Treasures of Fantasy - Margaret Weis [3]
For men are free to choose. And thus men may unwittingly unravel the plans of the gods. . . .
Skylan Ivorson, Chief of Chiefs of the Vindrasi nation, sat in the sand and watched half-naked men with hammers crawl over the side of his ship. He was reminded of flies swarming over a carcass.
The damage the Venjekar had suffered when the ship ran aground on a sandbar was greater than Acronis, the Legate of Oran, had first thought. After capturing the ship, the Legate had ordered his men to make some cursory repairs to the hull and then sail with the tide. The Venjekar had taken on so much water so rapidly that Tribune Zahakis, chosen by the Legate to captain the ship, had barely made it back to shore.
Skylan had felt a grim sort of satisfaction in the failure. It was as if the Venjekar knew she had been taken captive and had chosen to sink to the bottom of the sea rather than submit to her captors. Skylan prayed to Torval that the foul Southlanders would not be able to repair the Venjekar. Let them take away his sword, haul him off in chains; he would find some comfort in the fact that his ship had steadfastly defied her foes.
The Venjekar had not been given the choice. The Legate carried carpenters on board his ship, a war galley which the soldiers called a “trireme” because it had three banks of oars. Acronis sent the carpenters to make repairs. Zahakis ordered the Torgun prisoners to be removed from the ship. They now sat in the sand, their hands and feet shackled, bound to each other by chains, and watched over the soldiers of the Legate in their glistening segmented armor and leather skirts.
The Torgun warriors, bereft of their armor, were now only seven in number. Almost thirty had set sail on the Venjekar when Skylan had begun this god-cursed voyage. Some had died fighting the giants on the Dragon Isles. Some had been wounded in the battle against the Southlanders. They had survived their wounds only to die later with the others, victims of a strange sickness, the likes of which the Torgun had never known before.
The sickness came on suddenly, beginning with fever and chills, stomach cramps and bloody diarrhea, and ending in death for many. Others, like Aylaen and Treia, Erdmun and the youngster, Farinn, had caught the sickness, but recovered. Skylan had not been affected by it at all, possibly because he had remained isolated from the others, a prisoner in the hold. The sickness had not struck Wulfe either, possibly because the boy had run away. Terrified of the strange soldiers, Wulfe had stayed away from the camp for days. He was gone so long Skylan had thought the boy had run off for good this time. But then Wulfe had returned, showing up unexpectedly, saying he was hungry.
Skylan had feared the soldiers of Oran would try to shackle Wulfe. The boy had a marked aversion to iron, swearing he could not touch it or it would hurt him. Wulfe could not even bear to smell it.
The Southlanders did not shackle Wulfe. They had no manacles that would fit over the boy’s scrawny wrists, and no one considered the eleven-year-old boy a danger. They didn’t particularly care if he ran away again, and so the soldiers left him alone. If Raegar had been on shore, he could have told them that Wulfe was extremely dangerous. He would have urged the soldiers to bind him hand and foot and lock him in the hold. Raegar was not there, however. Skylan had not seen his traitor cousin for days. Wulfe crouched by Skylan’s side, keeping his distance, for fear he might accidentally touch one of the iron shackles.
The prisoners were not chained up to keep them from running away, but rather to discourage the “savages” from attacking their guards. The Torgun warriors had already tried twice to fight their captors, not with any hope of escape, for they had no weapons, but simply with the intent of killing as many as they could before they themselves were killed.
The Torgun blamed Skylan for everything—the storm that had blown them off course, the