The Deadly Magician (The Memory Stones Series Book 2)

by Jeffrey Quyle

  "Pull, pull, pull those oars!" an officer beseeched the crew; his voice was shifting from angry to pleading. Theus wearily tried to wield his oar alone in compliance with the order, but he saw the black ship ahead of them preparing to pass the Swaigg again, and he knew it would be the last time.

  He ceased his efforts for several seconds, trying to rest his agonized arms in preparation for the next set of frantic orders that he knew were going to be delivered when the Swaigg faced the next assault.

  "Left side halt! Right side pull us away! " the orders were shouted out moments later, then Theus saw an arrow strike the officer trying to direct the activity of the men on the rowing benches, and the man went down.

  The rowers tried to act on the last set of orders that had been issued, but shadows suddenly loomed over them as the black ship pulled close aside the Swaigg.

  Theus heard a number of thumps and an outcry of inarticulate screams. He looked up and saw men leaping from the attacker onto the deck of the Swaigg, swords and pikes held aloft as the seizure of the ship moved to its conclusion.

  Theus released his oar, as the other remaining rowers did likewise, and he joined the scramble towards the ship's prow, in hopes of finding protection from the assault.

  The remaining ship's officers were raising their own weapons to fight the raiders, and the crew was streaming through and past them. Some members of the attacking crew grabbed cables being thrown from the attacking ship; the two vessels were being bound together during the engagement. Theus looked to the side to observe the activity, and in the process tripped over debris strewn across the deck. He felt his ribs strike some unknown projecting object among the clutter, and he winced at the painful injury.

  As he rolled over he saw attackers charging towards him. As quickly as he was able, he rose to his feet, and grabbed a wooden pole to try to protect himself. It was shorter than the staves he had practiced with in the armory at Lord Warrell's home, but it would serve as protection in his moment of desperate need.

  Theus backpedaled between two rowers’ benches, as the front of the wave of attackers went forward towards the defending officers, while a pair of sword-wielding men turned towards Theus.

  "Have a stick do you, boy?" one of them gave a coarse laugh, then swung his sword negligently at Theus, overconfident of his success.

  Theus watched, waited for a frightening second, then reacted as Forgon had taught him, with an angled block that forced the sword's blade down to the deck.

  Theus jerked his pole's opposite end forward with a hard thrust that struck his attacker in the temple and knocked him unconscious.

  The man's blade clattered to the deck as Theus's victim collapsed, and the aching young defender felt a moment of pride, with a fleeting wish that Forgon and Coriae might have seen his successful use of the lessons he had successfully absorbed through their long hours of tutelage.

  Without a further pause, Theus swung his pole at the knee of the second opponent facing him, and when the surprised man stabbed his sword down towards the deck protectively, Theus was able to deliver a second knockout blow to an opponent's head, and the man went down.

  Other fighters turned aside to battle Theus as he surprisingly emerged victorious from his first bout in the center of the ship. He snuck a quick look up at the front of the ship where the officers were putting up a spirited defense. Perhaps, he dreamed, perhaps the officers could withstand the attack while he could keep himself alive, and they might yet survive the violent encounter at sea. It would be a story to remember and retell for all the rest of his days, he knew.

  Another man came at Theus with a sword, and the two of them launched into a spirited contest, as the man tried to maintain a safe posture to defend himself from the longer reach that Theus's pole afforded him. At that distance of engagement Theus felt safe, until a second man joined the first, and the pair began to test Theus simultaneously, inflicting a series of small cuts on his arms before he finally disabled one, then quickly rounded on the other before that attacker was ready to face him in single combat. He knocked the man unconscious, then paused for a moment’s respite, before the next attacker came at him.

  Theus was tired. The long strain of rowing the heavy boat had temporarily been offset by the rush of adrenaline that had carried him through the beginning of the battle on the ship’s deck. He saw that the officers on the foredeck were falling to the onslaught they faced, and he raised his pole again in a defensive stance with a heavy heart, sensing that the end of the combat was near.

  He had only wanted to avoid the royal patrol in Great Forks for a few weeks when he had decided to sail away from the city. He hadn’t cared about where he went, what ship he was on, what work he did. He had only imagined that he needed a simple, straightforward voyage away from Great Forks, a few weeks elsewhere, and then a simple passage back to the city, and to Coriae.

  Instead, he found himself engaged in a life or death struggle for survival, and he knew the odds were now bleakly stacked against him.

  His mother would never know how his story had ended. He hoped that she would imagine he was alive and living well. But he hoped that Coriae would mourn his disappearance; he yearned to see her one more time.

  And then he started to fight the next attacker, defending himself as the space around him emptied of other attackers, who had by then all passed on their way to join in finishing the main resistance. In fact, Theus sensed with his peripheral vision, men were starting to come back down from the top deck, their bloody work there complete.

  Theus saw a swift movement, and a knife flew by him, struck the ship’s railing, and clattered to the deck. He momentarily glanced in surprise at the knife on the deck, and suffered a severe stab to his arm as a penalty for his distraction.

  Another knife flew at him. It followed a true path and struck his leg, deeply embedded in his thigh.

