by Adrian Selby
“Rygat will flay you alive!” sputtered the drudhan.
“He saved his life!” yelled Harl.
The drudhan ascended, followed by the guards lifting the wounded man up.
I had no more words, just bewilderment at the lucidity of my instructions. My eyes were sore with being open. Self-pity dribbled into the cracks of my drying out. The bars seemed more solidly iron than they had before, the pen suffocating where once such containment was a sort of cradling. The bones of the ship rolling across the stiffer water of the deep sea droned like the hemp string of some giant bow. My other voice came back, congratulating me, which I was grateful for.
Some hours later I was dragged out of my pen and thrust at the ladder out of the hatch. The light was like a hammer; the wind so cold I felt I was drowning. Above deck I staggered about, splinted hands over my eyes. Rygat stood before me. With a hot hand curled like a wolf’s jaws around my neck he pushed me past the mizzen and into the stern castle where the captain sat at a small wooden desk, the quartermaster behind him.
“I’m Captain Cythe, this is my quartermaster, Ethin. You have been given the name Sand.”
I nodded as far as Rygat’s hand would allow.
“You are a drudha?”
“I… I don’t know, I have no memory.” I glanced up, three guards each with a knife and shortsword, the smell of lovage leaves being boiled. Nobody but Rygat here had the patchy skin of fightbrew addiction, just the usual yellowish tinge of opia. I muttered to cover my confusion, my inability to explain how I could identify plant so easily.
“Some training you had has just saved the life of one of my crew. He’s little use now and a mouth to feed but I’m sure he’s grateful.”
Cythe looked drawn, unnaturally narrow, as though once crushed in a vice. There was a damp sheen over his saggy face, some grey fronds of hair slick against his cheeks and forehead despite the shutters open behind him. Ethin by contrast had thick black hair, the face of thirty summers varnished by the sun, the build of twenty at the rigging. He clearly ran the ship.
“Get Morki in,” barked Ethin.
Rygat released my neck and left, returning shortly with the drudhan.
“My guts are on fire, I can hardly move,” said the captain. “Morki, what are you mixing?”
The drudhan looked at me. He was risen on some bacca mix. “Uh, kannabic water, leaves of…”
“Have you checked his shit?” I interrupted. Why was that so obvious? Trust yourself, I said.
Morki shot me a glance before staring at his feet.
Cythe nodded, cleared the crumbs off his plate and threw it on the floor next to his chair. He dropped his grey woollen breeches to his boots and squatted over the plate, dropping a pile easily, keeping his eyes on me the whole time.
Tying up his breeches again, he gestured for Ethin to take the plate.
“Well?” Ethin pushed it under Morki’s nose. With an instinctive convulsion he turned his head.
“You.” Cythe pushed it under my nose. A life at war barely remembered nevertheless inured me to it.
Taking up a fork from the table, an awkward process due to my hands, and awaiting a nod, I cut through it.
“There’s blood. Some internal infection or bleeding. Witch hazel, tea, but fresh leaves, black-oak bark, shredded and left to soak in the same tea. Should cure it.”
“Morki?” Cythe turned on the shivering drudhan, his head shaking slightly.
“I… black-oak? But… there is some witch hazel, I was preparing a cream to…”
“Shut the fuck up and make me this tea.”
Morki paused momentarily, a furtive glance at me, requesting the recipe.
“Hot, not boiled water, shred three inches of bark, eight to ten fresh leaves, double if dried and leave it to cool and infuse.”
Morki left. Cythe glanced up at Ethin before staring closely at me.
“You’ve got the skin of a merc.”
“Yes, it looks like.” His breathing was shallow, joints sore. There was a lot more wrong with him than hazel would fix. The edges of my vision were crowding up with threat; I needed more Droop. I said nothing, keeping the edge on him.
“You’ve smelled the shits a number have got. We’ve got a week to port. I can arrange for some time out of your pen if you’ll get that mix-addled cum-drinking drudhan to start treating the crew right and the slaves. Each one alive and fit for transport is an extra seventy silver pieces when we reach Janoa. A good bonus on these dyes and spices we carry, though hardly a good use of space. Still, Zhilma knows best I’m sure. Rygat, take him below.”
