Legacy

Chapter 1 – Staking a Claim

	I was born in a small village near the Hyronses river, to a family of laborers working in the brick kilns.  My family, as many generations back as the walls of my home and the scrawlings of previous dead relatives could trace back, have always been laborers on the clay flats, working the brick kilns.  We have little choice.  Their is no elevation from the labor caste.  If you are born a laborer, and you live long enough to have children of your own, they too will be laborers.  That's simply how it is.  How it has always been.  How it will always be.  
	At least, that's what I was raised to believe.
	I am not ashamed of my birth or my upbringing, or even what was to be my profession in life.  My father used to tell me- and I'll never forget-  labor is noble.  It is hard, endless work, but it is respectable.  Some days it was harder to swallow his words, to understand what he was trying to tell me.  The hardest day's work may still not yield enough pay to fill your belly at the end of the night, and hunger turns your stomach bitter.  That bitterness inevitably spreads.  When I was young, when I was immature, I'd let that bitterness take hold.  Look to the people who were born better than us, and want what they had.  
	During those times, my father would simply take me to the square, to the posts the Hyenas had dug into the center of town.  I remember the smell of the dead and dying to this day.  It's a smell so primal, it sticks on the inside of your nose for the rest of your life.  The luckiest souls who stood against their betters were simply beheaded and strung up.  The most unfortunate, those who had truly earned the clans' ire, were strapped to the posts alive, to starve and cook in the sun.  
	My father would show me, and remind me of the futility in wanting more.  And I never saw him as a coward.  Not then, not even now.  My father was strong in will and body.  He just knew the reality of our world far better than I did at the time.
	Honestly, had things gone differently in my life, I probably would have become my father.  I would have had something to protect.
	The Caste System reduces us to grains of sand on the dunes, knowing no matter how much we strive to shift our place, what lies beyond is only another dune.  Some who are lucky may stumble upon an oasis, but even there, we are still grains of sand.  We can stare in wonder and tremble at the sight of the sparkling waters, but we cannot dip our heads to drink. But that is a sense of humility much of the rest of the world lacks, so in a way, it creates stronger people at the bottom.  
	Some cannot ever come to appreciate the life of a laborer for what it is.  It is a hopeless life, but it is a noble one.  There's no shame in it.  The merchant who grows fat on the meager pay of starving families, the crime lord who builds her power upon the backs of slaves. . . those are shameful lives.  An honest day's work may yield little reward in material comforts, but it leave the spirit free, and the mind aware of its own worth.  I have never felt regret, as some of my caste might, for the life I was born into. If it was something I had done to myself, perhaps.  But none of us can in any way affect the circumstances we're born into.  I am a proud man, and I know I have good reason to be.  I live without doubt that I have earned the right to wake and breathe every day.  I am alive because I have worked for it.
	Hauling and baking clay into bricks is the sort of labor only reserved for the strong.  Not many jackals choose the profession.  What labor we pursue in our lives is one of the few choices we have, and there is other, less grueling work this close to the Hyronses.  Plenty of it.  More than once I or my family members have been mocked on the flats by the more durable, more stocky sorts of creatures who are better suited to the work.  Boar, and big cats are the favorites of flat-owners.
	But my family was strong.  And they taught me to be strong.  To value food, and the health of my body, over all else.  To grow as large and as powerful as I could, and prove that our kind can be just as strong as any lion or boar.  Our bodies were our tools, and like any other tradesman, I worked best if I kept mine honed.
	I grew tall, thick and strong as I worked my way through childhood.  I knew schooling was a distant dream, and earnestly, I'd never had any desire for it.  Some laborers have struggled to learn the written word, or how to manage numbers like the merchants do, but I'd never seen the point in aspiring towards something so far removed from my everyday life.  I never saw the value in education.  I suppose most laborers don't.
	Knowing what I know now, I believe this is a mindset the upper castes wish to maintain.  Just another time-honored tradition that keeps us perpetually at their feet.    
	But I don't know why I'm talking about that now.  That's what my father used to refer to as 'big thinking', and it wasn't for us.  Regardless of what I eventually began to believe in my later years, when I was young I was actually very satisfied to be who I was.  I accompanied my father to the flats on my sixth birthday, as soon as I was old enough to haul the cooked bricks near the ovens.  I watched my father carry the clay drums from the flats over his broad shoulders, and I thought he looked like how a god must be.  He and my mother worked like they were one, her digging, him hauling, and then I carried the bricks.  Work made me feel like a true part of my family.  When I ate at night, I was proud, because now I was earning it.  And I think my parents were proud of me, as well.  They were quiet people, but I never felt unloved by them.  They were simply reserved, as laborers should be.