  “Voice! Help me!” Theus cried in despair as he fell to his knees. A wave of darkness washed over him, and he passed out.

  Chapter 2

  Theus knew he was moaning. It was all he knew at first, as he slowly climbed back to consciousness.

  “I’m surprised they let you live, with as many of their men as you defeated,” a voice spoke in the darkness around him.

  “They respected him for fighting so hard,” another voice said.

  “And they know that if he even lives, he won’t be likely to fight any further,” a fourth voice said, “not with those injuries.”

  Theus felt movement. He was on a ship still, he could tell for the movement. The darkness around him resolved into a dimness, and there were shapes he could discern. They were the shapes of men hovering near him.

  “Take it easy, fellow,” one of the voices said, and a hand laid upon his shoulder.

  Theus felt pain in many parts of his body, but particularly in his left arm and left leg.

  “What’s happening? Where is this?” he murmured the question.

  “We’re in the orlop of the Swaigg,” someone explained.

  “Where is that?” Theus didn’t know the term.

  “It’s the bottom deck; we’re locked down here during the day, and we have to row at night. You haven’t since they expect you to die,” the dim figure explained.

  “You were the rower on the fifth bench, with Elof, weren’t you?” another voice asked.

  “I did row with Elof,” Theus confirmed, foggily remembering the man he had sat beside and stroked an oar with. “Is he here?”

  “He isn’t,” the answer provided abundant information.

  “How do we get out of here?” Theus asked. The ship dipped forward as it crested a large wave out on the open sea it was sailing across. The movement tossed him forward, and he felt striking pain in his injured arm and injured leg as his body shifted.

  The others were briefly silent as they held on to their surroundings during the movement.

  “We get out when they let us out. That’s it,” one of the other captives answered.

  �
��They don’t take many prisoners. The ones they do take – who live – are sold as slaves in Southsand in the south,” another person added.

  The reference to the southern kingdom triggered some vague negative recollection in Theus’s muddled memory, though he couldn’t place the trouble.

  “Voice?” he called softly, heedless of the others around him. “How do we get out of this?”

  There was no answer from the protective, knowledgeable, helpful voice that had accompanied Theus along the course of his adventures.

  “We just told you,” one of the other captives answered. “We have to sit here and wait. We don’t get out; we just try to survive.”

  There was a grating sound, and Theus saw a wash of dim light appear at the other end of the confined space he and the others occupied. There were several thumping sounds, and then the light vanished.

  “There’s the dinner bread,” one voice announced, as Theus heard others go scuttling through the dark to retrieve the food that had been dropped to the captives. There were more men in the hold than Theus had realized; he heard several people shuffling and moving in response to the arrival of the food.

  Minutes later he had handed a chunk of stale bread. He ate the food slowly, without appetite, then fell asleep again, uneasily, as the pain from his injuries troubled him.

  The next time he awoke he learned more from the men around him.

  “We’ll reach the port tomorrow,” one of the other prisoners told him.

  “And we’ll be sold as slaves?” Theus asked.

  “All but you,” the man answered. “The pirates said they don’t expect you to live very long, but they respect you for fighting so hard, so they haven’t thrown you overboard. They’ll try to sell you, fail because you’re injured, then just give you to the palace as a gift and let the palace have you.”

  “They think I’m going to die from these injuries?” Theus asked with concern.

  “Your leg doesn’t smell very good,” the man said in a factual tone. “It may be infected; I can’t tell without any light down here.”

  “Voice? Where are you?” Theus asked softly. “Why don’t you help me?”

  There was no answer, and Theus drifted off to sleep again.

  The final time he awoke as a prisoner onboard the Swaigg, there was noise and light and movement all around him.

  “Help carry him to the deck,” he heard a heavily accented voice command, and then two or more men lifted him and painfully manhandled him up through the hatches to reach the open air and the top deck of the captive ship.

  Theus blinked painfully, using his uninjured arm and hand to try to shield his eyes from the bright sun.

  He felt a breeze waft across the deck, and he realized how good the air movement felt. He hadn’t comprehended how stifling hot the interior of the ship had been until the fresh breeze swept the odors and unpleasantness away.

  “Can you walk on your own?” one of his handlers asked.

  The men lowered his feet to the deck, and he tried to stand. The leg that had been stabbed by the thrown knife buckled, until Theus grabbed a nearby cable to steady himself. He looked down at the injured leg, and his breath whistled through his teeth as he realized what he saw. The leg was frightfully swollen and red; it was badly infected. The injury was covered with scabbing that left no doubt that there would be an ugly scar – assuming he survived long enough to have a scar.

  He looked at his painful arm. It didn’t look as bad, but was clearly infected as well.

  He knew what to do. Through the fog of pain and confusion and depression in his mind, he knew what he needed to do to treat the wounds. The memories from Falstaff’s ancient memory stone filled his mind with possible remedies to use to halt the infections and heal the flesh. But he was a long way from any place that would give him easy access to the ingredients he needed to mix a cure for his infections.

  “Get the crippled one off the ship!” he heard a guttural voice shout from the dock.

