In the chaos, aided by the clarity the charisma had given her, she pulled a sword out of a man’s scabbard. In one swift stroke, the sailor with the machete lost a forearm. Instead of feeling bad about it, she thought the bastard had deserved it. Pointing the swiped sword at her tormentors, she eased her way back through the aisle, between the stove and a shelf full of crockery. The crew stared balefully at her from the other side of the narrow galley.
“Look at the light in her eyes,” one of the men said, backing away. “She’s bewitched.”
The cooks put their hands in the air. She gestured with the blade for them to join the other sailors hovering at the end of the prep counters. The doors between the slave room and galley swung open. There was Lars, broken chains dangling from his wrists. His eyes had a glow about them, eerie and dazzling at the same time. Is that what the sailors had seen in her eyes when they said she was bewitched?
“Josie,” she had never heard his voice so deep and tinged with danger, “are you okay?”
“I am stuck on a slave ship, everything smells like piss, and these bastards just tried to cut off my hand. I’m definitely not okay!”
As she backed toward Lars, she slid the end of her sword into the pot handle to pull it off the stove. Its boiling contents poured onto the floor with a splash. Hot splatters hit Josie’s legs, but the majority of it landed on the men. Steaming chunks of carrots and potatoes, shreds of meat sprayed across the floor as the men were scalded in a tidal wave of broth. Josie did the same thing to the other three pots, while Lars guided her backwards into the slaves’ holding room. Slamming the doors closed, he wrapped his loose chains around the handles, broke them from his body, and pinched shut a broken chain link to secure the doors.
“Let’s see them get through that,” Lars said smugly as they backed into the slave quarters, while pounding and swearing came from the other side.
Both of them looked up to the escape grate above them. The other prisoners looked up at it with wide-eyed hope tinged with fear. John held up his chains, silently requesting liberation. Since time was of the essence, Josie and Lars broke the other prisoners’ chains, but left the cuffs.
Josie climbed the ladder to the grate first, noting a padlock held it closed. The charisma was ebbing, so she closed her eyes and flexed the mysterious Excito Fortitudo like a muscle, pushing the energy deeper into her body. Warmth flowed through her chest again, warming her limbs. Reaching her hands through the grate slats, she yanked the padlock. With a satisfying clunk, the lock broke free. Her hands fumbled to unthread it as the other slaves huddled impatiently below the ladder. With a heave, she lifted the grate off of the opening, climbing onto the wooden deck in her bare feet.
The sunlight burned her retinas. Shielding her eyes, she heard the others scrambling up the ladder. Men shouted in the distance. As her eyes adjusted, she saw that popcorn clouds filled bright blue sky. Canvas sails drooped in the calm air. The biggest people she’d ever seen, the Gargoes, were poling the ship through the doldrums. Nearly fifteen feet tall, with thick gray skin, and massive shoulders—she understood why Lars had been so reluctant to risk a confrontation.
Dozens of humanoids, mostly Commoners, were running to and fro over the deck. As Lars climbed up the ladder behind her, men poured over the deck in her direction. She scoped out the area for a path of escape. A smaller ship was tied next to the slave ship, its occupants probably looking to barter.
Her wild ride down the river with Buckwheat fresh in her mind, Josie eyed the Kalida’s water with trepidation, and its steep banks in desperate longing. Thick tree roots sprouted from the muddy shore. If only she could get there and pull herself up...
The other slaves gathered behind Lars and Josie. As they considered their options, a familiar ugly mug came toward her, holding his fresh bloody stump, a snarl contorting his face.
Lars whipped the length of chain he held around the sword of the nearest sailor. With a tug, he pulled it out of the man’s hands and deftly grabbed the hilt in midair. John had managed to find a sword of his own; Lars was happy to see his fellow prisoner cutting his path through the ship’s crew like a well-trained swordsman.
“Jump, Josie,” Lars ordered, just as a Gargoe picked up the two slave girls by the hair and flung them through a door marked Captains’ Quarter’s. How could she leave these girls behind?
