PreCursive

  Actually, farm didn’t do it justice. It was more of a pntation.

  Stretg out in vast fields in front of me were crops, as far as my eye could see. From a cursory look, it didn’t appear to be a mono-crop being grown. Ordered i plots, I couldn’t quite tell what was being grown from my position. From a distance, I could see a great many different people w in those fields. However, those same people gave me a sinking feeling in my chest, even exhausted as I was.

  They were obviously sves.

  All of them were wearing threadbare clothing, with peared to be dull bck metal colrs cmped around their neone of them appeared to be in amazing shape, with sunken cheeks and emaciated forms. Toiling away in the fields before me, they were to a fault, as silent as they could be.

  Each plot had what could only be an overseer or perhaps a guard, to keep an eye on the ‘property’. These were sves as well if not sves ier shape. The overseers were dressed in slightly better clothing and were obviously better fed. These guards also carried a trun at their belt, while trotting around upon the back of a horse in order to keep a better eye out. They still had the colrs on, though.

  They were, all of them, human. Even the overseers.

  Several of those overseers were sitting on horseba a group not too far away from us, eyeing the raiders uneasily. They didn’t seem to care overmuch for those of us that had been dumped in the dirt.

  Tearing my eyes away from the overseers before me, I noticed the dirt road snaking its way iween two different types of crop fields. In the distance, I could see a cloud of dirt making its way in our dire rapidly. As the cloud got closer to us, I was able to make out the vague shape of what was ing our way. It looked to be a horse-drawn carriage.

  After perhaps five minutes of waiting, I was finally able to get a better look at the carriage as it stopped not far from us. It was, in a waudy. Painted a dark green color, it was covered in gold orion. Even the horses seemed more expehan the simple workhorses that the caravan and the guards were using. No, these were pure white despite all the dust they had kicked up, with an almost disdainful bearing to them. What caught my attention the most, however, were the two people sitting on the carriage’s driver’s bench.

  I think they were dwarves.

  One was obviously a servant of some kind, based upon his almost ically stereotypical butler uniform. With short-cropped brown hair and -shaven cheeks, he didn’t at all match my mental image of a fantasy dwarf. The sed one must have been a guard of some kind, based on his gear. He was wearing, of all things, a full suit of shining silver and gold ored pte armor. His breastpte was covered by a green and gold cloth tabard ched at his waist, with an image of a bull mid-rear painted across it. He had a gaudy-looking longsword belted at his hip, with golden bull horns funing as a cross guard, and a kite shield slung across his back. I couldn’t make out aures under his helm.

  Both dwarves hopped down from the seat of the carriage. The servant hurried to the door of the carriage, while the presumed guard leisurely hopped down and ambled over to stao it. The armored dwarf stood to the side of the door, with a visibly bored posture, while the servao open the door. With a bang, the door opened before he could, sending the servant dwarf fling back.

  Striding doweps of the carriage was a dwarf that was equally as gaudy as the carriage he had rode in on. Pale-skinned, he wore rich forest green silk robes with a shining golden cape secured to his shoulders with a golden . He had much longer hair than the servant dwarf, pitch b color falling to well below his shoulders. He also had a voluminous beard, reag mid-chest length that had several braids in it, capped with golden rings. In fact, gold seemed to be a theme with him. He had golden rings on each of his fingers, several golden s around his neck, multiple golden earrings, and he even had golden orion on his belt. Even his shiny bck leather boots had golden csps on them.

  Catg a glimpse of his eyes, I could see that they were a bright gold as well, with a slight glow to them. Striding in our dire, he had a walking stick painted as green as the carriage, equally as decorated.

  Stopping perhaps twenty feet away from us, the lead dwarf made a show of looking at the lineup of caravan survivors arrayed in the dirt. As he looked over us, I caught his eye briefly. Despite their warm color, they were anything but friendly. He looked at me like I was a bug he had crushed underfoot, with a slight curl of disgust to his lip.

  Finished with his iion, the leader of the dwarves spoke into the crowd of raiders that had arrayed themselves behind us. Hearing boot steps behind me, I saw the leader of the raiders that I hadn’t seen in days step out.

  He said something back to the dwarven leader before they seemed to enter into some kind of bad-forth exge. Whatever it was that the elven leader was saying didn’t seem to make the dwarven one very happy, as he raised his voice briefly, making the armored dwarf y a hand on his sword. This didn’t seem to sit well with the raiders, as I heard some shuffling and mumbling behind me, whily stopped when the leader raised his hand without looking backward.

