by Ted Neill
They were fed twice a day. Watered six times. Only occasionally in turns would they be allowed to relieve themselves in a bucket. When it was full, the last one to fill it had to carry it, sloshing, topside and dump it. When one rower, a merchant man of some breeding and class who had fallen into debt and been sold into slavery, refused to row, Ravitch nearly drowned him by stuffing his head into the same bucket of excrement.
The merchant was cooperative after that.
Weeks went by. Sade dwelled on his hatred and bitterness. He entertained great fantasies of breaking free and unleashing his power upon the crew, but besides a few weather working spells, he truly had nothing that could help them against leather whips and iron manacles. One day he had decided he would disclose his abilities, calling Ravitch over to explain to him that he could help the crew and work the weather, but when he tried to work a spell his mind was a confused blur and his strength gone. He knew magic was difficult to work when he was tired, but he had not anticipated that worn down as he was from rowing, he would have nearly nothing left within him for conjuring. He did little more than call a few stray raindrops down upon the deck. They went undetected by Ravitch and the crew. For Sade, all his efforts earned him was a beating.
With the mindless monotony of the rowing occupying his body, Sade’s mind wandered, reflecting on their lives so far. Considering their best and worst times, Sade could only conclude that when they had been soft—loving their mother, trusting Nicholas, even Jerrold—they had left themselves vulnerable to pain, loss, betrayal. Playing by their own rules had indeed made them strong, powerful even. That power had only ebbed when they had given themselves over to sentiment. If they ever escaped this hell, Sade knew his life would be committed to one thing and one thing only: the acquisition of power, for himself. That was the way one survived.
Sade soon learned that there were two types of rowers. Strong men with broad backs, rounded shoulders, and muscular arms—these men were highly valued and given extra portions of gruel and grog to keep their strength up. Those near the front would sometimes even be unchained to have their way with one of the girls or boys, as a reward and motivation. The crew viewed his brother with his fighter’s physique and unfailing stamina as one of these rowers.
The other type of rower was any man who was thin, weak, or showed signs of fatigue. These rowers were place holders, temporary parts so to speak, who would fetch little as laborers, and held a place on the bench until they expired from exhaustion, at which point they were simply thrown overboard and another slave from the aft hold replaced them.
Sade was one of these disposable rowers. His one grace was that he was chained next to his brother. Vondales carried the load for both of them and even shared his food with Sade when Ravitch was not looking. It helped to keep Sade going, but he had no doubts about his long-term prospects. When he contracted a fever and the runs, he knew his fate was sealed. Ravitch took one whiff of the air about him and turned to the slave dispensing the morning gruel, “Don’t bother, this one is a goner.”
But Vondales shared his gruel and pulled for both of them that day. “Just rest your arms on the oar,” he said. “I’ll pull. You just wait until your strength returns.”
Vondales actually flourished with the challenge. His body was built for work: his arms had thickened, his waist had grown slender. If not for the fact they were enslaved, Sade imagined his brother could have thrived as a rower. It certainly was better than being a fighter in some ways. And Vondales was thrilled every time they came to a new port and a new city with all different kinds of brigs, galleys, and other craft anchored in the harbor. He would press himself against the oarlock as close as he could to see what wonders awaited them on the other side.
At least when I’m gone, he’ll have work that makes him happy.
Despite the long reprieves, Sade was growing weaker. The monotony of the work was torture. The constant motion, the aching and burning of his entire body each morning—his legs from stiffness, his back and arms from work, his palms from friction—created endless suffering. Vondales encouraged him to flex and relax his leg muscles in lieu of standing but Sade did not know how to explain that he simply didn’t have the energy to make the effort. The rhythm of rowing remained in his body even when they slept on the benches. Sleeping, he dreamed of rowing.
His fever only worsened. And his brother was beginning to show signs of fatigue at the end of each day. Sade had even forgotten his hatred of Jerrold. For the first weeks it had burned brightly, helping him to see past the pain of blisters and cramps and aching joints. Such a betrayal, he had thought, would burn for an eternity. But not now. Now he was apathetic. Even his own life he cared little for. So one afternoon when Ravitch unchained him and motioned for two other slaves to carry Sade topside to be tossed overboard, Sade did not resist.
“No!” Vondales protested. He released his oar to grab hold of Sade, striking out at the other slaves. Though chained to his bench, Vondales was still dangerous. Sade tried to soothe him, for all the leagues of rowing, the weeks of beatings, the hatred and bitterness he had carried had worn him down—he was ready for it to end.
“It’s all right brother, I have nothing left.”
But Vondales would have none of it. “I will row for both of us, I can!” His desperation made him fearless even of Ravitch. When the overseer brought his whip down on him, Vondales reacted as a fighter, not a rower. He caught the whip, yanking it free of Ravitch’s hands, and turned it on the overseer. Vondales left a red welt across the overseer’s face. He lunged for a second attack but was caught by his chains. At which point Ravitch had recovered and called to his crewmates from the deck above. They descended the steps, their hands balled into fists.
After so long in the hold, the sunlight above deck blinded Sade. The crew carried him and then threw him across the boards at the feet of the captain. Sade did not catch himself, he had no strength left for that. He simply fell, landing on his face and tasting blood in his mouth.
