*Don't worry!
I've had some problems with taking a long time to complete series, but this is one story where you don't have to worry. The entire story is completed as of now, but I am releasing it in two chapters for sake of length. I'll release the next chapter next week.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy my new 'series' The Slave Boy.
All Characters are 18+*
It was very dark in the slaves quarters. It was always dark. Most rooms in the Keep tried to have high vaulted windows for natural light, but the slaves weren't worth the windows, so our sleeping place was a long low-ceilinged hall under the grand hall. It was only five feet from the rough cobbled floor to the thick creaking ceiling, and the thick pillars that kept the floor above our heads never seemed like quite enough.
Cave-ins had happened in the past, so every night we slept in the fear that we wouldn't wake up, or that we would wake up screaming with a jut of splintered wood in our stomach, like that poor old woman not two moons ago.
We didn't have separate rooms, only the main family, and honored guests got private rooms. Lesser guests, like visiting peasants and infantry slept on the thick straw in the main hall. We slept in the thick straw under them.
I could tell it was morning by the foggy clang of the slaves bell. It rung at the very crack of dawn all year round, so in winter we got to sleep in a little. However, in winter there were more feasts and celebrations because there was no open war in the winter and the only way to pass time was to get drunk and sing and impregnate the slave girls with bastards.
I was a slave, so this is a list of all of my possessions. Two linen shirts, white. One thick cloth vest, brown. One light pair of summer trousers, brown. One heavy pair of winter trousers, brown. One winter cloak, black. One pair of felt boots, black. One pair of light slippers, brown. Three pairs of thick woolen socks, white. Three loincloths, white.
Those were all of my possessions. My food was given, or withheld, every day. I could not carry weapons, and even in the kitchens, I was allowed one knife during the day to chop vegetables and meat. Every night, when all of our masters and those we served finally fell asleep; we were thoroughly checked by the cook, who doubled as the slave-master.
I had been captured when I was fourteen, and I was one of the lucky ones. Yes I worked longer, yes I got less food, and yes I got very little sleep, but I worked in the kitchens. It was hard work, but I worked in a place where only theft or laziness could get me whipped, and I was a boy.
Slave girls were free property to any freedman who wished to have a roll in the hay. Many of the slave girls were so cowed by now that they were afraid to go to the market. I knew a girl of sixteen that had already borne three bastards. The slave-master had to use girls as house and kitchen slaves. They were heavily desired by the crowds at feasts, and they generally worked better in the kitchens, but they did need a few males as well, they could go outside without the near-certainty of being raped by a passing soldier.
I was lucky because when I was fourteen, I was cramped and weak and filthy from over a month jammed in the hold of a viking ship. The crops-master proclaimed me too weak to work in the fields. I may have gone to a quarry or a mine, an even worse fate, but one of my slavers, the man who had captured me when I was cowering under a bed in the loft above my father's shop, recalled that I was a baker's son. I still remembered him, a tall fierce man with reddish hair and pale eyes.
I was sold to the kitchens of a rich general named Boris Strong-hammer, and I had worked there for four years now. I supposed I would work here for the rest of my life, maybe even live to the ripe age of fifty. Slaves could grow old in the kitchens, as long as they worked hard enough.
I put on a fresh loincloth, my heavy trousers, socks, felt boots, linen shirt, padded vest and warm winter cloak. I put my slippers in my pocket, those are what we wore inside. Me and a scrawny man named Colin were the only men in the slow trudge of house slaves. We crawled out of the tiny hatch that had been unlocked by the slave-master, and he counted us out and tallied our names as we came out.
Today we were all awake, but woe to any girl that had slept past the slave bell and not been awakened by her fellows. That had happened to me just once, and the slave-master had stripped me naked on that freezing cold morning, tied me to a post and poured buckets of water over my head till I was half-drowned and my skin turning a dull purplish-blue from the cold. He had whipped the warmth back into me, and then told me if I liked to sleep so much, that he would give me a reason to stay in the quarters.
It hadn't happened again.