	There is one caste beneath us.  One.  The owned.  The non-persons.  The indentured.  As a child, I would rarely see them.  They are generally kept on plantations, or in estates in the cities.  But as I grew older and I began to venture to the nearest city with my parents whenever we needed to trade, I would catch sight of one every now and then.  I would always know them . . . and not just because of the glinting metal collars.
	It was something about their eyes.  I'd seen bodies before.  People died working at the kilns, and hauling clay.  We lost at least one soul a season, and often times it would be on a shift.  There weren't many disastrous ways to die making bricks, save being kicked by a mule.  It was usually the heat.  The elderly, sickly, or sometimes just the youngest workers were always at risk.  We'd find someone we'd known, sunken into the clay fields or slumped near the baking bricks.
	The indentured servants I saw when I went to the cities had the same eyes as the dead.  Glassy, cold and lifeless.  I'd asked my mother once whether or not they were truly alive at all, and she'd told me the indentured life was not life.  It was a nightmare those people were having while they waited to die.  To a child, you have to understand, that statement sounds like a riddle.  Or poetry.  Neither of which I was well-acquainted with.
	I hadn't realized she meant it literally.

	For the tenth time this hour, I work the now-chafed, cracking pawpad on my right index finger beneath the newly-adjusted snug fit of my collar.  The guard reminds me again that my discomfort was entirely of my own doing, saying so with an almost paternal tone this time, as though he was honestly concerned for my well-being.  It doesn't make the statement any less disgusting to me.
	“Nothing in my contract said I had to work on a broken ankle,” I snarl, curling my lip back against dirty teeth.  They haven't let me have any kind of meat in weeks, let alone bones to clean my teeth on, and the water they've been bringing me has made me sick nearly every day.  I've lost more weight in this stretch than I ever have before in my life and I know my strength is beginning to fade.
	But not so much that I couldn't take the brown, striped hyena escorting me, if I had the chance at it, I tell myself.  If he weren't armed.  And I wasn't in manacles, with a freshly-adjusted metal collar singing the side of my neck where the hinge is still hot with soder.  Apparently one of the favored punishments for people like me is to adjust our collars past the point of comfortably resting on our collarbones, to digging into our fur.  In time, it will create a permanent part in my fur that will remain even when I work the collar around.  A constant reminder, the blacksmith told me.  For Servants who need to be reminded.
	It doesn't matter.  The fact is, I'm not going to try to take the man down.  For various reasons.  But the most important reason is that attempting to kill a plantation guard was the reason for the aforementioned broken ankle.  The bitch was good with a man-catcher, unfortunately.
	He doesn't hesitate to bring that up.  “Your contract requires that you work,” the hyena sniffs, “you can't very well do that if you're on the run.  We're legally obliged by our employers to keep you sedate, and dutifully paying off your debt.  By any means.  Any injuries you sustain during an escape attempt are your cross to bear during the workday.  The harvest doesn't stop just because you went and got yourself damaged.”
	I'm snarling again, so I make sure he sees it.  He looks less than impressed.  This time they gave me one of the seniors, an older, graying hyena who's thick in the waist, and just about everywhere else.  I don't recognize him from around the plantation, so he must work specifically here in this prison.  He's well-fed and strong, and he hasn't made a single mistake since he came to get me out of my cell.  Nothing I could take advantage of.  He's kept a lazy but constant gaze on me the whole while, he keeps me in front of him when we walk, and he's got my manacles on a short lead.  The woman they had on me last time was less experienced and I got that chain around her neck for a few seconds before some of her peers heard her screaming and got to us.
	“Besides,” the man chuckles, “what do you honestly know about your contract?  You can't read it.  It could say you have to fuck cattle for your betters' amusement.  You don't know.”
	“They have to read it to us,” I mutter, because both he and I know how pointless that statement is.  It's more just a mantra we tell ourselves, because it's comforting.  And I must be delirious, if I'm believing it now.
