“Find the leaders. They’re often the strongest, but not always. Find those men and learn their fears. They all fear something, and that is what we will use to control this flock of sheep. Find the natural leaders and cower the shepherds. The other sheep will be no problem after that.”
“How long do you think we can keep up the lie?” asked Captain Grull.
What lie?
“Forever. They will have new lives in Sands End, and certainly in the coming war. The lie has value as long as it helps control their behavior. If they knew their families were dead, we would have a massive revolt or mass suicide or both. As long as they have hope for their families, we have control. This proud lot values the lives of their families far more than their own. I can see now what Xaro sees in these Islanders. Properly trained, they will be a fierce army.”
“But they already see some officers we left behind rejoining us, General. Some ask questions, and I can only beat them and the women we brought for so long.” Captain Grull paused before adding, “Not that I mind, of course.” There were throaty chuckles from inside the tent.
Seething, Herodius forced himself to remain silent and kept listening.
“That is easily explained. Tell them it is a rotation. Whatever you do—keep threatening their families. Believe me, you cannot control this lot by threatening them individually. They must never know that we slaughtered their families, looted the island, and brought the guards back to aid in our training and our march to Sands End.”
Herodius quietly stood, taking great care not to jingle his shackles or make any noise at all. He had always planned on his revolt leading him back to the Isles. To his family.
Head down he walked back to his barracks, past guards that he now recognized as having recently arrived. He looked down at his wrist: 1X5Z9. Not the mark of my family any longer…just the mark of a slave.
Putting his head down, he began formulating a new plan. A man who values nothing in this world—not even his life—has no fear.
That knowledge truly was his secret weapon.
Trevor
“Sixes!” Trevor grabbed a small pile of coins from the table, and passed the dice. “Just my lucky night, boys.” He refilled his mug for the fifth time this hour, round-for-round with the other four sailors, who were grumbling loudly.
The first mate on the Modest Mermaid, Helmut Bowhistle, looked at Trevor a bit suspiciously. “Been a real lucky night fer you indeed. What did you say you did again?”
“Just a merchant. I have business on the Great Isle, that’s all.” Trevor took a large pull, wanting to keep up with these sailors, who could drink.
More coins were thrown into the center, first to roll doubles win. Trevor always increased his bet as the dice came to him. The pot had grown to a significant amount – lots of copper, some silver, and Helmut had to throw in a piece of gold to stay in. “Your turn.”
Trevor spun the dice, and easily rigged them to come up doubles. It was an old thief’s trick, one that a two-bit gypsy could perform. “Deuces! What a run I’m havish, fellas! Jush my lucky nightch.” He sloshed some more ale down, some of which actually ended up in his mouth, as the boat began to rock in heavier seas.
He reached out to rake in the coins when Helmut grabbed his wrist. “I think it’s a bit more than luck. I think you’re a cheater and a thief!” Another sailor grabbed his other wrist, and soon he was pinned to a wall, as a storm began picking up outside.
“Strip him down and search him, we’ll take the coins and split ’em up between us. Throw this thief in the brig below deck. The cap’n will have his hands off in the morning. We know how to deal with thieves at sea.”
Herodius
“Are you hurt badly, Mika?” Herodius asked.
He sat in a small tent, pouring cool water on a cut beneath the serving woman’s eye. With the demands of training, the half-ogre and his men had begun to limit the amount of beatings on the men. They chose instead to punish only the women, which they did publically and regularly, for all forms of insubordination, incompetence, or laziness. They had brought around a hundred women on the journey to serve as slaves in support of the makeshift training ground the ogre had formed. Mika Lalonde was the wife of one of his friends; her husband was in a different section of the camp and had no idea what was happening; all the women were kept separate from their men. The distance on her face between the deep whip-gash and being blinded was less than one inch.
“Yes, Herodius. I am lucky. Better the whip than other things.” She took a cloth he was holding to her face. “Thank you, Herodius. You should not have taken the second blow.”
