A Dance With Dragons

“Yezzan’s collar. Not yours.”
    Tyrion wiped the blood from his split lip with the back of his hand. When he tried to rise, one leg went out from under him, and he stumbled back onto his knees. He needed Penny’s help to regain his feet. “Sweets said the master must have water,” he said in his best whine.
    “Sweets can go fuck himself. He’s made for it. We don’t take commands from that freak neither.”
    No, thought Tyrion. Even amongst slaves there were lords and peasants, as he had been quick to learn. The hermaphrodite had long been their master’s special pet, indulged and favored, and the noble Yezzan’s other slaves hated him for it.
    The soldiers were accustomed to taking their commands from their masters and their overseer. But Nurse was dead and Yezzan too sick to name a successor. As for the three nephews, those brave free men had remembered urgent business elsewhere at the first sound of the pale mare’s hooves.
    “The w-water,” said Tyrion, cringing. “Not river water, the healer said. Clean, fresh well water.”
    Scar grunted. “ You go for it. And be quick about it.”
    “Us?” Tyrion exchanged a hopeless glance with Penny. “Water’s heavy. We’re not so strong as you. Can we … can we take the mule cart?”
    “Take your legs.”
    “We’ll need to make a dozen trips.”
    “Make a hundred trips. It’s no shit to me.”
    “Just the two of us … we won’t be able to carry all the water that the master needs.”
    “Take your bear,” suggested Scar. “Fetching water is about all that one is good for.”
    Tyrion backed away. “As you say, master.”
    Scar grinned. Master. Oh, he liked that. “Morgo, bring the keys. You fill the pails and come right back, dwarf. You know what happens to slaves who try to escape.”
    “Bring the pails,” Tyrion told Penny. He went off with the man Morgo to fetch Ser Jorah Mormont from his cage.
    The knight had not adapted well to bondage. When called upon to play the bear and carry off the maiden fair, he had been sullen and uncooperative, shuffling lifelessly through his paces when he deigned to take part in their mummery at all. Though he had not attempted escape, nor offered violence to his captors, he would ignore their commands oft as not or reply with muttered curses. None of this had amused Nurse, who made his displeasure clear by confining Mormont in an iron cage and having him beaten every evening as the sun sank into Slaver’s Bay. The knight absorbed the beatings silently; the only sounds were the muttered curses of the slaves who beat him and the dull thuds of their clubs pounding against Ser Jorah’s bruised and battered flesh.
    The man is a shell, Tyrion thought, the first time he saw the big knight beaten. I should have held my tongue and let Zahrina have him. It might have been a kinder fate than this.
    Mormont emerged from the cramped confines of the cage bent and squinting, with both eyes blackened and his back crusty with dried blood. His face was so bruised and swollen that he hardly looked human. He was naked except for a breechclout, a filthy bit of yellow rag. “You’re to help them carry water,” Morgo told him.
    Ser Jorah’s only reply was a sullen stare. Some men would sooner die free than live a slave, I suppose. Tyrion was not stricken with that affliction himself, thankfully, but if Mormont murdered Morgo, the other slaves might not draw that distinction. “Come,” he said, before the knight did something brave and stupid. He waddled off and hoped Mormont would follow.
    The gods were good for once. Mormont followed.
    Two pails for Penny, two for Tyrion, and four for Ser Jorah, two in either hand. The nearest well was south and west of the Harridan, so they set off in that direction, the bells on their collars ringing merrily with every step. No one paid them any mind. They were just slaves fetching water for their master. Wearing a collar conferred certain advantages, particularly a gilded collar inscribed with the name of Yezzan zo Qaggaz. The chime of those little bells proclaimed their value to anyone with ears. A slave was only as important as his master; Yezzan was the richest man in the Yellow City and had brought six hundred slave soldiers to the war, even if he did look like a monstrous yellow slug and smell of piss. Their collars gave them leave to go anywhere they might wish within the camp.
    Until Yezzan dies.
    The Clanker Lords had their slave soldiers drilling in the nearest field.