Dangerous Waters (34 page)

Offer to scour a kitchen’s pots with it, once the
Reef Eagle’s
master and his men had been served the choicest dishes, and Hosh could hope for some food from the women. That task and any others he could find to earn their goodwill would take him till midnight. By then slaves and raiders alike should have sought some rest in the cool of the night. Hosh could find a quiet corner and risk some sleep himself.

The door behind Imais opened and two more of the pavilion women emerged to share her smoke. Hosh concentrated on pounding his shells.

You can’t roll a rune without one showing reversed. That’s what his mam always said. Hosh did miss her so. Skulking behind the pavilion might be safer than mingling with the other slaves but seeing these women with their work-roughened hands and age-thickened bodies as they snatched their brief respite did remind him—

Hosh sniffed crossly. An aggravating trickle of mucus was sliding from his nose. He threw his head back to try and stem it. As he did so, he caught sight of the jar with the wretched mouse clinging to the vizail stems.

Did the poor creature realise that venomous peril lurked beneath the blossoms? Would it starve first or be stung to death? Was there any way it could survive being trapped in there? Poor little mouse.

Hosh ground the crushed shells with his stone. He sniffed harder but couldn’t stem his miserable tears.

He was trapped as surely as that mouse. Even if he escaped the myriad things that could kill him, he would eventually die here alone. His beloved mam would never know what had become of him. None of these godless barbarians would give his body a decent burning. He’d suffer the torments of Poldrion’s demons until the last of his bones crumbled to dust.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-
O
NE

The Tresia Estuary, Caladhria

9th of For-Summer

C
ORRAIN AWOKE WITH
a start. He had dreamed he was back in chains, the stink of the galley seeping into his sleep. No, he was enjoying the dubious privilege of the galley master’s bunk in the cramped stern cabin.

He swung his feet to the planking and stretched his arms to ease the stiffness in his shoulders. Feeling the tug of the healing burns on his arms, he found the jar of ointment which Hosh’s old mum had given him and Kusint to share. They didn’t want those scars to heal stiff, she had warned. Corrain worked the pungent salve into the tender skin.

How long had he slept? He’d come below deck just after midnight, as far as he could reckon it. Rousing Kusint to take his place up by the steersman’s oar, he’d rolled into the musty bunk and been asleep within moments.

Was it morning? With the door securely wedged shut, the fetid gloom gave Corrain no clue. He didn’t feel particularly rested. That meant nothing. This voyage was proving as exhausting as any he’d ever made chained to a rower’s bench.

The galley wasn’t moving. Anger burned through Corrain’s weariness. If they were to reach Solura this side of Solstice they must row from dawn to dusk and on into the night if the moons permitted it. Belting on his sword, he stooped to pull the wooden wedge out from under the door and went into the hold.

The stern hatch was open, bright sunlight showing him two rowers sharing a cup of water in the shadows of the main hold. Ignoring them, Corrain climbed the ladder. Where was Kusint?

The Forest lad was sitting in the galley master’s chair up on the stern platform. He was fiddling with one of the Aldabreshin compasses which they’d found in the galley master’s cabin. It was a dauntingly complex instrument compared to a straightforward Caladhrian roundel with a needle indicating north. A circular brass plate as big as Corrain’s splayed hand was engraved with a web of lines and numerals. A second pierced disc overlaid that with more interlaced circles while two brass pointers swivelled around the whole thing, all joined together by a central pivot.

‘Why aren’t we under way?’ Corrain demanded.

Kusint took a breath before answering. ‘See here? I know where all the heavenly jewels and constellations are at this very moment.’ He held up the gleaming device, apparently expecting its display to mean something to Corrain.

‘Why aren’t we under way?’ He repeated with some heat. It wasn’t quite as bad as he’d feared; the sun was low in the sky and the morning cool had yet to lift, which was far better for rowing than the oppressive heat which would soon be building. ‘We’re wasting the best part of the day!’

‘You need to persuade the men that taking the westward course is wise.’ Kusint’s gaze warned him that something was awry on the rowing deck. Not for the first time.

Corrain turned to look at the benches. A few of the laggards glared back at him. Others were looking studiously away, over the bulwarks towards the open seas on one side, at the green coast of Caladhria on the other.

A handful huddled together in a manner which Corrain had come to know all too well. He walked towards them, staying up on the raised planking, one hand on his sword hilt.

A rower lay on the deck below a bench, curled around a corsair dagger driven straight into his heart. There wasn’t much blood. From his unmarked hands, Corrain judged the man had been taken so completely by surprise that he hadn’t had a chance to fight back.

‘What happened here?’ he asked dispassionately.

The knot of slaves looked up at him, Archipelagan born, dark of hair and skin. How many could understand him? It was hard to say. Not for the first time, Corrain wished fruitlessly for Hosh who could have translated his threats and promises.

Imposing his will on the rowers had proved an unforeseen challenge. All Corrain could do was cajole and browbeat and hope to the gods he didn’t believe in that none of the freed slaves would actually force him to draw his sword.

It had been a shock. Restored to his rank of captain in Halferan, if only unofficially by the likes of Reven and Fitrel, Corrain had readily slipped back into the habit of command. But the Halferans were willing to obey him, albeit with grumbles.

After casting off their chains, the galley’s former slaves chafed at even the slightest order. Tempers were as raw and tender as their shackle welts at wrist and ankle. Bloody arguments flared, with few of those involved paying any heed if Corrain or Kusint tried to mediate. None of the rowers would surrender the blades which they had seized from the dead corsairs.

