Chapter Three
Jem opened her eyes slowly, yawning a bit in the early morning. The sun was not yet up, but all of the slaves were. Most of them crowded around the food which was still laid out on the floor. A few napkins had been unfolded and spread over the food to keep it from becoming stale (or in some cases, staler) overnight, but now two otters were folding those napkins back up, sitting to the side. Jem's stomach rumbled as she sat up. Genti came to sit by her, his paws full of nuts.
"Here you go Jem. Breakfast! Did you get much from dinner?"
Jem shook her head and took a few nuts. As she was reaching for her mouth, a paw seemed to come out of nowhere to swat her own away, causing her to drop the nuts.
"No marm!" said Chohur, straightening up from where she'd slept beside her new friends. "Tha's no' fur us'ns, no noo!"
Jem's stomach growled in protest.
"Chohur! What was that about?" asked Genti, picking up the dropped nuts. "Jem needs to eat just as much as any other beast."
"But wes kichen slaves," said Chohur quickly. "We gets lot's o' food thur."
Genti hadn't heard her. He was already offering the nuts to Jem again. "Here little missy, you need to keep up your strength."
Jem took one look at the nuts, then looked at Chohur. "You need your strength more Genti," she said, pushing his paw away. She tried to not see the look of concern on his face, but he didn't offer her the nuts again. As she stood up and stretched, she saw that the last of the food was quickly being snatched up by slaves. She went over to where it had been and began to help the otters who were folding up napkins. Chohur joined her and before long, it was all ready to go.
Picking up a stack of napkins, Jem saw Barka approaching. In fact, all of the kitchen slaves were assembling. Jem could vaguely remember that the first slaves to leave every morning carried the food napkins away. She assumed that they had to leave first to make sure that the horde got its breakfast. Most of the other slaves didn't leave until sunrise or shortly after. At least the vermin were smart enough to know that slaves did their work better when they could see what they were doing. With these thoughts running through her head, Jem followed behind the other slaves. The same ferret guard that had counted the slaves before taking them back to the barracks where they slept was there to count them this morning. After he was sure that all of the kitchen slaves were present, he called in a loud voice for them to get moving.
Chohur fell in line beside Jem. "Bur aye, 'e's a bad 'um, ain't 'e?"
Jem nodded in reply.
"'E don't work in'a kichen. Jus' leads us'ns back an' forth."
Jem could understand that. There were always a few more guards to lead the slaves between the barracks and their place of work than there were to guard over them during the day. She had always assumed that that was because it would be easier for slaves to slip away through the forest which came up almost to the walls of Fort Vil than from any of the open fields or definitely from the insides of the fort itself. She and Genti had often spoken of how the early morning might be the best time to try an escape, when the hordebeasts were still groggy and it wasn't fully light yet. If they could just get behind a tree really quickly, they might be overlooked. She thought of this now, but made no move toward the trees. Escaping now would be foolish. She had no food or water, and she had no knowledge of the woods. Vermin scouts, who regularly walked through these woods, would find her before the day was done and she wouldn't live to see tomorrow. Anyway, working in the kitchen didn't seem that bad.
This day didn't seem much different than the day before. Jem worked beside Barka, running back and forth between her and the pantry to gather the ingredients they needed. She helped the elderly mouse to measure out ingredients and stir them together. She watched with amazement as Barka turned what looked like inedible slop into breads and cakes. Once, when she made biscuits, Barka split a biscuit in half and shared it with Jem to "make sure they had turned out right." It would have been obvious to anyone with eyes and a snout that there was nothing wrong with the biscuits, but Jem didn't object to being a taste tester.
Wow! That's the only way Jem could think to describe the biscuit. She had heard slaves telling stories to dibbuns before and had often heard of how good food "just out of the oven" tasted, but she had never understood until now. She knew she was crying, but she couldn't help it.
"Hey! What's wrong with her?" asked a rat, coming away from the wall where he had been standing. He hadn't been speaking terribly loud, but Barka had understood well enough.
"Oh, it tastes horrible!" said Barka quickly. "Too much flour. You don't want to go eating one of those."
"They look fine to me," said the rat, looking at the batch of fresh biscuits.
Jem was wiping her eyes, watching Barka closely. Those two bites of biscuit had been the best tasting food she'd ever had in her life. Surely, there wasn't anything wrong with them.
"The best you can do with this is either throw it away or give it to the slaves," said Barka.
All of a sudden, Jem understood. Barka was making sure that some good food made it to the slaves for once. There had been times when Jem had seen, not scraps, but full loaves of bread or basket or fruit among the food offered to her and the other slaves. Now she thought she knew how it got there.