Just make it quick.
The slavers used a language that he was not familiar with, so the details of their discussion were lost on him. A pretty girl—or she would have been pretty without the bruises on her face—stood by, clutching a mop and a bucket. At a look from the captain, she moved to close a manacle around Sade’s wrist. It was unnecessary. There was no fight left in him. The captain himself bent down, his thick beard touching Sade’s bare shoulder, and sniffed him. He said something to make the other men laugh then turned his attention to the opposite side of the deck.
Four men were wrestling Vondales up from the hold. Unlike Sade, he was not cooperating and by the welts and scratches on the crew members, it was clear he had put up stiff resistance below. Two more men joined the scuffle then two more and they finally overpowered his brother and moved to tie him, arms outstretched across the gunwale.
No, not my brother.
Ravitch had replaced his whip with his truncheon and waited for the captain’s signal. The pretty girl with the mop was already looking away, but the captain yanked her head around by the ponytail to force her to watch. It was an important lesson on a slaving ship: what happens to slaves who fight back. With a nod from the captain, the blows began. They made a meaty wood-on-flesh noise, except for when the truncheon came down on his brother’s head. The contact of weapon on bone made a terrible clunk. His brother’s skin was soon splitting apart, his face swollen, bloody, and beyond recognition.
Panic and terror returned strength to Sade’s limbs that he did not know he had. He pulled at his chains and protested, “No, no punish me.”
But the captain only put his boot down on the chain and Sade’s arms crashed back on the deck. Vondales’ blood splattered the boards. Ravitch was breathing heavily, his expression one of concentration as if hammering in a row of nails. When he grew tired, he handed the truncheon over to another crew member, a younger man whose eye was swelling from one of Vondales’ punches. He brought the weapon down on the crown of his brothe
r’s head.
The boat was silent but for the lapping waves and the popping of blows. A few men laughed or exclaimed when a particularly well-struck blow would send a glob of blood flying outwards. A string of red struck one man in the face. Another man complained when blood splattered his shirt. Vondales was motionless. His breathing was ragged, tears made tracks down through the blood on his face. The second crewman grew tired and handed the truncheon back to Ravitch. They were making an example of Vondales for all the other slaves. Slaves were nothing but chattel, not even deserving of the mercy given to slaughtered animals. And like a dying animal, Sade’s brother slouched against the gunwale, rendered dumb, confused, and scared.
But he was not an animal. He was Sade’s brother and Sade’s only link to a life once worth living. He strained against his chains, dragging them across the deck and pulling them taut as he stumbled towards his brother. The captain, less amused now, stomped down on the chains again. Sade fell, but this time he lifted his gaze to meet the captain’s eyes. Hate poured through him so that all he felt was rage—a rage born of blood, of family—and fear—not of death but rather of being alone.
The flames in his hand surprised him. Sade thought them at first a flickering of his soul leaving his body, but the tongues grew into a wreath of fire that encircled but did not burn his own flesh.
You will call the fire forth one day when you do not fear it.
The captain’s black beady eyes grew large, the fire reflecting in them. The girl made a sign to avert evil. Sade could feel the flames, brushing and licking his hands like warm feathers, but he felt no pain. He heard the footstep on the boards behind him before the blow came that knocked him back down to the deck. His hands were flung apart and the fire roared through the air, falling on the girl, igniting her into a screaming silhouette of flame.
Sade willed the fire to spare her, but the flames had their own life, their own mind, their own anger, born of his own. Ravitch reached down from behind him to choke him, seizing his neck and crushing his windpipe. Not a bit of air could escape that grip. Sade’s lips moved, trying to recall the words he had learned a lifetime before. His last thought before the red darkness overtook him was: Fire, fire like the sun.
Sade woke to the smell of smoke—wood smoke and cooking meat. He pictured a summer festival back on Illicaine when pigs were slaughtered and slow roasted over fires for hours before drenching them in a sweet-spicy sauce made from the sap of the red maple trees.
But then he heard the lapping of water sluicing down along the hull of the ship and he remembered where he was.
I am no longer home.
He pitied himself that he had to wake up, anticipating the horror he had to still endure before the end. But when he opened his eyes, he was on a different ship. The worn boards of the Judgement he had come to know were gone, replaced by uniform black, charred planks, their surfaces scaled from the heat of a quick moving fire. Beside him was a smoking corpse. It was faceless and would have been indistinguishable but for the glowing metal truncheon in its shriveled hand.
Ravitch.
This is not a different ship.
Or what was left of it. Not a sail remained. The masts were shortened and withered like trees after a forest fire. Some rigging still hung freely as flames consumed what was left, tracing circles of smoke in the air. The crew was dead, burned, every one of them. The cargo, too. Between the gaps in the withered deck boards Sade could see into the hull below where the blackened remains of their fellow slaves curled around what was left of the oars.
“Vondales,” Sade’s voice croaked as he remembered his brother and worried for his fate. He pulled away from the charred boards and turned to where he had last seen his brother. Tears came to his eyes. Tears of relief, for there, completely out of place amid the destruction, the smoking ruins, the roasting bodies, was Vondales. He was as he had been—beaten and bloodied—but unharmed by the spell of fire.
