Firehurler (Twinborn Trilogy) (6 page)

He remembered the whole rigmarole he had learned in
his dreams, in that faraway realm in his head where they had finally told him
to stop trying to create magic. It was the incantation his dream self had tried
for so long with no results, hoping to see just the tiniest bit of an effect
for all his hard work. He swallowed hard and then began.

“Aleph kalai abdu,”
he recited, while carefully touching the tip of his middle finger to
the tip of his thumb and carefully tracing a small circle in the air.

The tip of his injured finger burst into a soft white
light.

Kyrus stared at it for just a moment … and then passed
out.

Chapter
5 - Hard Time

Choonk … choonk … choonk … choonk—CRACK—choonk …

The heavy hammer swung rhythmically, slamming into the
rubble of more rocks than he could count. Denrik Zayne paused a moment to wipe
the sweat from his bald head before any more of it dripped into his eyes. He
was of average stature and not a solidly built man, but he had a body that had
long grown accustomed to hard labor even before coming to this place. His skin
had a weathered, leathery look, tanned by sun and rubbed raw by the ocean wind.

Denrik was a sailor by trade, and had spent more years
at sea than some of the other prisoners had seen in their whole lives. He had
been in the New Hope penal colony on Rellis Island for nearly three years, and
he was to see seventeen more before he would ever again be a free man. He
regretted nothing more than having been caught, for he was unrepentant of his
crimes. Indeed, many at his trial clamored for the reinstatement of public
hanging, claiming that if ever there was to be an exception to the king’s wish
that no prisoner be executed, it would be for Denrik Zayne, Scourge of the
Katamic Sea.

Denrik had been one of the most successful—and the
most feared—pirates in the region in recent memory. During the height of
Denrik’s power, few were the merchant ships that left port without an escort
from the Acardian navy. He had even been so bold as to engage and sink naval
vessels when he could catch them alone. Piracy was a profitable way of life,
but one that created a great deal of enmity. In the end, the Acardian navy had
caught his ship in a blind inlet, hiding away while being repaired, and he had
reluctantly surrendered. He found out during his trial that one of his former
crewmen had betrayed the location of one of the sheltered ports he used.

The crack of a whip overhead had Denrik back to his
chore quickly. The prisoners spent all day breaking large rocks into smaller
rocks, and then sweeping them into sacks to make room for new large rocks to be
brought in. Denrik knew it to be a pointless exercise, designed to punish the
prisoners and break their spirits by forcing them to perform backbreaking labor
all day, every day. He knew the game, though, and played along, biding his time
and keeping in as little trouble as his nature allowed him.

They were each stripped to the waist and chained in a
long line by the ankles. There were six men together, five others and Denrik,
and though the order might change day by day, Denrik was carefully kept from
the positions on either end, where a prisoner got to have one leg free at
least. As little hope as there was for a prisoner to break free of their
chains, Denrik carried a foul reputation, and the guards took any precaution
they could think of.

When the prisoners were given their break for lunch,
they remained in the work yard. Guards brought out a thin gruel that had been
warmed by the blazing noontime sun to the point of making it nearly inedible.
The prisoners who were attached to Denrik’s chain were not allowed spoons for
their gruel, for the warden had strictly forbidden that anything that might be
used as a weapon come within Denrik’s reach. The order had caused Denrik to be
something of a pariah when he first arrived and was assigned to a work crew,
just as the warden had intended. He had gotten past that social impediment by
agreeing to take the members of his chain-crew into his protection. Once it
became known that anyone who gave trouble to someone on his crew would have to
answer to Denrik, only one prisoner tested his resolve. The rest of the
prisoners on Rellis Island learned an important lesson that day when they discovered
that though Acardia no longer executed criminals, Denrik Zayne had no such
reservations. When the body was found, Denrik was safely locked away in his
cell with the rest of his crew, but nevertheless suspicions ran strong among
the more superstitious prisoners that Denrik had done the deed himself.