Herodius smiled sadly at her, his curly hair hanging limply by his shoulders, perpetually damp in the humidity of the marsh. “I’ll live.” He had a new welt on his sword arm where he blocked the second stroke from Captain Grull. “But the time is coming when this must end.”
Mika frowned. This was not the first time they had spoken about the subject. “Are you sure about this, Herodius? A revolt will only lead to more suffering back on the islands. I am scared, Herodius! Scared for you, for Maria, for my Mikel…”
Herodius rubbed her head gently. “Shh, Mika. Shh. Do not worry. I have a secret that may make you sad, but you should know. There is nothing to go back to on the Islands, Mika. I have seen several of the General’s men who he left behind now in our camp. They were supposed to watch our families as a deterrent against us doing exactly what I am preparing to lead: a revolt. I was curious why they would leave so many unguarded. They may be women and children, but it still takes a number of armed men to control 40,000 islanders, and I don’t have to tell you that our women can be every bit as ferocious as our men!”
He smiled at Mika, his white teeth a contrast with his reddish-brown skin. She smiled back, “I suppose we are a tough breed, aren’t we?” She sat up, still holding a cloth to her cheek, and spoke in whispers. “What do you mean there is nothing to go back to?”
Herodius quickly erased the smile from his face. “This may be hard for you to accept, Mika, but I believe our families have been slaughtered. All of them. They don’t tell us, but I know. I overheard them talking two nights ago. I suspected as much—they need more men here to watch us.”
Mika was shaking her head. “Oh Herodius, no. No, no, no, no, NO!” She kept whispering, but was raising the pitch of her voice. “No, Herodius. You must be mistaken. Why would they do that?”
“I am not mistaken, Mika. Think about it. If they left the women and children alone to come back here, surely some of them would sail to the mainland of Ipidine —here or other landings—and once they came to a city, word would spread of what was happening. It would spread before the half-ogre and his Master are ready to announce their plans…but I have heard those, too. They talk of an enemy in Elvidor. A Queen, and her General. Sailors in the cities have loose lips, and word would spread across the seas. Of that I have no doubt.
“And remember: our women know how to sail, Mika. They sail better than half the men who brought us here. You have been on boats how long, Mika? Fifteen years? Our families back on the Isle knew too much. Even if they could not rescue us, even if they landed right here in this cursed swamp—which is not far from our Isles, I might add—it would cause chaos and dissention with all of us. You know what would happen if our families came crawling up out of the bog, looking for us. It would be a fight. Only instead of facing farmers, they would be facing ‘soldiers’.” Herodius almost spat the word out, he was so tired of hearing his captors refer to them as such.
He continued on. “And even if they were able to subjugate us again, Mika, how many of us would die? Many, and that does not serve their purpose either. No, they viewed our families as a loose end. Forty-thousand loose ends. So they slaughtered them all. You were lucky, if you consider this fate worth living.”
Mika’s lower lip began to quiver as tears began running freely down each cheek. She had dropped her bandage while Herodius was speaking, and now blood and tears b
egan to drip from her face as he pulled her close and hugged her.
“Be strong, Mika! You may yet have a life with Mikel, if we succeed, but the time has come for me to leave. I do not know if any will follow me, and I won’t ask anyone to do so who is not willing to die. Speaking only for myself, I do not consider this a fate worth living. So I will change my fate or die trying; that is the only thing that makes sense to me. I was born free, I have lived free, and if I am to die, I shall die free, Mika.”
Trevor
“Well, well, well—look what we have here!” One of the drunken sailors held up a brilliant purple jewel that Trevor had tucked into an inner pocket lining his tunic. “That’s the largest gem I’ve ever seen! That thing looks like a sunburst!”
“Hey, I’ve heard of that. Doesn’t that Elf princess wear something like that? Ha! This guy bought a fake jewel, the fool!” One of the sailors kicked him and started laughing.
“Doesn’t look fake,” said the first one. He grabbed it back. “I’ll keep it just the same.”
“Let me take another look,” said the second.