“Yes, Captain.”
I couldn’t mask the shivers now, my bones bowing like twigs as my muscles trembled and ached for a comfort no food could provide.
Rygat again had his hand on my neck, thrusting me out of the stern castle and onto the ladder to the pens. My gate was locked behind me with the eyes of all the slaves on me.
I waited for him to leave.
“I’m going to make you stronger,” I said to them.
With morning, and surrounded by the tools, pots and plant of the drudhan, whatever source there was of this knowledge was opening up as quickly as I could read the labels on his bottles. My hands moved as though controlled by somebody else, or rather, by a part of me yet unjoined to the slave that endured these last weeks.
Heat the kannab resin. Sprinkle into boiled water. Next the larkspur seeds, shredded painfully with my mending hands in a pestle. Then the brugma, from a dusty jar this drudhan clearly knew nothing about.
I let the mix cool as he asked questions sugared with loathing, suggesting treatments for the slaves that mixed lethal quantities of the plant we had, attempting to find me out. I maintained an ignorance, pleading false limits to my knowledge, deferring to some mixes he felt were unorthodox, but were, I somehow knew, foolish.
I nudged the mix forward in a moment where he slumped against the bench cursing the night’s brandy.
“One thing I do know is a fix for the afters. This will work swiftly.”
He reached for it without thinking, needing something that might clear his head. He dropped the empty cup on the table. Now he would gradually lose his sense of balance while the brugma, if it was still potent, would cause a growing paranoia. The kannab would make him slur, fug his thoughts, the few larkspur seeds would cause a partial paralysis.
“You should take the air on deck, Drudhan, really get that mix working to clear your head.” I was delighted at my suggestion.
I had not expected him to die so soon. He was surprised by a deck boy landing in front of him from a ratline at the midsail, no doubt as a joke. Flailing and shrieking from the boy he hit the gunwale, was overboard and lost.
The captain soon had me, the boy and a few others nearby to account for themselves. The boy believed it was the shock of the surprise that toppled him. I suggested that the drudhan’s drinking did very little for his sea legs. The captain’s eyes were on me, but he was helpless.
“You are our drudha then, Sand. You will have two hours a day to see to the mixes that Morki has a record of. You will also be watched.”
There was little time for my satisfaction to ferment upon returning to the drudhan’s cabin. Rygat soon appeared, filling the cabin. My hands were in his, slowly being squeezed, the pain forcing me to my knees.
“You’re a right sneaky fucker and I ain’t fooled. No mistakes with the brews and you’ll be tasting mine yourself.”
From crushing my hands he balled his fists and battered me to the floor.
Days later we anchored off some Ry’ylan port built into the cliffs and valley of a narrow estuary, the last before rounding the Knee of Gath’Fen and the final stretch to Janoa on the Dust Coast. Rygat took me in chains to the plant sellers. We were north enough that I found the right breeds for the mixes that would support the mutiny I was planning. Rygat would be days dying. I’d be set with the counter prior to tasting his soups and breads.
Since my promoti
on I’d caught twelve of the slaves at the line where the Droop’s prison and the fear of leaving it met. With Harl’s help I managed to get each of them some caffin and an outline of my intentions, how I would provide a Droop that would not make them hurt so much; that would let them live a more normal life. Each gave his word to be ready, seeing freedom in me now I’d begun the fearful journey myself from the Droop’s nipple, doctoring our mix before Rygat’s ignorant eyes.
The part of me that remembered what I had once known had reconstituted the Droop to harness the harosin to caffin powders instead of the throw-wort. It took the shakes away, but we continued to affect the same manners as the wretches still slumbering, those I had no heart to see die for want of size or age.
