Chapter 21
A Dread Tide Rising by Walt Shuler
It’s Monday again, and that means it’s time for another ADTR chapter!
Previously: Mac awoke to find himself enjoying the unwanted hospitality of Estari slavers.
Currently: Mac learns more about his current situation, but an opportunity presents itself and he grabs it with both hands.
A Dread Tide Rising is a serialized, pulp-flavored, epic fantasy novel set in the world of Thalrassa. It follows the Talon, a group of mercenaries, thieves, and smugglers, as they come face-to-face with an ancient enemy intent on the destruction of the Rakkian Empire.
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Chapter 21
The slaver’s whip cracked. A slave toward the fore of the ship cried out, the whip laying open his back from shoulder to hip. The whip wielder, a tall Estari with a fierce mustache and a prodigious paunch, laughed uproariously. Even without words, Mac felt tense anger emanating from his companion, but Murgha kept his bald, blue head down and focused on the endless motion of the oar.
There was little else he could do. The commotion faded, and Mac too bent back to the oar. This was his life now: the endless drumbeat from above that kept the slaves rowing in cadence, the endless burning in his arms and back, and the endless cruelty displayed by his captors.
Mac spat on the floorboards.
“Don’t let them see,” Murgha hissed. “They love nothing more than denying your water ration.”
Mac nodded. No surprise there. The Estari lived to torture their captives, finding almost any excuse to deprive them of food, water, or rest. And through all the sweat and pain and rage, there was the omnipresent drum from above. Mac hated the drum. He fantasized about shredding the skin and lighting the rest on fire, before pitching it into Mali’s depths and watching it sink.
Ahead, the whipped slave shuddered, then slowly toppled forward into the rower ahead. Bonelessly, he crumpled to the floor between the benches. The guard was there almost immediately, whip in hand.
“Rise, you lazy son of a whore!” he shouted. There was no response from the slave. The guard unrolled the lash then, and heedless of those nearby, sent its flickering length over the prone slave’s body. Again, there was no reaction.
A sharp pain in the ribs brought Mac back to the present. He had been so engrossed with the goings-on that he had stopped rowing. Murgha’s elbow had recalled him to the here and now, and not a moment too soon. As the first guard bent down, muttering curses and trying to lift the motionless slave, two other guards rushed forward from their post at the aft of the ship, whips in hand and shouts on their lips. They lay about them with abandon, catching anyone not rowing.
Through the up-down-back-forth of moving the oar, Mac watched as the first guard dropped the slave back to the deck. He gestured for another to join him. They unchained the slave’s partner, who moved to stand in the central gangway while the guards took the slave’s arms and legs and dragged him out of the way. Two things became clear to Mac at that moment. First, the slave who had collapsed was almost certainly dead. The boneless lolling of the head and sightless open eyes told him as much. He felt a twinge at the loss, but it was more jealousy than sadness at the unknown man’s passing.
Second, and arguably more important, was the fact that the second slave stood there unguarded and unobserved while the two guards carried out their work. The third guard, one of the two who had come from the aft of the ship, was currently walking back toward his post while keeping a watchful eye on the rest of the crew. No one was watching the slave who stood unchained in the center of the ship. There might be a way out of this hellhole, after all, Mac reflected. However, it would require more than what he was capable of alone.
“You want off this floating piece of dahkha, Murgha?” he asked, voice haggard, barely above a whisper. Murgha started, whether at Mac’s use of the Sanean word for excrement or because his voice had finally returned. Then the other man nodded, and a flame flickered to life in his eyes. Murgha glanced around and, seeing that he was unobserved, stopped rowing. He leaned toward Mac, placed one blue hand over one of Mac’s brown ones, and whispered, “Do not call me Murgha. My name is Da’alo.”
Mac raised an eyebrow. “Da’alo,” he repeated, testing the feel on his tongue. “I only know enough of your language to swear,” he said with a sheepish grin. “What does it mean?”
“Fire in the Depths,” Da’alo answered. Then the guards returned, bare feet slapping the planks of the gangway, and Mac and his new friend resumed their rowing. It was only a little, but Mac felt a sense of confidence take root. Maybe there was a way out of this mess without going through Mali’s watery gates.
It proved to be a good thing that Mac’s plan could only be called such with the most generous of margins. The opportunity to enact it did not present itself immediately, which gave Mac and Da’alo a little more time to refine their strategy. What Mac had thought would be a simple means to get himself and his friend off the slave ship proved to be more involved than he had anticipated.