“Quit squabblin’!” yelled Helmut, though he never took his eyes off the pocket where the first one pocketed the large gem. “Strip him down and be done with him. We’ll split the stuff later.”
“Whoa, what is this?” One of the squabbling sailors said as he rummaged through his clothes. He found several knives, a lock pick, a small vial, and a pouch with tiny pouches inside, each containing different colored skin-tone powders. “What is this for?”
Trevor said nothing, his head already pounding from the drinks, the rocking, and the beating.
“Bah! I knew it. This is Thief’s Guild stuff. Cap’n will have his hands for sure, make no mistake.” Helmut put his face right next to Trevor’s while two other sailors pinned his arms against a wall. His breath smelled like beer that had been swallowed twice. “A thief caught at sea is good as dead, son. You’ll lose your hands, but we won’t be wastin’ food and water on you either. You’re going overboard soon after. And I hear it’s hard to swim wit’ no hands.” He laughed heartily, as the first flashes of lightning illuminated the night sky.
They tore his pants off next, and finally his shoes—his magic shoes. Trevor immediately shrunk in height half a foot, and was standing there naked, all five-foot-three inches of him. He was sobering up real quick. Just don’t find it!
“What in the world…” Helmut said. “Boys, this is either the queerest lookin’ dwarf I’ve ever seen, or we got ourselves a wee-little thief on our hands!” The sailors busted up laughing. “Throw him downstairs, then pull yourself together. We need to drop our sails in the approaching storm.” He reached down to grab the pile of garments lying on the floor. “What’s this?”
Trevor’s heart sank, but he said nothing and kept his eyes downward, still pinned as he was against the wall.
As he scooped up the clothes, Helmut felt a tiny object sewn into a pocket on the inside of Trevor’s pant leg. He took one of Trevor’s knives and cut the trousers open.
I can’t believe he found it.
Helmut Bowhistle pulled out an unusual looking ring and held it up to a lantern that swung wildly as the Modest Mermaid headed toward a frightful storm. It was a silver band with an onyx square, with a diamond-shaped emerald embedded in the center of the onyx. “I have seen this ring before,” was all he said, putting it into his pocket. He turned to look at Trevor, a half grin on his face. He didn’t ask him where he got it. A clap of thunder brought everyone to attention.
“Come on, little thief!” One of the sailors picked up his belt and began to whip him with it. “Move you scrawny rat!” The two other sailors flanked him, pushing him while the one behind struck him with his belt every time he slowed down. After stumbling a few times, Trevor collapsed in his cell, bleeding, naked, shivering, and fully sober. They locked him in and threw him his belt.
“If I were you, I’d hang myself before morning.” They laughed and walked away, hearing the first mate calling them to get back to the top deck.
What have you gotten yourself into, Trevor?
Herodius
Mika and all the serving women put together a particularly flavorful stew for the General and his men that night. It had taken about a week for Herodius to finalize his plans. He began to secretly break the harsh truth to some of the islanders he trusted…and could take the news. Using the women as messengers and go-betweens, the first phase of their revolt began tonight. And it started with a stew.
This stew, however, had been made with spidergrass. It was common enough, a mostly tasteless weed that grew in the marshes. Spidergrass, Herodius had learned, tended to cause severe abdominal sickness if ingested. It was a simple thing for one of the women to distract the officer who oversaw the cooking, which allowed the bog plant to be ground up and mixed into the evening meal prepared for the General and his men.
Twenty-four hours later, almost every guard, captain, and supervising officer was feverish, cramping, vomiting, and squatting in the waste ditches.
Coordinating the attack was trickier, but the system that Herodius designed was simple. He threw a particularly wide-leafed plant on one of the central campfires, one that was always damp and that he knew produced black smoke. You bring me to a bog, I shall use its fruit. Herodius grinned as he saw the unguarded campfire send up unmistakably thick, acrid smoke, deep grey against the black sky.
When the Islanders saw the smoke all around their massive camp, they knew the time had come. Herodius and many of his co-conspirators moved against the sick guards.
