The Infernal Lands (The Aionach Saga Book 1) (24 page)

Ellicia scrunched up her mouth, deliberative. “We sort of
have
to amputate, at this point, don’t we?”

Daxin frowned. “If we want to keep a bunch of hungry
sanddragons away from Dryhollow Split, I’d say taking Duffy’s leg is our only
chance.”

CHAPTER 22

Rowers

Curznack’s crew opened the hatch and dumped a box of
bread crusts into the hold. When Lizneth had wrestled one out of the hands of another
slave, she ate so fast she barely chewed. When she swallowed, the dry tack
stuck in her throat like a lump of coal. The meager portion didn’t stop her
stomach from churning, but at least it made her feel like she was still alive.
Even if she got seasick and it came back up later, it was worth it; eating was
one of the few things she still had the freedom to do on her own.

When the slaves had eaten the last of the scraps, the hatch grated
open above them. Taskmasters descended the stairs with flagrums in hand, shouting
and cursing as they dispersed among the ranks of bound
ikzhehn
. They
came onward with ferocity, as though the rowing slaves had done something
worthy of punishment, lashing them across the shoulders and snapping at their
legs with leather cords tied to bits of bone and metal. Lizneth caught a
glancing blow on her thigh—a blow that had been aimed at another slave. The
pure white fur on her leg began to drip red, but she had no time to stem the
wound before the taskmasters heaved her to her feet and shoved her up the
stairs with the others.

The taskmasters lined them up along one edge of the railing
while more crewmembers brought the prize slaves up from the rowing hold. The
prizes were wet, many of them dripping as if they’d been doused in seawater. Without
rowers at the oars, the ship rolled listless on the current, pulling at the pit
of Lizneth’s stomach each time the craft settled into a trough of wave. She
held herself against the railing and tried not to stumble as the deck shifted
beneath her feet. The wood was slippery, and whenever one slave moved, he
pulled his neighbors along with him by the string of chain that bound them
together.

 Curznack stood on the quarterdeck with his brood-brothers,
looking down over the main deck to oversee the changing of the shifts. Lizneth
noticed him watching her. His coat was damp, and wisps of his fur undulated on
the breeze.

“Curznack, they put me in with the wrong group,” Lizneth shouted,
desperate to point out the mistake. She didn’t want to row, and she certainly didn’t
want to be left aboard the ship and forgotten when they made landfall.

One of the taskmasters drew back with his flagrum and made to
strike her as punishment for speaking out. Lizneth lifted her arms to shield
herself.

“Bilik,” Curznack shouted.

The taskmaster turned at the sound of his name. He lowered
his arm and watched as the Captain descended the quarterdeck stairs, favoring
his side and taking care to use the handrail.

“You are not to strike this slave,” Curznack told him. “You hear
me?” He raised his voice to make sure everyone did. “This
scearib
is not
to be whipped.”

“Thank you,” Lizneth said, breathing a sigh.

Curznack punched her, hard across the snout. He hit her so
hard, it made her eyes water and put an aching in her head. “What are you
thanking me for? I’m the only one with the sense to hit you proper. These dimwits
of mine don’t know how to treat good stock.” Curznack lowered his eyes and
scowled at the gash in her thigh.

Lizneth wiped the tears away, chains clinking at her wrists.
She wanted to cry for her Papa, for the days when she was just a
lecuzhe
and Papa was young and strong, when he could pick her up in his arms and hold her
in his warm fur and protect her from anything.

“I should be with the prizes,” Lizneth said.

The ship pitched and threw her back against the railing. Curznack
caught her by the throat and held her there, halfway out over the water. Sea
foam crowded white at the hull below, a fine spray misting over them as the
ship ploughed through a cresting wave. Lizneth wrapped her tail around a
spindle in the railing to keep herself from falling overboard in case Curznack
pushed her. Her spine was arched at an uncomfortable degree, the muscles in her
abdomen tight, her knees weakening with every passing second.

The front of Curznack’s haunches were pressing Lizneth
against the banister. He spoke softly, showing her the whites of his eyes. “
Scearibahn
row like everyone else. The next time you ask for special treatment, I’ll make
you cry red.”

