I glanced at the sleeping boy and studied him for a moment. Yes he was an unwanted hassle, but I was glad in some ways to be of help in saving his life. I didn't want him to experience what I had as a young slave that was for sure.
I would get him to his kin in the Valley Lands along with the information that his father had given me before he had died. It was a long way to safety though and a lot could happen. There was no guarantee that the boy's fate would turn out any differently than mine had.
I glanced at the setting sun. I still had an hour or so to kill so I let my thoughts drift back to the past again as I rested.
I had helped the girl change her fate. At least I'd made it possible for her to die in a more preferable way anyway.
I looked out at the horizon that the sun was fading over the edge of, but the sunset wasn't what I saw. In my mind's eye I was seeing back to the day, when I had been sold as a slave to the arena fighting school of Carsea.
I'd had to repeatedly blink my eyes to adjust to the harsh daylight of the marketplace, after we had been pulled from our underground holding cell at the slave market. I had stumbled several times over the uneven cobblestones of the market floor, and several times heavily armored guards had lashed out at me with their sharp stinging whips that drew blood.
The market place was filled with tradesmen hawking their goods. Prospective buyers filled out the rest of the market's space.
The noise of the mob of jabbering faces which poked and prodded at me as I walked by, caused a renewed sense of anxiety to rise up inside of me as to what my fate would soon be. The guards had begun to divide us into groups; old, young, male, and female.
My attention throughout the walk from the cell had been drawn to a woman ahead of me. She would have been quite attractive, if it hadn't been for the hard lines etched deeply into the skin around her mouth and eyes. She had a mean look about her too. She held a baby in her left arm almost carelessly, while her right hand gripped the forearm of a young girl that walked beside her.
The girl's bright cinnamon red hair hung all the way to her waist. She was sure to be noticed, even though she had yet to show the maturity of a grown woman. Something told me that these two must have been the two I had overheard the night before.