Finding the crew members took more time. I fixed them some fine brews and smokes to take the edge off their lives. Those with the scurv, the shits or a whore’s pox were easy to treat and in so treating we talked and in our talking allegiances and hatreds became clear. The captain too made some improvement, despite he and the rest getting a dormant poison gradually working through their guts and into their blood. Only Ethin, the quartermaster, I left free of the poison. The respect for him was fierce, and he was my best chance at getting the ship somewhere useful.
Over the following weeks there were ten crew I could say with conviction would be happy to improve their lot with Ethin as their captain. It would be enough to get the ship landed and sold somewhere, if they could be turned when I showed them their crisis.
By then I’d had the splints off my hands for good, itself surprising for I recalled so little of the actual time that had passed since I woke and found myself a slave.
It was a warm morning off the Dust Coast when it began. I felt a churning dread and yet excitement at the prospect of killing, painfully, those who were cruellest.
Freed for the drudha duties, I added the active that would trigger the poison to all the brews and also the wine the cook had warming for the mid-morning sup.
I sat on the port gunwale as I counted out the time it took for the food to go down, the pains to show, then the nosebleeds.
Shivering and retching, the deckside crew went through their stock of curses and insults as the waves of agony built. They had too little time to realise I’d killed them to raise a sword or knife against me. Their abuse was inspired.
I moved freely then among those who had taken the poison as they cowered or fell to the deck, pleading with me and crying for help.
“You are all dying! All except Ethin. The sooner you give me your fealty the less crippled you’ll be. Those of you who chose to beat or fuck the slaves will die regardless.” This other me was warming my bones. I did my best to play along, almost drunk with the success and the power I had.
Ethin and the sailmaster quickly pledged, followed by ten of the crew that I expected would be well disposed to the brews I’d got them addicted to. Ethin went straight for the captain’s cabin but I made sure Cythe was never going to survive the active.
Rygat had been eating with one of his guards near the port ladder to the quarterdeck. Within moments of the active being ingested his strength left him. I made sure of his dose. His bellows diminished as he fought for breath, his great bulk twitching. I took the keys from his belt, pushing aside his now feeble attempts to grasp me, and sent a crewman down to free the slaves. It had gone perfectly.
Harl and the twelve I’d got ready for the mutiny led the others up out of the hatch. The light and the Droop brought them to their knees. They looked as lost and incredulous on the main deck as fish.
I gave those who pledged to my mutiny their draught and watched their backs straighten as the mix broke up.
“Expect some violent shitting shortly, to expel the poison.”
The girls who had been in the hold went swiftly for Rygat, kicking and beating him as he heaved and twisted away from them.
“Leave Rygat be,” I said to them. “His mix is a slow one. You can beat him and finish him now if you want, but you could sit and watch him. He’ll die more slowly and in more pain.”
I turned to the sailmaster, who eyed me straight despite still quivering on his canepole legs. He was stood with Ethin at the wheel.
“I’m Wilbo,” he said. “Got us a new headin’?”
“I want off, freedom for everyone alive. You can keep the ship. Just get us to shore somewhere I can disappear, away from any towns or ports.”
“You won’t mek land fer forty leagues at least, these lanes’ll be full o’ the clans o’ Gath’Fen. We get past the Hyczies to the midden an’ the Shahn’s coast you might mek it.”
“You know the waters well?” I asked.
He flicked his head up… “We jus’ need to find a navy Drom’d or som’t to stick to into the shallows ’n’ channels. Navy boat might keep us safe.” I looked at Ethin, for I was thinking this might be a plan they’d hatched to be rid of me.
“He’s right, Sand, he’s true. These seas are scarred with pirates, a lot of islands about, the Gath’Fen or Hyczika navies might give us some protection if we find them.”
I turned and saw Harl behind me. “Harl, give the slaves some knives and let them have the others. Rygat we’ll lash to the mizzen-mast.”
“I’m to be captain then?” said Ethin.
“Yes, Ethin. I can’t sail a ship, these slaves I brought off the Droop mix can’t either, they’re just bags of sticks. The crew we have left will work for you, the slaves I hope can help us once we’ve fed them some of the dead crew’s rations.”
