Kheda looked around for any sign of disturbance. Travellers were scattering like a villager's ducks but only out of fear of the Shek swordsmen. Some cowered by their inadequate huts, others hesitated, tattered bundles clutched tight. The most terrified found themselves up to their chests in the waters of the strait before they could stop. Some ran inland to find villagers with brooms and hounds on ready chains barring their way. The dogs reared up, baying with excitement.
The swordsmen ignored them all, faces unyielding, pace unvarying. Behind, the trireme was wheeling round, blades poised before cutting deep into the water as the unseen rowers drove the ship along the shoreline after the troops. Commotion travelled up the beach like a storm squall. Men who'd long since traded away their pride cowered on their knees. Women begged with futile tears for protection from the Shek islanders. The column pounded inexorably along the beach.
Insidious, contagious fear pulled Kheda to his feet. He found his horrified gaze locking with the gaze of the leading swordsman, the man's eyes dark and determined beneath the gleaming bronze brow band of his helm.
They're coming for you. What have you done? Does it matter? You're just as vulnerable as any other beggar on this beach. You're unarmed. Resist and they'll kill you. Unarmoured is unburdened. You'll be faster on yourfeet. But there's nowhere to run. Try dodging past them? They'll be expecting that. The men at the end will just spread out to catch you.
He looked, all the same, for any chance of evading capture and saw instead the scrawny girl who'd asked him to read her palm. The girl clutched a bowl to her flat chest, scooping something up with her fingers, sticky orange smears all around her mouth.
You're betrayed? Who wants you so badly? Godine?
The thought that he might have been tracked, might be called to account for the stolen treasures he'd traded made Kheda feel so sick that he thought for one appalling moment he might truly vomit. He swallowed hard and gritted his teeth.
Vomit, and that morning's backbreaking work will all have been for nothing.
The distraction cost him any chance of flight. The troops were on him. Merciless and impersonal, the leading swordsman threw him down on to the sand. Kheda raised his hands to ward off further blows but all that did was offer up his wrists for deftly locked manacles. Arms wrenched, he was rolled on to his stomach, agonising pain in his back telling him someone was kneeling there in plated leggings. Mailed hands seized his flailing legs, weighing them down with shackles. A foot came down on his neck, forcing his face into the cloying, smothering sand.
The sea couldn't drown you but the land just might.
As Kheda's outrage yielded to this terror, cloth ripped; his tunic, his trousers, he had no idea. On his back again, he spat sand and earned a stinging slap across the face. Opening his mouth in angry protest, a wad of cotton stifled his words. Cloth tied tight, gag and blindfold both, reduced him to furious mewling. Sand trapped beneath the cloth rubbed his cheekbone raw and hair caught in the knot pulled painfully at his scalp.
'Take him up.' At their leader's curt command, unseen hands lifted him by shoulders, feet. Belly up like a beast trussed for slaughter, Kheda writhed and twisted, chains rattling. A fist drove deep in his stomach.
'Give it up,' a voice growled near his ear.
With a strangled groan, Kheda struggled to catch his breath through the choking gag. The duck broth rose in his gorge along with a new fear.
Vomit now and you'll likely smother in it before they can get this gag off. Let them think you've given in. Struggle much more and they could kill you by accident.
He went limp. To his chagrin, his uncooperative dead weight didn't inconvenience his captors in the least, their jogging run jolting him into anguished breathlessness. Then Kheda felt the salt breath of sea water beneath him, a few splashes cold on his skin.
'Drop us a rope!' someone yelled. Someone else pulled Kheda's hands up over his head and he felt thick hemp pushed between his forearms. Just as he realised the rope had been looped through his manacles, he was hauled upwards with a yank that threatened to pull his arms out of his shoulders.
You lizard-eating, star-crossed sons of cursed fathers.
He banged hard against the side of the ship on his way up, once, twice, each impact shocking what little breath he'd managed to recover out of him. As he hit the deck with a thud, it was all he could do to drag some air into his aching lungs.
'Don't let him roll off the edge.' The shipmaster evidently had little interest in Kheda beyond that.
'He's not going anywhere.' A firm foot was planted the small of his back. 'Not beyond my lord's cells.' That jest prompted hearty laughter all around. A strident flute signalled to the oarsmen and Kheda felt the wood vibrating beneath his cheek.
You've spent the last three days wishing for a way to get across the strait, haven't you? How many times did your father tell you? 'Be careful what you wish for, you may just get it.' Very well then, what do we wish for now? A rapid end to this perilous voyage or some improbable delay before you're taken before Shek Kul? Or will you even be taken before Shek Kul? Perhaps you'll just lose your head on the guard commander's word, once Godine's identified your thieving, deceitful face.
Though they could have killed you for that back on the beach, all the better to warn any other beggarly travellers against pilfering and treachery. You're to be put in a cell. If the warlord's swordsmen hold you, could you draw one of them into conversation, find some clue as to how this domain defeated magic, without bringing suspicion on yourself ? At the very least you might learn some truth of events in the south, brought by message bird or courier, uncorrupted by passing through countless mouths.
Frail hope raised Kheda's blind head when he felt the grating of shingle beneath the trireme's hull.
'Over the side with him.' The shipmaster sounded bored.
'What, like this?' Hands grabbed his feet and arms, swinging him back and then out, as if to toss him bodily into the sea. Kheda's instinctive, futile struggles prompted laughter all around until the frantic heartbeat drumming in his ears drowned it out.
'Let's have him.' Even when they'd had their fun with him, Kheda's fear was slow to fade. He was passed from hand to hand like a bale of cloth, fleeting moments ;tween one grip and the next when all he could feel was the empty air between himself and the sea below.
'Get those chains off,' someone ordered with cheerful confidence. 'We're not carrying him.'
Hauled upright, Kheda reeled, dizzy. As the shackles around his feet fell away, he stumbled to steady himself.
'Walk forward.' the confident voice commanded, a directing hand firm on his shoulder.
Very well, since you insist. So far, so good. They haven't killed you out of hand.
Kheda felt for the ground with hesitant toes, as slowly as he could without prompting retribution. The shingly sand of the beach soon gave way to the hard damp earth of a well-worn path and Kheda felt the land rising under his feet.
Are they taking you to Shek Kul's compound?
'This way' The hand turned him abruptly. The screech of a pebble caught beneath a door and grating on a stone threshold send an involuntary shiver down Kheda's spine. Then the heavy slam of the gate behind him crushed hope like a flower beneath a heedless foot. Inside the hollow square of the fortress on the beach, big stones had been brought up from the shore to cobble the ground and Kheda stumbled, stubbing his toe and ripping the edge of a nail. He bit down on the cloth inside his mouth, against this pain and worse, his bitter disappointment.