	“Right,” the man laughs, and pulls me to a stop at the end of the dusty corridor we're walking.  I don't recognize the hallway, haven't recognized this place since they put me in it what felt like weeks ago.  I'm realizing now as we walk it that it's not as large as I'd assumed it was.  I'd thought for certain I was locked away in the Yari Hyronses Prison, a sort of warehouse I'd always known about growing up, but never seen.  It's was a notorious dumping ground for unwanted persons, where the majority of 'unmanageable' Servants ended up.  I would have been content to rot away there in my cell for what remained of my life, rather than return to the fields.  
	But now that I think about it, the small cell I'd been kept in while I'd been starved, fed moldy bread and stagnant water, and, (almost against my own wishes) had begun to recover from my ankle wound, was far too quiet to be in any part of that crowded hell-hole.  I would have had to share it with someone, I doubt they would have fed an ailing man anything whatsoever, and I distinctly smell pollen drifting through the air.  In fact, I can see it, filtered through the dim light that penetrates the small building I'm in, dancing specks in sunlight.  It's unfamiliar pollen, too.  Nothing like the meager flowers that managed to grow on the sandy banks of the Hyronses.  This is thicker, richer, more potent.
	I wasn't in the desert anymore.  This smelled like the country.  Somewhere with monsoon weather.  Now that I was paying attention, I can even tell the air's more humid.
	The hyena must see me dragging the new scents through my nose, because he gives a leering smirk.  “You don't even know where you are, do you?” he echoes my thoughts.
	I give him no reply, but then, he doesn't need one.  “It's on your contract,” he taunts, “but again, you can't read that.  Getting a feel for how worthless you are yet?”
	I don't want to confirm his statement, and I definitely don't have the energy to fight it, especially when it feels so true.  So I continue to say nothing.  He seems plenty fond of talking on his own.
	“You're in Charic Pradesh,” he says, and now I'm catching the subtleties in his accent.  The deep, throaty way he emphasizes the 'Hah' in 'Charic'.  
	My eyes widen marginally.  “Near the sea?”
	“Ocean,” he corrects me.  “The Somanta is no mere 'sea'.  You're in Tavesi, boy.  Came quite a long way.”
	“How-when?” I stammer.  I don't remember any of this.  After the incident with my last escape attempt and the injury from the man-catcher, I'd remembered little other than going to sleep slumped in a shed at the plantation I was working on, and then . . . .
	I had woken up in that room.  There'd been feverish dreams, but I thought those had been brought on by the wound, and the starvation.  
	“You were sold,” he states simply, then grins.  One of his canines is missing.  “Or rather, given away.  Our Matron shares relation with the Sura, the clan that owned you last.  She is a pragmatic woman,” he says with an air of earnest respect, or else he fakes it well.  “Not too proud to take unwanted refuse, if it comes free or at a bargain.  Here near the ports, strong Servants are at a premium.  The merchants are well aware they can simply ship them to the Shanivaar for better rates than compete and undercut their worth.”
	He hefts me by my bicep, tugging me along towards the door, but still irritatingly vigilant about keeping me in front of him.  He has experience.  Unlike the guards at the last plantation, and the one before that.
	“Most of the workers here had their contracts bought from the interior.  Desert refuse.  Like you,” he says in a remarkably jovial tone.  “So you'll be amongst the dirt you're accustomed to.”
	“Why can't I remember the trip?”  I demand.  It's the one question he hasn't answered on his own, and the one question that haunts me the most.  I've never before had so much time in my life simply . . . slip away, like this.  I've been drunk, I've lost track of a night, I've had days of work blend together.  But nothing like this.  It honestly frightens me.  
	And not much does that anymore.  
	He's silent as he reaches for his keys, reaches past me, and begins turning them in the lock.  Sunlight streams in from outside and that pungent scent has grown stronger.  I'm fairly certain he's not going to answer me at all, but then he does, and his hesitant, uncertain tone tells me something I didn't expect.  It's not that he doesn't want to tell me.  He honestly might not know.
	“My guess would be they smeared Divine in your wounds,” he says, and there's a heavy creak of metal as the lock slides free inside the door.  Metal locks.  This place would have been nigh on impossible to break out of, if I'd tried.  It was remarkably secure for such a small building.
	“ 'Divine'?” I parrot.  I know the word, but not in the context.
	“The extract from the flowers we grow here,” he states.  “You'll learn all about it soon enough.”
