Heart of Black Ice

CHAPTER 42

The sea was wide open around the Norukai ships as they lost sight of shore. Bannon took no joy in the expansive sight, even though it reminded him of how he and Ian had once stood on the beach at Chiriya Island, watching the ships sail by. The two had dreamed of seeing the world, though Bannon mostly just wanted to escape his father.

Now he dreaded where King Grieve was taking them, to the main Norukai islands.

Belowdecks, the oar master pounded on his drum, and the unfortunate slaves chained to the benches pulled at the oars to drive the serpent ships faster than the sluggish breeze.

After being beaten unconscious at the river mouth, Lila had been tossed to the deck near Bannon, her ankle also secured with a chain, the chain that had once imprisoned Erik. Now the morazeth lay bruised and battered, a captive just like him. Bannon couldn’t understand why she had allowed herself to be captured. She had caused it! It seemed a foolish risk.

As she lay motionless under the hot sun, he studied the symbols that marked her skin. The runes protected her against magic, but they did nothing against the brutal Norukai. Her body was mottled with bruises.

Lila finally groaned, and her eyelids flickered open. She snapped awake in an instant, fully conscious and alert. She thrashed against the ankle chain, and her wince told Bannon just how much pain she must feel. When her gaze locked on to his, she visibly relaxed. “So, I succeeded then. My memory is … fogged.”

“You certainly drew their attention.” The words bubbled out of him, rising in intensity. “That was a foolish stunt! Why would you do that? We’re both prisoners. Now you’re in as bad a place as I am.”

“I am in the same place as you are,” Lila said, as if that were reason enough. “That was my intent.”

“But why? What can you hope to achieve here?”

“More than I could achieve if these ships sailed off and I never saw you again. It was the only way I could stay with you. Now we have a chance.”

Bannon hung his head, and his long hair drooped over his face. “A chance? You are maddening. I don’t understand how you think.”

She frowned. “It is perfectly obvious. The Norukai ships were going out to sea, and that was my last opportunity to intercept them. If they had sailed into the ocean, how else could I rescue you?”

“This isn’t much of a rescue,” he said.

“Obviously, I am not finished yet.” She winced again as she shifted her body to inspect her bruises. She flexed her fingers, ran her tongue over the caked blood on her smashed lip. “I will heal.” She strained at the bindings around her wrists until blood stained the knotted rope. “I can work myself free eventually, but the ankle chain will be problematic.”

He looked across the open water, but he could no longer see the coastline, only endless ocean. “I have no doubts about you, Lila. I know what you’re capable of.”

“Of course you don’t have any doubts. I have never given you any reason to.”

Now that she was helpless, he feared the Norukai would drag her across the deck and rape her, although most of the raiders seemed to prefer their own beefy women, and their nightly lovemaking on the open deck sounded more like a brawl. Still, he had seen Norukai men ravish three of the female Ildakaran captives, treating them so brutally that two were mad and one was dead and tossed overboard. They thought of their slaves as nothing more than “walking meat.” Lila was a beautiful woman with a lean and shapely body. He dreaded what would happen to her, but he also felt a sick inevitability.

The first night at sea, a sneering young Norukai with fresh red scars on his face grabbed Lila’s leg chain, unfastened it, and dragged her away. She didn’t scream. Instead, she coiled, made herself ready. Bannon threw himself to the end of his own chain. “Leave her alone!”

The Norukai laughed, but Bannon was more stung when Lila turned and snapped at him, “Be quiet, boy! You only make it worse. I can handle this.” She tugged on her own chain, pulling back against the raider, but the Norukai yanked the metal links, nearly dislocating her shoulder.

After the Norukai man dragged her into the shadows beside stacked crates of stolen supplies, Bannon strained to hear her voice, sure that Lila would challenge her attacker, but she spoke no words. He heard a scuffle, a grunt, then a scream—but it was not Lila’s scream.

The Norukai man reeled back out of the gloom, drunk with agony, as he staggered across the deck. Holding her own chain, Lila stalked back to return to Bannon’s side. Several Norukai came running in response to their comrade’s groans. He pressed his palms to his crotch and blood dribbled between his fingers. The angry Norukai stared at Lila, but she faced them defiantly, holding up a fleshy handful in her palm. “I tore off his testicles, but I stopped at that. If another man tries to take me, I will make him eat them as well.”

She tossed the bloody sac with a splat onto the deck. The would-be rapist whimpered, then collapsed in a bloody mess. The Norukai prowled toward Lila, ready to tear her to pieces.

Bannon hoped his leg chain would be long enough for him to fight. Lila stood her ground and prepared to die.

King Grieve strode over and saw the writhing, moaning man on the deck, the bloody testicle sac next to him, and he guffawed. Moments later, the other Norukai joined the king in bellowing laughter. “Throw him overboard,” Grieve said. “Worthless.”

They tossed the moaning raider, still alive, into the sea.

Lila went back to her place beside Bannon, and the angry Norukai men glowered at her before loudly declaring that she was too scrawny for their tastes.

