than if they had been drunken unscrupulous oafs. And cleanliness and hygiene would lessen the chances of disease.
Alternatively, chances of escape would be virtually non-existent among captors such as these. They knew what they were doing and, in the case of Boar and most probably many of the others, had done it many times before. Whatever they were, they were good at it. Whatever their intentions for him – and, with a start, he realised that he had not even thought that far ahead – he was sure they would achieve them.
He was, to his surprise, not sure that he even wanted to return to his village, to the scene of the brutal deaths of everyone close to him. What was there for him to go back to, other than pain and grief? But where else did he have to go? His mind spun furiously. Shaking his head violently, he ran his fingers through his hair in anguish and confusion.
A pair of black boots stopped in front of him, breaking both his gaze and his whirling thoughts. A voice, cultured but anything but soft, said, ‘Welcome aboard. I assume none of you is a sailor. You have a morning to become accustomed to the motion of the ship, and to put your clothes back on. Then you will eat. Whether you feel like it or not.’
Brann looked up. ‘Why are we here? Where are we going?’
The tall man’s dark eyes locked with his and Brann’s stomach lurched with nerves at the intensity of the gaze, the first strong emotion he had felt since his capture. The man’s expression flickered, surprise momentarily evident. Brann cursed himself. A man like that would not be accustomed to being interrupted. So much for keeping a low profile.
‘You will find out soon enough. We have almost a full cargo now, and we are heading for port after just one more stop.’ He turned to go, then paused. ‘Rest assured, you will have more to concern you now than a ball game for apprentices.’
He brushed spray-soaked hair away from an L-shaped scar on his cheek, and returned to the rear of the ship.
The morning dragged by in a daze. At first, the movement of the ship caught Brann’s fascination. He’d known it would rise and fall, but he had never envisaged the rocking, both from side to side and front to back – or any combination of all of them. In the absence of any notable activity (with the wind filling the sail, the rowers were still taking the opportunity to doze and, of the crew, only the helmsman and a lookout remained in view) all he had to fill his attention were the noises – which comprised the creaking and groaning of wood and rope, the occasional sharp crack as the sail flapped, sporadic snores from the rowers and a soft whimpering from one of the boys beside him – and the sensation of movement. He tried to play games to relieve the boredom, predicting the combination of movements that would come next, or whether the boat would roll to the left before it rose. But it did not take long before he lost interest in that, also.
One of the boys retched, his body jerking forward and jangling the chains. Brann was relieved that at least he did not feel any sickness from the motion of the ship. Two of the boys spoke to their miserable and pained companion, trying, without success, to comfort him. It appeared from the conversation that the boy had nothing left in his stomach to vomit, having been brought over the course of a night and a day to the coast by captors who had lost all of their rations – and one of their number – in a fierce skirmish along the way. The boys had been left with Barak while the men left again to search for provisions, intending to meet up with the ship further up the coast. When Galen and Boar had arrived with Brann, Barak had left to find a vantage point to watch for the ship.
Brann watched the trio dispassionately, still feeling a detached onlooker. He was well aware that he was in the same situation as the other five, but still felt different from them in ways he could not rationalise, as if none of it was really happening to him, as if he were watching a performance by one of the groups of travelling players who would periodically visit his village.
‘Get a grip on yourself,’ he muttered angrily to himself, slapping his thigh as if to waken himself from a dream. You won’t find a way out of this unless you accept it is real, he thought.
The boy had stopped retching, and his comforters had fallen silent again. Now that the distraction of another in need was over, the captives were left to face their own misery once more, their hunched shoulders and hanging heads speaking more eloquently of their emotion than any words. And with the little tableau finished for Brann, he cast around the ship for anything else that could hold his interest.
A few warriors had returned to the fresh air of the open deck and were tending to their weapons, cleaning and oiling them to protect against the effects of the salt water and anything else that may have attached itself to them in their use over the past day. Those weapons that were not worn about their persons – and these seemed few, Brann thought wryly, considering the host of swords, knives and axes that festooned the men – such as spears, crossbows and bows, were carefully wrapped in lightly oiled cloths. Brann noticed, however, that even these wrapped weapons were never far from the warriors’ reach. Most of the men seemed to be from the same tall, powerful race as Galen, their pale skin beaten and scoured by the gods knew what sort of violent weather, by rain and wind or sun, by howling sandstorms or driving hail and lashing salty spray, until it matched the faded leather of their boots in consistency and colour. The remainder, few as they were, were from a variety of other origins, but they all had at least one thing in common: they were not men who would be caught unready.
The monotony was broken by the return of the boys’ clothes, but only briefly. Brann turned his attention to the rowers, sprawled against each other and whatever part of the ship was available as they took advantage of the chance to rest.
Brann had heard of ships that used rowing slaves, and had imagined such men to be huge muscle-bound hulks, selected for their stature and with their bulk increased by endless days of heavy toil. Instead, these men were of all sizes, but with a uniform leanness rather than being over-laden with bulging muscles. True, they looked strong enough – the ease with which they had handled the large unwieldy oars had been testament to that– but it seemed more of an adaptable strength that could cope equally well with short bursts of power or long stretches of steady rowing.
It seems obvious when you thing about it logically, he mused. I just never had reason to think about it before.
The ringing of a moving chain as one of the oarsmen shifted position drew his attention to their feet. The rowers sat in threes, and each man had a manacle on his left ankle with a short chain reaching from it to a ring at the other end. Under each bench, another chain ran, passing through each of these rings. This chain was anchored to the side of the boat at one end but, where it reached the aisle, it was linked by another ring to a long chain that ran the length of the ship.
The wild-haired boy beside Brann noticed his interest in the chains. ‘Clever, is it not, chief?’ he said, his voice as cold and flat as the sea around them. It was a statement of fact, not admiration. ‘Simple, but clever.’ The boy regarded him with a cold dispassion and Brann looked into the palest of blue eyes. They did not bore into him as the dark stare of the man with the L-shaped scar had done: instead, the intensity in this gaze was behind the eyes, a cold fire that burned within, never raging nor dying. There was something about him that suggested an older perspective on life. Perhaps it was his physical calm amidst the dejection of the other boys.
‘What do you mean?’ Brann asked. His voice was as low as his spirits and the aggression in the boy’s gaze indicated a temperament that he had always found irritating, but he welcomed any conversation that broke the tedium.
The lad nodded with economy of movement towards the rowing benches. ‘The chains. It is an old enough system, but it works, so why change it?’
‘What system? Surely they just get chained up and they row. That’s it.’
His companion shook his head slightly. ‘Simple, but not quite that simple.’ He spoke in short bursts, as if uncomfortable saying any more than was strictly necessary. It was so much in keeping with his appearance that Brann almost smiled. ‘My father rowed. On a galley bigger than this. An Empire one with three banks of oars. Until he escaped and tried farming instead.’
Brann’s eyes came alight. ‘Escaped?’