	“Wait- you mean the drug the holy men smoke?” I demand.  “They poisoned me?!”
	“Market value for that poison is higher than gold, by weight,” he snuffs.  “'Course whatever they gave you was probably old, weak product.  But still,” he gives a feral smile down at me, as he pushes the door open and piercing light streams in, “did the trick, didn't it?”
	I'm blinded by my first glimpse of sunlight in weeks.  It bores into me, staggers me back.  The dampness that's sunk into my fur in the small, dank cell seems to be lifting from me already, my skin prickles with warmth beneath, and slowly, my pupils constrict, taking in the sight before me.
	I knew there would be flowers.  I didn't think that was all there would be.  But it is.  It's all I can see for what seemed like miles.
	A tapestry of red and green in patches.  Poppy fields, as far as I can see, save a few long buildings half-obscured by a dip in the terrain in the distance.  Dusty dirt roads thread between the fields, and speckled amongst the mostly green patches, I can see the hunched figures of plantation workers, doing I know not what.
	Poppy fields are illegal near the Hyronses.  For centuries, rival clans fought and spilled blood over the scarce few patches of good land to grow the flowers on, until the increase in trade from Tavesi, the large delta to the southwest where the growing season was longer and water was more plentiful, made scratching out a living from farming in the desert a pointless venture.  The most prominent clans of the Hyronses made production farms like this illegal to assure that whatever land they had available that could be irrigated was used to grow food, not drug.  
	That doesn't mean I've never seen a field before, though.  People still grew the flowers illegally, just not on this . . . scale.  
	“This is Tavesi,” I say quietly, more to myself than the hyena.  
	My head rocks back as the hyena slaps me hard in the back of my skull.  “Were you not listening, boy?” he chuckles gruffly, then shoves me hard enough that my weakened legs nearly give out.  “You're in Matron Sura's fields, now.  But that's of no matter to you.  All that you need to know, all that should fill your dense little head now, is me.”
	I don't bother to look back at him and show my teeth, much as I'm tempted. I'm too tired, too thirsty, too hurting to be disobedient for the sheer sake of it, right now.  We begin to walk and he continues to talk at my back.
	“I'm your entire world now, dust dog.  Me and these fields,” he gestures.  “You do as I say, you work like I tell you to work, you'll do fine here.  I know you got one over on a few of your previous employers, but let's be clear right at the start,” he shoves me again, but this time it isn't idle, this time it's straight in the small of my back, with enough force to make my vision go white for a second or so.  I know I'm going to fall, but I grit my teeth and ensure at least that I don't fall face-down.  My knees strike the dirt hard, pain courses through my bones at the joint, and I'm nauseous for a few moments, but I'm not fully down, and that's what matters.
	“That's not going to happen, with me,” he declares, stone-faced.  “Not a soul on my watch acts up without consequences.”  His claws scrape in the dirt as he paces around in front of me, gray eyes staring down imperiously.  I stare right back.  I may be tired, but this man won't see me prostrate myself before him.  He'll have to take every inch by force.
 	I've been through this before, many times now.  He wants me to know he has the power here.  Well, I want him to know that he'll have to earn it.  I'm a proud man, but even I'm not so arrogant as to say I haven't been beaten down before.  No man is impossible to conquer, when you've got weapons, money and strength of numbers to keep him subdued.
	That doesn't mean I'll make it easy on him.
	“Keep on top of me, then,” I warn, forcing a rough laugh through my teeth.  “I'm told I'm troublesome.”
	He grins, that one missing canine a black hole in his smile.  “Oh, you're not my type, boy.  I prefer my meat slender,” he gestures to the road a ways down, where out of the corner of my eye I think I see a lion, escorting a ragged bunch that have to be other workers.  “But Vikram there, he'll take just about any mongrel he can get bent.  He doesn't mind the thicker boys.”
	I've been through this before, too.  The guards always let you know who you can fuck for extra privileges, or food.  My pride won't allow it, of course.  Or maybe I've just never been that desperate.
	“That's alright,” I snort, “I'd rather die than let a hyena fuck me.”
	Finally, I get a reaction from the man that isn't mirth.  His muzzle twists down into a frown, and he reaches down to grab me by my collar, yanking me to my feet.  I stumble as I find my bearing again, and briefly note that he had me off the ground for a moment.  That's no mean feat, considering I'm at least six inches taller than him.