“A good drudha could make a fortune from his merchant; where do you need to go this far from the Old Kingdoms that you want off now?”
“I need to go back.” I said this but in truth I didn’t know. My conviction resided in the gaps of my memories, its voice had fed all my effort to seek freedom from this boat without my understanding it.
“You need to hope we can get far enough south,” said Ethin.
“You sailed off this coast?”
“As a boy. My father was a sailmaster with the Finola clan. There’ll be nothing left of us if they get sight.”
“You speak King’s Common well,” I said.
“He got me off the ships, for a while. We’d put in to Farlsgrad, far north, looking for slavers or cargo like this shortly after the last of Kagh’s grandsons forced a war with the Shahn and dried up our supply of meat and rum. The merchant cogs and hulks stayed north of the Knee till the war blew over. The Finolas had navy contacts, privateers of a kind. We took their purse on work shaving down the merchant interests that were getting out of hand, without the navy and the rulers fingered for it.
“Few pirates live beyond thirty summers. He made me up to a man of means so I could study for an education, paid for with a bottle of rosary peas from a caravel out of Hanwoq. His crew didn’t realise what they were because they hadn’t seen them before. He stashed them and freed me with them.”
I shook my head; it was a staggering booty.
“We’ll do what we can, Ethin, you’ll get no more grief from me. I just want off.”
I turned to face the deck, slick with the blood and hacked-up bodies of the crew the slaves most hated. They had whimpered on for a while under the artless blades. It was a compelling and delicious savagery. Ethin shouted at the slaves to clear their mess so they could get the deck in order.
It was slow going against some hard southerlies as we pushed on. Ethin cursed me for depriving us of experienced crew but he was the man to keep those remaining tight while we sailed south.
Rygat lasted two nights before Harl and Wilbo begged me to throw him over so they could get some rest from his howling. I found little more soothing than hearing him suffer. It kept my flint up, a reminder to me that I was no longer powerless.
During those two days he did his best to gesture towards the gunwale on those occasions he caught my eye, the incoherent desire to be drowned all that remained of this tree of a man. I approached only to kick him or hit him with a club, unt
il he flinched whenever I approached, even as he begged me to throw him overboard.
Past the main Siczy Island channel we headed for the midden and Janoa. Squalls gave Ethin a chance to try the stronger slaves with learning to reef, course and stow the main and smaller mizzen sails with the regulars.
A further week or so south our luck ran out. I’d been mixing up the caffin Droop for the girls and older slaves when the shout went up from the rigging.
Ethin danced up the ratlines to the top spar where the crewman was stood, and called down. “Looks like clan colours, not navy!”
The sailmaster cast his eyes quickly about.
“Some’t else’s not right neither,” he shouted as I left the drudhan’s cabin to join him.
Ethin dropped out of the rigging.
“Two ships, caravels. Wilbo?”
“We cin put some run on wi’t wind as it is, but look… no gulls, Captain, I’m not seein’ fair clouds so some’ts coming, whitecaps read southwest, an’ it bin blowin’ east all morning, no caps neither.”
“Wind’s turned sharply then, a storm,” said Ethin.
From the deck I could now see the sails of the two ships closing from the stern.
“Man the braces and ready about!” barked the sailmaster, his sparrow frame belying a fierce bark that cut across the ship.
Ethin shook his head imperceptibly, lips tightening, squeezing out the paralysis of fear.
“Lash up and fix up the stores! You don’t need telling what pirates do with captured crews. We’re dead if we don’t head for the storm and dead anyway without you giving Wilbo and me every scrap of your will to live!” He turned to me, past the blame it seemed, setting himself for the madness of an under-crew galley racing for a storm.
“Sand, you’d best get us a fine mix to bow out with.”
I felt the boat heel as we gave it full sail, tacking out towards the stiffening swell. I got my belts, blades and rags on and got to work in the drudhan’s cabin. Part of me wondered at the surety of my preparation of the belt. It was a certainty I needed, to crush, to bury the nervous wreck I had become.