The poor five-fingered human that had helped me defeat the leader of the other company was struggling. His arms were pinned under the orc’s superior bulk and he couldn’t generate enough leverage to lift the body enough to get the chain from his manacles back off the dead orc’s neck. When I said that the human was thin and not well-muscled, I wasn’t exaggerating. He looked like he was maybe five foot seven or eight and he likely weighed less than 150 pounds even if he filled his pockets with rocks. His head was poking out above the orc’s shoulder and besides the grimace of effort on his face from trying to free himself, it was clear that he had not been treated very well by his captors. One of his eyes was almost swollen shut and a set of ragged scratch marks ran down the left side of his face and onto his neck. They looked like they had come from a wide set of fingernails.
“Hold on,” I said. “Let me help to get you out from under there.”
“You speak my language?”
“I speak everybody’s language,” I replied with a laugh.
Bowen was following quickly behind me and together we levered the corpse into a seated position. Of course, since the human was still attached to the body by a chain looped around its necks, he was forced to sit up as well, his arms thrust at an angle upwards like he was saluting the sky.
“Can you get your legs out now?” I asked.
He started wiggling and writhing, trying to get his legs free. First one came loose, then the other popped out. He was able to get to his knees and then stand, finally freeing the chain from the neck of our defeated foe.
“That was fairly courageous, you attacking like that,” I said.
“I owed them for a lot of pain. They captured me three days ago. When they got bored at night they had fun abusing me. They played this game. The first one who could make me cry out in pain or beg for mercy won as long as they hadn’t permanently injured me. They even bet with each other on it.”
“That would make me want to fight,” I said. “My name is James by the way. What’s yours?”
“I am Sawwar,” he replied. “I don’t suppose I can convince you to get these manacles off of me?”
“I think we can help with that,” I said. Then, I went rooting around looting the orcs and looking for a key.
While I was busy doing this, I realized that something was odd about Sawwar’s appearance. He was dressed in a set of crudely fashioned clothing patched together from the pelts and skins of several animals and based upon the smell they hadn’t all been perfectly tanned. The predominant item of clothing he wore was a crude poncho that shrouded his lean frame. He was wearing similar pants of some sort but no boots or shoes, his feet apparently toughened by walking many miles barefoot. I couldn’t see anyone selling clothing like that. It must have been made here on the island.
Eventually I located the key. It was in a bag with six more sets of shackles. That was fairly optimistic planning on the part of the orcs but I assume that its better to have too many sets than too few. After locating the key, I walked back over to Sawwar.
“Before you bolt off back into the forest, I need you to hear me out,” I said. “If you run, we are not going to stop you. If you run, though, you are going to be missing an opportunity to have a better life.” I had already decided with his willingness to fight he would be a great addition to the farm. I felt like I owed him for pitching in. That meant the next poor bastard we caught was going to the company, though, and that didn’t make me very happy.
“You would let me go?” he asked. “I thought you were slavers like the rest of them. I fought because the one person of my kind who is with you looks well taken care of. Anything’s better than being abused night after night.”
Slavers? How did he know that there were groups of slavers on the island. What did he mean by the rest of them. This guy clearly had some knowledge that most new arrivals didn’t possess. How had he obtained it? How long had he been here? Taken together with his appearance, something wasn’t adding up.
I didn’t immediately give voice to the questions that popped into my mind. Instead, I walked over to the man and unshackled him. The key worked smoothly in the lock. The bigger companies clearly invested in things that would maximize their profits. New recruits, though, those were apparently disposable.
After removing the manacles I got to work on the collar around his neck. That wasn’t locked but it was attached by a series of ingenious buckles. Given enough time, a slave could probably remove it on his or her own but that effort would be pretty damn obvious to whoever was standing guard. Soon, Sawwar was free of all restraints. He stood there rubbing his neck which had been abraded and chafed by friction from the collar. The collars clearly were designed to force compliance not to be comfortable.
“Contrary to what these two might think, I am not a stupid man,” I said, pointing at Aleyda and Bowen. “You are obviously not a new arrival to this place. Your clothes look like they were made here and you have knowledge about what is happening here that the newly arrived don’t tend to have. How long have you been living here on this island?”
“Oh, I just got here,” he replied. “This is just how people dress where I am from.”
I didn’t believe him, not even a little bit.
“Are you hungry?” I asked, deciding to take a different approach for the moment.
“I’m starving,” he replied. “The orcs didn’t feed me much.”
Hmm. He knows what orcs are. The plot thickens.
“Well, let’s loot these orcs and pull the bodies off into the woods. I am sure something will come along and enjoy the free meal and we won’t have to smell them. We had just stopped for lunch ourselves but these idiots look decently supplied so maybe they have something they can contribute to our meal.”
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
And we did just that. Beyond finding a little pocket change, we didn’t find a whole lot that appeared to be very valuable. I did claim the cat pelts and strap them on the top of my pack. They looked like they would be worth something back at town. The orcs were all wearing boots and we sorted through them until we found the smallest pair. Those we offered to Bethany. Of course, they didn’t fit but with the surplus of blankets, cloaks and other cloth items that we were able to scavenge from the orcs’ possessions, we were able to pad them well enough to make do. That meant nobody would have to carry her anymore, which was just grand as far as I was concerned. We didn’t keep too many of the cloth goods after seeing that many of them were infested by some sort of lice.
They had quite a lot of food. Orcs were hearty eaters, it seemed. We kept those things that were recognizable, fruits, bread and the like. What we didn’t recognize, though, we left. The last thing I wanted to do was inadvertently become a cannibal by eating some of the questionable meat that the orcs carried with them. Each of the orcs had a sword and dagger of some type, but none of them looked like upgrades over what we already had. I noticed that Sawwar had armed himself with a couple of daggers and a sword and we gave Bethany a dagger just so she could at least have one weapon or tool. Besides a little pocket change and skins of the horse piss alcohol that orcs seemed to value in this world, there was very little else that was noteworthy.
