Skarr the Barbarian - Enslaved (17)

From “My encounters with the Barbarians blade”, by Lady Elina Greypepper.

 

We had been on the slave ship for several weeks. Lay in the creaking, damp filthy stinking hold surrounded by other poor wretches, both male and female, all of us chained and hungry.

 

The bid for freedom came suddenly. None of us had been in a mood the past few weeks for any kind of frivolity, and even my usual stock of witty repartee had dried up. Skarr sat, sometimes lay, morose and silent. I knew she, like most Northers, hated the sea and she had puked many times, not used to being forced to make ocean crossings sober. I did not normally approve of her sometime excessive drinking, but right now I could have murdered a tankard of ale myself to deaden the pain and the smell of sitting in that stinking filth. We were all fettered below decks, Skarr more so because she had bitten off the nose of the Captain, on being boarded in chains weeks earlier. It had happened early on in the day, the slaves on deck were having their heads shaved to prevent lice and tics taking hold and reducing our value. They pushed Skarr roughly down to the deck and one of the men pulled out a huge knife and grabbed a handful of Skarr’s unruly blonde mane. I thought at first she was going to sit and suffer it being done to her, but she suddeny rose up from the deck with a Norther roar, broke the neck of the man holding her and leapt for the captain. They had collapsed together, and eventually the barbarian was wrenched off him with the mans nose in her teeth. With a glint in her eye, she swallowed the nose tip, while the man swore and held the bleeding remains of his face. Then, they wrenched her down to the deck and began to beat her with their coshes. This was it, I thought, we had not even got out of the harbour and we would be killed. But they set a high price on the Barbarian and her apothecary apprentice companion, it seemed. Our enforced haircuts forgotten, we were thrown into the dark hold, with another girl, Kefira, we later found our she was called. The guards came in to us most days and gave Skarr a few lashes with the whip, or hit her with sticks, but she remained quiet and morose, slumped in the corner under a pile of piss stained rags. We were well fettered. A large heavy iron collar was locked about my neck, short chains welded to the collar fastened to more shackles that were locked about my wrists and ankles, restricting my movement and making a horrible clanking sound every time I shited position in the cramped hold. At least I had some arm movement and could feed myself, unlike Skarr. She, like all of us, was fitted with strong manacles locked around her ankles. But unlike the other girls, they had fixed Skarr into a thick heavy wooden yoke. Her neck was fastenened into the centre hole, and her wrists pinioned either side, immovable and inescapable. She grunted with the weight occasionally, or with the discomfort of having her arms fixed up in that position permanently, but other than that the Barbarian gave no sign of her discomfort. I attempted to feed her with my own limited movement, but she often refused to eat, and when she did, it was near impossible to feed her wearing the wooden pillory as she was, and most of the gruel I attempted to spoon feed her ended up smeared all over her face.

 

 

The day of the fight came as did any other, locked in the dark stinking hold. I think it was Onag who came in to deliver our slop. The last time I had looked, Skarr had been attempting to lie down under a bundle of rags I had thrown over her. Suddenly the rags moved with unbelievable speed, with a clank of chain coming from her ankles, and she barrelled sideways into the man, thrusting her locked yoke into the sailor’s neck just under his chin. He collapsed clutching his throat. I recognised that this was now our only chance, if we were subdued again, Skarr and I would be killed instantly. How did I get myself into these situations, I wondered?

“Prepare your witchery”, she said, looking at me with a smile.

Damn her to hell, I thought. She was actually enjoying this. Witchery, I wondered? What witchery? I’d killed a goblin with a curse my granny had taught me, this situation was very different, this was armed men. And we were three chained women, three now as we had been joined by Kefira.

 

I noticed that Skarr had made her way up the small steps, with difficulty due to her fetters and was slamming her yoke sideways into the locked hold door. I ran after her, as best I could, but I was not quick enough as, by now, she had battered the door down and slammed her way into two crewmen armed with cutlasses, thus knocking them over.

“Pivarr san Iruktask!” she shouted at the top of her voice. I wished she could have fought more quietly, so to make easier our progress to the decks, but she insisted on shouting obscenities as she fought.

 

As I followed in her wake, I noticed red weals appearing on Skarr’s wrists and neck as she used her yoke as a battering ram. I also noticed that she was still firmly locked into it, the thing hadn’t even cracked and it still held her fast. With my shackled feet I managed to kick one of the guards in the face as he attempted to pull Skarr’s ankle chain out from under her. Then I felt a fist slam into the side of my head and I was down. I watched through hazy blurred vision as a crewman got hold of Skarr’s ankle chain finally and yanked her to the floor with a crash.

