Despite all his reasoning, and for every passing moment, Garrett knew that he could not bring himself to the cold-blooded act. The more he looked at Arsen and his predicament, Garrett imagined himself in the Orc hostage’s situation; one that Garrett had experienced numerous times already. He envisioned the panic Arsen would be feeling. The knowledge that pain and death was soon to come. The wondering of all that to come thereafter, or if there was any hereafter at all.
Please. Arsen begged of Garrett to draw him from his thoughts. Don’t kill me, Weaver. I’ll swim for the shore and never come back. I swear it.
Garrett’s jaw clenched. I asked the same mercy of you, once, he replied to Arsen, his blood warming at the request made and the result that had occurred thereafter outside the walls of New Pearlaya. Forcing himself to not break his stare of the condemned, Garrett’s thoughts turned from picturing himself in Arsen’s place to that of another, more familiar enemy from his past.
Please. Garrett pictured Arsen as if he were Kellen Winstel instead, his old classmate’s haunted gaze begging the same as Arsen did whilst in the grip of the burly Nomads. Don’t do it, Weaver . . . don’t do this.
And then all such thoughts and imaginations were gone, Kellen’s face replaced with the reality of Arsen’s instead. Garrett’s imagination ran with him, remembering when he had killed Arsen’s partner in crime, Xander, before. How the surrounding water had blossomed red and enveloped them both as the life in Xander’s eyes had faded away and then stilled in deathly embrace. Garrett pictured committing the same act again, picturing Arsen’s head lolling forward, his chin covering the bloody smile that Garrett would draw across his neck to feed the surrounding water with its color.
No . . . Garrett’s conscience rose within him to fend off the primal minds of his Orc and Nomad forms. If you kill Arsen now, then you’re no better than him, or Ishmael either.
Garrett blinked, then. He found Ishmael’s dagger still clutched in his hand and at his side, but the blade remained clean and unused.
In front of him, Arsen nodded in thanks for his life.
Garrett averted his gaze, the familiar hatred lingering with the thought of serving rightful vengeance against his former pod-mate. There was the look of Cursion White Shadow too, studying him all the while, and Garrett wondered then if he had failed yet another Salt test placed before him.
More than all, Ishmael’s smile broadened to the point that Garrett wondered if it would break the Nomad’s face in half. Ishmael shook his head, then spoke to Cursion. Pity your Orc-son could not bring himself to act, White Shadow. It would seem he is truly of two minds as to which people own his loyalty.
Garrett shuddered under the other, disappointed looks from the surrounding warriors. They doubt me now too, he understood from the Nomads that sneered and whispered as they swam off in search of darker waters, or others to share the news of his failing with. And now I’m like you, aren’t I, Arsen? He thought, turning back to the captive Orc. Distrusted on both sides of the war to come.
Cursion called him from such thoughts when he placed his hand upon Garrett’s shoulder and squeezed. Perhaps my son is sworn to peace and life, Red Water, he said. Whatever his decision today, I have little doubt you will see where his true loyalties lie when we reach the gates of New Pearlaya.
Ishmael nodded. In time, aye, he said. Glancing over his shoulder, Ishmael motioned toward Arsen before looking to Cursion once more. For now, what would you have us do with this lone Orc captive, high chieftain? If your Orc-son will not slay him, and you will not permit me or any of us here to do so, what then is to be his fate?
His focus narrowed on Arsen, Cursion parsed his words before speaking. This Orc was with those who attacked the Selkies and maimed the son of Atsidi Darksnout. Let the Silent Hammer decide what his fate shall be.
Arsen came alive then, fighting in vain against the Nomads dragging him away in the direction the Hammer tribes had swam. No, please, sir! Don’t give me to him! Set me free, sir, please! I’ll swim for the shore, honest I will. You have my word!
Your words mean nothing, Garrett thought, frowning as Ishmael grinned at him a final time, then swam off with the others to deliver Arsen to the Hammer tribe. I should have done it, he thought then, watching as several of the warriors with Ishmael looked back at him and sneered. If he’s going to die anyway, I should have killed him and proved myself to the Nomads before they do the same for me.
