A Feast for Dragons

as you can carry. And be quick about it.”
    The soldiers broke off their game. Scar rose to his feet,
brow beetling. “What did you say, dwarf? Who do you think you are?”
    “You know who I am. Yollo. One of our lord’s treasures. Now
do as I told you.”
    The soldiers laughed. “Go on, Scar,” one mocked, “and be
quick about it. Yezzan’s monkey gave you a command.”
    “You do
not
tell soldiers what to do,” Scar
said.
    “Soldiers?” Tyrion affected puzzlement. “Slaves, is what I
see. You wear a collar round your neck the same as me.”
    The savage backhand blow Scar dealt him knocked him to the
ground and broke his lip. “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