by Mel Odom
Arghant leaned in against Wick, his brutish face only inches from the little librarian’s. The stench clung to the goblin as well, leaving him smelling like a dead thing that had gone sour and moldy. “An’ what about ye, halfer?” the goblin captain demanded. “Do ye feel all high and noble for sacrificin’ yerself for all yer shipmates? Ye saved their lives, ye know.”
Wick tried to make his voice hard and cold, but it came out stuttering and weak. “You sh-should b-be g-glad that I c-came. My only re-regret is th-that I prob-probably sa-saved your life, t-too.” Still, the little librarian took some measure of pride in the anger that blanched the goblin captain’s face.
“Stupid halfer!” Arghant backhanded Wick, knocking him free of the two goblins that held him.
Wick hit the deck and barely held back a moan of pain. His stomach rebelled on him again, drawing him up as the heaves took him.
“Yer arrogance is gonna be the death of ye,” Arghant declared. He reached down and hauled Wick up with one fist. He slid his cutlass up under the little librarian’s throat. “Yer life is mine to do with what I will.”
Wick hung from the great fist. He seized the goblin’s wrist, but he could not even wrap both of his hands around it. He was too frightened to say anything.
“Ye hear me, halfer?” Arghant demanded.
Wick tried to answer, but his voice was stuck in his throat.
Arghant shook him. “Speak when ye’re spoken to, halfer. I get more money for ye in Hanged Elf’s Point if ye’re whole, it’s true, but I got a cargo hold full of halfers. One more or less ain’t a-gonna matter to me.”
“I h-hear you,” Wick stuttered. His heart hammered in his chest. Although he’d never hated anyone in his life, he knew hatred now, and he was surprised to understand how much hatred came all wrapped up in fear.
Arghant threw him to the deck. “Take the halfer below with the others.”
Wick lay on the deck weakly for only a moment, then someone yanked him up by the back of his shirt. A goblin stepped forward and clapped manacles to the little librarian’s wrists. They pulled him to his knees, then brought out a blacksmith’s hammer and drove steel pins into the manacles to lock them.
Wick yanked at his hands, nauseous again when he realized he was going to be bound. He hadn’t thought about that when he’d offered to surrender himself. Panic filled him and took his breath away. The short chain held him and the manacles bit into his flesh. Before he knew it, a steel collar snapped closed around his neck as well. The goblin yanked him roughly, bending him over so his back was bent, then snapped a chain from the steel collar to the manacles. Another set of manacles was attached to his ankles.
“In case ye decide to take yer chances in the water some night,” a goblin snarled. He grinned, showing gapped fangs. “Even bound up so, there’s a few of yer kind that choose that over slavery. Ain’t a-gonna stand for that neither.”
They yanked him to his feet.
Sick with fear and nausea, Wick could hardly stand on his own. His chain links clinked against each other as the goblin ship rolled on the waves. The stink filled his nose, overloading his senses. Everything had a nightmare quality about it, feeling unreal though he knew it was truly happening. He desperately wanted to wake up and find himself in bed at the Library.
But that wasn’t going to be true.
That was never going to be true again.
Arghant grabbed Wick’s wrist manacles and pulled him to the railing. The goblin captain pointed out One-Eyed Peggie as she sailed away. “They must not care too much about ye, halfer. There they go.”
Wick didn’t argue. He didn’t have the strength. Everything seemed dead inside him, bound up by the weight of his chains. Instead, not knowing what else to do, he lifted his hands and waved goodbye.
Without warning, Arghant struck him, knocking him senseless.
11
Enslaved
Wick fought against the darkness that lay over him like a heavy quilt. He reached up, listening to the clinking links of the chains that bound him. The stench let him know immediately where he was.
“Take it easy,” a calm voice told him.
“Who’s there?” Wick demanded. He turned toward the voice, trying to peer through the gloom.
“Harran. I’m a dweller like yourself.”
Wick tried to sit up, but the effort set off another dry heave spell.
“Just sit back and relax,” Harran advised. “You’re chained down anyway, and there’s no place to go.”
