Free Byzantium's Crown by Susan Shwartz Page B

slaves toward their barracks. The household for which he had been purchased was no great one. While the main villa seemed substantial enough, its looks might have been improved by a new wash of paint on the outer walls. The outbuildings showed that the owners and Strymon (now riding in a wagon with the more valuable indoor slaves) took decent care of the estate's livestock, animal and human.
    Probably a regimental officer garrisoned in Alexandria had decided to retire here and had taken land outside the city walls fronting Lake Mareotis. Sensible of him, Marric thought. The man's descendants had obviously shared his good sense by tending the land, buying more, and adding a new wing onto the original house. As a general, Marric would have prized such an officer.
    Master of no man, least of yourself. The Osiris priest's rebuke came continually to mind. Would Marric indeed have valued such a man?
    The overseer, Sutekh, stalked past the line of slaves and pointed to the barracks with the whip he seemed to use as a badge of office. Given the number of men crowding into it, the long room was as clean as might be expected. Marric had seen soldiers housed in worse quarters and had shared them.
    But the sun beating down on the lake and the breathless heat of the day would make the place not just stuffy but suffocating. Doors and windows might let a breeze in at night, but the windows wore set so high that Marric didn't think they would do much good. Not even brimstone would cleanse the place of the reek of too many bodies.
    He turned quickly from the thin pallet beneath one of the windows and glanced about. Surely a household of this size provided bathing facilities for its slaves.
    Deliberately Sutekh stepped into his path. Though the overseer was shorter than Marric, he was far stockier. He had the body development of a man who had overtrained solely to win at wrestling, not to achieve the all-around coordination of the charioteer that was the Byzantine ideal. Sutekh's powerful arms and chest would make him a nasty adversary. Marric examined him. The skull under the reddish headcloth would be quite as hard as the jaw that the man thrust out.
    "Looking for a bath, are you?" Sutekh anticipated Marric's question with more shrewdness than he had expected. He laughed, as if Marric had told him a ribald tale. "There, slave!"
    He pointed lakeward with his whip.
    "Just don't let the crocodiles eat you. Around here, slaves who are too clean don't live long. But any time that you have time, go right ahead and risk a bath. Just don't expect me to come with a spear to pry you out of the crocs' jaws."
    Marric returned to the barracks. He would watch the more experienced slaves and do as they did. Most of them seemed to avoid Sutekh. They stepped out of his path and looked down whenever his eyes swept over them.
    At nightfall the slaves were fed: bread, onions, and thin, sour beer. Marric had eaten worse on campaign. He would simply have to think of this as one more battle to win.
    * * *
    In the days and weeks that followed, Marric found his resolve to survive and escape tested sorely. His barracks mates were none of them the sort of men he was used to. Whenever he had walked among soldiers they had been rough, cheerfully obscene, and wily with the craft of men who knew that if they survived this campaign, they would have money in their purses and the thanks of their officer. Most of his companions were spirit-broken fellahin. There were a few exotics from the Upper Cataracts, sold into slavery down in the Delta for reasons Marric never learned. There was even one Northerner—one of the Gepidae, Marric thought—who grunted incomprehensible hostilities at any attempt to speak to him. Like the others, he seemed only to understand the whip.
    As scribe and account-slave, Nicephorus was kept within the house. Marric missed his serenity, his quiet faith that there was a purpose to the scant food, the hard labor in someone else's fields, and the daily,