Moments of laxity were far scarcer than he would have hoped. The Estari were brutal, but not stupid. Killing a slave was not a crime, but it was considered a waste of resources. Thus, it was reserved as a last resort. Besides, there were many ways to motivate men that did not involve the threat of death. The slavers were masters of torture and manipulation, causing incredible agony and then offering a reprieve with the promise of rewards, even freedom, later.
Edwin was a victim of this particular tactic, although Mac learned to hate the man almost as much as he hated the Estari. Edwin was no Sanean. Judging by his accent, he hailed from the Southern Reach, maybe Shaedōw or even Väsh. Between oar strokes, Da’alo filled him in on the man’s story.
Edwin had once been a thorn in the slavers’ side. Angry and defiant, he found every opportunity to thwart their will. “Nothing big, mind you,” Da’alo said. “No armed uprising or anything. Little stuff. A guard tripped here; a rope sawed mostly through there.”
Edwin had kept up his antics for a time, at least until the Estari figured out what was going on. Then he had been taken up on the main deck. The other slaves had been ordered to stop rowing, and in the echoing silence that followed, Edwin’s screams were loud indeed. They kept at him for several days, and he alternately screamed in pain or raved madly.
When they brought him back below decks, he was a different man. It went deeper than the missing fingernails and signs of the beatings he’d taken. His flame of defiance had been snuffed out. In its place, the Estari had left a dark, infected wound. Edwin no longer caused problems for the guards, but for the slaves. Anyone who so much as glared at a guard’s retreating back soon found the tip or butt of the whip. Edwin would smile tightly every time, but his eyes remained empty and dead.
Mac was grateful Edwin’s bench was farther amidship than his own. Nevertheless, he took care to keep his eyes downcast and face expressionless whenever the other man looked around.
Edwin was just one of the complications that kept Mac and Da’alo chained to their oar. The days moved inexorably in a blur of sameness only marked by the deepening chill in the air. Soon, Mac knew, the slavers would turn south and head for warmer waters where prey was easier. And when they went, so would his chance of rejoining the Talon.
“We’ve got to make our break soon,” he whispered to his companion. “If we can get off this hulk, we can make for Sparrowhawk.”
Da’alo just nodded. The other man also felt the change of seasons and knew what that meant. As luck would have it, their opportunity came soon. Mac and Da’alo shuffled up from the sleeping deck below to take their shift at the oars. Mac’s eyes felt like someone had poured sand into them. The days of rowing were taking their toll. A voice from behind him shoved such concerns out of his head.
“You’re a right bastard, Adelstan,” a guard growled. Mac could not afford to turn around, but he thought the voice sounded like Egbard’s, a dour Estari with a puckered scar down his right cheek.
“What’d I do?” another voice complained. Adelstan, Mac could only assume.
“Yer damned luck at the table last night. Never seen such in my life. Took my last silver’n we get no pay ’till we sell off this lot or land a fat prize!”
Adelstan scoffed. “Not my luck, Egbard. Yer just shit at knucklebones.”
There was a scuffling sound, and then Egbard’s voice came again, this time edged with menace that made the hairs on Mac’s arms stand up. “Shit, am I? Shit? I say yer a cheat!” Then came the unmistakable sound of someone being shoved, and Adelstan fell to the walkway right beside Mac with a jingle, the air whooshing from his lungs with the impact.
A jingle? Mac’s eyes widened. Adelstan had the keys to the chains! The man was bleary from the fall, shaking his head to clear his vision. If Mac were quick, he could win their freedom now. His arm snaked out toward the fallen guard and the keys lying on the gangway next to him.
Then Egbard was there, leaping onto the other man, fists flying. The confines of the gangway were too tight for anything more than grappling, but that did not bother Egbard. He went after the other man with abandon. Mac watched with dying hope as the keys were kicked farther up the central plank and out of his reach. They came to rest beside the foot of a slave, and Mac’s heart sank. He saw the man glance down and stop, then slowly bend to pick up the key. It was Edwin, and he now held their only hope of escape.
“Shit,” Mac cursed under his breath.
Adelstan, apparently not content to be pummeled, decided to get in some licks of his own. He managed to flip Egbard over and began happily slamming the other guard’s face into the wooden planking. When his opponent had stopped struggling, Adelstan stood, glaring his hatred down at the prostrate man.
Seeing an opportunity and praying he was right, he turned to Da’alo. “On the count of five, let go of the oar.”
“What?”
“Just do it!” Mac hissed.
One, Mac counted in his head. He felt the waves move the hull, the oar shifting under his hands.
“Adelstan!” he shouted.
