The Titan's Tome

by M. B. Schroeder

  When most of their captors went to the wagons to explore the loot, Madger edged closer to Kharick. “What is this?”

  “Slavers, lass. Those pirates are gonna take us out to that big ship and sail us to the southern continent.” Kharick’s explanation ended when his line was jerked sharply, pulling him away from Madger. Jorn gave a startled cry as the dwarf lurched under him.

  Rosth was dragged away from them, screaming. Kharick took several steps after him, but stopped when a troll blocked him with a raised cudgel. Another snatched Jorn away from Kharick, and he made a desperate protesting sound, but didn’t try to fight. If he guessed right, they were all going to be put on the ship anyway. Madger spun from one orc, but another grabbed her, and Jula was taken away with a screech.

  Kharick and Madger could only watch, helpless, as the children were put in with the others. The two of them were lead over to the three humans, and one with a thick, black beard and short cape of golden fabric looked over Kharick and Madger.

  “Exotics,” the bearded man mused.

  “Could be fighters for the pit,” the dark elf said, with a heavy accent. “Their weapons.” He motioned for Kharick and Madger’s belongings to be brought forward, and their weapons were dropped on the rocky beach.

  “Dwarves are common enough in the arenas,” the bearded man began but took a moment to look over Madger. “This giant though, she might be worth the extra room.”

  “Dwarf will take less room than human,” the dark elf said. “No need for him here. Just be feed for birds.” He nodded to the children and said, “Like them.”

  The bearded man grunted and shrugged. “Someone always wants little boys and girls.” He bent and examined Kharick’s weapons. “Might be a professional fighter.” He stood back up and nodded. “All right, we’ll take them all.” He paused and motioned at the weapons and packs. “And their belongings. Our contractor likes to have their personal things.”

  “Done,” the dark elf said. “Now this,” he turned and walked to the carts.

  The negotiations were lost under the noise of the ocean and the wailing of children. She turned away, unable to face them after carrying them here. Kharick watched the whole scene in a stoic manner. He didn’t look away from the three and they stayed looking at him. As though he was silently promising he would find a way to make it better. Madger felt sick, she hadn’t offered them any such comfort.

  They could do nothing but watch as the women and children were taken out to the ship. They were among the last people to be taken. Three of the garishly clothed men rode with them, besides the two that rowed. One simply sat with a curved sword across his lap, while the other two held onto the leads attached to Kharick and Madger’s bonds.

  As they approached the ship, Madger saw it was made of wood and not some creature. Their boat bumped and jostled against the large vessel, a thick cargo net was laid over its side that reached down to the water. The man with the sword pointed at it with his free hand and ordered them to climb.

  Madger struggled to pull herself up the thick netting with her hands still bound. More than once she thought she would slip and fall into the churning waters. Being forced to march through the cold with little food for a fortnight had left them all weak. But fear gave her strength and she reached the top and clambered over the railing. Kharick followed, grunting as he rolled over the rail and fell to the deck.

  The humans on deck ignored the new arrivals, their attention set to preparing the ship to leave. Their clothes weren’t as bright as the bearded man’s, but were still a variety of hues. The salt and sun had taken its toll on the cloth, as well as the men’s skin. They hurried about to keep warm in the cold wind, working with the rigging, rolling barrels of water and mead below deck, and stowing crates of food.

  The sail cloth above Madger’s head lazily flapped in the wind, not yet turned to fully catch the breeze. The ropes were like a web, the few men climbing between the two masts reminded her of spiders in trees. The creaking of the ship as it rocked on the waves made her worry about how long it could float on the water, and she fought to keep her balance.

  The wooden deck had several grates that allowed the whimpering of the people held below to drift up. Her nose wrinkled at the smell of wood, tar, and salt water, unused to the strange combination; excrement and sour sweat wafted up from the hold.