	“Aardwolf,” he snaps.  “Not a hyena.  And if I ever hear you call me one again, I'll put soder in your eyes.  We understood?”
	I mentally note his intensely antagonistic reaction to the common misconception, but only nod mutely for now.  Could mean something, could mean he's just tired of people mistaking his species.  Either way it's interesting.
	He shoves me again, something he's clearly fond of.  The man's strong, there's no mistaking that.  This time I manage not to fall, and we begin walking again.  It looks like we're heading towards the long rows of shanty buildings in the distance.  Servant lodging, I can only imagine.  Servants are the only people who'd willingly live in hovels like that.
	“What's your name, boy?” the man I now know is an Aardwolf asks.
	“Why do you care?”  I mutter.
	“I like to put a name to my daily frustrations,” he quips back, and just like that, the jovial tone is back.
	“Kadar,” I say, finally.
	“Lochan,” the man replies in return.  “But to you, Master Lochan.  Or just Master.”
	“Or we can simply never speak again,” I offer.
	He laughs.  “See?  You're understanding.  Listen.  That's all you need to do, so long as you're here.  Listen, and obey, and pay off your contract debts.”
	“What's the boarding cost here?” I ask idly.  As though it matters.
	“What do you care?” Lochan chuckles.  “You can't manage numbers, can you?”
	I'm silent.
	“None of you can,” he says.  “The clan will handle your day-to-day expenses and deduct them from your total earned each day.  Your debt is paid when we tell you it's paid.  Now move your legs,” he kicks at them.  “We need to get you cleaned off.  You smell like death.”

	The lodging for the Servants is exactly what I expected it to be, and exactly what every other lodging house has been like at all of my previous plantations.  When I arrive, the houses are already filling with people coming in from the fields.  The few straw mats in each building are at a premium, and men are already claiming their ground when we arrive, but I have to be taken to the baths first.  I watch a painted dog shoving a boar away from one of the last sleeping mats as we pass, knowing with a yearning in the pit of my stomach that by the time we return, all that will remain are bare patches of earth to sleep on.  I've been sleeping on the cold, earthen floor of the small prison cell I was being kept in for weeks now.  My body aches from the cold that seeps up through the ground when the night falls.  I'd give anything for one of those straw mats.
	Eyes follow me as I'm lead towards the baths, sizing me up.  I see quite a few men here that are larger, and most definitely stronger than I am at the moment.  In my prime I might not have worried so much, but there are at least four lions, a pair of warthogs that look related, and have some significant bulk to them, and a cheetah who leans more towards my end of the spectrum.  Tall, not as broad, but strong.
	At the very least, I have nothing they want.  Still, this is a bad way to start off my entrance to a new workers' circle.  Malnourished, sickly and still nursing a slight limp.  My fur stands on end, but I resist showing my fangs, for now.  No need to antagonize until it becomes necessary.
	I know I'll have to make a reputation for myself, and fast.  Make it clear I'm not worth the trouble for most of them to mess with.  Even injured and exhausted, I can manage that, I tell myself.
	The bath is little more than three cold buckets of water poured over my body, and camel fat soap to rinse the filth out of my fur.  Lochan clearly doesn't want to waste much time doing this, because he hurries me through it with an air of indifference.  The icy water, pulled up from their well I'm certain, saps what little remaining strength I had in my body straight out of me, and the cloying cold sinks into my bones.  I try to shake as much of it as I can from my fur, but the light is dying fast, and I know I'll still be wet when I try to sleep.  What's more, Lochan takes my tattered clothing and returns with only a long loin cloth.  
	When I examine the meager scrap of clothing, he merely shrugs.  “If you want a dhoti or a sarong, you'll have to buy one from your earnings.  Be thankful we've given you anything at all.”
	“I'm going to freeze in this, tonight,” I point out, my ears flattened to my skull.
	 There's that grin again.  “Make a friend?” he offers.
	My intention, actually, is to do quite the opposite.  He escorts me back to one of the sleeping lodges, thrusts me through the door and points me towards an older Dhole, the only woman I've seen since I came here.  A gruff, “Eat,” is the last command I get from the Aardwolf before he heads off.  
	My fur is still sticky with water and some unwashed soap, but the promise of food is strong.  I head towards the elderly, stooped woman, collared like the rest of us.  Normally women don't work on plantations, female Servants are more desirable as house workers and, of course, in the sex trade.  But this woman is too elderly to be of much use even in a house, and probably too unwanted even amongst forty head of male workers to be at physical risk.  Or she simply doesn't have a choice.
