Chapter 5

Hours later, the party of bandits pulled them all up and took them to the nearby town for a slave auction.

The rigorous grey stone building stood alone on foreboding wharves, indifferent to the wave and tide of life within and without it. Meager trees bent and curved from constant storms almost touched the underside of the second-floor windows. A swiveled rutted alley obscured from the fresh downpours, ceased unexpectedly at two enormous iron thresholds darkened with age. Approaching the hostile territory, a loose carriage thundered along with the mist-bound road, its scratchings, and whines swallowed by the wind. Three unconscious naked passengers wrapped in a rugged lay in the chill snow behind a miserable-looking driver. Who bought the three from the bandits with ten silvers. He, snuggled under a winter tunic and frock with another man, whipped the horse onward in a rambling attitude. The man hunched together for heat; a kerchief wrapped around their heads to safeguard them from t