for their own pay.
It was sheer chaos, except for little islands and pockets of stability here and there. For the most part, outside the towns, those pockets were provided by resettled veterans. Clusters of villages, much like the ones which Jessep and his clanfolk had established on Demansk's lands. Largely populated by transplanted easterners, whose close kin ties and military experience enabled them to clamp a fist on their immediate terrain.
Invariably, such villages drove off the bands of runaway slaves which were soon roaming the countryside. Taken as a mass, those slaves probably did more damage than anything else. Not so much out of vindictiveness, once they'd settled accounts with their own masters, but simply out of desperation. A group of slaves who rise up and murder a master or burn down his estate—or both—has but one thought afterward: flee, before the reprisal comes.
They had no way of knowing, of course, that there was not much chance of any reprisal coming. Not soon, at least. Isolated as they were, field slaves had little understanding of the great world of Confederate politics. The one thing they did know for sure—branded into them over the decades with lash and stake and spear—was that any rebellion against Vanbert masters would invariably bring a quick and merciless response.
So, they fled. Immediately, and with no thought at all for how they would survive the days and weeks and months ahead. Half-naked, most of them, without food; autumn here, and winter coming.
Vanbert winters were "mild," true enough—by the standards of a nobleman in his villa, or even a yeoman farmer in his cottage. For a half-naked, starving slave on the run, it is always winter. "Summer" is simply that portion of winter when you might survive a little longer.
Almost every slave plantation and estate in that third of the Confederacy called the "southern provinces" erupted, within a week after Lurion. It might be better to say "burst"—like a sudden ulcerous wound, spilling toxins within the body politic. Tens and tens of thousands of slaves roaming everywhere, like so many locusts. Except these locusts had hands; and brains, which,
It was sheer chaos, except for little islands and pockets of stability here and there. For the most part, outside the towns, those pockets were provided by resettled veterans. Clusters of villages, much like the ones which Jessep and his clanfolk had established on Demansk's lands. Largely populated by transplanted easterners, whose close kin ties and military experience enabled them to clamp a fist on their immediate terrain.
Invariably, such villages drove off the bands of runaway slaves which were soon roaming the countryside. Taken as a mass, those slaves probably did more damage than anything else. Not so much out of vindictiveness, once they'd settled accounts with their own masters, but simply out of desperation. A group of slaves who rise up and murder a master or burn down his estate—or both—has but one thought afterward: flee, before the reprisal comes.
They had no way of knowing, of course, that there was not much chance of any reprisal coming. Not soon, at least. Isolated as they were, field slaves had little understanding of the great world of Confederate politics. The one thing they did know for sure—branded into them over the decades with lash and stake and spear—was that any rebellion against Vanbert masters would invariably bring a quick and merciless response.
So, they fled. Immediately, and with no thought at all for how they would survive the days and weeks and months ahead. Half-naked, most of them, without food; autumn here, and winter coming.
Vanbert winters were "mild," true enough—by the standards of a nobleman in his villa, or even a yeoman farmer in his cottage. For a half-naked, starving slave on the run, it is always winter. "Summer" is simply that portion of winter when you might survive a little longer.
Almost every slave plantation and estate in that third of the Confederacy called the "southern provinces" erupted, within a week after Lurion. It might be better to say "burst"—like a sudden ulcerous wound, spilling toxins within the body politic. Tens and tens of thousands of slaves roaming everywhere, like so many locusts. Except these locusts had hands; and brains, which,