Wick laid back down, breathing shallowly so his stomach would stop turning. He patted his blouse and found to his great relief that he still had his journal. “Where are we?”
“Bottom of the ship’s hold.”
“Arghant’s ship?”
“Yes.” Harran laughed without humor. “The goblinkin call her Ill Wind. Arghant heard a phrase somewhere about how death was an ill wind. Still, you have to admit after smelling her that she’s aptly named.”
Other chains clinked in the darkness. Someone labored through a hoarse, racking cough, and for a moment Wick had thought the person had died. Then another rasping breath came. More chains clinked.
“You’re chained, too?” Wick asked.
“All of us are.”
“‘All of us?’” the little librarian echoed.
“There are dozens of us down here,” another man said. “But none of us were picked up from a Blood-Soaked Sea pirate ship.”
“Some of the others are suspicious of you for that,” Harran pointed out. “They’ve never heard of a dweller pirate before.”
Wick remembered Trosper, still aboard One-Eyed Peggie. “There are a few.”
“Not where I’m from.”
“Where is that?” Wick asked.
“I’m from Moroneld’s Harbor.”
The name struck a chord in Wick’s mind. “Along the Shattered Coast?”
“Yes. You’ve been there?”
“No, but I’ve heard of it.” One of the most destructive battles in the Cataclysm was fought along the Shattered Coast. Human mages had warred against the dark forces Lord Kharrion had controlled. Goblinkin armies had swept down from the remnants of the Western Empire after King Amalryn and his family had been murdered and changed. It was the first time the human mages had faced the Embyrs.
“Where are you from?” Harran asked.
“Further north.”
“Lottar’s Crossing?”
Wick thought for a moment, trying to place Lottar’s Crossing. He didn’t want to mention Greydawn Moors, and he didn’t want to make himself more suspicious to the other dwellers held captive in Ill Wind’s hold.
Lottar’s Crossing was nearly three hundred miles north of the Shattered Coast. It had been primarily a dwarven city that had sprung up from seven mining villages that quickly grew together. Upon occasion, there were minor battles between dwarven clans over mining rights when the long tunnels started to intermingle. Lottar’s Crossing referred to the common ground the seven villages eventually came to share, named for the dwarven clan leader who had managed to negotiate the usage of the land.
“Yes,” Wick said. “I’m from Orsin’s Saucer.” The village was real, a small hollow along the Rolling Jewel River.
“I’ve never heard of it,” Harren admitted.
“I have,” an older man said weakly. “They make glass there. Window panes and bottles, mostly.”
“Right,” Wick said, struggling to remember what he could of Orsin’s Saucer. “Greengloss glass. The finest glassware anyone could ever want.”
“Hrumph,” the old man said in the darkness. “At least, that’s what a man from Orsin’s Saucer will tell you if you ask him. I’ve seen glass just as fine made in other places. And they made a lot more of it. The place should be named Orsin’s Wallow, if you ask me.”
“How did you come to be on a pirate’s ship?” Harran asked.
“My da sent me down to the docks in Wexlertown,” Wick said, improvising, remembering
the terrain clearly now from Harferd’s Treatise on Stained Glass-Makers and Blowers. “While I was there making arrangements for the shipment, I went down to a tavern for a drink. Somebody hit me over the head. Next thing I knew, I was on the pirate ship.” There. That’s close enough to the truth.
“They told the goblinkin that you were one of the crew,” still another voice said.
Wick thought quickly, hating the way the lie kept threatening to get all tangled up. “They only told the goblinkin that because they wanted to keep me to ransom back to my family.”
“A glassblower’s family? Where would they get the idea that a glassblower’s family would have enough money for ransom?”
“I told them my father was very well known,” Wick said. “And around our village, he is.” Everyone in Greydawn Moors knew Mettarin Lamplighter. “The pirates just didn’t know how small Orsin’s Saucer is. It’s not a port, you know, and they have never had cause to go there.”
“The pirates sounded like they were going to fight for you.”
“I know,” Wick said. And he knew he would always remember that. “But in the end, they didn’t.” Only I have to know the real reason they didn’t.