Then, we paired up and started dragging the bodies out into the forest. We didn’t pull them far, maybe fifty feet or so, but it was still hard work dragging them over rocks and through underbrush. Then, after cleaning up a little in the little stream, we sat back down and got back to the important business of eating.
Lunch was a monotonous repeat of almost every meal we had since coming to the island, dried trail rations. I missed Jahhaf so much. There wasn’t a lot of conversation while we ate. Bowen and Aleyda could speak together in a rudimentary fashion but every other sort of communication had to go through me. I didn’t feel much like talking. My mouth was full of dry, tough food that I had to chew over and over until I could finally force it down into my stomach. It made eating more of a chore than a pleasure but our bodies needed fuel.
While I was sitting there in relative quiet, I started thinking about the answers or lack of answers that Sawwar had provided. When I happened to glance at him, I noticed he was studying me intently before he quickly looked away. He knew far too much for a new arrival and I hadn’t seen any of the other companies bringing slaves to the island, so it was unlikely he was an escaped slave from this world. That meant, at least in my mind, that he had been here living on the island for some time. He might have some real survival skills and might have just been fending for himself before he got unlucky one day and ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. The other option was more intriguing, though. Could there be an organized group of new, and in some cases not so new, arrivals here on the island? If so, I wondered how many there were. If that was the case, it would change a lot of things. I decided to test my theory with a little conversation.
“So,” I said, addressing him. “Bethany here was a retail worker and aspiring fashion designer. Tell me about yourself and your world.”
“Oh, we were pretty primitive,” he replied cagily. “We lived in tents out on the plains and did a lot of hunting and gathering. Sometimes we would skirmish with other tribes but all in all things were fairly peaceful. We would follow the herds, moving from place to place to make certain that we always had food and skins. I was training to be a hunter. One day I was out on a hunt and fell down a ravine and was knocked unconscious. I woke up here.”
His answer was complete and utter bullshit. He didn’t move with the strength and dexterity I would expect from someone who spent his days stalking prey. If anything, he reminded me of myself when I first got to this world, somewhat bumbling and unsure. There was no way he had survived on his own for very long.
“When did you arrive here?” I asked.
“Oh, about a week ago, I guess.”
“Well, let me tell you what we have to offer,” I said. Then, I went into my normal spiel about the farm and the group we were building. I talked about my moral compunction against slavery and how, once we got back to the mainland, he would be well treated and become a member of our little community. I also told him about the deal I had with the company and why it was the best that I could find. He sat there listening intently. After I was done, he spoke.
“That’s a fine offer and in other circumstances I might be tempted to accept it, but if you truly meant it when you said you were going to let me go then I think I am good here.”
“You realize that there are two governments making a play for control of the island and soon one of them plans to erect a travel portal to allow troops to move back and forth from the mainland with ease? All too soon there will be no place left to hide.”
My words seemed to make him agitated. “No, I didn’t realize that,” he replied. “I better get going soon so I can find a good, isolated place to hole up.”
Yeah, he had someplace to be and people to talk to. I didn’t blame him for lying to me. After all, I was leaving some stuff out as well. But he clearly seemed like he had somewhere else he wanted to be. Perhaps he was eager to leave because there were others that needed to know the information that I had shared with him. I didn’t know for certain, but I strongly suspected that might be the case. How was I going to get the information out of him? I decided I needed to go for broke.
I noticed that Bethany and Aleyda had finished eating. I was going to have to put everything on the table to test my theory. If I was wrong, though, we would be forced to protect our secret. That might result in Sawwar joining the orcs out in the forest. It is not something that I had any desire to do but I couldn’t put a whole group of people at risk if I made an ill-advised decision. If I was right, though, that changed everything.
“Aleyda, why don’t you take Bethany down the trail to test out her new boots and see if we need to make any adjustments,” I said.
“I suppose that’s a good idea,” Aleyda replied with a quizzical look on her face. She clearly didn’t understand what I was doing. “If we need to adjust the padding it is better to do it now than later.”
Aleyda stood and gestured for Bethany to follow. They went strolling back down the trail and soon they were out of sight.
I think Sawwar could tell that something was up. He kept glancing around nervously like he was considering making a break for freedom. I didn’t blame him at all. Something was up indeed.
Once I was certain Bethany was out of earshot, I addressed him.
“Don’t be concerned. I just want to see how you react to a little secret and see whether that changes your willingness to share the truth with me. Here’s what I think. You have been here a lot more than a week and you aren’t living by yourself. I think you live in a community of other new arrivals. The story that you told me about where you came from is crap. You don’t carry yourself like some primitive hunter. I think your world was a whole lot more advanced than you let on. I believe the explanation you offered me is entirely fictitious. It’s a story that someone had you rehearse in case you got captured, which you did. But if we want your secrets, we are going to have to share our own.”
My words struck him like lightning, causing him to jump to his feet and to begin shuffling away from us.
“Do you think that we can’t run you down if we have to?” I asked. “Have a little patience and listen to what I have to say.” Then, I turned to Bowen. “Bowen, take off your gloves.”
“Are you certain?” Bowen asked. “If we do this there is no going back.”
“Yes, I am sure,” I replied.
Bowen stood and removed his gloves. Then he held his hands out spread wide, allowing Sawwar a clear view of his five fingered hands. At the same time, I dropped my illusion and removed my own gloves.
“As you can see, we have a lot to talk about,” I said.