Or What

The woman was in the house and working without looking back. I helped Isa and Bella up into the saddle, together they were lighter then me so I wasn't worried about it. I took the reins and started running back towards the city. The messenger and the elder of Estro had remounted and they had their horse keep pace with mine. It wasn't long before we got to the main road.

"I wish to go with you when you meet with her again in a week." I looked up at the eldest.

"As you wish, sister. Will you be going back as soon as we drop off the horses?"

"I was going to let you take this one and part at the main, I have much work to do now."

"If you can send the men when you get them? You have all but 12 of my earnings to work with. I will write to you when I have the measure of them for what time and terms I would ask you to look for, for them."

I stopped at the intercession of the main road, and the eldest hopped down. She wasn't worried about being bothered even on dark days. The land of our lord was pretty safe. "We will talk about it in a week."

I nodded to her and she nodded back, then turned and started towards the main house. I had one of the woman remount on the horse my sister had been riding. I wasn't sure the horse could carry me as I was heavier than I looked. It also didn't matter as I enjoyed the run. The horses seemed to enjoy that I was running as well, they were egging me on to go faster.

We got back to the city faster then we had gotten to the farm. The sky had started to spit rain but it wasn't bothersome yet. We left the horse at the stable and walked the rest of the way to the branch house. I had wanted to brush down the horses but the stablemen wouldn't let me. I had other things that needed to be done anyway.

We stepped inside and the trainer was having an argument with one of the newly awakened slaves. "You will do as I say."

"Or what, old man." The trainer wasn't really that old, maybe 30 but for the arena that was old.

The trainer looked up as I entered. The collared slave had a bucket and a rag. Clearly he had been told to clean something, and the man thought it was beneath him. I reached out and turned the man to make him face me. I didn't think any of the priests had had time to really teach my men how the collars worked. There was a tag on the collar and on it was a number and two words. They were words that were unlikely to end up next to a number in normal conversation. I only knew that because of the gift our lord had given me. For the same reason I could read the collar's tag. "Or this, 47 lighting swimming."

I let go of the man as the spell in the collar activated. He collapsed and hit the floor hard. He wasn't the only collared slave in the hallway. I spoke again as he hit the ground, "Return." All commands had been given in the language we speak, not what I used for magic. The collar loosened again, but the man didn't stand again. "Almost any priest can activate your collar after they see it. I don't have to memorize the commands. If I catch any of you talking back to one of my brothers I won't ask for permission before putting you on the floor. If you have a problem with what one of my brothers tells you to do and you don't belong to him, say yes sir, and do it as soon as you can if you cannot speak with your master first. Only your master can tell you not to follow an order given by one of us, slave. Do you understand now?"

The slave nodded from the floor, and the others in the hall nodded as well. The slave was shaking as he tried to stand. "Also if one of my brothers asks for the words to your collar you will tell them, it won't activate for another slave or you. If they have to get me or bother a priest you will regret it."

The two women behind me had stayed by the door with the messenger behind them. I started down the hall. "Come on, Bella, and Isa." They followed and I could feel their fear as we walked. Fear was everywhere right now, except for with my brothers. "Travis, gather our brothers in the dining room, I wish to talk with them."

"Yes, sir." I wasn't sure if he was making fun of me or not as he sped down another hallway. None of the slaves looked at me, and most turned or sped somewhere else as I moved through the house.

The place was looking better even if it was more crowded, the truth was there were plenty of slave rooms in the basement of this house. Even the 90 slaves we had wouldn't fill up a quarter of the rooms. The first floor had common rooms, the second had what looked like offices and work rooms, the third was the floor most of my brothers had taken as rooms. The nine of them had grouped together and stayed near the stairs. There were another 21 rooms on that floor, all unused at the moment. The fourth floor had the room I had woken up in. Which was the biggest room in the house. There were still another 14 rooms on that floor. They were a bit bigger then the floor below but too much space felt more wrong to my brothers then it did to me.

I held the door to the dining room open as the two women walked through it. Most of my brothers were already there eating while they could. There weren't any slaves in the room right now. My brothers stopped talking as I entered they were watching the women. "You don't have to worry about them, I will explain when everyone gets here." I looked at one of the younger men at the end of a table. "Do you have any more of that? It has been a long day already."