He pulled her forward by the neck and released her, but the
ship tilted hard to port in that instant, and she stumbled into him. He shoved
her away with a cry of surprise, making her fall to the deck and yank the
slaves next to her by the chains.

Curznack brushed himself off and straightened his coat.
“Can’t keep herself off me,” he said, fixing his collar and making sure the others
heard him above the waves.

The sailors chittered.

“Carry on,
ledozhehn.
”

The crew grumbled at his insult, but they went about their
business.

Curznack stared after Lizneth, his mouth hanging open, his tongue
rubbing the back of his longteeth. There was a cold glimmer in his eyes, but he
said nothing more to her.

The taskmasters led Lizneth and the others into the rowing
hold, a long room with a low ceiling located just beneath the main deck.
Benches ran along either side from front to back, and water pooled on the
floor, sloshing with the ship’s movement. The taskmasters slid them off the
chain one at a time and sat each of them down on their own bench, fastening
their manacles to rings bolted into the floor—the same kind of ring Lizneth had
hung from in Curznack’s quarters.

 The bench was damp, its middle worn smooth. Lizneth slid
into place and took up her oar. She could see the dim glow of the mirrored lanterns
shining from the main deck above. All else was black, the dark water fading
into the unseen distance.

“You have spirit,” Bilik said, as he worked to fasten the
chain to the floor between her legs. He was a fawn—a big one, with deep red
eyes and a bright coat of golden orange. “Rowing will take that spirit right
out of you.”

At the front of the hold were two tall drums, goatskins
stretched with thin leather cords over smooth ironwood shells. Behind them
stood a lean hooded buck with a thick stripe of dark gray down his belly. He
wore a leather cap and knee-length breeches, and he was holding a cloth beater
in each hand. As the taskmasters locked the last of the rowing slaves into
place, the drummer made ready to play.

“Sit in and set ready,” he yelled, his voice barking shrill
through the hold.

The rowers raised their arms and leaned forward, letting the
blades of their oars come to rest in the water. Lizneth followed suit, trying
to mimic what she saw the others do.

“Ready all,” the drummer shouted.

They sat motionless, waiting on his command.

“Row.” He struck the right drum, and it resounded with a low
bung
.

The rowers pulled, leaning so far back that the slave in
front of Lizneth bumped her with the back of his head. The left drum made an
even lower
gung
when the drummer struck it. They pushed their oars down
and forward, lifting them from the water and returning to the catch.

Lizneth was lost. No one had shown her what to do, how to
hold her oar, or even how to row. Bilik strode over, brandishing his flagrum.
He began to lift the weapon, but he must’ve remembered Curznack’s decree,
because he moved the flagrum to his other hand and batted Lizneth with the back
of his fist instead. The blow caught her over the ear and set it to ringing.

“Fall in and row,” Bilik said, “or I’ll bring the Captain
down to make sure you do.”

Lizneth waited for the next stroke, the next
bung
of
the drum, and worked her way into sync with the others. Her strokes were
awkward at first; the oar either went in too shallow and skipped across the top
of the water, or she plunged it in too deep and pulled too slowly to keep up.
Each time she thought she was getting the hang of it, something threw her off,
or she caught a glare from Bilik and lost her place in the cycle.

However unpredictable and discomfiting the ship’s movement
had been anywhere else, it was even more so in the rowing hold. Whenever the
ship hit a wave just right, water would burst in through the oar holes and soak
everyone nearby, slicking the deck and making it hard to keep traction with
their feet. Lizneth anchored one foot on the corner of the bench in front of
her, but after a while the wood became slippery, and the joints in her leg grew
stiff.

They rowed for what must have been hours on end, never
stopping, never speeding or slowing. The drummer gave no further vocal
commands, and there was only the occasional taskmaster cursing or cracking his
flagrum to remind them not to slow down. Minutes passed, stretching toward
hours innumerable, and there was always the steady
bung, gung, bung, gung
of the two dissonant drums to keep them company.

“What lies on the far side of the Omnekh?” Lizneth asked
later, as they lay in the cargo hold, every muscle sore and every joint aching.

They’d been shuffled between the two holds more times than
she could count, given only short periods of rest while the prize slaves took
over the rowing. It seemed that for every hour of rowing the prize slaves did,
Lizneth and the rowing slaves did four or five. The taskmasters kept them at
the oars for what felt like days at a time. The work was so monotonous, it was
maddening.