Cursion drew Garrett from his inner debate with a light touch. Come, my son. Swim below me with awhile and let us forget these troubles above.
How? Garrett wondered, even as he obeyed. How am I ever supposed to forget all of these things I’ve seen and done?
And though Garrett repeated the question to himself, praying for a response, neither his conscience or the Salt came back to offer him an answer as he followed the Nomad high chieftain into deeper waters for answers that no one could give.
19
LENNY
Trekking across the Bouvetøya cavern floor of ice and stone, Lenny led the column of Selkie prisoners he and Jemmy T had helped to rescue from the killing fields and crematorium work. At the rear of their train, Tom Weaver escorted a lone Orc prisoner – the crematorium guard, Yusuf, bound and gagged.
At the head of their column, Lenny was afforded the primary view of what awaited them back at the Sailfish train and loading platforms. Some of those who fought in Røyrkval had cracked open barrels of the Orc supplies and divvied up portions of bread and fish among the slew of newly freed Selkie prisoners, all huddled and sat together. For all the masses gathered there, the weeping and whispered chatter among them, it was those beyond the Selkie groupings that drew Lenny Dolan’s attention most.
Vasili and others far taller than he stood in a semi-circle on guarded watch over the wounded Orc leader, Commander Pohl, and near a dozen of his Orc soldiers. All were seated or lain upon the platform with their hands bound behind their backs and gags in their mouths. Their blood-streaked skin and armor bore the hallmarks of battle, their faces lined with defeat. Most appeared as though they had resigned themselves to their fate. A few wrestled and failed to free themselves of their bonds. Commander Pohl did not fight his Selkie captors, or his bonds. His eyes trained instead on a pair of his soldiers lynched bodies’, both swaying at the end of ropes that had been tied to a support beam railing above the platform steps.
Lenny’s gaze narrowed on those who presided over the Orc condemned – Henry Boucher and his gang of Lepers.
Brutus worked alongside them too. Man-handling the corpse of an executed Orc, he lifted the body free of the noose it swung from, all to make room for another soon to come. Brutus tossed the dead Orc soldier aside, then headed for the platform as if meaning to choose his next victim. He hesitated when catching sight of Lenny and those returning.
“Oi! Found another to dangle, have we, Dolan?” Brutus asked, then waved his hand toward the platform. “He’ll have to take a place in line. We’ve others here to go first that have been waiting too long already.” He pointed one of his brat-sized fingers at the prisoners there. “Aye, and their dear Commander Pohl there is to go last of all. Meant to run him through with my sword, so I did. When I saw the wee children and the women he put away to suffer and starve though . . .” Brutus stroked his red-faced cheeks, the veins in his neck popping for each word spoke. “Well, let’s just say a blade would be too quick for him and such crimes.”
You haven’t seen the worst of it. Lenny thought, stopping shy of the platform as the others in groups came to stand along with him. The Orc prisoner, Yusuf, was trembling in Tom Weaver’s grip as he was brought toward the fore.
“No,” Yusuf wept. “Please, not this. Don’t let them hang me.”
Brutus took the Orcs in his sights. “Want to live, do you, lad? Mayhap you should’ve thought of that before going around slaughtering innocent women and children, eh?”
“I didn’t,” said Yusuf. “I didn’t kill them. I couldn’t.”
&
nbsp; “No?” Brutus asked. “Then, why are you still here? Your dear old commander over there don’t seem the sort to tolerate a good-hearted soldier, like the sort you claim to be.”
Yusuf turned to Tom Weaver, clinging to him. “Please, sir, don’t let him kill me. Please! You know that I couldn’t hurt the Selkies. That’s why they put me in the crematorium, sir. Commander Pohl knew that I couldn’t hurt the prisoners.”
You’re barking up the wrong tree, Orc. Lenny thought when Tom shook Yusuf hard enough to keep him from blathering on.
“Oi, Tommy,” Brutus called out. “What’s this about a crematorium, eh? Got one here, have they?”
“Aye,” said Tom. “They’re burning the bodies of all those they killed.”
Brutus sneered. “Burning the evidence, you mean. That way none can say elsewise as to how many they’ve killed, if it were ever found out what they’re doing here.”
