Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 76583 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76583 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
By the gods, if I get my hands free, even if we’re not close to shore, I’m still going to swim for it. I’d rather face the monsters of the sea than the ones on land. At least if they kill me, it’ll be quick.
So I sit on the heavily laden, crowded ship and I plot. I keep my ears pricked and I listen for any sort of opportunity. I’m not going to let these raiders decide my fate.
I’ve had enough of that sort of thing.
“Land!” one of the men cries.
I sit up straighter, my senses pricking with attention. The afternoon sun has been beating down upon us captives for hours on end, making the travel in the boat a miserable experience. Add in salt water, hunger, thirst and the endless weeping of the others and I’ve never been more miserable in my life, not even when I was enslaved the first time…and that’s saying a lot.
At least when I was first sold, I knew I wouldn’t be killed unless I misbehaved. A slave is valuable alive, not dead. But after watching the “pretty” slaves get fed food and water, and our group does not? I’m worried that they won’t feed the rest of us until we get to Sunswallow, and whoever lives gets sold. Whoever doesn’t probably gets tossed overboard. The situation just keeps getting worse and worse. I lick my dry lips and send a prayer to Vor, the God of the Seas. Help me survive this, I pray quietly. I have no offering to send to the depths at the moment, so I’ll have to hope he’s in a benevolent mood. I’ll sacrifice the biggest fish I can find if you help me find safety. Please, great Vor.
We sail into the shadow of a large cliff, cooling my overheated skin for the first time in hours. I breathe a sigh of relief and hope that’s a good sign. The gods are fickle, Vor especially so, but sometimes they help. I can only hope.
“What do you mean, land?” The captain pushes past the soldiers manning the oars of our long, flat boat and strides toward the far end of the deck. “Of course there’s land. We’re hugging the shore because we’re too heavy.”
“No, I mean land on all sides.” The man gestures ahead, holding out his spyglass for the captain. “Look.”
I crane my neck, trying to look, too. We’re still passing the tall cliff in the middle of the water. A strait, someone called it a while ago. Land is on the other side, the cliffs just as high and forbidding. I could swim to shore if I wasn’t chained…not that there’s a shore. There’s just cliffs and more cliffs.
And between the two cliffs, up ahead blocking the way? Is something that looks like an island. It’s mostly flat with a gentle slope towards the center, and there it looks like a tent of some kind is set up, and a spindly tree right smack dab in the middle of the strange island. It doesn’t seem all that threatening to me.
As the captain raises the spyglass to his gaze, his man continues. “We’re trapped.”
“We can’t be trapped. This is open sea. This is…” He trails off as he squints into the spyglass. “Is that a turtle?”
“A hamarii turtle,” the navigator agrees. “And Vor protect us, but it’s got a sea-ogre on its back.”
A thread of terror races up my spine. Vor is apparently not in a good mood this day. A sea-ogre? A giant turtle? I’ve never heard of such a thing except in legends, but the expression of fear on the navigator’s face is very real. I crane my head to look, fascinated despite my fear. It could be a turtle shell, I think. One covered in thick moss, but still a shell. But why is there a tree? And a tent?
As I try to get a better look at the mysterious island, it somehow moves, turning slightly in the waters, and seems to wedge itself even tighter between the cliffs. A figure emerges from the tent and stares at our wide, heavily laden ship, at our dead sail and our flustered oarsmen.
The tingle of terror in my spine turns to a knot of dread in my belly. Some of the soldiers break into terrified prayers to Aron of the Cleaver. A few others grab their weapons, and I flinch back against the other captives huddled in the center of the boat.
“Not here,” another slave hisses at me. “Go away. You’ll drown us all. We’ll capsize.”
“The captain got greedy. We’ve got too many slaves. Look at how low we’re sailing in the water. If one takes a shit we’ll go under.”
I eye the edges of the boat and we do seem to be rather low in the water. That just adds to my panic, and I twist at the chains again, frantic.