	I feel for her, of course.  But mostly, I'm disappointed when I make my way to her, because all that remains on the tray she holds in her slightly shaking paws is stone-cooked flat bread.  The same bread I've been eating for weeks now.  I can smell cooked meat in the air, I know there must have been some available, but of course it's all gone now.
	The woman barely regards me as I take a few portions of bread, except to say, “Just two.”  I take three, and she doesn't notice.  She's probably half-blind.
	The water in the bucket near the door that I collect in one of the chipped clay cups available is at least clean, unlike the water they were bringing me in that damned cell.  It's as cold as the bath water, and probably from the same well, but I drink all of it and go back for a second cup without thinking, while forcing the bread down my throat.  It's at least not stale here, and I have to eat.
	I'm getting little more than a few curious stares, because most everyone is settled in for the night by now and no one wants to move and give up their purchase.  Tomorrow, I'm sure, will come the testing.  I need to somehow rest my body tonight, so I can stand my ground then.  But the chill in the air is already getting to me, and there isn't a straw mat available.  In fact, several of the men here are already sleeping on the ground, suggesting this is a common problem.
	I'm sure the house will still charge me as if I've been given a mat, though.
	I finish the last piece of bread I took, swallowing dryly and taking another cup of water to wash it all down.  It's not meat, but it's more food than I've had in one single helping in a long time, and it feels good to be so close to having a full stomach.  I sweep the room with my eyes, finally taking a good long look at the men I'll be bunking with in the dimming light.  Only one of the lions is in this building, but so is a tiger I didn't see before.  And that painted dog.  I dismiss the mere thought of targeting them outright.  I can't run the risk of being seriously hurt again right now.
	But I also can't shoot too low, or I'll be seen as a coward.  
	Stripes catch my eye, black against grayish blue in the fading light.  That could only be . . . .
	A hyena?  
	Here?
	I size the man up.  For the moment his back is to me, and he's either asleep or not perceptive enough to notice he's been targeted.  A few of the men near him notice, though, and a meerkat quickly scuffs his mat a good foot or so away from the hyena, and clear of my path.
	His ears flick, and I know by their distinct shape that my suspicions were correct.  Definitely a striped hyena.  He's tall, broad-shouldered and has a fairly strong frame on him.  Possibly even as tall as me.  But he's thin.  Almost to the point of looking malnourished.  And unlike me, he hasn't got much muscle to back it up.  He looks almost . . . soft.  Not like a worker.  More like a house servant, or one of the clan hyenas themselves.
	But he's got a collar, and he's here in the workhouse.  So it's not his lucky day.
	The corner of my muzzle twitches up as I make my way across the crowded room towards him.  I'm not too embarrassed to admit . . . the thought of beating on a hyena has me a little thrilled.  It's rare they get contracted out, let alone sold to their own kind.  The clan heads might be unreachable up on high, but this one, he can't get away from me.
	And I know no one here is going to help a hyena.
	I pass the cheetah on my way, and I'm fairly certain he shakes his head at me, as if to warn me away.  I ignore him, but then I hear a “Don't,” from behind me, and when I turn to regard him, he shakes his head again.
	He doesn't give me much reasoning to back up the warning, so I only pause a few moments.  Maybe the hyena's a little tougher than he looks.  Maybe he's got friends after all.  I can't really be certain.  But I'm fairly well committed to this now.  
	I am not spending another night in the dirt.
	By the time I'm five feet or so away from him, his ears twist and he finally notices me, turning to regard me.  So he wasn't asleep, after all.
	I soon see what had him so occupied, though, and it only fuels the fire in me more.  He has a chopped shank of some kind of meat, and there's actually a fair amount of flesh left on it.
	I drop to a crouch beside him and thrust my paw out, my voice coming out in a hoarse snarl.  “Give it over,” I demand, and hope the sick still stuck in my throat comes off sounding menacing, not weak.
	“I-what?” he blinks up at me, dark black eyes dropping to my paw in apparent confusion.
	“The meat,” I snap.  And then for emphasis, because he mostly looks confused right now and I want to make myself clear, “Now!”