The house-girls trudged over to the great hall above the hatch we had just crawled out of. They would clean the mess up as quickly as they could in order to dodge the letch of an early-rising drunkard.
Four house-girls and eight kitchen-slaves, including myself and Colin. It was hard work keeping up for not only the family and guests, but for all of the field slaves, who spent their winter rebuilding and fortifying the keep walls, and tending to the animals.
We worked for an hour, making porridge with honey for the guests and family, and porridge without honey for the slaves. In the brief time when no dishes needed to be scrubbed and no food needed to be made, we all ate a small bowl of porridge and a shriveled apple.
In no time, we were working again.
---
It was in the noontime lag when we saw them.
The sun had come out, so despite the cold we were eating our afternoon meal of pottage (thick soup of vegetables, grains, onions, and a few scraps of pork) outside to enjoy the brief sunlight. The courtyard was white with packed snow, except in places where hooves and feet had churned it to frozen mud. The wooden keep door opened, the watchman was blowing an excited call on his horn, when they came in.
We got up and huddled against the wooden kitchen (kitchens needed to be built far away from large homes, even stone homes because of the wooden supports) and watched them come in, over fifty men on horses, with a small herd of remounts following them. The horses were laden with clanking bags of metal armor, for the men were only wearing the leather pads worn under the armor, and each man had the livery of their home on it. It was fifty land-owners, back from some crusade or war, here for food and wine and girls.
I watched long enough to see Boris Strong-hammer come out and clap one of the men on the shoulder, but then I fled back into the kitchen, eating my pottage as fast as I could. Fifty men meant we would have to work until the break of dawn.
---
Colin and I were the slaughterers. Boris wanted to make this into a feast, so Colin, me and several of the field slaves were ordered to slaughter and butcher two fat hogs, a fat calf, three goats and a dozen fat geese.
We were all exhausted after nearly two hours of slitting, boiling, skinning, butchering, and plucking, but the work had barely began. All of the animals were too big to be slow-cooked with this little time, so they would have to be roasted. The twelve field slaves were digging pits and chopping wood, while the kitchen slaves were spicing and preparing the animals, shoving sharpened poles all the way through them and cutting slits in the meat to rub spices and oils. The organs of the animals were cut out and cooked as sweetbreads.
We always felt overworked, but even with the help of the field slaves we were dying. We were working so hard that we were all allowed a chunk of bread spread with soft cheese and a slice of onion. I wept with gratitude. It hadn't been ordinary hunger of the belly, we felt that every day. It had been the deep, all-consuming hunger of the flesh, where I could feel myself growing stronger with every bite of the soft nutty bread and soft flavorful cheese and pungent onion.
We still had to cook fresh bread and roll barrels of wine and mead out of the cellar. We had to grill fish and greens on a flat scrap of tin. Had to make beef stew with wine in it and rich-man's-pottage, a mixture of herbs and grains and pork so tender it melted into the stew.
My eyes were blurred and my hands were raw with work. It was finally time to serve. The men were to carry in the whole bodies of the hogs and the goats and the calf, served on giant wood platters and garnished with greens and stuffed with herbs and gleaming with juices and gravy. My hunger was so great that I had to swallow over and over to stop myself from drooling. My knees trembled with weakness and I nearly dropped the platter of goat that I and another young man were bringing in. When we set it down, he asked me if I was alright. His eyes were so beautiful. I looked down and mumbled that I was okay before hurrying back to the kitchen to help.
The men sat at two long wooden tables, and those poorer, or with less status sat on stools or the floor. They tore into the meat like animals and ate it with their fingers and teeth. They were like wolves, pushing us out of the way and lunging at the slave girls trying to pour their wine.
Ten girls were too little for nearly a hundred men. Some of the local nobles had brought their girls, and that brought it up to maybe thirty, but it still wasn't enough. They fucked them in plain sight, in corners, covered by cloaks, or even just on the tables. Freewomen were there too, and they satisfied their men, and some men they weren't with, but there was no one to serve the food but me and Colin and a few of the field slaves.