The next day, after several captives were worked to exhaustion belowdecks, the oar master herded them back up on deck with shouts and growls and cracking whips. Bosko released Lila and Bannon from their manacles on deck and commanded them to go down to the benches. A foul stench wafted around him, which even the sea breezes couldn’t dissipate.

During the stifling heat of the afternoon, Bannon and Lila sat side by side as they pulled on the oars. Lila was a friend and sometimes lover, but she had never been much for conversation. As they pulled on the oars, Lila stared with hatred at the Norukai captors, yet with a calculating gleam in her eyes.

Chalk came down to jabber, fearful of Lila, but fascinated by her as well. In a clumsy whisper that was easily audible over the creaking oars, he muttered to Bannon as if it were a secret, “Pretty lady. Dangerous lady.” His pale face was mottled purple and yellow from where she had struck him. “No love for Chalk, though. Not me. I’ll never have love.”

Lila growled, “Cut me loose and I’ll love you until I break you into tiny pieces.” Chalk scuttled away with a last look at Bannon and retreated up the wooden ladder to the deck above.

“Pull!” the oar master scolded.

The serpent ships sailed north from the estuary for days. Grieve paced the deck, and Chalk followed him like a puppy. The king placed his iron-knuckled hand on the shaman’s bony shoulder. “We’ll be at the Bastion soon.”

“The Bastion,” Chalk cried. “Home!” He ran up to Bannon, leaned close, and repeated, “Home!”

Grieve’s expression darkened as he turned to his shaman. “I hoped Ildakar would be the center of my new empire. What went wrong? What didn’t you foresee? We should have been victorious!”

Chalk’s pale eyes gleamed with a cracked edge of madness. “There will be war, a big war! I promised a war. Many ships. My Grieve, King Grieve! They’ll all grieve!”

“Soon,” the king vowed.

The serpent ships sailed onward. For Bannon and Lila, the days were an endless blur of being chained on the open deck or sweating in the miserable hold as they worked the oars. When the wind picked up and stretched the sails, the oars were withdrawn, and the slaves remained bound with nothing to do but fear their fates.

One afternoon, the lookout called from the top of the mast. “Selka in the water! Starboard side.” Grieve strode to the bow, where he shaded his craggy brow and stared out on the waves.

Bannon raised himself up so he could scan the water. “Do you see them?” he asked Lila.

“What are selka?”

Squinting across the choppy water, he felt a thrill of terror as he spotted five swimming figures. “They look human, but they are definitely not human.”

Lila’s brow furrowed. “Fish people?”

“That’s as good a description as any. A race of humans long ago altered to live under the water. They can rip sharks apart with their claws.” He shivered even under the hot sun. “Nathan told me that during the great war thousands of years ago, powerful wizards manipulated captives, gave them gills and changed their skin in order to form an undersea army. The war is long over, and the selka have built an entire civilization beneath the surface. They hate humans and they still prey on ships.” He swallowed hard as the memories washed over him.

“They attacked the Wavewalker when we were traveling south. The selka swarmed over our ship at night, killed the entire crew to get revenge against the wishpearl divers that raided their reefs. Nicci, Nathan, and I were the only ones to survive when the Wavewalker wrecked on the Phantom Coast. The selka queen had some connection to me, didn’t want to kill me … for whatever that was worth. But they were unstoppable.”

“The odds are better now. This time you have me to fight beside you,” Lila said. “And I am a morazeth.”

With her hands bound and her ankles shackled, Bannon doubted even Lila could do much against a selka attack.

At the railings, the Norukai held their bone-tipped spears, ready to hurl them at the swimming figures, but the selka kept their distance. Grieve bellowed a challenge out on the water. “Come close enough for us to kill you!” The selka remained tauntingly out of reach.

Chalk groaned with fascination. “Selka fish! Fish people!” He nervously ran his palms over the puckered, scarred skin of his stomach. “I don’t want to be gutted, King Grieve, my Grieve.”

The king glowered down at him. “I won’t let them gut you, Chalk.”

The shaman chanted in a singsong voice, “Wrong, wrong, wrong!”

As if bored, the selka swam away, while the Norukai doubled their lookouts to keep watch on the water.

Lost in his memories, Bannon mused quietly to Lila, “I don’t know why the selka queen spared me the first time.” When he was much younger, he had stolen a small fishing boat and sailed away from Chiriya Island without charts or knowledge. He drifted for days until he ran out of water and food, sunburned, in despair. He’d been sure he would die at sea.

“I knew stories of the selka,” he told Lila, “but I’d never seen one. I thought they were just fisherman’s tales, but that night when a sea fog closed in, I huddled in my boat and fell asleep. In the darkness, something pulled my boat, brought me back to the island. When I woke, I was home, and the boat was dragged up on the rocky shore. I saw only the imprint of a webbed foot in the beach.” He looked at her. “When they attacked the Wavewalker, the selka queen seemed to recognize me.”

Lila gave him a skeptical look. “I believe you overestimate your charm and attractiveness, boy.” Her voice was flat, but he thought she was teasing him. “But if the queen wishes to be your lover, I will fight her.”

He shuddered at the thought. “I don’t ever want to see her again.”