For twenty-two years, Varek had greeted every dawn with the sound of chains. For five weeks now the sound was gone, and Varek still could not get used to the silence.
It was the last hour of the night watch. The camp lay on the slope of a hill; hundreds of tents, fires burning down to embers, and the sleeping breath of nine thousand people. Varek leaned on his spear and looked east. The spear still sat foreign in his hands. For Thirty-two years his hands had known only the pick, and the calluses of his palms were carved to the thickness of a pick handle, not the slimness of a spear shaft. Sergeant Korr told him the same thing at every drill: "Don't squeeze it, hold it. A spear is not a pick, son."
Son. Varek was forty years old. But in Korr's tongue all the freed slaves were sons, because measured in spear-years, every one of them was an infant.
The brand on his cheek itched at night. Varek had learned not to scratch it; a scratched brand shows more. The brand sat on his left cheek, above the cheekbone: two lines inside a circle. The mark of the quarry. Varek had been born in that quarry, his mother had been born in that quarry, and the brand had been pressed into both their faces at the same age, at seven. When the quarry's clerk took inventory each year, he wrote down not Varek's name but his number. Varek knew his own price too, because the clerk said it aloud: a strong quarry slave was worth a little more than a good mule.
Five weeks ago, when the quarry gates were broken, Varek had not run. He had hidden. Half the slaves had hidden, because in their lives the breaking of gates had only ever meant one thing: property was changing hands, and property that changes hands gets beaten. The dark elf soldier who pulled Varek out of the stone-breaking pit had not shouted at him. He had only looked at his chain, brought his sword down once, and moved on. For the first time in Thirty-two yearss the chain lay open on Varek's ankle, and Varek, not knowing what to do, had sat at the edge of the pit until evening.
In the evening, the army's scribes had come. Everyone was shown the same two things: a sack of road-bread and a spear. The rule was simple and needed no interpreter. Whoever took the bread could go; no one would follow. Whoever took the spear stayed.
Varek had taken the spear. He had nowhere to take the bread to. For a branded dark elf, every road in imperial lands ended in one of two places: a new chain, or a ditch.
His watch-mate Sel crouched down beside him and held out his waterskin. Sel was young, twenty perhaps; a farm slave, and he loved to talk. Varek did not, but Sel's talking helped the night pass.
"A new group came in from the east road at dusk, did you hear?" said Sel. "From a mill. Eleven of them. There's a child among them who won't speak at all. The scribes asked his name, nothing. They read who he was off his brand."
Varek handed the waterskin back. "He'll speak," he said. "In time."
"How long did it take you to speak?"
Varek did not answer, and Sel, feeling the weight of his own question, went quiet. Below, by the picket fire at the camp's eastern end, there was movement; two riders came in, words were exchanged, and one of the riders spurred on toward the command tents. Varek saw the layer of dust on the rider's back. He had come from far away, and he was in a hurry.
"Another village, you think?" said Sel. His voice had dropped. "Like last week?"
Varek thought about last week. About the village called Verren. He had not seen the army enter it; their company had been in the rear, guarding the road. But he had seen the smoke. The smoke had hung in the sky all day, and in the evening some of the freed slaves in the company had rejoiced quietly, and some had not spoken at all. Varek was one of those who had not spoken. He did not know whose grain had filled that village's granary. But he could guess whose hands had worked that village's fields, because whoever had broken stone for Thirty-two years alongside him, their kind had driven those plows too, and a chain does not let you run when the fire comes.
Freedom, as far as Varek had learned, was not a clean thing.
"I don't know," he said.
Sel stayed silent for a while. Then, with the courage the young have for unaskable questions, he asked: "Have you ever seen him up close?"
He did not need to say whom he meant. In the camp, he was always the same person.
"Once," said Varek. "The day the quarry opened. From a distance."
"What is he like?"
Varek remembered. Sitting at the edge of the pit, he had seen a group of riders pass along the road. The man in the middle had no horse; he was walking. His white hair could be picked out even from that distance, and there was no hurry in his stride. He had stopped for a moment before the quarry, looked at the opened gates, and moved on. That was all of it. Varek had not seen his face, and he was not sure he wanted to. The empire called him a demon; the newcomers said so, criers were shouting it in the town squares. But the freed slaves in the camp used another name. No one knew who had started it, but the name had taken hold, because it was true.
"You're asking about the Chainbreaker?" said Varek. "He's a man. He was walking."
"The quarry men say magic doesn't touch him. The empire's mages rained fire on him and not one spark landed."
"The quarry men say a lot of things."
"What if it's true?"
Varek shrugged. Whether it was true was not his problem. His problem was this: for Thirty-two years the world had held a single order, and under that order Varek had been a number. Five weeks ago a man had walked through that order, and the order had torn wherever he passed. Through the tear, Varek had fallen; with a spear, with a brand, and with a whole life that had to be learned at forty. Who the man was, what he was, whether magic touched him or not... those were questions for scholars. The only truth in Varek's hands was this: it was that man's army that had broken his chain, and if anyone came to fit him with a new one, the spear in between would be Varek's spear.
When dawn broke, the watch ended, and the camp rose, shaking the sleep off its back. As Varek spooned his barley porridge by the fire, the night rider's news spread from company to company. Sergeant Korr stood before the company and kept it short; Korr always kept it short.
"Today we assemble. Tomorrow at dawn, we march." He paused a moment and looked at the company; at a hundred men holding spears with pick-hands. "We go east. Not a village this time. A walled town."
No one in the company spoke, but Varek heard the breathing of the men around him change. Walls meant stone. Stone meant ladders, and arrows. Sel, his spoon halfway to his mouth, asked: "What's the town called, sergeant?"
Korr looked east, past the hills, before he answered.
"Oliar."