“Don’t think they care about numbers,” said Lenny. “They got all the Selkie skins peeled off and stacked up back there too. Suppose someone could count them, if they wanted to.”
“Is that so?” Brutus asked, eyeing the Orc prisoners one by one. “Well, then, I reckon dangling at the end of a rope is a bit clean for these here too. Might be instead we ought to flay them first, then add some of their skins of black and white to that mess they’ve all got piled up.” He looked to Henry and his gang. “What say you, Leper? You and your boys suited to such a task as they served up for all those like us?”
Henry’s cold, dead eyes made his answer plain enough. The drawing of his blade and the others in his gang to follow cemented the idea.
Despite all that he had seen, Lenny cringed at the idea of leaving the Orcs to Henry’s whims. He reminded himself of all the Orcs had done in Bouvetøya. His father’s death in Røyrkval. The Selkie criminal back in New Pearlaya that Edmund had shown him for being one the Orcs had strung up in Lenny’s place too.
Serves the Orcs right. He told himself, even as Declan’s teachings and his own conscience warned that to kill in such a way was not justice, but cold-blooded murder. Still, Lenny made his peace with the torturing to come, turning away that he, at least, would not need to add those images to his memories.
Looking out across the crowd of Selkie freed, however, he spotted more than a few children watching the ongoing affair. He keyed on a standing, Selkie boy among the crowd, his face already burdened by darkness and harsh realities. For all that Lenny saw in the boy’s eyes, he took note when the Selkie boy winced at one of the Orc soldiers yelping at Henry’s cruel taunt with the point of his blade.
Lenny to action. “Wait,” he said, wheeling back to the ongoing affair upon the platform.
The Leper gang did not heed him, flipping the tussling Orc soldier onto his belly, then holding him fast. Henry came among them with his blade handy, his left knee needling into the crook of the Orc’s back. Though he stopped at Lenny’s calling out, the glint in Henry’s eye warned that he did so only out of curiosity for the little man speaking up on the Orc’s behalf.
Brutus too came to the fore. “What’re you on about, Dolan?” he asked. “You got a better idea for how to make these here suffer first?”
“Nah,” said Lenny, glancing to the Selkie boy in the crowd again that Brutus, at least, might take note. “But ya can’t kill them. Not here and now anyway. Not like this.”
Brutus snorted. “And who’s going to stop us, lad? You?”
“Not me,” said Lenny. “You’re gonna stop yourself. Henry and his gang too. Because it’s like ya said, Brutus – they’re burning the evidence. If ya kill these Orcs, then who’s to say otherwise? Who to believe us?”
“You see all these seated out here, Dolan?” Brutus swept the end of his blade in pointed direction over all the newly freed Selkie prisoners. “They’re evidence too. T’will be their voices to carry the truth of this day and all those before it, so they will. Aye, let their voices stand as witness for the horrors that happened here.”
“Won’t do no good, if they can’t speak.” Lenny nodded toward one of the Selkies who had prevented Tom from punishing Yusuf in the crematorium. “Those we found burning the bodies had their tongues cut out, all on orders from that Commander Pohl over there. That way they couldn’t tell the other slaves what was happening. None of these we freed from the crematorium can talk.” He looked out on the Selkie masses, wondering if they too had all received a similar punishment, or if they stayed silent throughout the exchange for fear of what would happen if speaking up.
Brutus shook his head as he marched down the steps of the platform and then slowly over toward Lenny. “You’re a Dolan, lad. Figured you to be a wiser sort than this.” His blade still clutched in hand, Brutus stopped in front of Lenny and looked down on the smaller man. “You think the Merrows and Nomads, the other Orcs, any of them at all will care what these Selkies have to say about what happened here, do you?”
“I don’t think it,” said Lenny, a single glance in Tom Weaver’s direction making him reflect on conversations had with a younger Weaver. Lenny’s jaw clenched with conviction at the memory of warning Garrett outside Crayfish Cavern on how the Painted Guard soldiers had planned to defile Ellie and other captive Silkies. How Lenny’s warning and Garrett’s passing the message on had led to their rescue by the Painted Guard pod mother, Makeda. How her judgement of the Orc intentions and assault had later led to the castration and banishment of her guilty soldiers for their crime.
