Slaves of the Mastery Read Online Free PDF Page B

up to defy the unknown enemy.
    I will not let you destroy me !
    She looked south at the great grey heaving ocean. She looked back towards the last of Aramanth. Then she looked east, and knew that this was the way they had gone, the people-killers, the
city-burners. The stiff grasses of the coastland were trampled in a broad swathe, and not far away there lay the huddled shapes of dead bodies.
    She had only to follow the march. Her family may be dead. Her people may be dead. But her enemy would be alive. For this reason alone she had survived the death of her city. For this reason
alone she would not die.
    I am the avenger.
    This single simple idea filled her up, it was food and drink. Half-intoxicated with passion and exhaustion, she reached both hands high into the air above her head and spoke aloud, shouted
aloud, to her unknown enemy who neither knew nor heard, and to herself who would never forget.
    ‘I will follow you! I will find you! I will destroy you! This I vow!’
    For all of that first long day on the march, the people of Aramanth could see behind them the smoking ruins of their home. At first, as if drawn to look on their lost happiness
against their will, they turned many times, and wept at the sight. But as the dying city became smaller in the distance, and their tears were all used up, they turned to look no more.
    Bowman marched with his family, striding steadily onwards, seeing nothing. With all the power he possessed, he was reaching out, listening, feeling again for the familiar vibrations of his
sister’s mind. But now he could hear nothing.
    Marius Semeon Ortiz came riding slowly down the line. Bowman, seeing him approach, woke from his half-sleep, and tuned his acute senses towards him. This was the man who had taken everything
from him, including Kestrel. This man was his enemy. More steadily, more surely, he looked on the tawny-haired man on the horse, and reached out his mind towards him, in order that he might know
him.
    Ortiz saw the young slave staring up at him. For a moment, their eyes met. Then he rode on, paying him no more attention. Most of the slaves looked at him as he rode by. No doubt they hated him,
but they said nothing. They had learned that his punishment was instant and harsh. So it was only a few moments later that he realised the young man had been looking at him in a way he had not
known before. Ortiz rode on down the line, puzzling over the sensation. It hadn’t been the look of a captive, or a slave, but of an equal. Somehow, in that short moment in which their eyes
had met, the young man had seen inside him. What had he seen? Ortiz was not much given to introspection. He was a man of ambition, a man of action. But now he was intrigued.
    He turned his horse round, and rode back to find Bowman.
    ‘You,’ he said, tapping him on the shoulder with his sheathed sword. ‘What’s your name?’
    ‘Bowman Hath.’
    Ortiz walked his horse alongside the marching slaves, keeping to their pace.
    ‘Why do you look at me like that?’
    Bowman didn’t answer. Instead, he turned and looked once more into Ortiz’s eyes.
    This time, because Ortiz had sought the contact, Bowman entered far more deeply into his mind. Ortiz started as if he’d been stung. He jerked his eyes away, and spurred his horse into a
trot.
    How dare he! he thought to himself as he rode off to the front of the line. He didn’t put the thought clearly into words, because he found it too unsettling, but what he had felt,
inexplicably, tantalisingly, was that the slave called Bowman Hath had understood him.
    The slaves were not chained or roped. They marched in whatever order they chose. The pace was punishing for the little children and for the old people, so the stronger young
men took it in turns to carry those who couldn’t keep up. This was more than an act of kindness: those that were left behind on the march were killed by sweepers, mounted soldiers who
followed the tail of the long