“That was a clever ruse on your part,” Harran commented. “You think quickly on your feet.”
“I try to,” Wick said.
“Pity all that thinking hasn’t taken you elsewheres than here,” someone said. “From here, it’s a short trip to Hanged Elf’s Point.”
“What’s Hanged Elf’s Point?” Wick asked.
“A goblin city along the southern tip of the Shattered Coast,” Harran answered. “Once, the city was called something else. It was an elven town, I think. But that was years ago, and even that might be myth. But the goblinkin live there now and operate their slave markets. They keep their ships there as well.”
“I wasn’t aware that the goblinkin had many ships,” Wick said.
“They do now,” Harran replied. “A regular navy of them.”
“All ships like this one?”
“All the ones I’ve seen.”
“But this one is new,” Wick said incredulously.
“I know.”
“Where are they getting them?”
“None of the dwellers along the Shattered Coast know. And none of them are going down to Hanged Elf’s Point to ask.”
“A dweller in Hanged Elf’s Point,” another said, “would be better off slitting his own throat. Otherwise, it’s life imprisonment in the gold and silver mines, or working on the buildings in the city, or fighting in the arena.”
“What arena?” Wick asked.
“You say you lived in Orsin’s Saucer?” a man asked. “Why I thought even in Orsin’s Saucer folks would have heard about the arenas the goblinkin have set up for their own amusement. They pit dwellers against ferocious beasts other dwellers have spent their life’s blood to capture out in the Forest of Fangs and Shadows.”
Wick had never heard of such a forest along the Shattered Coast, nor did he know of a town called Hanged Elf’s Point. But the books he’d read concerning goblinkin and Lord Kharrion had definitely mentioned the evil arenas where the goblinkin slaked their blood-thirst. Before the Goblin Lord’s rise to power, the goblinkin had often conducted such contests with captured prisoners, but Lord Kharrion had ordered such edifices built in each territory his army conquered.
“I’ve spent a lot of time in my father’s shops lately,” Wick said. “And I’ve never been one to get out much.”
“Well, you’re definitely getting out now,” someone said sarcastically.
Wick lay in the darkness, feeling the weight of his chains on him. He’d read about such things in Hralbomm’s Wing, and often thought that a hero getting captured was exciting because it only precluded wondrous escapes and amazing feats of derring-do. But that was only in the fanciful tales. Real people didn’t manage such things. More often than not, the little librarian recalled from the histories he’d read, real people died in chains and dungeons and on torture racks.
He was no hero. He was only a Librarian who’d strayed too far from home one night. Maybe he wouldn’t even be remembered as being important enough to remember. No future Librarians would sit down to read about him and wonder, Whatever happened to Edgewick Lamplighter?
After a time, he drifted off to sleep and didn’t even know it.
“Wake, ye halfer wretches! Wake and get yer breakfast afore I just throws it over the side!” Someone beat on what sounded like a milk pail and the ringing concussions echoed throughout the hold.
Bright sunlight stung Wick’s eyes as he roused. He blinked against the light, hoping his eyes would adjust quickly because the pain made his temples throb. He raised a hand over his eyes, feeling the heaviness of the manacle and chains. His body ached from sleeping on the hard floor of the wooden hull. His clothing was wet in places from the water that pooled and spilled across the floor. For all its newness, Ill Wind, as Wick had discovered, leaked from time to time. As a result, his sleep had been haunted by nightmares of sinking into the Blood-Soaked Sea while chained to the goblin ship.
The little librarian sat up with difficulty. He peered through spread fingers. The dark, shadowy forms that walked among the dozens of dwellers chained to the bottom of the ship gradually became goblinkin. Guards took up positions among the slaves, standing with bared axes while other goblins walked along the ragged lines doling thick gruel and water from five-gallon buckets.
Not having seen Ill Wind’s lowest deck earlier, Wick was appalled to see it now. Dwellers of all sizes and shapes were chained to long metal poles bolted down to the deck. None of them could do more than sit, and even if they had been able, even dwellers couldn’t have stood under the low floor of the deck above.
