Chapter 1 The Ugliness Of Man

It's been two days since the whipping, two men step on to the platform and begin to loosen the bindings on Tect's wrist. "About time you learned to keep your mouth shut aye, Tect." says the man on his left with a laugh. The man on his right shakes his head and frowns. These two are Robert and David. David is the quiet man shaking his head. Unlike Robert, David is a Slave. It's rarer to see human slaves but it still happens on occasion.

In David's case his father was a drunk and a gambler, unfortunately he wasn't very good at either. When the debts piled up David's father sold him to a slave trader. In the Kingdom of Tafia this was a perfectly legal exchange except that most people frown upon it and any sane person would have negotiated a period of indenture. David's father only had eyes for the money and didn't care for his son at all. After David was taken away it didn't take long for his mother to find out. When she confronted her drunk husband he beat her to death. By the time young David was sold to his first master his father was hung for her murder, of course he had no clue and for 15 years has held out hope that one day he will see them again.

Tect envied David, Tect had to watch as his family was killed right in front of him. When the humans are short on slaves they will often raid goblin and orc camps to steal children. Children are easy to train, and put up less of a fight, which is why the slavers always kill the adults. The easiest way to make the children cooperate was to throw them in cages and kill the adults in front of them one by one. Any child who looked away had the head of the prisoner placed on top of their cage. Most children looked away when it was their relative being killed, the slavers knew this and used it to break their spirit.

David and Robert took Tect back to the slave's quarters, Robert only helped them to the entrance and then left. After he was out of sight Tect straightened his walk, clearly he has gotten used to these punishments and shows no more weakness than if he had worked the forge for the past two days. "Tect you're going to take one too many punishments one day and they aren't going to let you down till the birds finish picking your bones clean." David has a clear look of concern on his face, unlike the other humans of the town David has grown up with the goblins and doesn't look at them like beasts. " I know that but I couldn't very well let a child take that kind of punishment could I." Tect has always done his best to protect the other goblins. In this case a young goblin girl who works in the fields stole a few carrots. Tect told the overseer that he took them and had already eaten them. That's why Tect was whipped.