  He said something again to the dwarven leader, which seemed to calm him down. Not taking his narrowed eyes off the leader of the raiders, the richly dressed dwarf held a hand out to the servant dwarf to his right behind him. The servant stepped up briefly, took a small bag off his belt before handing it to his master, and stepped backward with a bow. Looking down finally, the dwarven leader opehe bag and spilled its tents in his hand revealing a pile of gold s. Taking some away, he deposited exactly fourteen gold s bato the bag.

  Exactly the number of survivors arrayed before him.

  As the lead dwarf tossed the bag of s to the elven raid leader, I closed my eyes briefly in despair. I suppose I knehy we had been spared in the ambush upon the caravan.

  We were meant to be sold as sves.

  Opening my eyes again, I risked a quice at the other survivors to my left. The numb look on their faces told me that they already khat this had beee that awaited them.

  ……………………………………...

  After that, the elven raiders left, taking the caravans that they had stolen along with them without a backward g the people they had sold into svery.

  As they left, the servant dwarf hurried around to the back of the carriage before unlog something. From behind it, I heard the servant bark a and at the sve overseers that had been standing off to the side during the entire exge. They hurried to obey, moving over to where he was. I could hear the k of s as something was unloaded.

  From behind the carriage, the overseers carried out lengths of s with manacles and colrs attached to them. As they got closer to us, a few of the other overseers uhed their truns before moving in to hover over us with fearsome scowls on their faces as if to intimidate us. They have bothered, as we were all too weak from hunger and dehydration to even sider resisting them.

  One by ohe overseers began to truss us up in shackles and s. When it came to be my turn, all I could do was limply let them do what they wanted. Even if I hadn’t been weak from , I had never been very physically ined in my life, before I’d been dropped in this hellhole. I ced at the very back of the line.

  Yanking us to our feet, we were just in time to see the richly dressed dwarf from earlier climbing bato the wagon and sm the door behind him. Hurrying back to the carriage from where he had been direg the overseers, the servant dwarf climbed into the driver’s seat, while the armored o o him. Shouting a and back down to the overseers, the servant dwarf gestured back down the dirt road in the dire that he had e from. The overseers bowed to him before perf some kind of salute, thumping their right closed fist over their hearts.

  The servant dwarf reared the horses and the carriage around, before setting off at a breakneck speed down the dirt road back the way they had arrived. Watg them fade into the distah unfocused eyes, I was heless startled when the attached to my neck was yanked on. Jerking my head to my right, I saw the dirty face of one of the overseers shouting at me. He pushed me forward with the trun as the procession of ed sves started to move.

  ……………………………………...

  The overseers marched us for miles in the heat, weighed down with s, colrs, and manacles. No matter how much they shouted, they seemed to cat that we were too weak to move any faster.

  As we proceeded down the dirt road, I could see that we were surrounded by crops. I didn’t personally know much about farming, but there seemed to be a rger variety of goods being growhan I would expect. I only reized some of them, but wheat, , and cotton were among the crops I was able to dis. Something about the huge variety of crops that I could see didn’t seem right to me, but I was too exhausted to think about it.

  After perhaps an hour of tinuous shuffling at our slow pace, buildings began to e into sight in the distahese were ramshackle things, that looked like they were made from driftwood than any kind of sound material. From those ramshackle buildings, I could see dirty faces peering out at us. Primarily women and the elderly, I could see some elderly men as well. All of them wore threadbare rags. All of them also wore those same bck colrs the overseers were wearing. The overseers yelled something at them, and the other sves disappeared.

  I suppose these were the sve bunks.

  As we moved further up the road, I began to see peared to be a wall in the distance. Made of carved wooden logs with points at the top, the wall had a gate in front of us that had two guards manniher side of it. These guards were also in full pte with the same tabard as the armored dwarf from earlier, but far less decorated and without a helmet. These dwarves were also carrying spears instead of a sword and shield. Strangely, they were -shaven to a fault as well.

  When our procession reached the gate, one of the overseers stepped up to speak to the guard. With lowered eyes and a deferential bearing, they tried to speak to the guard. The guard cut him off with a wave of his hand before moving off to the side and opening a smaller door rather than opening the gates. Gesturing at us in an impatient mahe dwarf began to wave us in.

  I couldn’t muster up the energy to be surprised wheher side of the wall tained a full-blown dwarvelement.