Firehurler (Twinborn Trilogy)

by J. S. Morin

  Denrik was a sailor by trade, and had spent more years at sea than some of the other prisoners had seen in their whole lives. He had been in the New Hope penal colony on Rellis Island for nearly three years, and he was to see seventeen more before he would ever again be a free man. He regretted nothing more than having been caught, for he was unrepentant of his crimes. Indeed, many at his trial clamored for the reinstatement of public hanging, claiming that if ever there was to be an exception to the king’s wish that no prisoner be executed, it would be for Denrik Zayne, Scourge of the Katamic Sea.

  Denrik had been one of the most successful—and the most feared—pirates in the region in recent memory. During the height of Denrik’s power, few were the merchant ships that left port without an escort from the Acardian navy. He had even been so bold as to engage and sink naval vessels when he could catch them alone. Piracy was a profitable way of life, but one that created a great deal of enmity. In the end, the Acardian navy had caught his ship in a blind inlet, hiding away while being repaired, and he had reluctantly surrendered. He found out during his trial that one of his former crewmen had betrayed the location of one of the sheltered ports he used.

  The crack of a whip overhead had Denrik back to his chore quickly. The prisoners spent all day breaking large rocks into smaller rocks, and then sweeping them into sacks to make room for new large rocks to be brought in. Denrik knew it to be a pointless exercise, designed to punish the prisoners and break their spirits by forcing them to perform backbreaking labor all day, every day. He knew the game, though, and played along, biding his time and keeping in as little trouble as his nature allowed him.

  They were each stripped to the waist and chained in a long line by the ankles. There were six men together, five others and Denrik, and though the order might change day by day, Denrik was carefully kept from the positions on either end, where a prisoner got to have one leg free at least. As little hope as there was for a prisoner to break free of their chains, Denrik carried a foul reputation, and the guards took any precaution they could think of.

  When the prisoners were given their break for lunch, they remained in the work yard. Guards brought out a thin gruel that had been warmed by the blazing noontime sun to the point of making it nearly inedible. The prisoners who were attached to Denrik’s chain were not allowed spoons for their gruel, for the warden had strictly forbidden that anything that might be used as a weapon come within Denrik’s reach. The order had caused Denrik to be something of a pariah when he first arrived and was assigned to a work crew, just as the warden had intended. He had gotten past that social impediment by agreeing to take the members of his chain-crew into his protection. Once it became known that anyone who gave trouble to someone on his crew would have to answer to Denrik, only one prisoner tested his resolve. The rest of the prisoners on Rellis Island learned an important lesson that day when they discovered that though Acardia no longer executed criminals, Denrik Zayne had no such reservations. When the body was found, Denrik was safely locked away in his cell with the rest of his crew, but nevertheless suspicions ran strong among the more superstitious prisoners that Denrik had done the deed himself.

  The guards stood watch over the prisoners while they ate. Each guard was dressed in loose-fitting garments of light linen, all a dusty shade of white. Wide-brimmed straw hats kept them well shaded during the hottest parts of the day, and on that unseasonably hot spring afternoon, the prisoners dearly envied them that shade. In a land with trees and shade and cool water to drink, the day would have seemed beautiful and bright, but not in New Hope. The ground was barren of plants of any sort, the whole of the island being little more than an oversized outcropping of rock jutting from the sea.

  “Eat yer grub and be quick about it,” ordered one of the guards, a fat surly man by the name of Pierson.

  Despite the lightweight uniform and all the other comforts afforded the guards, he was dripping rivers of sweat and in a foul mood. Seeing little response from the prisoners, who in spite of his remonstration were already eagerly slurping up the stomach-turning meal, he cracked his whip over their heads. Several men were startled and fumbled the bowls containing their lunch, and one even spilled the remains of his meal.

  Denrik, who had with long practice trained himself not to flinch at the sound of the guards’ whips, merely looked up at the guard with dangerously narrowed eyes.