Ducking a sword swing, and leaping over a man who had dived for her ankles, Josie shouldered her way through the captain’s door. It burst open into a neatly organized wood-paneled room with a desk arrayed with metal instruments, for navigation she assumed, an unlit oil lamp, three corked bottles of wine, two fancy goblets, and a shelf full of books. The female prisoners were huddled together on the bed.
“If you want to be free,” Josie screamed, “then come with me.”
One girl edged to the back of the bed, but the other one took Josie’s outstretched hand.
“Please,” she pleaded with the girl who slunk deeper into the bed. “This is your only chase.”
“Let’s go,” the other girl encouraged. “She has made her choice.”
Josie glanced back at the frightened girl who was now clinging to the headboard. As much as she would like to convince her to come, there wasn’t time. She ran through the captain’s door with the other girl who was more than eager to jump ship, only to run face-first into a Gargoe’s belly button. She looked up at a bald head with a single tuft of black hair. The Gargo had a wide blank face with a tiny button nose and dull eyes the size of thumbtacks.
“Run!” Josie encouraged the girl with a shove. “Swim for it!”
The girl broke away and hurled herself over the rail into the river, while Josie scurried between the Gargo’s legs. The stupid Gargo tried to follow her through its own legs and toppled over.
She heard two more splashes. Hopefully, slaves making their escape. Now it was Josie and Lars against the rest of the ship.
A muscular middle-aged humanoid with caramel-colored hair and a handlebar mustache just like a villain from an old silent movie who got his kicks from tying fair maidens to train tracks, stood near the railing, sipping wine from a goblet. He was flanked by two burly guards, who fended off the fighting when it came too close to their master.
The callous son-of-a-bitch was laughing—laughing! As if he were having a jolly good time watching the slaves fight for their lives. Josie frantically looked for Lars. There he was, parrying with several of the crew. Why was he still fighting when he had a clear opening to the rails? It occurred to her that Lars would not jump until he was sure she was off the ship. Fear of drowning had made her avoid the water thus far, but she couldn’t fight forever. Smug Handlebar Mustache Guy wouldn’t be expecting the fight to come so close to him and his bodyguards, so she decided the best route was directly through them.
Temporarily strengthened in body, agility and mental acuity by the charisma, Josie propelled herself at Mustache Guy. His guards tried to move in, but weren’t fast enough to stop her from making contact with his glass of wine, splashing it into his face, sending the glass to the ship’s deck in an explosion of shards. He cried out in surprise as her foot propelled off his chest. As she sailed over the side of the ship, she boldly reached out and grabbed a fistful of his necklaces, breaking them off of the flamboyantly dressed impresario’s neck. After all, she and Lars would need something valuable to trade for supplies once they were free, and that purple cloak and scarlet shirt shot with threads of gold and silver spoke of a man wealthy enough to afford more. She was still holding them as her body slammed against the water.
Instinct told her to move like a frog to the top, but the charisma was competing with an overwhelming fear of drowning. The more she flailed, the slower her ascent. Lungs screaming for air, she couldn’t hold her breath a moment longer. The first breath burned as her passages took in river water.
Inhaling water was more painful than she had expected.
Everything faded to black.
The next thing she
knew she was on the deck, sputtering water. Lars was mercilessly dropped next to her like a sopping wet blanket.
“Bravo.” The impresario clapped sarcastically. “You two put on a marvelous show. Addressing the captain, he inquired, “Pray tell, wherever did you find them?”
“North of here. Plucked them right out of the river, Mr. Bayloo,” the captain said proudly.
“The river—again?” Mr. Bayloo chuckled. He used his boot to roll Lars onto his back. “What’s the matter—got a death wish or something?” Lars and Josie were too busy puking up river water to answer. “How much are you asking for the set?” Mr. Bayloo sifted through a small velvet drawstring bag and took out a handful of coins.
“Even I have my principles,” the captain said, shaking his head. “I don’t sell the females to be slaughtered for sport. And the young male is already sold.”
That was news to Lars and Josie.
“A slaver with scruples—what a hoot,” the man mocked the captain. “I’m sure an open wallet will change your mind.”
“How open?” the captain asked.
