Interlude 4

Baroc

The sulfuric aroma of burning meat filled Baroc’s nostrils. The rak feasted a victory tonight.

The sharp, ever-present, taste of the iron pins sticking into his mouth was heightened by his own salivating. He preferred the meat raw, but he couldn’t deny the smell of cooked deer had an instinctive response in his body. It couldn’t mask the scents of the battle. It was a combination that Baroc was becoming very familiar with. Rak blood was heavy with copper and it lingered on rock and in the soil for months. There was a lot of rak blood on the ground in this place. The blood of the smaller pale raks was much the same but Baroc senses were sensitive enough to notice the difference.

White-grey smoke drifted up and around the false-peaks. These southern rak had the peculiar habit of building these. It was a strange amount of effort. Cutting rocks into squares and stacking them atop each other over and over. Both of the false-peaks were blackened with fire but the rak were busy repairing the tops. Baroc could smell the ash of the wood that had been burned. Three days. He didn’t guess, he knew. It had been three days since those fires and the blood of the rak had seeped into the ground.

The thick chains affixed to his collar rattled as Baroc rose to his feet. The chains and collar were covered in chinks from Baroc’s previous attempts at clawing them off. It had been weeks since his last attempt to escape. That complacency had given Baroc some measures of freedom. He was still forced to wear a muzzle, he was still chained but at least he now had the liberty of his hands to be unbound.

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Baroc watched as a set of the small rakmen—now slaves like him—were led through the encampment. There were a dozen of them in total, collars similar to his clipped around their necks and heavy chains linking them together. These were fighting rak. Those that had been injured but not killed in the battle. They would be sold to other rak chieftains or sent back to the rak chief of chiefs. They had a word for him but Baroc had forgotten it. It was a strange concept to him. A chief above other chiefs. How could that even work?

One of the pale rakmen stank of infection. There was dark blood crusted into his red fur. Baroc could smell the infected wound under his cloth robes. Rakmen bodies were different to his own clan. Their wounds festered easily, especially the pale ones. The shamans of his own people would insist that the wound be cleaned with boiled water every few hours until the rot was stemmed. But this rak would not have that privilege. Baroc could smell the delirium fogging his brain. He won’t last. None of the rak being marched out of the encampment seemed like they would.

The only two that seemed in good condition were a pair caged at the foot of the false-peaks. Baroc could detect the charcoal-like smell of a skin that had been touched by flames along with the sulphurous odour of burnt hairs; it was fading but still lingered on the yellow-furred one. The other looked a bit more like the rak he was used to although not as dark and still quite small. In appearances, the small rakmen didn’t look much like the rak of the north, but they had the same scent signature. The same play of emotions on their scent. These two did not hold the same fear that he’d seen of captured rak. He knew the scent of defiance. He used to smell it on himself.