  Pierson scowled back at him. “What’re you looking at?”

  He cracked the whip again, this time within a few inches of Denrik’s head. Denrik clenched his jaw and willed himself not to move, but betrayed himself slightly by blinking when the tip of Pierson’s whip drew close. Salvaging a bit of authority from the exchange, Pierson let the matter end at that.

  Secretly many of the guards were a bit afraid of Denrik Zayne. The name had been synonymous with piracy in Acardia for well over a decade, and even years after his capture, something about the name still commanded fear and respect. He was so unlike the rest of the prisoners on the island; they knew not what to make of him. Most of the men sentenced to hard labor on Rellis Island had been criminals because they knew no honest trade or had taken too easily to the lure of undeserved riches. They were generally an undisciplined, unruly bunch, and prone to much violence when left too long to their own devices. Though little of Denrik Zayne’s earlier life was known, it was apparent that somewhere along the line, he had acquired a nobleman’s education. Though he spoke little when the guards were about, his accent and vocabulary singled him out clearly among the rest of the rabble incarcerated on this island, and he carried himself calmly and with a strange, offended dignity, as if imprisonment were beneath him. It struck a strange chord in men’s minds when they reconciled his demeanor with the reckless brutality for which he had been convicted.

  * * * * * * * *

  At the end of the day, the prisoners were led back to their cells. The cell block was built from stone native to the island, which had a distinctive reddish-brown color to it, and which Denrik had always thought gave the place a rather cultured look, as far as prisons were concerned. His crew was led into their cell, a stone-floored, square room with no windows and a heavy steel door with a small, closeable door set into it at eye level. There were six bunks, three hanging from each of two opposing walls and with little space between them in any direction. Once the door was locked, the guard handed through the eye-level portal a key ring that would let them unlock their manacles and unchain themselves. Failing to hand both the key and chains back to the guard promptly, through the little door, was always cause for a good punishment, and so the crews each learned to perform the nightly ritual with admirable efficiency.

  With their chains removed and the guard having left them locked in and to their own devices, the exhausted men relaxed. Each of them climbed into their bunks, as there was little enough room elsewhere in the cell, and collapsed gratefully onto the not-so-soft wooden planks. The room’s stench told of years of sweat and blood soaked into the wood of those bunks and to a lesser degree into the walls and floor, mixed with an entirely different smell from a large bucket shoved back into the far corner of the room. It had become home to them, welcoming only in comparison to the rest of the barren rocky wasteland of New Hope. But in their cell at least, there was no one to whip them for talking and no rocks to break. To the beleaguered prisoners, that was enough.

  “Cap’n, how much longer we gots to wait?” asked one of the men.

  The men of Denrik’s crew had taken to calling him “Captain” as a sign of respect, for they found it seemed to improve his mood.

  “Not so much longer, Jimony, not long for this place anyway. Just two more days. I have been counting them, and I do not lose track … unlike some of you.”

  The last bit was a rare show of humor from their taciturn leader, and it was met with a chorus of chuckles from his crew, except for Tawmund, who was the butt of that particular jibe.

  “I can’t wait to sees the mainland again,” muttered Jimony dreamily.r />
  Their captain had promised that he had a plan to get them off the island and make them all free men again. He had told them few details of it, though, except that it involved them getting as many of their own crew members assigned to help unload the next supply ship as they were able. Bribery was difficult, as the prisoners were allowed few personal effects, but Denrik had managed something along those lines. Getting himself appointed to a loading detail was out of the question, however; for while the guards were careful to keep him away from sharp objects and anything that might conceivably be made into a weapon, the warden had promised to personally hang any guard “who lets Denrik Zayne within sight of any boat.”

  “Just keep playing their game, by their rules, until their rules do not matter to us anymore,” Denrik said.

  He realized that he seemed unusually talkative this night and in better spirits than normal. Thus his men took that to be his well-concealed excitement over their impending escape.