“Fifteen hundred meelars?”
“I was offered more than that for the boy alone. They are tall healthy specimens with good teeth. And the girl’s bracelet is already spoken for, so unless you’re comfortable with a one-armed female, you will have to pay me for that as well.”
“Tell me,” Mr. Bayloo hovered over Lars. “Where do you come from?”
“No place you’ve ever heard of,” he replied dryly.
“I knew it,” Mr. Bayloo said, rocking back on his heels. “You’re one of those wanderers from the...” He cut himself off and cleared his throat, and held out the stem of his broken goblet. “How about another glass of wine for your best client?”
“Wanderers?” The captain tilted his head, then his eyes narrowed in comprehension. “I’ll be damned: Galatians or whatever they’re calling themselves.”
“Now, let’s not jump to conclusions,” Mr. Bayloo said. “I never said anything about them being Galatians. There are lots of Commoners with ten fingers. They could be from Hunterdon.”
“Nah,” the captain said, shaking his head. “It all adds up to them being Galatians. They’re a rare breed.”
“Two thousand each,” Mr. Bayloo offered.
“Eight thousand for both,” the captain said.
“I wouldn’t pay that much for the King and Queen of Faladore.”
“Royalty—who cares? But Galatians say they are human. If true, they are the originals from which all the other races were born. They could fly, erect buildings that touched the sky. The ancient books say they destroyed the world once. And rumor has it they’re born able to read and write. Super men and women are what they are. Who wouldn’t line up to get a glimpse at that? Make it ten thousand.”
“Dammit,” Mr. Bayloo said clenched his teeth and opening his wallet. “You’re a hard-driving son-of-a-Sliven. Six thousand for the set.”
“Seven thousand.”
“Sold,” the captain said.
Josie watched them shake on it before her head collapsed back into the deck.
Chapter Twenty
(Larsen Drey Steelsun)
The lights in the school auditorium dimmed. Lars held his breath as the spotlight landed on a diminutive figure wearing a white tank top, tiger-print capris, army boots and a band of fake daisies in her short black hair. On a stool she sat, strumming a pink guitar studded with glittering white crystals. That was the first time he had really noticed Josie Rose Albright and he would never forget it. The girl was a wisp, but her alto voice came out rich and strong. The old folk song Hanging Tree poured from her soul, filling the audience with a spellbound hush:
Well, once I met a dashing gunslinger and he was good to me;
We rode through the valley and o’er the mountain, young, in love and free; Then one cold night the sheriff caught up and took him away form me;
Oh, hanging tree; Oh, hanging tree; don’t take my love away from me. Oh, hanging tree.
A sharp pain to his jaw startled him awake. Lars’s eyes flickered open to a frog-like humanoid sitting on its haunches. Its neck was as thick as its shoulders, while its comical eyes were half-spheres atop its head. The humanoid grinned from ear to ear. Or was that its natural expression? Lars had no idea.
Unable to speak, still struggling to get his bearings, Lars noted the ceiling, walls and floor were made of brown stone. A door made of bars served as the cell’s only entrance. His stomach felt like a dead fish sinking to the muck at the bottom of a pond. This certainly wasn’t a slave ship, but it was still a prison. Benches were bolted to the wall. Filthy-looking blankets were wadded up haphazardly in the corner. The air smelled like stinky feet and excrement. All manner of species filled up the tight quarters—the amphibian, two Bulwarks, one Regalan, tons of Commoners, and a group of reptilian creatures built like gorillas, but with rainbow scales and flicking forked tongues.
The green frog dude continued to hover over Lars with interest.
A loud bang made both of their heads jerk around. A Deerma stood on all fours in front of the barred cell door. He kept ramming the bars with his antlers, pausing just long enough between head butts to yell through the bars in a bleating language Lars didn’t understand.
“That fool.” The frog shook his head. “Those bars are strong enough to stop ten charging Gargoes. I asked you a question—where ya from?”
“Uh...north of here.” His first thoughts were of Josie, but he could see only males in the cell. “I arrived here with a young woman.” Lars pushed himself to his feet. “Have you seen her?”