Most of the sour, decaying odor Wick had been smelling he now realized came from the slaves themselves, not the goblinkin. His heart felt like it was going to burst as he looked at the people around him. Thankfully, there were no children, and only a few dweller women. Evidently the goblinkin slavers aimed to sell strong backs for harsh labor. The brine air that flushed through the slave’s quarters from the open hatch smelled fresh and clean, but was quickly overcome by the lingering stink.
“You’ve never seen anything like this, have you?” a familiar voice asked in a hoarse whisper.
Startled, Wick peered over his shoulder, recognizing the voice as Harran’s.
Harran was thin and sallow looking. Gray wisps showed in his unkempt brown hair and beard. His eyes lacked luster and were red-rimmed. His clothing hung in tatters. He held out his hand. “I’m Harran Fieldtiller. You never mentioned your name yesterday.”
Wick took the man’s hand and found that it shook slightly. “Yesterday?”
Harran nodded, glancing back at the goblinkin walking through the rows of chained dwellers. “You slept through the night.”
Wick’s head spun. How had so much time passed without him knowing it? “What time is it?”
“Morning,” Harran replied. “They always feed us in the morning. Never early, though.”
“What about noon and evening?”
Harran shook his head slowly. “Feeding slaves takes away from profits. Captain Arghant is a firm believer in pinching coppers. All that matters to him is that the slaves he’s bought for trade make it into the port alive. At least, that most of them make it into the port alive. We’ve already lost a dozen or more.”
Wick watched in horror as the goblinkin let the slaves drink from a dipper from the water bucket. The goblinkin with the gruel dipped out a portion into each dweller’s cupped hands.
“As you’ve noticed, they don’t give us any silverware or bowls either,” Harran went on. “There would be far too many bowls to wash and spoons could be shaped into weapons or perhaps picklocks for someone skilled enough.”
The goblinkin rounded the end of the line and started down the one Wick was in.
“Quickly, my friend,” Harran advised. “Put your hands out or
they will skip you. It’s a long time till tomorrow morning.”
Wick cupped his hands, waiting.
The goblin stopped and grinned at him cruelly. “Ah, so ye’re the new one.” He placed the dipper back into the bucket of gruel then reached out and pinched Wick’s cheek. “Still got some fat on ye, don’tcha? Well, we can’t have that. Folks what’s buyin’ a halfer, they already know they’re a-gettin’ purebred laziness. But a fat halfer, now they’re a-gonna think they’re a-biddin’ on a halfer what’s figured out how to get away with bein’ lazy.”
Wick’s face flamed. He felt guilty of being better fed and in better condition than the poor dwellers around him. His hands trembled, and for a moment he thought of putting them down. Then he realized that he had to keep his strength up if he was going to have any chance at all.
“Can’t have a fat halfer on the slaver’s block,” the goblin said. “Cap’n Arghant will have the hide off me back.” He brought the dipper out and barely half filled Wick’s hands. “So’s until ye lose some of that fat, ye’re on half rations.”
Wick looked at the pasty white gruel sitting in his hands. It was cold and greasy and dirty white as if the pot it had been boiled in hadn’t been clean. The appearance and texture made his stomach rumble threateningly.
The goblin moved on and the next one in line offered a dipper of water. “Open yer gullet, halfer,” the goblin snarled.
Wick did as he was ordered. The goblin poured water into his mouth. The water gagged him.
“Don’t spit it out,” Harran warned from behind Wick. “Open your throat and let it pour down. You won’t be given another dipper.”
“Shut yer face,” the gruel goblin ordered. “Or I’ll be a-cuttin’ ye to half rations as well.”
The sound of flesh striking flesh reached Wick’s ears as he managed to catch most of the tepid water in his mouth and swallow it down. After having slept all night without having anything to eat or drink, he had a powerful thirst. The dipper was empty long before he was ready for it to be. He looked at the gruel in his hands, squeezing it and watching it change shapes like an artist’s clay or butternut cake batter that had set up.
