Half a King

“The hole in the hull is the real worry,” said Ankran. “There’s daylight in the hold. It’ll have to be patched and caulked before we can even think of floating her.”

“Wherever will we find some timber?” Shadikshirram swept a long arm at the ancient forest that hemmed in the beach on every side.

“It belongs to the Shends.” Trigg eyed the shadowy woods with a great deal less enthusiasm. “They find us here we’ll all end up skinned.”

“Then you’d best get started, Trigg. You look bad enough with your skin on. If my luck holds we can handle the repairs and be away before the Shends sharpen their knives. You!” And Shadikshirram stepped over to where Nothing was kneeling on the shingle and rolled him over with a kick in the ribs. “Why aren’t you scrubbing, bastard?”

Nothing crawled after his heavy chain onto the sloping deck and, like a man sweeping his hearth after his house has burned down, painfully set about his usual labor.

Ankran and Sumael exchanged a doubtful glance then set to work themselves, while Shadikshirram went to fetch her tools. Wine, that was, which she started steadily drinking, draped over a nearby rock.

Trigg opened some of the locks-a rarity indeed-and oarsmen who had not left their benches in weeks were put on longer chains and given tools by Ankran. Jaud and Rulf were set to splitting trunks with wedge and mallet, and when the planks were made Yarvi dragged each one to the rent in the ship’s side, where Sumael stood, jaw set with concentration as she neatly trimmed them with a hatchet.

“What are you smiling about?” she asked him.

Yarvi’s hands were raw with the work and his head hurt from the blow against the oar and he was riddled with splinters from head to toe, but his smile only got wider. On a longer chain everything looked better, and Sumael was by no means an exception.

“I’m free of the bench,” he said.

“Huh.” She raised her brows. “Don’t get used to it.”

“There!” A screech shrill as a cock dropped on a cook slab. One of the guards was pointing inland, face ghostly pale.

A man stood at the treeline. He was stripped to the waist in spite of the weather, body streaked with white paint, hair a black thicket. He had a bow over his shoulder, a short ax at his hip. He made no sudden move, roared no threat, only looked calmly towards the ship and the slaves busy around it, then turned without hurry and disappeared into the shadows. But the panic he sparked could hardly have been greater had he been a charging army.

“Gods help us,” whispered Ankran, plucking at his thrall-collar as if it sat too tight for him to breathe.

“Work faster,” snarled Shadikshirram, so worried she stopped drinking for a moment.

They doubled their efforts, constantly glancing towards the trees for any more unwelcome visitors. At one point a ship passed out at sea and two of the sailors splashed into the surf, waving their arms and screaming for help. A small figure waved back, but the ship made no sign of stopping.

Rulf wiped the sweat from his forehead on one thick forearm. “I wouldn’t have stopped.”

“Nor I,” said Jaud. “We will have to help ourselves.”

Yarvi could only nod. “I wouldn’t even have waved.”

That was when more Shends slipped noiselessly from the blackness of the forest. Three, then six, then twelve, all armed to the teeth, each arrival greeted with growing horror, by Yarvi as much as anyone. He might have read that the Shends were peaceable enough but these ones did not look as if they had read the same books he had.

“Keep working!” growled Trigg, grabbing one man by the scruff of his neck and forcing him back to the felled trunk he had been stripping. “We should run them off. Give ’em a shock.”

Shadikshirram tossed her latest bottle across the shingle. “For every one you see there’ll be ten hidden. You’d be the one getting the shock, I suspect. But try it, by all means. I’ll watch.”

“What do we do, then?” muttered Ankran.

“I’ll be doing my best not to leave them any wine.” The captain pulled the cork from a new bottle. “If you wanted to save them some trouble I suppose you could skin yourself.” And she chuckled as she took a swig.

Trigg nodded towards Nothing, still on his knees, scrubbing at the deck. “Or we could give him a blade.”

Shadikshirram stopped laughing abruptly. “Never.”

The wise wait for their moment, but never let it pass.

“Captain,” said Yarvi, setting down his plank and stepping humbly forward. “I have a suggestion.”

“You going to sing to them, cripple?” snapped Trigg.

“Talk to them.”

Shadikshirram regarded him through languidly narrowed eyes. “You know their tongue?”

“Enough to keep us safe. Perhaps even to trade with them.”

The overseer jabbed a thick forefinger at the growing crowd of painted warriors. “You think those savages will listen to reason?”

“I know they will.” Yarvi only wished he was as certain as he somehow managed to sound.

“This is madness!” said Ankran.