  “Um, pardon me asking, Cap’n, but when we gettin’ to find out the rest o’ yer plan? Um, I’m not meaning no dis-ree-spect or nothing, but it’s just that we ain’t as smart like yerself, see. I mean, what if we’s taking some time to learnin’ it all?” asked the largest of the group.

  “It is alright, Andur; you will do fine. You are all well suited to the parts you will play. The difficult part will be my own, and if I fail, all you need to do is nothing. You will never be suspected should things go awry—um, wrong.”

  Denrik had to have a care how he spoke among his men. There had been hard feelings and some ticklish situations that had come about from them misinterpreting words they were unfamiliar with. Andur in particular had become nearly frantic when he first heard that Denrik planned to see all of them “emancipated.” He had promised to kill any man who tried “emancipating” him.

  “Now enough about the plan,” Denrik said. “We do not want to risk one of the guards happening to check the cell block while you men are carrying on about how you are looking to break out of here. Now get some sleep.”

  In truth, the odds were against the guards checking up on the prisoners during the night. They were just concerned with keeping the prisoners from storming their own barracks. Rellis Island was three miles of rough sea from the nearest mainland coastline, the small port town of Trebber’s Cove. There was nowhere to hide on the island, either. Though nearly a mile long, the island was only a few hundred yards across, and the terrain was rocky and barren, with very little cover. Any prisoner who broke out of the cell block would either have to make a swim for it against incredible odds or avoid the penal colony’s guards until they were eventually captured anyway.

  Denrik did not care for his men’s questions, though. They were pawns, and he wanted it to remain that way. If he had to explain everything, there would inevitably be suggestions to change things this way or that, or for the men to question if it would work. Things had been arranged too carefully for Denrik to suffer his imbecile henchmen throwing the chaos from their bedraggled minds into his carefully constructed scenario.

  The silence lasted not nearly long enough: “Hey, I’m thinkin’ of something. Try and guess,” called Andur softly into the darkness.

  “Is it something on the island here?” another voice whispered.

  “Nope.”

  Despite the pitch darkness in the cell, Denrik found himself squeezing his eyes shut, willing his idiot companions to shut up.

  “Well, is it something on the mainland?” asked another voice from the bunk just above Denrik’s.

  “Nope.”

  “Hey, wait a minute, it has to be one or the other …”

  Of all the inane activities Denrik’s crew engaged in, this was his least favorite. It was an insipid attempt to fill the quiet darkness with something human, Denrik believed. The others were weak-minded and needed the comfort of knowing that there were other people with them in the still dark of night, lest they be overcome by fear.

  But let them tell tales or brag of what they will do when they are free, thought Denrik, or even sing if they have to.

  The game could last hours, so poor were they at it. Despite his best efforts to block it from his mind, Denrik could hardly help occasionally trying to guess, though he kept his questions to himself. If he was going to order them to stop, he would have put an end to the game long ago, but he had chosen not to. He reminded himself that though they deferred to him in almost anything when he made his will known, these were not his ship’s crew, nor was he really a captain here. There was a limit to how far he dared push these men and how much resentment he was willing to risk creating. And so he allowed them to continue, though it pained his quick-witted mind to listen to it.

  Denrik tried to block the silly banter of questions from his mind as he sought to find the peaceful rest needed to meditate. His muscles were still relaxing from the long day’s work, and he was still sweating out the late-evening heat from his body—he was not ready for sleep quite yet. And so he drifted into introspection, fleeing the ennui of his present and wandering rather unwillingly into his unpleasant past. If only his wandering mind was as obedient as his waking one …

  * * * * * * * *

  “Ow, watch it with those,” he complained, rubbing the sore shoulder where the apple had struck him. He was a small boy again, perhaps eight years old.

  “Oops, sorry, Deni,” his brother Kennon called down from above, amid his giggling amusement at his little prank.

  Denrik hated this memory.

