It don’t get any easier.
Hard Decisions
Cole retched one more time, heaving until there was nothing left inside him and he thought his innards were going to spill out of his mouth. Between the constant rocking sensation and the foul stench, scarcely an hour passed when he didn’t feel the need to empty his gut. Puddles of piss and dark mounds of excrement lay mingled with vomit, blood and other assorted filth on the floor beneath him. The one saving grace was that it was too dim to see the putrid mess in all its glory. Cracks in the planking above allowed a few narrow shafts of light to illuminate the faces of his fellow prisoners, but they didn’t reach far enough to penetrate the darkest recesses of the cargo hold.
Someone kill me, he thought miserably. The Redemption had set sail the night before, and while the small carrack was making good time they still had the better part of a day and night before they reached their destination.
Of the forty men on board, almost half were consigned to the cargo hold. Their ankles were shackled to ensure they didn’t try to escape. The rest of the ship’s passengers were above decks: Kramer, the disgraced former admiral of Dorminia’s fleet, now captain of the Redemption, and his first mate, a bald-headed brute of a man named Vargus; their crew, ten of the bravest — or stupidest — men they could convince to sail the ship; a dozen Crimson Watchmen to maintain order and help operate the small arsenal of heavy artillery in case of attack; and finally Falcus, the lisping Augmentor overseeing the expedition. He’d already murdered one captive for refusing to return to the hold after they’d been allowed on deck for their morning meal. The Augmentor had clucked in annoyance, whipped out his crossbow and put a quarrel through the man’s head at point-blank range. The body had been hurled overboard to sink to the bottom of the Broken Sea.
Cole’s ankles were chafed raw from his shackles, his ribs still ached and he’d been pissing blood ever since Goodlady Cyreena had clobbered him in the balls and shoved a needle in him.
She had been waiting down at the docks to watch them depart. Cole had longed to spit in her face or break away from his captors and drown her in the harbour. When she’d met his gaze with those strangely familiar eyes of hers, however, he’d felt his legs turn to jelly and promptly vomited all over the Crimson Watchman beside him. That had earned him a rough backhand across the face.
I want to die. He’d never known suffering like this. He was trapped on a cramped and filthy ship, his body a mass of agonies, any single one of which would likely incapacitate a lesser man. Even a hero had his limits.
Not for the first time Davarus Cole cursed his ill luck. He was on his way to the Swell, a place sailors spoke of only in the most fearful of whispers. The odds of him returning to Dorminia and the glorious future he had been promised were growing worse by the hour.
‘Stop your snivelling, boy,’ spat Three-Finger. He was an evil-looking fellow, with dirty grey stubble covering his scabrous face and piggish eyes staring from beneath a brow that seemed permanently furrowed. His left hand was missing its index and middle fingers. As a boy he had been caught stealing in the Bazaar.
From the other captives Cole had learned Three-Finger was also missing half a cock, having more recently been charged with numerous counts of rape and sentenced accordingly. He scowled at anyone he caught looking at him whenever he decided to take a piss, which was often.
‘My nose is broken,’ Cole replied sullenly. ‘I wasn’t snivelling. You don’t know what I’ve been through.’
Three-Finger laughed. ‘Aren’t you a special snowflake. Take a look around, kid. Every man in this shithole has a sorry tale to share. You think I want to be here? It was this or swing in the Hook until the crows pecked off the rest of my prick. I figured the Swell would be quicker and a good deal less painful.’
One of the other captives coughed, a horrible hacking that told of some illness in his lungs. ‘I didn’t even have a choice,’ the man said, once he’d wiped the blood away from his mouth. ‘The Watch burst into my home. They told me I’d been found guilty of treason.’ He coughed again before continuing. ‘Taxes were raised so high to fund the war with Shadowport that my business collapsed and my wife had to take to the streets to support our family. I called Salazar every name under the sun, didn’t see the mindhawk until it was too late. Then the Black Lottery chose me.’
‘What kind of trade you in?’ Three-Finger asked. He had a rash on the side of his face and kept scratching at it with his maimed hand.
‘I’m an engineer,’ the sick man replied. ‘I ran a business. Soeman’s Solutions on Artifice Street.’
‘I know it,’ Three-Finger said. ‘You’re Soeman, then?’
The engineer nodded and lapsed into another fit of coughing. ‘Those in charge of this operation must have thought I’d be useful to them,’ he said once he recovered. ‘Otherwise I’d be dead. Armin is directing the mining operation. Maybe he requested an additional engineer aboard the ship.’
‘The Swell,’ exclaimed a red-nosed man of advanced years chained nearby. ‘I’ve sailed the Broken Sea for thirty years — travelled to the Drowned Coast and the ruins of old Andarr, and west further still, out onto the great Endless Ocean. Yet never once did I venture near that accursed place. They say the Swell marks the spot where Malantis plummeted from the heavens. His corpse rots there still.’
The old seadog’s voice suddenly dropped to a whisper. Cole struggled to hear him over the creaking of stressed wood and the murmuring of waves washing against the hull.
‘A ship can be sailing happily along one minute — and the next, it’s twenty feet under water. That ain’t the worse though. I’ve heard tales of craft that have crested a wave only for the sea’s surface to plummet a hundred foot or more in an instant. He might be dead, but the Lord of the Deep don’t rest easy in his watery grave. His rage is unquenchable, they say, and he’ll scupper any ship that dares disturb his resting place.’
The old sailor’s words sent a shudder of fear rippling through Cole and the other captives within hearing distance. Danger was one thing, a calculated risk to overcome. What the veteran sailor described amounted to playing roulette with the very sea itself.
‘This is suicide!’ he gasped.
Three-Finger grinned, revealing crooked yellow teeth. ‘I hope those wankers know what they’ve let themselves in for.’
The hatch above up them suddenly banged open and sunlight flooded the hold. Cole blinked tears from his stinging eyes. Once his vision had cleared, he saw the weather-beaten face of First Mate Vargus staring at them. Sweat ran in rivulets down his bald head and scarred cheeks.
‘Captain Kramer wants you all up on deck,’ he barked at them. ‘We’re coming down to open your shackles. Any of you so much as looks like causing trouble, that man gets to feed the fishes.’
He disappeared. A rope ladder was lowered, and four men of the Watch climbed down into the hold. Each wore chainmail and carried a steel longsword in his hand.
Cole briefly considered trying to overpower the soldier unlocking his shackles, but a glance at the open hatch revealed Falcus and a half-dozen Watchmen positioned around the edge of the hold, crossbows at the ready. The young Shard’s appraising gaze became a sickly grin when the Augmentor caught him staring at them. Cole gulped and quickly looked away.
Ten minutes later and the captives were huddled together on the main deck. The Crimson Watch surrounded them, swords in hand. Captain Kramer stood on the forecastle. Falcus was to his right, fondling his crossbow as if looking for any excuse to shoot someone. Vargus brooded to the captain’s left.