Lenny furthered his belief by thinking back to his exchange with the Merrow queen, Nattie Gao, outside of New Pearlaya too. How she had promised the Selkies freedom in exchange for teaching her daughter about the Salt’s harshest realities and what they meant for slaves. Lenny cursed himself again for rejecting the offer in favor of making his own choices and way. How all the decisions he made thereafter had led him to the pain and loss and place he stood in now. “I don’t think just anyone will care,” he reiterated to Brutus. “I know the right people who will listen to what’s happened here and do something about it too.”
“Well, most of us don’t have your fancy friends, do we?” said Brutus. “And even if you did have someone from up on high who you think would listen, lad, it don’t mean they’d do nothing about all this to stop it from happening again.”
“They would,” said Lenny. “But they gotta know about it first. Gotta give them something to use to back our claims too.”
“Oh? Your word not enough for your fancy friends then, eh?” Brutus asked before poking him in the chest. “Tell you what I know, son. All the friends I have left are either here, or dead. All of them Selkies too. And most of them killed by this sort.” He jerked his head toward Commander Pohl. “Their kind will never stop trying to put an end to folk like us.” He sighed. “Oh, I been a long time Salting away in prisons of all sorts, Dolan. Now, that I’m free of them slave mines too and seen all these horrors here? Don’t seem like much has changed for our kind beneath the Salt . . . and that which has only turned for the worse.” Brutus headed for Tom Weaver and Yusuf, reaching to grab hold of the Orc prisoner’s arm. “So, keep your good intentions and your bleeding heart, lad,” he said to Lenny. “Wash your hands of the mess to come, if you need, but leave the dirtier sort to us who know what this world really is. Aye, say nothing of what needs be done to change it and to help the poorer sort like us.”
Lenny gathered that Brutus meant to pull Yusuf away then.
Tom Weaver kept hold of his prisoner.
Brutus’s brow furrowed. “What’re you doing there, Tommy?”
“I’m listening,” Tom growled, brushing Brutus away, pulling Yusuf closer toward him. Tom’s gaze slighted back to Lenny. “Keep talking, Dolan. If you got a better idea than Brutus of what to do with these Orc scum, then you best lay out your plan quick.”
Lenny’s throat ran dry at the pressure of Tom’s challenge. His skin tingled with the eyes of all those he had fought beside questioning his arguments and judgement of the others with murd
er plain in their words and actions. In Jemmy T, he saw a similar, curious intent that Tom Weaver allowed in him to speak further on. There was the pleading in Yusuf’s eyes too, a stark contrast to the cold betrayal steeped in the faces of the Selkie fighters surrounding him.
What would you say, Pop? Lenny wondered, praying for his father’s voice and mantras for guidance. For all the times he could recall Declan Dolan’s sage-like words, Lenny heard nothing from the ghost or memories of his father now. What do I say?
“Well?” Tom barked at him. “What’s it gonna be, Dolan?”
Lenny ignored the question, his thoughts and questions, his search for an answer, all went blank when he recognized the stillness that had taken hold over all in Bouvetøya. Turning, Lenny looked over all those seated before him, the emaciated prisoners, desperate for sustenance and hope. He saw the defeated Orc soldiers, the hate in their angered looks a mirror of the Selkie rebels standing guard over them. Most of all, he found himself coming back to the Selkie boy in the crowd, his dirty brow furrowed with the same hate and anger Lenny knew lived within him also.
It’s gonna keep going. Lenny thought then. It’s all just gonna keep going . . . keep happening. Just the way the world is . . . and ya can’t do nothing about it, Len.
But ya can, son. Declan’s teachings rose within him. The mantra that Lenny was his father’s son in every regard. Chief among them, what it meant to be a Dolan.
Lenny looked across the faces of those he had fought and bled with, and then to those he had rescued, along with all the others he had fought to overcome. I’m a Dolan. He told himself once more, his shoulders squaring as he met Tom Weaver’s harsh gaze. “They’re coming with us,” he said. “All of them. The Selkies and these Orcs. Their commander too. We’ll take them back to New Pearlaya and sort them there for the ones who will listen. The rest will stand and answer for what happened here.”
Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 Page 28