  Kennon was four years older than Denrik, and the two were nearly inseparable, despite the fact that Kennon teased him and picked on him all the time. It could hardly be helped, since Father would not let him go anywhere unless he agreed to stay with his older brother. Given a choice between the two of them, Denrik chose his brother’s company every time.

  Denrik tried to duck the next apple as it sailed down at him, but it clipped him in the shoulder anyway.

  “Stop it, Ken!” he whined up to his brother.

  Kennon was sitting up in the higher branches of an apple tree and was supposed to be tossing apples to Denrik to put in the sack he carried. They were not supposed to be in the Climmons’ orchard, but it was late summer and the leaves on the apple trees were thick enough to conceal them rather well if they drew no other attention to themselves. Kennon’s horseplay was causing more noise than Denrik had hoped they would make. Denrik was scared of the beating they would get from Father if Mr. Climmons caught them stealing apples.

  He saw a third apple coming right at his face and only had enough time to turn his head before it clobbered him just above the ear. Denrik lost track of the next couple seconds and saw grass just inches from his face when he reoriented himself.

  “Yeah, bull’s-eye!” came a triumphant cry from above.

  Putting fingers to the side of his head, Denrik felt a sticky mix of apple juice and a bit of blood running down toward his face.

  “You asked for it!” Denrik yelled, forgetting for the moment his fear of being heard.

  Fallen apples around the tree far outnumbered those still in the branches within Kennon’s easy reach. Denrik began hurling them back up at his adversary. Dizzy as he was, and with the scrawny arms typical of very young boys, few came near the mark. Ken taunted him from the branches, saying he threw like a little girl and daring him to come up and get him. Then chance, aided perhaps by a bit of anger and wounded pride, helped one apple find its mark. Kennon threw his arms up in front of him as it was coming for his face, and in his panic, he overbalanced.

  Arms flailed as Kennon toppled backward off the branch he had been sitting on. He grabbed at the lower branches as he crashed by them, but he could find no hold to stop his fall, and in grabbing just ended up jerking his body wildly in his fall.

  Crunch!

  Denrik remembered the sound vividly, even nearly forty years later. Kennon had fallen headfirst to the ground a few feet from the base of the tree and lay their motionless. When his brother contin
ued to lie completely still, Denrik stood staring and his breath quickened. He did the only thing he could think to do. He ran to the farmhouse as fast as he could to find Mr. Climmons.

  The old apple farmer seemed to gather from Denrik’s panicked confession and plea only that someone was hurt in the orchard. He let Denrik take his hand and nearly pull him out the door of his own house and into the orchard.

  “You have to help him, he is hurt real bad, see?”

  Denrik pointed under the tree where he and his brother had been fighting. Next to the discarded sack, still half full of stolen apples, lay Kennon. The boy’s neck was twisted at a grotesque angle.

  The older man put his hand around Denrik’s shoulder. Denrik could almost feel the rough firmness of it again, setting heavily on his slender frame. It was as if he could feel the old man’s grief pressing down on him.

  “No, he is not hurt, son. Not anymore. The dead do not feel pain. Now come on, let us get you inside. I will see that someone goes to get your pappy and tell him.”

  That night, Denrik was beaten worse than he thought possible. When it seemed like the beating had gone on forever, he found himself suddenly alone on the floor of the woodshed behind his father’s barn. He could not get up. Everything hurt too much. In the hours it took him to cry himself to sleep, he could not help but remember the farmer’s words: “The dead do not feel pain.” He repeated them in his head until slumber rescued him.

  So long as he could still feel the pain, he was still alive.

  * * * * * * * *

  Denrik wished his thoughts would stop wandering down those dark paths from his youth. The memories still seemed fresh in his mind, even after so many years had passed. But there was no longer the same sense of horror that overcame him when he thought back on how his father nearly killed him that day. Even in the pitch darkness of the cell, Denrik held his arm up in front of him—as best he could with another bunk less than a foot overhead—and imagined he could make out the scars left by his father’s belt.