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“Colonel,” he says, ducking his head with respect. “Who’s this?”
“Deserter.” She snatches up my rope and pulls me in, her sharp eyes boring into me. I resist the urge to shrink back at the fury in them. “We should hang her. Bring in every squadron, especially those new recruits, and make them watch.”
The stick-like man nods again deferentially. “Of course, of course. She would make a great example of what happens to people who run from the King’s call.” Then his shoulders tighten and he wrings his hands. “However... we do rather need all the bodies we can get.”
The colonel’s eyes snap to him. “Are you arguing with me?”
He pales and waves a hand. “No, no. Not at all. I’m merely suggesting that we could use her instead of breaking her neck. She’s young and strong, and now that we’ve commandeered all the production capacity, we’re in need of individuals who can, erm, work the land.”
Commandeered? Does that mean they’ve stolen the trollkin farms and taken over? I think of Drazak and Han’zir, simply living their lives when humans arrive to take the rest of it, and my blood turns cold.
But this is, potentially, an opportunity to escape death, if this twig of a man can convince my captor not to break my neck.
“I’m familiar with trollkin farm equipment,” I say suddenly, and the colonel glares at me.
“Keep your mouth shut. You have no say in this, deserter.”
But the man’s eyes are curious now. “Really. I was... indentured on a trollkin farm for the last few months. I know how everything works?—”
“Silence!” The colonel yanks on my rope, dragging me towards her until we’re face-to-face. “No one asked you. Now shut up.”
But I’ve caught the man’s attention. He peers at me, studying me to see if I might be lying.
“The tillers,” I say, thinking of Drazak asking me to hand him different tools as he repaired one. “They don’t work like ours. The trollkin have a totally different method for tilling.”
There’s a growl low in the colonel’s throat, but the stick-man holds up a hand to her. “We’ve been having trouble with this,” he tells her, then gestures at me. “We’ve had to do everything by hand.”
The colonel’s brows furrow in thought. “Is this the hold-up we’ve been facing with planting?” she asks, never once taking her razor-sharp eyes off of mine.
“One of them.”
“I can help,” I interject. “I also know what all their vegetables need. You’re probably overwatering those big roots, the white ones. They actually like it very dry.”
The colonel is about to strangle me for speaking out of turn when the skinny man steps in. “If it’s all the same to you, colonel,” he says, gingerly reaching for the rope, “I think we could use this one.” When she opens her mouth to object, he adds, “It’s still servitude. She’ll spend the rest of her life working herself to the bone, without pay, to serve and further the mission. Perhaps that’s a fate even worse than death.”
I don’t really agree with him, but I nod hastily anyway. The colonel thinks, looking me over from head to toe.
“She’s a good age, and she looks tough. I wonder what else she’s learned that could be useful to us?” Her frown morphs into a wicked smile. “What else we could do to take out more trollkin?”
Again I think of my orc and my troll, the humans charging in and cutting them down to take the farm. Then I shake my head. They’re not mine, not like I thought they were. Still, a deeply-buried hole inside me aches. It is cavernous, absorbing all the light around it, and I don’t think it will ever be filled again.
The colonel hands off my rope. “Make sure to put her at the bottom of the food chain,” she says. “Treat her like the animal she is, leaving her own fellow soldiers to die.”
I want to argue, none of us should have been out there in the first place, but she could always change her mind about the gallows.
The squirrely man nods a few times eagerly. “I know just where to take her. And I’ll find out everything we can about how the trollkin are surviving the war.”
Begrudgingly, the colonel nods and releases the rope. I can only hope that what they have planned for me isn’t worse than death.
Once again, I’m a thing, a bargaining chip, a tool to be used until I break and serve no other purpose.
This time I’m put on a horse, though my hands are still tied. The skinny man is some kind of magistrate. He oversees transporting me to the farm where I’ll be stationed and made to work.
There’s an irony there that doesn’t escape me.
“You’re going to show me everything,” he says, adjusting the collar of his shirt. “Then I’ll write a guide, and then the Colonel will see.”
I nod along as we march down a long dirt road. Up in the distance there’s a big barn that looks much like the one on our own farm. They’ve left the animals alive, which perhaps makes them an inch smarter than the trollkin who came and took everything.