 

Witchery. I did what Granny taught me, but it was difficult, my mind kept focussing on my metal restraints, my power unable to pass beyond the locks that held me. Then I was in another place, a place of peace, with Skarr, by a river, fishing for salmon. We laughed and sang songs about old times, then I felt the heartbeat as I had with the goblin. I squeezed. Not quite hard enough. Then the power within me faded again. I remember my knees suddenly unable to hold me up and I fell to the deck. Kefira stood guard over me as Skarr kicked her feet, then the curse came to me once more, not the complete curse with which I had dispatched the goblin, but enough to distract the man slightly. Was it enough? The man cried to himself and clutched his chest as my weak magics took effect

 

 

We were done for, I thought, as the crewman struggled for his cutlass to cut Skarr’s throat. But no! I’d bought her time as, with struggling, at last, Skarr’s yoke had cracked and one arm was free.

“Davaris!” she cried, “Lavanoyka si sibarrhe!”

Unable to move now, I whimpered with the power I had wielded. I curled up into a ball, with Kefira stood over me.

 

The Barbarian brought her one free arm up into the mans crotch and crushed his balls to pulp. He screamed in pain, and collapsed, as Skarr again stood, battering more crew that had appeared with the half broken yoke. Then, from somewhere she had a cutlass in her free hand and was ripping into the crew with it, still half yoked and with her ankles still securely fastened. Finally, with the battering it had taken, the locks on the yoke broke and Skarr was free of it. She decapitated the remaining crewman with the cutlass and turned to me. She knelt and gripped my chains in one hand, yanking them apart and freeing my hands with the other. She stared at me with those blue eyes of hers, fixing me with her gaze, a look of tenderness passed between us, then she smiled that maniac’s smile of hers, turned to her own ankle shackles and snapped the chain in two. I did not have much time to contemplate our freedom as she was running off, blade in hand, onto the deck in the open air, to a chorus of shouts and cries. I picked up a cutlass and went to help her. By the time I got to her, she was stood on a pile of about five bodies, bleeding from a dozen cuts and wounds, the two remaining crewmen fearful of attacking her. They did so finally, Skarr finished one and I the other, muttering again the curse that came now easily to my lips. Then we were onto the upper deck. Skarr kicked down the door of the Captain’s cabin, wood spintering her bare feet. She never even paused, instead running straight to the startled noseless Captain, threw down her cutlass and ran to the nearby treasure chest. I stood watch as Skarr retrieved our belongings, and her precious Doomsayer. Smiling that strange smile of hers, she moved behind the Captain and put her hands on his throat and chin.

 

“Someday, you Imperials will learn that Northers do not make good slaves. Remember me to your gods.”

 

Then she snapped his neck suddenly and quickly, and we looked down at ourselves. Ragged, barefoot, sweating, cut and bleeding from a dozen places, and covered in puke and piss, we presented a fearsome sight. But we were once again free, even if we were adrift with a crew of slaves who had no knowledge of sailing.

 

The first thing to do was to wash, and we did so. Then Skarr unlocked our broken shackles and we attended each others wounds, dressed and buckled on our weapons. Skarr handed me the Captains keys. At first I wondered why, but then I remembered our fellow slaves. I handed the keys to Kefira who had appeared in the doorway. We had done it. We were on our own ship , free of our captors and on the way to Samaria.

 

I quickly realised that a crew of slaves captained by an apprentice apothecary and a severely seasick Norther barbarian would not amount to much. As I pondered on these thoughts and Skarr, once again, heaved her guts up over the side of the ship, the deck lifted up suddenly under our feet, with a sound of splintering wood and rending iron. We had run aground! The ship screamed as it came apart beneath us! Then we were in the water, and all I could hear was the sounds of slaves struggling in the salty foam and spray. We could see a coastline clearly now, we were not that far from land. It appeared we had run aground on a reef and our hard won ship was now snapped in two and sinking fast. As I struggled to keep my head above the waves, I looked around for a sight of the Cock of the North herself. I couldn’t see her, and began to wonder if she had been dragged to the depths already. Suddenly I felt an arm grab me, there she was, soaking wet and struggling in the water. What dread hand had fate got in store for us now. I would not be long in finding out.

 

Done