  The man who’d guarded them with the sword, came over the edge of the railing. He drew his sword again and pointed it toward the hole in the deck where the sailors were loading supplies.

  Madger looked at the hole, then at Kharick, and finally back at the man. “I understand the Merchant language.”

  The man lowered his sword with an exasperated look. “I don’t give a fuck what you think you understand, you rat-sucking whore. You don’t understand to follow directions. Now stop trying to use your tongue for something more than sucking cock and walk yourself down to the hold, or we’ll winch you down there.”

  He lunged at Madger with the sword, and she staggered back from the weapon. Without a child on her back she forgot her caution and with a flick of her bound wrist, she set the tail of his shirt on fire.

  The man dropped his sword with a curse and started beating at the little flame desperately. Another crew member hurried to his side and helped rip the shirt off and stomped the flames out on the deck.

  “Shit, she’s a mage,” the burned man cursed.

  “We need the hood!”

  “The hood won’t fit over a giant’s head, idiot.”

  “You should let us all go,” Madger warned. She didn’t know what hood the men were talking about, she could still cast magic without seeing. But she wouldn’t know where to place the spell unless she was touching what she wanted to affect. She couldn’t be sure how much the men knew about mages, but it was the last thing she could think of to keep from being made a slave, along with everyone else from Pero. “I could burn this whole wooden thing.”

  “You do, and all those people and children in the hold will burn, you will burn, and this dwarf will burn,” the bearded man said as he climbed over the railing, joining the crew. “Don’t worry about a hood, lads. If she were anything of a real mage, she would have used a bigger spell than that a long time ago.”

  The now shirtless pirate picked his sword back up. It didn’t look like she’d injured him. The sun had likely burned him worse than she had. Kharick shook his head slowly at her. Madger ground her teeth in frustration, but turned to the hold and crawled down below deck.

  She dropped into the darkness, and the foul smell that had wafted up from the grates assaulted her nose. It was strong enough to make her gag and recoil, but the man with the sword pricked her with his weapon and she continued down into the shadows. Once she was down the ramp, she could get her feet under her, but the hold only offered her enough room to crouch. With the crates and barrels stacked around her, there was hardly enough room for her to stretch out her legs. The cramped surroundings walled her off from the rest of the prisoners, but she could still hear and smell them.

  The room was lit by one meager lamp and was filled to the low ceiling with crates and barrels. Some of the stolen items from Pero were there already, including their packs. She didn’t see their weapons though. In the middle of the tightly packed hold was a thick upright timber supporting the upper deck.

  The sword-wielding sailor hurried down the ramp with an armload of chains. The bearded leader followed and assisted with wrapping the chain around the timber. With some prodding and harsh direction, they bound Madger’s wrists in front of her and leashed them with little more than a foot of slack to the wooden column. Once secured, they took the lamp and left, sealing the door to the hold.

  She was alone. Kharick and the children taken away. The sun shuttered away. Only her abusive dreams remained.

  Chapter 11

  309 Br. winter

  “Mercenary companies keep books with the stamps from contractors. Each job taken from a contractor is marked and stamped in red,
and once completed another black stamp is set into their ledger. The larger and older companies proudly display their volumes of completed jobs. Smaller bands jealously protect theirs, for if stolen another group can take up their name and receive jobs and pay far better than new mercenaries starting out. A contractor recognizes the stamps of his fellows, even from distant lands, and knows to avoid those companies of mercenaries with few finished stamps in their ledgers.”

  -A Book on Markets and Hirelings

  T he first week of the trip Madger was violently ill. Her wrists had been narrow before, now they were skeletal. The sailors kept the chains tight so she couldn’t slip free. The air was sweltering in the hold, and she wiped at the sweat before it could fall into her eyes.

  Madger used a levitation spell she’d been practicing to stash the book back with her other belongings. After two months on the ship she was well practiced. The light orb snapped out of existence. The sailors were hurrying around the deck, shouting to one another. A horn sounded from above, the heavy notes made her cover her ears when it was blown three times. After the echoes had faded, a distant horn answered twice.