  “Get going, Theus,” one of the other men from the orlop said. The man placed Theus’s good arm around his own shoulder, and assisted the injured prisoner down the steep gang plank, giving Theus a momentary fear that he was going to fall into the murky harbor water beneath the plank. They made it safely to the stone jetty, and Theus was taken from his companion, and placed in a wagon with several other men. A chain with shackles connected them all to one another and to the wagon, and then the wagon began to roll away.

  Theus watched from the back of the wagon as the battered hull of the Swaigg grew smaller, then disappeared from sight as the wagon entered the waterfront district of the city they were landed in, Southsand.

  His view was restricted to seeing what they passed, as he sat on the back gate of the wagon, and what he saw failed to inspire him. The buildings were constructed of dark blocks of stone, of grimy bricks, and splintered wooden posts. It was depressing to see, and the faces of the people he saw were grim and unfriendly.

  “New slaves!” he heard a voice shout, as the wagon entered an area crowded with pedestrians, and then the wagon came to a stop. A soldier unlocked the shackles from the dozen men in the wagon, and they were ordered to move around to the front.

  “There wasn’t an auction scheduled for today,” another voice in the crowd said. “No one knows there’re any goods here to be bought.”

  “That just makes better bargains for those who happen to be here then,” someone answered.

  “That one is a waste of money,” he heard one nearby observer say as Theus haltingly limped along the side of the wagon, holding onto the wooden planks for support. He could see that there were people all around them, almost exclusively men, and the line of captives he was in was heading into a wooden pen, as if they were animals. The people around them were observing them carefully.

  “You are first up,” a man pointed at one of the captives five minutes later, after they had settled into their cramped pen, one of several that were side by side by side, though theirs was the only one that Theus could see that had anything to contain.

  The notified captive was led up a set of stairs as Theus and the others watched, to where the man could stand on a stage, with a pair of other men who appeared from the far side of the platform.

  “This is our first lot,” one of the men spoke loudly to whatever audience stood out of sight on the far side of the stage. “These are captives from a sea battle, and the ship’s captain is Graint,” the announcer read from a piece of paper he held. “There’s not much known about the products today, other than the ship they were on was out of Great Forks and bound for Thuro.

  “What am I bid for this first transaction?” he asked.

  “Two silvers,” Theus heard a price shouted out from the bidders on the far side of the stage.

  “That’s not a realistic price, and you know it,” the auctioneer responded. “This man is apparently healthy and of a young age. He’ll be suitable for many years of work in the fields or the mines. He’s worth at least three times that, and may be a steal if you find he has any talents.”

  “Seven silvers,” the first bidder sullenly revised his price offer.

  “Eight silvers,” another voice said.

  “And three coppers,” a third voice jumped into the contest.

  “Eight silvers and three coppers bid,” the auctioneer repeated. “Do I hear nine silvers?”

  Without any further bids, the dazed man on the stage was sold. Theus and the others in the pen watched the man be led off to the side and out of sight.

  “What’ll happen to Rich?” someone asked.

  “Chances are, we’ll never know, unless someone gets sold to the same buyer,” said another of the prisoners in the pen.

  “You, get up here,” the auctioneer stood above the pen and pointed to another prisoner.

  The man went up on the stage, and was treated to a similar type of introduction, then bidding by the buyers that the men in the pen couldn’t see.

  “I’ll bet Lars
fetches a higher price,” one of Theus’s companions predicted objectively as he placed his hand on the shoulder of the largest man in the pen.

  When Lars was called up on the stage minutes later, the bidding reached five silvers and a copper before it ended and Theus watched Lars being led off stage.

  Theus was the last captive left in the pen. As he leaned against the slats in the pen’s walls, he thought about the strange fate that had now left him assigned to slavery for the second time within a year. His first term, as an indentured servant to Grant, had been the farthest thing possible from a hardship. Grant had been kind and generous – if anything, Grant had spoiled Theus, rather than misused him.

  The likelihood of such a positive outcome in his present circumstance was next to nothing, he judged.

  “Get up here ugly, and hurry,” the auctioneer shouted at him.

  “Our next specimen is the last of the day, so if you haven’t bought anything yet, this is your last chance,” the auctioneer bawled out to the crowd a moment later, as he turned and walked back out on the stage to address his attendees.

  “This one got roughed up in the ship, but he’s a good, young slave who will give you many years of work when he’s forced back into shape,” the auctioneer pitched his sale as Theus limped up onto the stage.

  “Good build, young, fairly tall,” the auctioneer tried to point out all of Theus’s appealing traits.

  “What am I bid for this jewel in the rough?” the auctioneer asked as Theus arrived on the stage, finally, fully visible to the crowd of bidders.

  It was the first opportunity for Theus to see the men who were bidding to purchase the unfortunate sailors from the Swaigg. Their appearances varied widely – some appeared to be the direct overseers of slaves on farms, smears of dirt evident on their work boots, while others appeared to be aristocrats, if Theus could judge the quality of the robes and jewelry. But none of them showed any interest in Theus.

  “If there are no bidders, he will become property of the king,” the auctioneer said for the first time that afternoon. “So what am I bid?”