The guards stood watch over the prisoners while they
ate. Each guard was dressed in loose-fitting garments of light linen, all a
dusty shade of white. Wide-brimmed straw hats kept them well shaded during the
hottest parts of the day, and on that unseasonably hot spring afternoon, the
prisoners dearly envied them that shade. In a land with trees and shade and
cool water to drink, the day would have seemed beautiful and bright, but not in
New Hope. The ground was barren of plants of any sort, the whole of the island
being little more than an oversized outcropping of rock jutting from the sea.

“Eat yer grub and be quick about it,” ordered one of
the guards, a fat surly man by the name of Pierson.

Despite the lightweight uniform and all the other
comforts afforded the guards, he was dripping rivers of sweat and in a foul
mood. Seeing little response from the prisoners, who in spite of his
remonstration were already eagerly slurping up the stomach-turning meal, he
cracked his whip over their heads. Several men were startled and fumbled the
bowls containing their lunch, and one even spilled the remains of his meal.

Denrik, who had with long practice trained himself not
to flinch at the sound of the guards’ whips, merely looked up at the guard with
dangerously narrowed eyes.

Pierson scowled back at him. “What’re you looking at?”

He cracked the whip again, this time within a few
inches of Denrik’s head. Denrik clenched his jaw and willed himself not to
move, but betrayed himself slightly by blinking when the tip of Pierson’s whip
drew close. Salvaging a bit of authority from the exchange, Pierson let the
matter end at that.

Secretly many of the guards were a bit afraid of
Denrik Zayne. The name had been synonymous with piracy in Acardia for well over
a decade, and even years after his capture, something about the name still
commanded fear and respect. He was so unlike the rest of the prisoners on the
island; they knew not what to make of him. Most of the men sentenced to hard
labor on Rellis Island had been criminals because they knew no honest trade or
had taken too easily to the lure of undeserved riches. They were generally an
undisciplined, unruly bunch, and prone to much violence when left too long to
their own devices. Though little of Denrik Zayne’s earlier life was known, it
was apparent that somewhere along the line, he had acquired a nobleman’s
education. Though he spoke little when the guards were about, his accent and
vocabulary singled him out clearly among the rest of the rabble incarcerated on
this island, and he carried himself calmly and with a strange, offended
dignity, as if imprisonment were beneath him. It struck a strange chord in
men’s minds when they reconciled his demeanor with the reckless brutality for
which he had been convicted.

*
* * * * * * *

At the end of the day, the prisoners were led back to
their cells. The cell block was built from stone native to the island, which
had a distinctive reddish-brown color to it, and which Denrik had always
thought gave the place a rather cultured look, as far as prisons were
concerned. His crew was led into their cell, a stone-floored, square room with
no windows and a heavy steel door with a small, closeable door set into it at
eye level. There were six bunks, three hanging from each of two opposing walls
and with little space between them in any direction. Once the door was locked,
the guard handed through the eye-level portal a key ring that would let them
unlock their manacles and unchain themselves. Failing to hand both the key and
chains back to the guard promptly, through the little door, was always cause
for a good punishment, and so the crews each learned to perform the nightly
ritual with admirable efficiency.

With their chains removed and the guard having left
them locked in and to their own devices, the exhausted men relaxed. Each of
them climbed into their bunks, as there was little enough room elsewhere in the
cell, and collapsed gratefully onto the not-so-soft wooden planks. The room’s
stench told of years of sweat and blood soaked into the wood of those bunks and
to a lesser degree into the walls and floor, mixed with an entirely different
smell from a large bucket shoved back into the far corner of the room. It had
become home to them, welcoming only in comparison to the rest of the barren
rocky wasteland of New Hope. But in their cell at least, there was no one to
whip them for talking and no rocks to break. To the beleaguered prisoners, that
was enough.

“Cap’n, how much longer we gots to wait?” asked one of
the men.

The men of Denrik’s crew had taken to calling him
“Captain” as a sign of respect, for they found it seemed to improve his mood.

“Not so much longer, Jimony, not long for this place
anyway. Just two more days. I have been counting them, and I do not lose track
… unlike some of you.”