  It was several hours before Madger was released from the hold. Like the rest of the slaves she was stripped and washed down. As humiliating as it was to be naked and washed on the deck of the ship, she endured it. Instead of the rough smocks the others wear forced to wear, she was given a set of her clothes from her belongings.

  There were dozens of ships all around, some still out in the bay, others docked alongside the slave ship. Beyond the dock was a city, the buildings and people stretched out to the horizon. Madger sucked in a surprised breath; she never imagined there could be so many people in the world. Besides the sheer number, the variety of races stunned her. Most she had never heard of, and she wondered at their strange skin, some were even covered in fur and others in scales. They looked more like beasts than people. Even the darkling races freely walked among the people. But there were no giants.

  The sailors grabbed Kharick and Madger’s packs and carried them to the dock. She stepped off the ship and the rolling of the ocean stopped and she resisted the urge to cry tears of joy.

  “Bring their weapons,” the bearded captain said as he descended the ramp. “Talas will want them too.”

  A third of the people who’d been loaded with them weren’t on the dock. If it weren't for her concern for Kharick, the three children, and the other people from Pero, she would likely have fallen into a melancholy stupor, like some of the other prisoners. What would her mother and father say about her defiance now? She hoped they would approve.

  The captain directed the sailors to chain Kharick, Madger, and two of the men from Pero together. The rest of the prisoners he ordered to auction.

  Madger lunged after the mass of people, the small group of children unfamiliar walking skeletons. “Jula! Jorn!” A blow to her stomach sent the air out her lungs, cutting off her call for Rosth. She wheezed and staggered, her eyes watered, fogging her vision as the people were led away.

  “No, lass!” Kharick called. “Nothing you can do.” He swallowed back a sob before it could break free. The slavers had seen enough of his suffering, he wouldn’t give them his tears for the children.

  By the time Madger regained her breath, the people of Pero were lost in the crowds. A little whimper escaped her throat and her lower lip quivered. She’d carried the children to this.

  They were chained with two other men from Pero and taken with a wagon of loot through the city. It had been built within a canyon on a steep incline away from the ocean. The desert canyon walls hemmed in the sprawl of buildings and at the top of the long rise was a palace and arena. The buildings progressed from mud brick shacks to grand, multi-storied stone structures with stained-glass windows the closer they got to the palace.

  The arena was made with great arches, built on top of one another, and decorative flags hung between them. The arches carried the walls into the sky for several stories. Multicolored pinions fluttered above them. Cheers and shouting echoed faintly from within.

  They were stopped next to a whitewashed stone wall, as tall as Madger and an iron bar gate was set in it that faced the street. A mansion was just beyond it, a few paces up the street, and the wall butted up against it. The mansion was five stories tall and its white stones pristine, with red awnings that flared out over the front windows. Stone of the same shade formed the wall that surrounded its grounds, and the unmistakable sound of weapons clashing resounded from inside.

  The captain didn’t go to the gold and silver embossed door of the mansion that faced the street, but instead went to the gate set in the wall. He jerked on a cord, attached to a bronze bell, twice, the sound rung out sharp and clear, and he took two steps back from the gate with his hand resting on the pommel of his sword.

  The noise from the other side of the wall ended and Madger looked to Kharick, hoping he knew what was about to happen, but he never looked back at her. After several strained moments of standing in the glaring sun, the gate swung out on well-oiled hinges.

  “Captain YusLer, welcome back. How many did you bring?” a man’s voice questioned. The speaker remained just out of sight of everyone but the captain.

  “Oi, Lanis. Four,” Captain YusLer answered. “One is an exotic mage.”

  “Really?” Lanis drawled, his voice rising an octave of baritone. “Bring them in.”

