Chapter nine
Into the Humped Land“Better for us if we were still owned by that rast Phrutius,” said Hunch, and he shivered. The other slaves in the tiny mud-walled compound agreed, with many and varicolored oaths.
Our new master in his black armor was Tarkshur — known as Tarkshur the Lash.
His face lowered in pride and power, a fierce face with a gape-jawed mouth over snaggly teeth, with wide-spaced eyes that gazed in contempt upon the world, narrow and cold, with thick black hair carefully oiled and curled over a low brow. His nostrils flared that contempt. He was accustomed to command. And as he spoke to us so his long whiplike tail flicked back and forth over one shoulder or the other, and to the tip of that sinuous tail was strapped six inches of daggered steel.
This stinking littl
