In the thickening darkness, Bannon saw lanterns lit on the decks of the many ships lashed together in the current. Grieve’s ship and three others were anchored together near the shore, ready to depart, and the king did not intend to wait. He would leave the rest of his fleet behind.
Two Norukai men walked along the torchlit deck carrying a wooden tub between them. They stopped at the first group of bound slaves and set down the heavy tub. One man lifted a ladle that dripped a slurry of fish guts and river water. “Dinner!”
The first slave turned his head away in disgust, but the Norukai dumped the contents on the bound man’s face anyway. Wet entrails ran down his chin, and when the slave realized this was all the food he would get, he tried to slurp some of the entrails. Learning the lesson, the next slave braced himself and opened his mouth, so the Norukai ladled the nauseating mess onto his face.
Prancing behind the two men, Chalk hopped from one foot to the other. “Dinnertime, dinnertime! My fish, your fish!” He scooped a long-fingered hand into the wooden tub and rewarded himself with a fish head, which he tossed in the air and caught with his mouth like a trained dog. Crunching down on the scales, he came closer to Bannon. “Fishes tried to eat me, and now I eat them!” In the light of the rising moon the puckered scars were prominent on his albino skin. Bannon wondered what had happened to him, what the shaman had endured, what ordeal had created those scars and driven him to the edge of madness. “They didn’t eat enough of you,” Bannon said under his breath.
Chalk hopped over to him and squatted down. “They ate just enough. Razorfish nibbled my arms, nibbled my legs, and nibbled between them.” He clamped a palm against his loincloth-covered crotch. “They took much away, but they gave me something, too.” He leaned so close to Bannon that the young man could smell the rotting fish in his mouth. “That gave me my power! I see things. I know the future, the fire in the towns, the blood on the swords, so many screams. But good screams, I think.”
“Are they the screams of dying Norukai?” Bannon asked, but the shaman seemed oblivious to his vitriol.
Chalk cocked his head as if listening to whispered voices. “Yes, some of them are Norukai screams.” He sounded as if he was imparting a secret.
The shaman seemed to find Bannon fascinating, as if he recognized that the young man was different from the other Ildakaran captives. The two Norukai men set their stinking wooden tub on the deck, and Bannon steeled himself. He raised his head to accept the food, vowing to keep his strength for when he really needed it, but he nearly choked as they poured fish guts onto his face. He made himself swallow.
Squirming next to him, imitating Bannon, Chalk also turned his head up like a baby bird begging for a worm. The Norukai splashed the fish-gut soup across the shaman’s face, which satisfied him. He plucked a small fish head and held it between his thumb and forefinger. “You didn’t get a fish head. A special treat.”
Before the young man could protest, Chalk popped the head between Bannon’s lips. He took it into his mouth, wincing as he swallowed the horrible morsel. Why was the albino paying so much attention to him?
Drumbeats echoed from the stern of the serpent ship, and King Grieve stepped out into the lantern light. All the people fell silent, slaves and Norukai. Grieve’s voice boomed out to all the nearby vessels. “These four serpent ships are ready to sail, and four is enough to spark terror as we proceed downriver. Tonight, we will head back to the Bastion so we can begin this war.”
Chalk leaped to his feet. “My Grieve, King Grieve! They’ll all grieve.”
The king raised his heavy wooden baton and pounded the oar master’s drum again, louder than before. Guttural cheers resounded from hundreds of Norukai aboard the other ships, which were in various states of repair.
“We will raid villages as we make our way to the estuary and the open sea. The rest of our fleet is already gathering at the Norukai islands, and I must be their king and warlord.” Offhandedly Grieve shouted across the water to the other vessels. “Finish repairs to the rest of the ships and sail back to us.” He raised his iron-knuckled hand. The chain around his waist jingled as he spun about and gave the order to raise the anchor. “These first ships will set off. Now!”
Norukai sailors raised the midnight-blue sails on the four repaired ships, striking the ropes that lashed the hulls together.
Bannon felt sick, knowing that once they sailed away from Ildakar with him and this small group of slaves aboard, he would likely never escape. He gazed longingly at the dense vegetation on the bank as he strained against his ropes and chains. He could think of no way to get off the ship, but he would keep looking.
From her hiding place among the thorny reeds, Lila spied on the raider ships, knowing that some—including Bannon’s—were repaired and ready to depart. In the darkness, she heard the drumbeats accompanied by distant gruff shouts, a voice she recognized as King Grieve’s.
Lying in wait for days as the repairs continued, she had made her plans and created a booby trap. With all of the vines and trees along the river, she fashioned her tools, working quietly in the shadowy blanket of night. Her greatest advantage was that the Norukai didn’t know she was here.
She had dismissed dozens of different plans because they would surely end in failure. Lila could not let herself fail. If this were just for her sake, she would have thrown caution to the wind and charged in with her weapons, confident she could kill a dozen or more Norukai before she died. But she had a greater calling now. She needed to free Bannon.
When the four repaired ships prepared to depart down the river, Lila vowed to stop them. Fortunately, she had worked for days, laying her trap. She used vines to pull down the supple swamp trees, staging them, forming makeshift catapults. Her surreptitious work left her vulnerable to swamp dragons, large coiled snakes, and hunting spiders the size of rats. Lila killed many of them, avoided others. Now everything was ready as she lay in wait.
With the anchors raised and the dark sails set, the four serpent ships moved off into the night. Lila knew she had only one chance.
She wasn’t sure of her aim, since she’d been unable to test her crude catapults, so she had to rely on her guesses and her hope. Bannon was aboard King Grieve’s ship, and she had to make sure she didn’t accidently kill him in her attack.
With three resilient saplings tied down, Lila had gathered bunches of dry twigs and dead vines into flammable bales that could fly like projectiles. The bent trees were quivering and ready to launch, loaded with all the dry material. When the ships began to move out, Lila struck her dagger against the flint she carried in a pouch, lit a spark to ignite the first bale. As the flames caught, she ignited the bundle in the second catapult, then the third. She could smell the sour odor of green wood burning.
When her makeshift catapults held their blazing clumps, she slashed the rope holding the first bent tree in place. With a groan, it sprang upright and released the bale of fiery wood, throwing a burning comet toward the Norukai ships. Lila cut the second rope to launch the next projectile. The ball of fire raged across the sky as the first bale struck one of the four ships—not Bannon’s, she saw with some relief. The Norukai crew scrambled to extinguish the blaze before the ship could catch fire.
The second bale whistled over the top of the next vessel, missing it and plunging into the river, where the flames spat as they were extinguished.
The third projectile, though, crashed into the vessel just behind the flagship, and the flames spread as kindling scattered across the deck and caught in the rigging. The Norukai rushed about to extinguish the flames, but the blaze quickly got out of control. The vessel was engulfed in fire, a torch on the Killraven River.