He was eating a roll that had been left from breakfast. He nodded and got up to grab another. Mato waved at me and pointed to a chair in the middle of the long table. "Come sit, alfa. We have been waiting for the women to tire of your bad attitude but that doesn't seem like it will happen now."

"No they have a vested interest in me for some crazy reason." The women hung back by the door as I moved to the chair. It was the only chair, on each side of it was a bench. My brothers were taking up most of the space but the ones nearest the chair moved over. I looked up at the women when I noticed they hadn't moved. "These men won't touch you. Come eat something."

The man that had gone to get me a roll had had the forethought to bring two plates loaded with freshish fruit and a few rolls. He had noticed they looked half starved as well then. The women sat together on the bench to the right of the chair. I took up the chair and they started picking at the food. I picked at the roll as they ate. My brothers started to talk quietly to each other. They clearly weren't sure about the women but they trusted me enough to stop them if they started talking about something I would rather they not.

It wasn't long before Travis had rounded up the two brothers that were missing. I let them sit down and join the conversations that were going on. I had missed quite a bit it seems. "There are some things I need to talk to everyone about."

"Like how you are now the favored of the soon to be new mother, and she needs to be on your good side to hold the women together? And how you negotiated being in charge of this house."

I looked at the man who had talked and sighed, "Seems news is getting ahead of me. That wasn't even where I was going to start. There was a term we weren't told about our match and it affects a few things in the house."

"Oh, so we are starting with the girls first. This should be good." I looked at the other man in surprise. I didn't think they were stupid but sometimes they jump right in the river and other times they could be drowning in it and not find it.

"Yes, the term was that our house is to provide all victors with two women. The women will have to odey the man they are given to and can only have his children. Some of the requirements in the law will be loosened for those women. I just realized that I don't know how they will be loosened."

The men were quiet for a change while they thought about that, "So clearly they don't have to obey everything, we cannot order them to break a term set by our lord." The men of my unit had picked up my habit of calling our lord our lord instead of the lord but they still didn't know why the priests and I made that distinction.

"No, you would not be able to order that." The messenger was standing just inside the doorway, he was listening but he didn't seem inclined to talk any time soon. "I did talk to our sister about it some. The house women would never willingly take that restriction, and they don't believe they have too."

"No, they would want to convince the farm women that it would be their best option for getting a foot in the door for getting into the house. Considering the two women you brought to our table that is what they went with."

I raised an eyebrow at the man, "What in my demeanor makes you think I would ever agree to such a thing?"

"Sorry, alfa, I hadn't added in the fact that you let them in this room. What did happen?"

"You are right, our sister needs me, whether or not our mother returns. What she still doesn't seem to understand completely is she will really need all of us. For now, as long as she is humoring me I am fine with whatever masks she puts on, for herself, or others. I convinced her to give me a complete accounting of the house and it's resources." one of the men whistled. "She went with me this morning to understand my proposal for solving both problems. I got her to agree to my terms, and I made a deal with one of the farmer women." One of the woman snickered but covered it quickly by shoving another roll in her mouth. "That woman is the mother of these two, and she is to make the offer I made her to those she knows of who are like minded. Now comes the bad news. She accepted my terms herself, which means if she can supply the 20 women fast enough, she will, but those women will be granted their days to do as they wish within the law as long as they keep the term that they can only do things that risk having children with the man other than the one they have been given to." The women had paused to watch my brothers. My brothers did just what I thought they would, they shrugged and continued to listen, they were sure I wasn't done.

"That is the reaction I was expecting. I also expect this won't be a surprise, but even with the two women you will be responsible for I will keep you to the pattern of behavior I have told you all I expect from a man."

"That is fine but trying to keep the slaves off of them might be harder."

I snorted, "They cannot be violent with those collars on. What you are talking about is inherently a violent act."

Travis looked at me with surprise and all the other men were reflecting that emotion, "If that is true someone might want to tell them that. I just had to tie one of them up for trying to punch his way through me to leave the house."