Two, he continued.
Adelstan stopped, foot half-raised to smash into his opponent’s skull. Confused, he glanced around, unsure where the voice had come from.
Mac counted three.
“Adelstan!” he shouted again. This time, the guard spotted him. He lowered his foot and half-turned toward Mac. Egbard groaned and tried feebly to move away, but it looked like his arm might be broken, and he could not drag himself very far. The hull shifted again, groaning with the movement of the waves.
Four, Mac counted. Adelstan took a step toward him, initial confusion gone, replaced by anger that a slave would dare interrupt his moment of triumph.
“You wait your turn, you…”
Five. Whatever Adelstan might have thought of Mac, the world would never know. Mac’s count was spot on. As he and Da’alo reached the count of five, the sea swept back in toward the hull. He and his companion released their grip on the oar, sending a hundred pounds of hardened wood flying up and forward. The end caught Adelstan squarely in the ribs with a sickening crunch and a wet squelching sound before it slammed back to the deck.
One look was all it took to know that Adelstan was dead. Blood and spittle dribbled from his lips, and his face was set in an eternal look of surprise. A groan from the deck brought Mac back to the present.
“Edwin, throw me the key!” he shouted.
Edwin looked bemusedly from the dead guard to the live one struggling to escape to the key in his hand and then back to Mac again.
“Mali curse the luck, he’s not gonna do it.” Mac could see the smirk on the man’s lips, the one he put on whenever getting one over on his fellow slaves.
“Edwin, listen to me. This is our chance. Your chance!”
Edwin paused. Something flickered in his dead eyes. Seizing on the hesitation, Mac pressed on.
“Throw me the key! We can pay them back for everything they’ve done. You can pay them back for what they did to you; what they took from you.”
Whatever it was in Edwin’s eyes flared bright, and his lips twisted in a snarl. Rather than tossing the key to Mac, though, he bent and unlocked his own manacles. Only when he stood on shaky legs did he toss the key Mac’s way.
Mac snatched the key out of midair and bent to undo the shackles that held him and Da’alo chained to the bench. Free of the fetters, he stood on his own. Seeing what was going on, the rest of the crew erupted. Mac passed the key off to one of many grasping hands and turned to Da’alo.
“We need to do something about Egbard. Then we need to regroup and get off this damned hulk.” Da’alo shook his head, pointing. Mac turned to see Edwin step over to the fallen guard. Egbard’s eyes flew wide as he realized what was about to happen, but it was over too fast for him to do anything. Edwin grabbed the man’s head and viciously twisted it. Even over the clamor in the hold, the snap carried to Mac’s ears. Edwin caught his eye, and Mac nodded.
To Da’alo, Mac said, “We’ll need to keep an eye on that man. He’s done some bad things by the others and might be more than one would like to repay his meddling.” He stooped down and removed a pair of knives from Adelstan’s belt, handing one to his companion.
“Why bother?” Da’alo asked.
“He was tortured. They took his life from him. Broke him. I’ve seen it before, back in the war with Süt. That wasn’t him doing those things. It was something the Estari created. This is the real Edwin, and I think we should keep an eye on him.”
Edwin seemed to have much the same idea. As Mac and Da’alo moved toward the forward hatch, he fell in behind them, one eye over his shoulder. A ladder led up to the top deck and down to the sleeping deck. Mac signaled for Da’alo and Edwin to come with him and moved up a rung toward the upper deck.
“You,” he said, pointing at a slave named Hathel. “Take ten men below. Free the others and handle the guards, then come up and help with the rest of the fun.” Hathel’s answering smile was predatory, and he quickly chose his ten. As Mac and his companions climbed up, he heard the others going downward. It would not go well for the few guards below. He pushed such thoughts out of his head as he stuck his head out of the hatch and glanced around.
Night was falling, although the western sky still bled red. In the dim light that remained, he counted twenty or so slavers. “Plenty of folk left up here. Let the rest of our people take on the bulk of the slavers. We need to get to the steering oar.” Mac pointed aft, where they could just make out three sailors clustered together.
As Mac, then Da’alo, and Edwin climbed soundlessly out of the hatch, the other erstwhile slaves came boiling up behind them. Most had armed themselves with what they could find, ropes and chains mostly, but a few knives glinted in the ember-red glow. It took only a moment for the slavers to realize that something had gone badly wrong, and then they fanned out across the deck.