Here was Sade’s proof that he was indeed more than a common weather worker. Sade had the potential of great magic in him, to be a sorcerer as Jerrold had foreseen. Finally. But the demon that had awoken in him had proved beyond his control as a novice. His own will and his love for his brother had imposed the only restraint on the spell, sparing the two of them from the inferno. But nothing and no one else.
Sade tended to his brother’s wounds as best he could, using strips of his own tattered trousers as bandages. The Judgement smelled of a funeral pyre now and there was nowhere to go to escape the odor of death.
Or the sun. The sun hammered them with its light and heat. The blackened boards grew blistering hot and with the sails incinerated there was no place to seek shade.
Fire, fire like the sun.
It was soon clear to Sade that their fate was still sealed. The ship was dead in the water, irrevocably crippled, the cabins reduced to cinders, the crew into ash. He saw the young slave girl catching alight in his mind’s eye and tried to push the image away, for in her face he saw the girl he had run down on Illicaine again. The slave girl was the smaller corpse, smoking just to the left of the captain.
Death still waited for Sade and Vondales. No food. No water. The power he had channeled had saved them from a quick death, sparing them for a slow one.
The sun set in a bank of scarlet and violet clouds. The Judgement still smoldered and crackled in places. Sade rested with Vondales stretched across his lap, welcoming the darkness of night and the coolness that came with it. Sade could not sleep. It was as if the presence of such power and the imminence of their deaths had chased fatigue away. Instead Sade watched the stars slowly turn overhead. He missed their mother, and for the first time in the years since they had lost her, he wept. Not as much for her memory but for his own sense of shame that he had failed her and failed his brother.
Vondales mumbled in his sleep. Sade checked the bandages on his head. The bleeding had stopped. How he wished his brother might not wake, so as to be spared a long terrible death by sun and thirst and starvation. It occurred to Sade that they might eat the charred remains of the crew, but something in him revolted at the notion. No, the destructive blackness that had overtaken the ship would remain outside of him, outside his body. He would hold on to life, whatever he had left, as long as he could.
The stars dimmed and the sky lightened. The sun returned, an orange face sliding up from the horizon. Vondales woke, but was still in pain. Sade leaned up against the gunwale beside his brother and held his head in his hands. As the day passed they both grew stiff. They could have moved but there was no point. The water line had crept up the side of the ship, the lower decks flooding. Black water moved amongst the bodies of the slaves below, peeling away burnt flesh. The deck collapsed in places, letting sunlight below for the first time since the Judgement had been built.
Things end as they began, Sade thought, but he was unsure if it was true wisdom or just the madness of thirst settling in. His mouth felt full of glue and his lips were already thin and peeling. His stomach was beyond hunger pains but the desire for water would not cease. It was only time before they would drink the water of the sea, the water of death, on a boat of death.
The sun was their Ravitch now, a harsh overseer providing worse torment than even the Thelonian could have meted out. Sade’s skin was red and covered in boils by noon. Vondales fared no better, but the bandages on his head at least kept his scalp from burning. They both stretched out, too weak even to sit, and watched the play of narrow shadows on the deck as the sun moved from one side of the sky to the other.
Around mid-afternoon the main mast collapsed. Its fall must have weakened the entire ship for the foremast came down shortly after. Neither Sade nor Vondales moved. The wreckage could have fallen on them and they would have welcomed it. They touched hands, knuckle to knuckle, because to grip one another’s hand would have been too hard.
The sun set and precious shadow crept out from the gunwale. Sade knew these were their final hours. He welcomed the darkness and the cold
of night—one last respite before he would wither. There was no life left in him any longer, after rowing, sickness, torture, and thirst—he was spent.
If only he had power to steer the ship, to replace it sails, to reseal its hull. But those were enchantments far beyond him, and perhaps the greatest of sorcerers. Even a simple spell to bring the breeze would tax him too much now. It would kill him for sure. He contemplated it. Perhaps he could call the wind, not to steer the ship, but to cool his brother during the heat of the day. At least then Vondales would be comfortable.
But then he would be alone. Sade could not do that to him. Not by choice.
At night he dreamed of waking. He saw the stars dance before him, spreading into clouds of light that descended on the husk of the ship like a fog. He twitched his fingers as astral haze danced on his palms and swirled about his head. Vondales was speaking in his sleep again. Time could have stood completely still or flown past; Sade had lost all sense of it. At one point the moon was over the stern post, but when he looked again it was abeam. Had they moved, or had the ship, or even the sky itself?
But all was still as the light found them in the morning. It dimmed but the brightest of stars and painted a band of red on the eastern horizon.
The fire was returning.
Sade moved to touch his brother’s hand in the gray morning light but his own hand could not be moved. Stiff, immobile as stone, this had to be the way things came to a close. They had sunk even farther into the sea. Water was sloshing up between the withered planks. The only question that remained was if they would die of exposure or drowning.
As the sky grew brighter the Judgement began to shake. It was so low in the water waves were tossing it about. They would escape the sun this day, Sade realized. It would be a watery death for them.
