Read Online The Desert Spear by Peter V. Brett - Free Book Online

you, Drillmaster. I understand now.”
    The game went on for hours more, until the remaining demons decided there was no gap in the wards and began to circle the camp or sat back on their haunches out of spear’s reach, watching. The warriors with full stomachs then went to take watch, hooting and catcalling at those who had failed to make a kill as they went to their meal.
    After all had eaten, half the warriors went to their bedrolls, and the other half stood like statues in a ring around the camp. After a few hours’ sleep, the warriors relieved their brothers.
    The next day, they passed through a khaffit village. Jardir had never seen one before, though there were many small oases in the desert, mostly to the south and east of the city, where a trickle of water sprouted from the ground and filled a small pool. Khaffit who had fled the city would often cluster at these, but so long as they fed themselves and did not beg at the city wall or prey on passing merchants, the dama were content to ignore them.
    There were larger oases, as well, where a large pool meant a hundred or more khaffit might gather, often with women and children in tow. These the dama did pay some mind to, with the warrior tribes claiming individual oases as they did the wells of the city, taxing the khaffit in labor and goods for the right to live there. Dama would occasionally travel to the villages closest to the city, taking any young boys to Hannu Pash and the most beautiful girls as jiwah’Sharum for the great harems.
    The village they passed through had no wall, just a series of sandstonemonoliths around its perimeter with ancient wards cut deep into the stone. “What is this place?” Jardir wondered aloud as they marched.
    “They call the village Sandstone,” Abban said. “Over three hundred khaffit live here. They are known as pit dogs.”
    “Pit dogs?” Jardir asked.
    Abban pointed to a giant pit in the ground, one of several in the village, where men and women toiled together, harvesting sandstone with shovel, pick, and saw. The folk were broad of shoulder and packed with muscle, quite unlike the khaffit Jardir knew from the city. Children worked alongside them, loading carts and leading the camels that hauled the stone up out of the pits. All wore tan clothes—man and boy alike in vest and cap, and the women and girls in tan dresses that left little to the imagination, their faces, arms, and even legs mostly uncovered.
    “These are strong people,” Jardir said. “By what rule are these men khaffit ? Are they all cowards? What about the girls and boys? Why are they not called to marriage or Hannu Pash ?”
    “Their ancestors were khaffit by their own failing, perhaps, my friend,” Abban said, “but these people are khaffit by birth.”
    “I don’t understand,” Jardir said. “There are no khaffit by birth.”
    Abban sighed. “You say all I think of is merchanting, but perhaps it is you who does not think of it enough. The Damaji want the stone these people harvest, and a healthy stock to do the work. In exchange, they instruct the dama not to come for the khaffit’s children.”
    “Condemning the children to spending their lives as khaffit, as well,” Jardir said. “Why would their parents want that?”
    “Parents can behave strangely when men come to take their children,” Abban said.
    Jardir remembered his mother’s tears, and the shrieks of Abban’s mother, and could not disagree. “Still, these men would make fine warriors, and their women fine wives who breed strong sons. It is a waste to see them squandered so.”
    Abban shrugged. “At least when one of them is injured, his brothers don’t turn on him like a pack of wolves.”
    It was another six days of travel before they reached the cliff face overlooking the river that fed the village of Baha kad’Everam. They encountered no more khaffit villages along the way. Abban, whose family traded with many of the villages, said it was because an underground