	This is the part where you find out what kind of fight you really picked.  It's a risk you run any time you try to take on a complete stranger in a strange work group, but I had to take the first step here and now, tonight.  Now it's really only a question of how much he's willing to get hurt, and how much he can hurt me in return.
	The rest of the house is silent.  Doesn't seem like anyone's going to try and help him, after all.
	Hyenas can be brutal.  Even the lean ones.  There's a reason they're at the top of the caste hierarchy, more often than not.  Even lion prides lose ground to them in most clan wars.  They're tough.  Resilient.  Enduring.  And vicious.
	I ready myself for a fight.  It was enough when it was just the straw mat.  But he has meat.
	. . . and he's holding it out to me.
	I blink down at the man.  I thought, of course, there was a chance he would just give in.  Albeit a very small one.  But I expected at least in that case that he'd have the decency to look crestfallen.  Belligerant.  Something.
	Instead, he simply looks resigned.  Not even resigned and visibly upset.  There's no fight in his eyes at all.  
	I snap the shank of meat away from his hand, and wait a few seconds, curious how far I can push this.  Even more curious why I was warned away by one of the other workers.  Clearly they know something I don't.  I'm waiting to find out what that is.
	But all he does is stare up at me.  Now that his face is closer to mine, I can get a better look at him.  He definitely lacks the muscle tone to be a plantation worker, or at least not employed for long.  But he's also not unmarred.  There are faint black lines beneath the fur along his muzzle that I recognize as old scars.  Not from insects like on the battered lion's muzzle, the big male already asleep in the corner.  Not from kiln embers, like the occasional marring marks on mine.  Just scratches, and the occasional chip in his large ears.  He's also got several rather large holes in his ears that have to have been piercings at one time or another, and one remaining in his nose.  It doesn't look valuable, or it would have been stolen long ago, I'm certain.
	His fur is better kept than most of the men here, and he certainly smells a lot better than most of them.  Which is saying something, because I've always personally loathed the scent of his kind.  
	I shove him by the shoulder and find I don't have to put much force into it to get him to give.  But he doesn't seem to know what I want, so I clarify, “Your mat, too,” I grunt, moving onto it on my knees.  “Get off.”
	That, finally, seems to get a reaction out of him.  His ears flatten and he stiffens up a little, clutching the sarong he has bunched at his waist.   “But, I . . . sleep here.”
	“Not tonight you don't,” I snuff, shoving him again.  I put more force into it this time and he catches himself on outstretched paws as he falls backwards.  From there on out it's fairly easy to shove the rest of him off the mat with a kick or two, and soon he's skittering away.
	I'm almost disappointed, honestly.
	But I'm tired, I'm worn out, and even if the hyena wasn't much of a challenge, he was apparently enough of a risk around here to the other men that they weren't willing to push him around.  So if that got me some ground, so be it.  All I care about right now is that it got me a place to sleep.
	I chew on the bone for awhile after easily picking off what remains of the meat.  It's so damned satisfying to feel the scrape of bone against my teeth again, I almost don't notice the man making his way back towards my side, tentatively.
	My eyes flick to him and I toss the bone his way, letting him know I still have my wits about me.  It plunks into his shoulder and clatters to the hard, dirt floor, but all he does is flinch.
	“You don't offend easy,” I mutter.  
	“I'm sorry,” he says in a quiet, subdued tone.
	I arch an eyebrow at him, pushing myself up onto my elbows.  I search his features for anything mocking, but the apology seems to have been earnest.  I cast one more perplexed expression his way, and he averts his eyes to the ground, unable to hold my gaze.
	I sigh, leaning back down on my back and threading my fingers together behind my head.  The room's begun to grow dark, and there isn't much sound other than the occasional low murmuring in some other corner of the room, and the thrum of the night insects beginning their chorus.
	It sounds so much different than in the Hyronses, and yet somehow, everything still feels the same.  No matter where I go in the world, the work is the same.  This life is the same.
	I try not to think about it, for now.  I need to sleep.
	Shifting to the left of me catches my attention, and I realize with a start that the hyena has wormed his up near a corner of my mat, and he's resting his head on the straw corner, staring at me in the darkness.  It's unnerving.
	Maybe people avoid this man simply because he's strange.
	I plant a foot on the top of his skull and shove, and he gets the point, backing away from the mat by at least a few inches.  Still, he seems intent on sleeping close.
	I really don't care, so I let him.