The rat eyed Barka suspiciously. Jem coughed up the last bit of biscuit, pulling a face at it. The rat nodded. "Lunch for the slaves," he said. Now that she'd already spit it out, she couldn't put the biscuit back in her mouth. So, Jem did the only thing she could do. She walked over to the trash and threw it away.
Jem and Barka were taking a break. The three ovens at their use were full of great-smelling food and they already had enough dough and cake batter ready to fill up the ovens again once the food inside them was done. They were using their break to help a vole test some cordial he had finished making that morning.
"Needs a bit more sugar I think," said Barka expertly. Jem, knowing nothing about the preparing of food or drinks, didn't have any criticism to offer and so just nodded at what Barka had said.
"Thank you!" said the vole. "I thought so, but needed a second opinion." He scurried off to the pantry to pick up some more sugar.
Jem leaned against the counter and watched all the activity around the kitchen. Gofod's two helpers were packing baskets of food. Most of the baskets held small cakes and vegetables and cheeses and water bottles filled with various juices. These were going out to the hordebeasts who wouldn't be coming into the fort for lunch. For those who would be coming in, fresh loaves of bread, fish, hot soup, pie, and cider awaited them. Jem did her best to ignore all of the heavenly smells which seemed to be stuck in her nose and looked instead at the baskets being filled with the slaves' lunch. The water bottles in those baskets held water, and only water. Scraps left over from cooking throughout the kitchen were packed into basket after basket. Jem was delighted to see that, in addition to the biscuits supplied by her and Barka, there were also many strawberries (they had been considered too badly squashed to serve to the horde).
The two slaves began to load themselves down with baskets, readying to make some food runs. For a second, Jem feared that they were going to try and take all the baskets at once, but then she noticed they were making many trips back and forth between the outside and the kitchen. They must have a cart of some sort to hold the baskets. As they were carrying the last of the slave lunches out though, the worst happened. While climbing the stairs, the first slave lost his balance. The mouse began to roll down the stairs, crashing into the otter behind him. The two became a cartwheel of furry limbs, now broken baskets, and scraps of food. Being close to the door and not having any work to do at the moment, Jem ran to help once she heard the crash. Opening the door, she saw a disaster zone. Two squirrels who had been adding carrots to the soup were behind her in no time.
"Oh no," said one of them, pushing past Jem to help the mouse up. The other squirrel began to pull the otter out of the mess. "Try and clean this up," the first squirrel said to Jem. She immediately got down on the ground and began grabbing crumbling biscuits and slivers of potatoes to cram back into the holes of the baskets. A few more kitchen slaves joined her, righting baskets and gathering up as much food from off the floor as they could. If the vermin told them to throw it all away, they wouldn't be able to do anything else and that would mean that much less food given to the slaves. Once as much of it had been cleaned up as possible, Jem grabbed two baskets and ran up the stairs to place them in the waiting cart.
Stepping back into the kitchen, she saw that the two slaves who had fallen down the stairs were surrounded by a large group of slaves and two hordebeasts.
"Are they alright?" she asked a mouse standing near the door.
The mouse shook her head. "The otter has a broken paw from the fall. They've both been taken off night duty."
Gofod pushed his way into the group. Everybeast made room for him, getting away from his spikes. "Get back to your work!" he bellowed. "I'll take care of this. Chohur? Where are you?"
The molemaid ducked under the chin of a squirrel between her and the hedgehog, calling out, "Here, zur!"
"Good. You're on night and food run duty now. You're familiar with the work." He began to scan the room, looking slightly worried. "But who else?" his voice faded away.
"Oi knows zur!" piped up Chohur. "Moi friend Jem. She'm could 'elp meh."
Gofod looked down at the mole, now joined by Jem who had stepped forward at hearing her name. Even though Gofod had spoken with Jem only the day before, he looked at her as if he'd never seen her in his life. "Are you sure?" asked Gofod. Chohur nodded vigourously. "Are you up to it?" Gofod asked Jem. "You might not see the barracks again for weeks."
This news startled Jem, but one look at Chohur's expectant face decided her. She nodded.
"Good," said Gofod, levering up the mouse who had slipped on the stairs and was now crying. "Where were you working?" asked Gofod of Jem.
Jem squinted her eyes up at the fat hedgehog. Could he not remember? It had only been yesterday… "Um, I was with Barka, sir," she said.
"You hear that?" said Gofod to the mouse he held, drying his tears. "You'll be working with Barka now. No harm done."
"Coom on!" said Chohur. "Neerly lunch! Got ta 'urry!"
Jem nodded and followed the mole up the stairs to the waiting cart.