With a battle shout that shook the heavens, the freed slaves surged forward into the ranks of their captors. One burly sailor stepped forward, brandishing a short sword. His arrogant grin was wiped from his face a moment later, though. Heedless of the pain, a slave caught the sword blade and shoved it aside, then ripped the man’s throat out with a gaffing hook. The sailor fell to his knees, hands vainly trying to staunch the fountain of blood that sprayed from his gullet. Bleeding himself, the freed slave hooted in victory, raised his hook again, and set out after more prey.
Better armed and not suffering from months of malnourishment and physical abuse, the slavers made a critical mistake. They’d assumed that the revolt could be quickly put down. That the slaves would be too weak or too disorganized. They had miscalculated the power of righteous anger and the drive for vengeance.
Mac and his three companions skirted the main battle. It was all for nothing if the slavers disabled the steering oar. They were almost there when they lost Edwin. The slave who had caught the sword blade with his hand was battling a particularly burly sailor with a tattoo covering half his face. It was going badly for the slave, as the sailor drove him back with quick, powerful blows from his cutlass. It looked like the man was going to come to a messy end when Edwin ran into the fray and leaped onto the sailor’s back. He stabbed down with a knife he’d picked up somewhere along the way, but he might as well have been beating a mountain with a twig. Again and again, he stabbed in the man’s broad back, but it only enraged the sailor. He turned, trying to swat Edwin off his back, but the slave with the gaffing hook took advantage of the situation and waded in.
Mac motioned for Da’alo to follow him. “Nothing we can do there. If we don’t get to the steering oar before they disable it, we’ll be dead in the water with no way to get home.”
Da’alo grinned at him. “I thought you people believed in some sea goddess. Won’t she help you swim home?”
Mac frowned. “Mali helps those who help themselves. And we’ve got a boat! I’d hate to throw her gift back in her face by letting the slavers lose it for us.”
Da’alo chuckled, and the two continued on their way. The sound of an axe striking wood told Mac his fears were well-founded. One slaver stood guard while another attempted to hack through the steering oar. There was no sign of the third man.
“You go for the man with the axe. I’ll take care of the watcher,” Da’alo said. “Wait for my signal”. The blue-skinned warrior wasted no time but slipped into the shadows, knife at the ready. Time passed slowly; each minute felt like an hour. Mac wiped his sweaty palms on his clothing. “What signal?” he wondered too late.
It came a moment later, and there was no mistaking it. Da’alo emerged from a clot of shadow near the stern, the last rays of the sunset transforming his blue skin to crimson. His mouth was open in a snarl, and every muscle stood out, taut and strengthened by months at the oar. Soundlessly, he collided with the sailor on guard, sending both sprawling to the deck.
Mac grinned and stepped out of hiding, knife in his hand. “Just you and me now,” he told the axe man, who took one look at Mac and redoubled his efforts. “If you stop, I’ll spare your life,” Mac told him. The sailor’s eyes were so wide they were almost completely white. “We hold the ship now, you know. There’s only one version of events where you’re not killed on the spot.” The man with the axe stopped his work and glanced around. Sure enough, the fighting was petering out, and the slaves looked to be victorious. “What do you think they’re going to do with you when they find you? Not a lot of places to hide on this hulk. If you give me your axe, I’ll not say a word if you slip away into the sea. Better the sharks down there than the sharks up here.” Mac’s grin showed all his teeth.
The axe man did not need to be told twice. He threw down the axe and dove headfirst into the water. Mac said a silent prayer that Mali would not let the bastard off too easily and bent to inspect the damage to the steering oar.
“It doesn’t look too bad—” he began, but Da’alo’s cry for help cut him off. He turned to find his companion facing two men, rather than one. The first guard was bleeding heavily from several deep cuts from the Sanean’s knife, but the other man had come back to help his companions. He carried a cutlass and swung it with an air of experience.
“Damn,” Mac cursed. Da’alo could hold his own against one man, perhaps even two if he were better equipped. A knife was of little use against a cutlass, though.
There was nothing for it. Mac threw his knife. It tumbled end over end to embed itself in the cutlass carrier’s neck. The man stopped, fell to his knees, then fell forward to the deck. In the shocked silence that followed, Da’alo took down his own man with a well-placed knife thrust to the chest.
“Nice throw,” Da’alo said, breathing hard.
“Thanks,” Mac grinned. “The legacy of a misspent youth.”
Then the scent of smoke came to his nostrils. Glancing to the fore, he saw smoke boiling out of the below-decks hatch.
“No!” he groaned, the heel of one hand going to his forehead. “We just went to the trouble of stealing this boat, and now they’ve gone and set it on fire?”
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Shoulda known Mac would rescue himself…