They huddled together in such a trembling mass that it was difficult to distinguish one from another. Their clothes hung in tatters; their emaciated bodies gave them the look of cattle better slaughtered for soup bones than left out to graze winter pastures, where they would only die and their carcasses be gnawed by wolves.
But these Alban folk had not died, or at least not all of them had. Daily his troops captured such refugees, folk who had escaped the fall of the city or who had fled the nearby farms which had once fed the town. While his strike forces searched and harried the countryside beyond the reach of the Temes River, he had a different task.
He beckoned to his interpreter, a Hessi merchant’s son named Yeshu. Like a well-trained dog, he approached without fear.
“Discover what manner of people these are,” he told him.
The Hessi merchants taught their children many languages, the better to follow the trade routes. Yeshu spoke his tortured mother tongue as well as Alban, Wendish, and Salian.
“They are artisans, my lord, so they say,” he replied after an interrogation of the eldest woman. “According to their report, they fled the city and hid in the forest lands. Half of them have died so far this winter, so they claim.”
“What kind of artisans?”
“Carpenters and turners, my lord.”
He glanced around the great hall, crudely refurbished after the battle fought last autumn but in need of good craftsmen to restore it. “Are they kin to each other? Of one tribe?”
“Out of two clans and three houses, my lord.” He wore a cap out of which black locks straggled. His dusky skin stood in marked contrast to the fair-skinned, light-haired Albans. “This is what they tell me: they came together in their flight because some of their kinfolk married between them, as is the custom of Alban artisans.”
“Woodworkers,” he mused, looking them over. They were a sorry lot, and many might still die no matter what mercy he showed them, but that they had survived for so long and stuck together in numbers, to protect themselves, suggested intelligence and practicality. A tool may look worn and almost broken yet may still be fixable. Useful.
There was more than one way to conquer a country.
“Let them be given grain and such salt as they need for the remainder of the winter. They will be left in peace to ply their trade as long as they reestablish themselves in their home and put themselves to such tasks as they are accustomed to. They will give me labor in exchange for my protection. This hall needs rebuilding. The doors do not shut properly. What tithe did the queen require of them?”
Another conversation ensued. The youth could bargain; since Stronghand could understand what Yeshu was saying to the Alban prisoners he understood that the elders of their house, despite the seeming hopelessness of their condition, hoped to convince the lad that the Alban queen took less of a tithe than he knew she normally did based on the testimony of other prisoners and the Hessi merchants with whom he had established trading relationships.
“Enough,” he said at last, in Wendish. Even the Hessi lad did not yet suspect that he understood the Alban speech. In truth, he was surprised he understood it at all, but ever since the return of Alain, the speech of all creatures seemed eerily open to him, as though the all-encompassing wisdom and sight of the OldMothers had infested his mortal, crippled blood. “If they argue, then they do not wish to tell the truth. One day in three will be their tithe. If they are faithful, they can earn the privilege that those loyal to my rule enjoy of one in six. Tell them to return to their home and rebuild.”
This mercy they had not expected. Weeping and wailing, they threw themselves down before him to offer obeisance, but he knew he could not trust them. To show his displeasure he chose the healthiest looking child from their group to send to Mother Ursuline at Rikin Fjord as an acolyte. He cared little for the quarrels between the gods of the Alban tree sorcerers and the circle god esteemed by the Wendish, but the adherents of the circle god were more useful to him, especially while the tree sorcerers remained his adversaries.
As the prisoners were herded away, he stroked the wooden circle that he wore around his neck. While he mused, his councillors maintained a respectful silence: the chieftains of Hakonin, Vitningsey, Jatharin, and Isa, Papa Otto, and Samiel, the Hessi merchant he had appointed as his steward because he knew how to read, write, and figure numbers.
“Woodworkers can also build a bridge upstream, where the river narrows. That will make our task easier. When spring comes, and they have finished the hall, let them work one day out of four on this task.”
“Yes, my lord.”