“Yep. She’s within shouting distance, though I don’t recommend it, in the females’ cell down the hall.”
Lars could feel the tension flow right out of him, but the well of worry ran deep. “Where am I?”
“Welcome to Mr. Bayloo’s Traveling Theater & Company. My stage name is Crashing Thunder,” the frog said in a voice deeper than any human baritone. Lars did a double-take as a thin membrane bubbled out of Crashing Thunder’s neck, going in and out as he spoke. “But friends just call me Crash.”
“Uh, hello—Crash. I’m Lars.”
“For now—but Mr. Bayloo will assign you a new name.”
“The woman I came here with—is she okay?”
Crash laughed, a deep resonant sound like one might hear from a bass drum. “Your woman is more than all right, she’s just what this theater company needs. She did real good out there in practice today. The girl is raw, lots to learn, but Mr. Bayloo thinks she’s gonna be a gold mine.”
“So she’s healthy?”
“Oh, yeah.” Crash’s chuckle spread to the other inmates. “Just ask Tance over there.” A young Commoner with two black eyes and his arm in a wooden brace frowned balefully at the entire room. Could Josie have done all that? “They say you and your girlfriend took down an entire slave ship—is that true?
“Maybe,” Lars replied, careful to keep his replies vague for fear the tiniest bit of information would be used against him. “You said something about a theater...I thought we were to be slaughtered in a fight?”
“Listen carefully. This ain’t a place of slaughter; this is a stage production and we are actors. This ain’t no prison cell—it’s the men’s dressing room. People don’t die here, they’re just acting. And that ain’t blood you bleed, it’s props. And you know why?”
“Nnooo.”
“Because there’s international laws against kidnapping people and enslaving them. Anyone found doing it risks a hanging. But times are hard. And Bayloo pays his taxes with real cash money. And money has a way of making everybody actors. Good citizens come to the show acting like they think the killing is just pretend. For a piece of the fatted calf, the tax collectors report back to their kings that everything is on the up and up, when it’s really on the down low. And nobody questions because everybody is a little richer on account of the show.”
Crash’s words confirmed what he a
lready knew. If he and Josie were ever to get out of this place, the authorities weren’t coming to their rescue. They’d have to do it on their own.
Other humanoids were gathering around to check out the new guy, and Crash elbowed one in the ribs who stood too close to the conversation. Now that his own emotions were leveling out, he was beginning to feel other people’s emotions creeping in—sadness, frustration, discontent, anger and something that wasn’t exactly grief, but a big hole created by a recent death, and competitiveness for the vacant position.
“One of your inmates just died—didn’t he?” Lars dared to question.
“Yeah, a couple of days ago. How’d you know?”
“Just a hunch. He had a lot of pull around here—didn’t he?”
Crash nodded sadly.
“How did he die?”
“He had an off day on the stage,” Crash said. “And Mr. Bayloo broke the stick.”
“What’s ‘break the stick’?”
“When the play is about to conclude, the victorious actor looks to the director—that’s Mr. Bayloo—who decides how to end the scene. If Mr. Bayloo shakes his head, both actors survive the show. If he breaks the symbolic stick, the loser dies.”
As horrible a prospect as that was, right now his own charisma was causing him more alarm: he was picking up nearly every emotion in the room, even the most run-of-the-mill stuff like depression, loneliness, bitterness and even a few nice ones like hope and pride. Mostly, it was negative stuff, but he wouldn’t expect anything different from his cell mates in such a situation. A man could lose his mind feeling so much at once.
With humans, Lars had only felt the most intense of emotions. Why was it different with humanoids? Even in the Red Squad, he had noticed the phenomena with Loyl and Hogard. Though Loyl had a patient temperament, anxious only when it came to his squad’s welfare, with an occasional bout of homesickness coming through, Hogard had been a different story. The Bulwark’s temperament was violent, greedy and irritable—yet, reassuringly courageous, and even though Hogard would never show it, he was fiercely protective of the younger members of the groups, especially the cows. A smile crossed Lars’s lips thinking about the other squad members still having to put up with Hogard’s belching, farts and noxious odors.
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