"I am sorry, I should have said, after a warm up period of three to four days they will not be able to be violent. There are also some other neat tricks those collars do, tomorrow morning, we should meet in one of the studies, bring up about five of the most troublesome slaves and I will make sure you know how they work."

"Beyond the casing pain thing. Is it different for each one and hard to remember?"

"Yes and we will have to come up with a way to figure out or remember all the different phrases."

"Since we are talking about the slaves; we wanted to bring up with you what we agreed we would do to divide them up."

"I am listening."

"All of us are going to give them to you, alfa. None of us would have survived that match, let alone captured any slaves. We will take our blood price from the match but the slaves are yours. Which works out better since you are the only one that can read those collars anyway."

"Well that makes what I told them confusing. Oh well, if you are sure?"

They all nodded, "Well I still want all of you to meet me tomorrow, I cannot control 90 people on my own. It will stay 90 as well, our sister already bought the ones I had lost back. I am thinking after that meeting you should each still pick a couple of favorites, and they can answer to me first, you second and take orders from our other brothers and sisters last. Our other brothers and sisters will avoid giving those favored ones any tasks unless there are no other slaves around and it actually must be done right then."

My brothers nodded again, no one seemed worried about it. We all got along fairly well, it was easier when your life depended on these people. "Good, then I would also like to start having them give blood to the priest every three months. After this first month to get them settled, just one of them a day, we can even do it in numerical order to keep it straight. You can lose some blood and be fine. I am thinking .3 if they are to do it every three months. That would be 9 liters a month. Then we only need to make up a 1 liter difference for ourselves until they start dying." I looked over at the messenger. He was talking to our lord. He had to be wondering how I had known those numbers. It was funny some of the laws in the book Father had taught me to read from.

"If you can do that, we can almost live off this last fight until we die of old age."

"We have more brothers then that, but it will help. Speaking of brothers, I also got our sister to agree to buy some of the boys from that farm. We are going to start a new way of training men here at the branch house." That got everyone's attention again. "That farm is going to send anyone over the age of ten to train with us for two months over winter. After that they will spend 3 days here out of every 30 days, so long as they aren't bought by the house for failing to pay their debt to our lord. If our house has to buy their debt they will buy it for 5 and the boys will fight at least once a month until their debt is paid in full. The house gets a cut off the top of every fight. When they belong to the house they will train more, two months no break until their first fight. Then they will be expected to train five days out of every seven but if they are not training their time is their own and they can leave the house as long as a woman goes with them, and they keep the laws."

"Why would anyone take that deal? You would be training boys that might be old men before they see the ring."

"I think it has to do with his strangeness, I think these people might be touched enough that being able to see each other means more to them then a month or two more of living. If that is true, then the deal is an amazing one."

The women had stopped moving while my brother had been talking. "Well that might be good for us though, if they do care that much they won't be as tempted to kill each other in the ring. That is good for our type of fighting."

"It also helps stop them from possibly having to face each other in the ring because they were born outside a house and they now get training even while maintaining their family bond, which might, might I say, mean more to you after you have woman who you know carried and birthed children that have to be yours. Even if that doesn't do it for you though, the other reason I agree to those terms was that everything produced by the workers of those farms, will go to support our house and not even have the chance to be sold to any other houses. We will pay for the goods, but it is mutually beneficial with this type of partner to keep the prices low and for us to spend as much as we can."

"I can see that, you trust this woman that much already though?"

"Neither one of us trust the other, but trust has to be shown before it can be built. She had already trusted me with two of her daughters, who she only has my word about and she is trusting that our sister will try and acquire her sons, if she can for a fair price."

Travis shook his head, "If it was a normal house I would say that wasn't trust it was necessity but knowing how you would most like react to what the houses think are reasonable. I can see why you would call it that."

I nodded at the man, "I am going to find these women a room, unless anyone else has something they want to cover?" Everyone shook their heads, "I will see you again in the morning then, I don't plan on coming down for dinner, if you could have something light sent up?" The men grinned and nodded. I tried to hide my reaction they really didn't and wouldn't understand