Elanari

“Who’ll give me fifty for this beauty?” The slavesman called from atop the pitted wooden dais.

Eldrick narrowed his eyes in concentration and sorted the silver discs lying in his dirt stained hand. He shrugged uncomfortably, shifting the weight of the heavy crossbow slung across his back. It was dwarven made, top quality, and would shoot clean through an armored man at thirty yards but it was not light.

“Fifty,” a silk clad youth standing next to Eldrick called out. The well-dressed gentleman looked like a feastday pheasant to Eldrick, though he was a little jealous of the man’s shining boots. He glanced away from his counting to inspect the supple leather. They were for riding, not walking, and walking was what Eldrick did most of the time.

“Thank-you young sire,” the slavesman called to the youth who was busy adjusting the long, blue, heron feathers that decorated his tall cap.

“Sixty,” Eldrick had finished counting and held his balled fist in the air. Silver glinted from between his fingers as his savings threatened to mutiny and flee into the street. Several of the merchants in attendance shook their heads in disapproval of the bid, thinking sixty talents far too much to pay for an Iverni woman.

The young nobleman glanced at Eldrick out of the corner of his eye and wrinkled his nose raising a scented handkerchief to the upturned member and yawned a casual, “Seventy-five.”

One hundred,” Eldrick held both his bulging fists in the air. The young nobleman blanched at the bid and held the kerchief closer to his face. The slavesman looked expectantly toward the well-dressed youth who shook his head slightly and mumbled something about the “unwashed and sodden masses.”

“One hundred then, is there another. Is there another?” The slavesman drew out the last formality, “Is there another?” The slavesman gave the crowd a pleading look and loosed a quiet sigh. Eldrick understood why. One hundred talents was a fraction of what the Iverni beauty was worth. But because she was Iverni and he was standing in the hamlet of Ebah in the South Midlands she would command no more. Religion, it seemed, was the bane of the slave trade. “Sold, to the,” the slavesman hesitated with the word “gentleman” teetering on the tip of his tongue. He settled with, “bowman.”

Eldrick stepped forward, reached up, and dumped his coins into the eager hands of the waiting slavesman who in turn dropped them immediately into a strongbox flanked by two scar knuckled brutes. Eldrick thought they were Adria or perhaps Lodrian and he eased his footman’s hammer in its rawhide hanger. Memories of fighting in the mountains east of Modara flashed through his mind. He was Skarnish by birth and since he could swing a weapon he had fought both the Lodrians and Adria under the banner of the boy king, Collin Kingshammer, his one time liege lord. He felt the sudden urge to crush the Lodrian’s skull with the back-spike of his hammer.

“Here she is,” a rough voice ended Eldrick’s violent reverie. “Take my advice archer, this one is only good for field work. She’d make a fine plow horse. But I wouldn’t let her off the chains. She’s no bedmate, if you don’t mind me saying so. The bitch fights like a wounded tiger.” Several deep scratches lined the grizzled old man’s face and a wide bruise was yellowing on his cheek.

She was even more beautiful up close. Tall, barely a head shorter than he, her unbound hair cascaded in dark waves over the smooth, cinnamon, skin of her shoulders. Bright green eyes regarded him coolly as if she were a queen and he the one being brought to her in chains. Sleek muscle, shaped dancing and hunting in the depths of the northern jungles, added to her feral beauty and the dirty rags draped haphazardly about her lean body barely managed to conceal her physical perfection. One hundred talents was blatant thievery.