“To the blade-hut!” Herodius yelled as he led them in a sprint for the makeshift “armory,” which was really a hut where all swords, spears, and other fighting blades were checked in and out for training each day. The few guards that were keeping watch drew their swords but were overrun by dozens and dozens of Islanders who, like Herodius, had lost enough weight to work their wrists raw to the point that the shackles no longer held them. Curved blades, long swords, spears, daggers—everyone grabbed their best weapon. Herodius handed many out himself.
“Mikel! Take these—free the rest.” He found his friend and tossed him keys that he ripped off the corpse of one of the fallen guards. “Take two more with you. The rest, with me!”
The commotion at the blade-hut had been heard, and many of the guards scrambled to rebuckle their trousers and armor in the middle of waste pits when the Islanders launched into them. It did not take long for Herodius to spot Captain Grull, who had just run his sword through one of the Islanders before he vomited onto the squishy ground.
“So. Herodius. Is this your little revolution? Do you think a group of farmers swinging dull swords will do much against an army of True Warriors?” He coughed and stepped forward, sweating even more than one usually did in the interminable humidity. The mosquitos were thick in the air, as if even the insects knew they could gorge themselves on blood tonight. “I should have killed you months ago. Just like we did your wife and worthless children. They at least begged for mercy. Step closer, so I can send you to them!”
Herodius didn’t say a word. He focused on his footwork, his technique. He had always been a competent fighter; he had honed these skills and hardened his body over the last couple of months. Now he put everything he had into a single objective: to kill this man in front of him.
Grull slashed downward, and despite his poisoning, he was still incredibly strong and highly skilled. His balance was nearly perfect, and the force of his blows was devastating. Blow after blow rained down on Herodius, notching and nearly bending his quickly-forged training blade. The weak metal they used for the ‘soldiers’ was nowhere near the match of the sword Grull wielded. After a few minutes of constant parrying, Herodius’s blade finally shattered from a particularly fierce overhand strike.
Captain Grull started chuckling. “I should give you another blade to use, if I wasn’t so bored with your pathetic swordsmanship. Still…I will say this: you have spunk, Her
odius. You would have made a fine Captain, a glorious leader in our Master’s army. It is almost a pity to kill you.” He advanced for his final stroke.
Expecting another overhand, Herodius gambled and took one quick step forward before diving for Grull’s legs, feet first, scissor-kicking. He caught the Captain off guard, and finally off balance, as Grull must have expected him to either run away or defend himself up high. Herodius caught him below the knee and tripped him on the wet ground. Grull was on his back.
With amazing agility, Herodius pivoted off the ground and onto the Captain’s chest, who had dropped his sword to try and break his fall. Herodius then plunged nine inches of jagged metal – the remnants of his sword—into Grull’s throat.
“Hope is a powerful thing, Captain. My hope is that you will get stabbed in the throat by my murdered family every night for eternity, you piece of scum.” He gave the hilt one final twist while Grull hopelessly gurgled, then he got up, picked up the Captain’s sword, and looked around for others who needed his help.
Trevor
Trevor waited for the trapdoor leading to the upper decks to shut. As the men left, they carried the only lantern with them, plunging the entire lower deck into utter darkness. There were no other prisoners down here, either. Just Trevor and his thoughts. And rats…he had rats for company as well, feeling one scurry over the top of his bare foot in the pitch black of his cell. He gave a reflexive kick and flung the squealing rodent off him as thunder pealed and the ship rocked wildly.
Hang myself? And miss all the fun of being shipwrecked? He could feel another wave slam into the same side of the boat as his cell, sending him stumbling into the bars. He pulled himself up, and felt the lock.
Hmmm…I wonder. Trevor got down on his knees in the dark and began feeling around the floor for his belt. He found it in a small pile of straw, the buckle still slick with his own blood from his beatings earlier. He used a handful of straw to wipe it off, then took the prong off the buckle.
In Pursuit Of Wisdom (Book 1) Page 35