  The sailors directed them through the gate, leaving the cart outside. The captain did direct one of the sailors to grab Madger and Kharick’s packs though. Inside the walls, the ground was simple, hard-packed earth, there were no awnings to block the baking sun. Inside, seven other people stood at attention.

  Five humans, a dark elf and an orc all wore steel collars. On the way to the mansion they’d seen the other slaves of the city, mostly iron collared, lowly creatures sent on menial tasks. Some wore silver collars, and a rare few were given a gold collar along with fine clothes.

  Lanis was a red-haired man and his skin was so burned by the sun that it seemed to want to match his hair and beard. His hair was neatly trimmed, squaring his head, and his beard was kept short. The long sleeveless tunic he wore was a light blue, covered in dust and stained with dried sweat. It reached just above his knees and was cinched by a belt around his waist with a sheathed short sword resting on his hip.

  Several weapon racks lined the rear of the enclosure and a small enclave held crude cots. There was little else of comfort, but a precious barrel of fresh water was kept in the shade of the shallow shelter.

  “Released!” Lanis ordered. The seven men relaxed from their stances and immediately went to the water barrel, but were still orderly and waited in turn for a chance to sip from the dipper. He motioned for the captain to follow him and they went deeper into the mansions compound, leaving the rest of the pirates and slaves in the sun.

  “Water?” one of the men from Pero begged.

  “Shut up,” a sailor answered.

  The sun had slipped just below the horizon when the Captain YusLer, Lanis, and a woman came back through the gate.

  “It is a giant!” the woman exclaimed and hurried past the men to stand in front of Madger.

  She was a mature woman, her body still fit and strong, but with gray hairs decorating her tall hair knot. Gems glittered like stars in her hair, and her teeth flashed white against her ebony skin. She was elegant and had sharp facial features, with deep brown eyes. The light fabric she wore was yellow, like a flower, and her rings flashed as she rested a hand against her breasts as she looked Madger over.

  “You say she’s magically active?” the woman asked without looking at the captain. Her eyes focused on Madger’s, firm and commanding, “Show me.”

  Madger couldn’t keep the bitter grin from pulling at the corners of her mouth. She gestured at the woman and swept her hand to encompass each of the sailors. It was something she had wanted to try, but hadn’t dared while on the wooden ship in the middle of the ocean. To her satisfac
tion, the woman’s yellow dress and two of the sailors’ clothes, all sparked with small fires. She had finally mastered working several spells at once, though she had tried for more, she hadn’t dared to feed too much magic into the attempt.

  “Mistress Talas!” Lanis cried and rushed to her aid, as the other soldiers hurried to snuff out their own smoldering clothes.

  Talas laughed richly and tore off the inflamed part of her garment and left it to burn out on the ground.

  Lanis drew his sword and pointed it at Madger’s stomach. “You, giant, will never threaten Mistress Talas again.”

  Madger studied Lanis for a moment, but doubted she would be much of a match against him, even though she towered over the human. He had a weapon and was comfortable with it. She wasn’t trained to fight, she barely knew enough magic to frighten sailors, was weak from the voyage, and she was lost in an enormous city. She nodded her acquiescence, for now. It was pointless to antagonize her captors anymore and lessen her chances of escape. It wouldn’t be a death worthy to gain the Ancient’s attention.

  Talas stepped closer to Madger and smiled. “I like her fight.”

  Madger stared back into the woman’s eyes, but didn’t make another aggressive move.

  “We should hood her, Mistress Talas,” Lanis said.

  Talas continued to study Madger but questioned over her shoulder. “You didn’t hood her on the ship or while walking her here?”

  “She never offered more than a few sparks, ma’am,” Captain YusLer answered.

  Talas nodded. “Still… I’ll commission a hood to fit her.” She turned away from Madger and glanced at the two men and Kharick. “Yes, they’ll all do. Settle them in, Lanis.” She walked back to the gate she had entered from. “Come, Captain YusLer, let’s see to your commission.”