“The city of the
calaihn
,” said Dozhie. “Sai Calgoar,
it is called.”

“It’s in the blind-world, where the
eh-calaihn
live,”
said Fane, a rex merle. Covered with splotches of brown fur over cream, his
coat was long and shaggy, though like many of the other rowing slaves, the fur
was thinning in places.

“The blind-world?” Lizneth said, worried. She’d heard the
tales of the land of light with no end. They said there was nothing but open
air where the ceiling should have been, and the sky was like a great torch of
blue fire that could burn the skin beneath your fur.

“They don’t make you go up there, unless they’re cruel,” Fane
said. “Bresh knows. She’s been to the blind-world.”

“Aye, and I would sooner be there than on this floating
tomb,” said Bresh. “It would be a quicker death.”

“What’s it like?” Lizneth asked.

“Bright.” Bresh lay on her side, slow breaths pulled in
through rattling lungs. A dark agouti with a coat of solid brown, layered under
with gray shorthairs. Her coloring reminded Lizneth of her Mama’s, though Bresh
was much thinner.

“What are…
calaihn
like?” Lizneth asked.

“Tall,” said Bresh, “and they have less fur. The fur they do
have, they often cut it off.”

There was a murmur in the hold, scoffing and laughter.

“Their skins are the color of mud and fire, and they cut
themselves with knives to prove their strength. Their
ledozhehn
do not
bear full litters; they birth their
cuzhehn
one at a time. Also… they do
not scent one another.”

Lizneth was astonished, and a little disturbed. “They don’t
scent? Not at all?”

“They can’t. Their snouts are too small. What’s worse, their
eyes can’t see in the dark.”

Lizneth wrinkled her snout. “They sound awful.”

“They are. But not all of them are mean. There are good
calaihn
and bad—some who hate what they do not know, and others who welcome it. Those
calaihn
are rare. Most are content to make us do their work for them.
Ikzhehn
make good slaves, you know. We are sturdy. Enduring. It is our curse, in some
ways.”

Bresh’s words began to come slow and shallow, along with her
breathing.

“Leave her be, nestling,” Fane said, brushing Lizneth’s arm
with his tail. “She’s tired, as are we all. We must save up our strength before
the next changing.”

Lizneth lay on her belly and rested her head on her hands,
but the hard manacles around her wrists dug into her neck. She rolled onto her
side, but cold water ran in thin torrents around her face as the ship swayed.
When she tried turning onto her back, the chains caught in her fur and pinched.
Finally she settled on her side again, drifting in and out of an uneasy sleep
as the slow beating of the drums throbbed in the floorboards.
Bung, gung,
bung, gung, bung, gung
.

It seemed as though she had only just closed her eyes when
she heard chains scraping the deck above. The taskmasters swarmed in again with
flagrums in hand, rousing them from their slumber with coarse shouts, the stink
of ale on their breath. Before she knew it, she was topside again, yawning and
shivering as sea spray frosted the deck. Some of the prize slaves gave her
weary looks as the two lines of captives passed one another, strings of chain
jangling at their feet. Others stared at the ground, or looked out over the bow
of the ship with longing, as if they thought the waves held better for them
than they were likely to find aboard. Lizneth was starting to think that might
be true.

Blisters that had formed during the previous session’s rowing
bubbled and popped as the crew set them to work again. The drums resumed, and
from the first pull of her oar every inch of Lizneth’s body screamed for
relief. She rowed with just enough effort to keep pace with the others, at
times closing her eyes and letting her thoughts take her to places far away, as
much to keep herself focused as to distract herself from the cramps running
through every limb and muscle.

She didn’t go home anymore, during those long dreamlike
periods of introspection; thinking of her family only disheartened her. Instead,
she would imagine that she was still free, still wandering the streets of
Bolck-Azock, or that she was across the Omnekh on some other distant shore,
discovering new cultures and places and ways of life. In her imagination, she
could even go out into the blind-world without fearing its cruel effects. In
truth, she hoped that if Curznack did sell her to some new master on the other
side of the sea, they didn’t force her to go into the blind-world. But she
still wondered what it was like—besides being ‘
bright,
’ as Bresh had
described it.