"Fetch me my armor and weapons! Hurry, you fool!" he shouted urgently.
Then, without waiting for a reply, he turned to a frightened-looking, beautiful House slave girl, one of the pampered indoors concubines, and said to her, "Go and tell the kitchen crew to begin preparing full marching rations for every able-bodied male!"
"But—" she stammered helplessly, "but Master, how can I do this, seeing I am but a concubine?"
Pampered from birth, and taken from the same mold as Sorpiala and her kin, the foolish girl could not help but balk.
Wrathfully, Master Rababull took one step forward and backhanded the surprised woman to the floor with a single blow.
"I said move! My men cannot fight on empty stomachs, you wench!"
Sobbing, the woman held her hand to her bruised cheek as she scurried out of his reach and ran weeping to go and relay his orders to the kitchen staff.
Master Rababull nodded to himself in satisfaction.
With a slap mark like that on the face of a beauty like her, there would be no mockery in the kitchen when she arrived to give the orders. Whoever contradicted her would surely be boiled in oil. It had been done once before by Master Rababull, two hundred and eighty years ago, and he knew the cooks still spoke of it on occasion, when the day's work was done and they could at long last magnify themselves upon the young and impressionable with their idle words.
Moments later, Master Rababull could hear Prut's voice, shouting from the top of the stairs. Then a horn was blown repeatedly, with much force and vigor of the blower's lungs, urgently calling all slaves to a general assembly.