‘What happened here?’ Corrain repeated himself slowly and clearly in formal Tormalin. He knew full well that some of these slaves had picked up a little of that tongue in the course of their misadventures. But this handful merely shrugged, their faces calculatedly uninformative.

‘Are you dumb beasts or free men?’ Corrain demanded with barely restrained anger. ‘Have you been chained for so long that you can only behave like the animals the Aldabreshi called you?’

‘Enough!’ Kusint’s voice carried the length of the galley. ‘Have you no respect for your equals, Corrain? Have you forgotten your own sufferings as a slave? Do you propose to use an overseer’s whip to loosen their tongues, while you bear such scars on your own flesh?’

‘Never!’ Corrain was shocked into furious denial. ‘How can you think that?’

But as he brandished his broken manacle, he saw the other rowers looking up from their benches. For some, that very fear lurked in their hollow eyes. Others looked at him with veiled menace, warning of dire consequences if they even suspected he would try it.

Corrain looked back at the corpse. ‘Get rid of that before it starts to stink.’

The men standing around grabbed arms and legs and hauled the body over to the bulwark. Heaving it over to throw it clear of the oars was something of a struggle.

Corrain had been appalled to realise he and Hosh and Kusint had fared significantly better than these unfortunates when they’d been chained aboard the
Reef Eagle
. Whoever this galley master had been, he’d expected his slaves to row on an Aldabreshin stodge of steamed grain mixed with rancid shreds of meat and a few crudely chopped potherbs. The stuff had either been prepared or stored so imperfectly that it was full of weevils. Dead rats had been floating in the water in the casks in the hold.

No wonder he and Kusint had discovered the galley’s master, the whip master and both the overseers dead in the hold. Their necks had been broken, the flesh purpling with the imprint of links from the chains that had strangled them.

The killers managed to hurl the dead man away to vanish in a fleeting splash. Corrain saw the other Archipelagans looking anxiously for whatever might rise from the shallows to claim the body. To his relief, nothing ruffled the water. There were no sharks in these waters accustomed to follow galleys for an easy meal. Nothing to encourage Aldabreshin superstitions which were proving yet another thorn in his foot as this cursed voyage progressed.

He began counting heads. How many had they lost on Kusint’s watch this time? Four, including the one just tossed overboard. Corrain knew better than to rebuke Kusint. Men died or disappeared between most sunsets and the following dawn. He’d seen some killed openly, a fatal misjudgement prompting violent retaliation ending in shattered skulls or knife-torn bellies. If he or Kusint tried to intervene, they risked the rowers turning on them. Better to leave well alone, they had agreed behind the galley master’s cabin’s securely wedged door.

What had happened to the others? Corrain looked over towards the green Caladhrian shore. Whenever the tides and currents brought them within sight of land, a few more starved and brutalised men decided to try swimming ashore. He had no idea how many had succeeded. Or how many might escape being hanged out of hand by the Caladhrians who caught them.

Corrain couldn’t help wondering what might become of those who survived. Particularly those too long adrift to ever return to the lives they’d led before they were enslaved. Those too ashamed to go home with the scars they now bore.

On the other side of the scales, he was relieved whenever he saw the missing men included one or more of the troublemakers they’d been lumbered with. Losing them was worth even the cost of the oars being stripped of their strength. But now the galley was becoming dangerously weakened. Its progress these past few days had been infuriatingly slow.

He walked back to the stern platform as the killers returned to their rowing bench. ‘When can we get on our way?’ He was asking the sullen oarsmen as much as Kusint.

The Forest lad held up the Aldabreshin compass again. ‘We’d be better served by a rest day.’

Corrain saw that warning in Kusint’s eyes again. He looked at the rowers. ‘Is that what you want?’

The Archipelagans nodded emphatically, even the ones who’d pretended not to understand him earlier. So this was something to do with their stars. Corrain swallowed his exasperation. There was no use arguing. He’d learned that much in the Archipelago.

What about the rest? Despite their grime and the sun’s bronzing, plenty of the others were mainlanders. It turned out that Aldabreshin slavers prized the crews of mainland merchant ships almost as highly as the corsairs valued their cargos.

‘Why can’t we head northwards?’ Someone called out amidships; a Lescari voice.

‘We’re headed for Solura,’ Corrain shouted back. ‘That’s what we agreed. When we reach their Great River, you can leave this ship with an equal share of the plunder to make what you can of your freedom. Any who’d rather return to the Archipelago can take this galley and their chances, and may the gods and the omens favour you.’

Kusint had found plenty of loot in the holds; lightweight linens, dyestuffs, brassware, even woollen carpets from Dalasor and leather and fur from the mountains, traded right down to the coast. All much sought after by the Aldabreshin warlords and a grievous loss for whatever merchants had entrusted their goods to the ship which this galley had caught following the sea lanes towards the southerly waters.

It had been easy enough for Kusint to persuade these paupers to conceal the bulk of it from Captain Mersed and his men on that first day. After handing over some sacks of grain, three casks of wine and leather pouches of jewellery and prized possessions from ravaged villages, they had begun hauling out the barrels of the sour-smelling pottage garnished with dead rats. That had been enough to dissuade the Tallat men from searching the holds. It had also been the start of the Forest lad gaining the rowers’ trust, far more than Corrain had managed.