The last bit was a rare show of humor from their
taciturn leader, and it was met with a chorus of chuckles from his crew, except
for Tawmund, who was the butt of that particular jibe.

“I can’t wait to sees the mainland again,” muttered
Jimony dreamily.

Their captain had promised that he had a plan to get
them off the island and make them all free men again. He had told them few
details of it, though, except that it involved them getting as many of their
own crew members assigned to help unload the next supply ship as they were
able. Bribery was difficult, as the prisoners were allowed few personal
effects, but Denrik had managed something along those lines. Getting himself
appointed to a loading detail was out of the question, however; for while the
guards were careful to keep him away from sharp objects and anything that might
conceivably be made into a weapon, the warden had promised to personally hang
any guard “who lets Denrik Zayne within sight of any boat.”

“Just keep playing their game, by their rules, until
their rules do not matter to us anymore,” Denrik said.

He realized that he seemed unusually talkative this
night and in better spirits than normal. Thus his men took that to be his
well-concealed excitement over their impending escape.

“Um, pardon me asking, Cap’n, but when we gettin’ to
find out the rest o’ yer plan? Um, I’m not meaning no dis-ree-spect or nothing,
but it’s just that we ain’t as smart like yerself, see. I mean, what if we’s taking
some time to learnin’ it all?” asked the largest of the group.

“It is alright, Andur; you will do fine. You are all
well suited to the parts you will play. The difficult part will be my own, and
if I fail, all you need to do is nothing. You will never be suspected should
things go awry—um, wrong.”

Denrik had to have a care how he spoke among his men.
There had been hard feelings and some ticklish situations that had come about
from them misinterpreting words they were unfamiliar with. Andur in particular
had become nearly frantic when he first heard that Denrik planned to see all of
them “emancipated.” He had promised to kill any man who tried “emancipating”
him.

“Now enough about the plan,” Denrik said. “We do not
want to risk one of the guards happening to check the cell block while you men
are carrying on about how you are looking to break out of here. Now get some
sleep.”

In truth, the odds were against the guards checking up
on the prisoners during the night. They were just concerned with keeping the
prisoners from storming their own barracks. Rellis Island was three miles of
rough sea from the nearest mainland coastline, the small port town of Trebber’s
Cove. There was nowhere to hide on the island, either. Though nearly a mile
long, the island was only a few hundred yards across, and the terrain was rocky
and barren, with very little cover. Any prisoner who broke out of the cell
block would either have to make a swim for it against incredible odds or avoid
the penal colony’s guards until they were eventually captured anyway.

Denrik did not care for his men’s questions, though.
They were pawns, and he wanted it to remain that way. If he had to explain
everything, there would inevitably be suggestions to change things this way or
that, or for the men to question if it would work. Things had been arranged too
carefully for Denrik to suffer his imbecile henchmen throwing the chaos from
their bedraggled minds into his carefully constructed scenario.

The silence lasted not nearly long enough: “Hey, I’m
thinkin’ of something. Try and guess,” called Andur softly into the darkness.

“Is it something on the island here?” another voice
whispered.

“Nope.”

Despite the pitch darkness in the cell, Denrik found
himself squeezing his eyes shut, willing his idiot companions to shut up.

“Well, is it something on the mainland?” asked another
voice from the bunk just above Denrik’s.

“Nope.”

“Hey, wait a minute, it has to be one or the other …”

Of all the inane activities Denrik’s crew engaged in,
this was his least favorite. It was an insipid attempt to fill the quiet
darkness with something human, Denrik believed. The others were weak-minded and
needed the comfort of knowing that there were other people with them in the
still dark of night, lest they be overcome by fear.

But let them tell tales or brag of what they will do
when they are free
, thought Denrik,
or
even sing if they have to
.

The game could last hours, so poor were they at it.
Despite his best efforts to block it from his mind, Denrik could hardly help
occasionally trying to guess, though he kept his questions to himself. If he
was going to order them to stop, he would have put an end to the game long ago,
but he had chosen not to. He reminded himself that though they deferred to him
in almost anything when he made his will known, these were not his ship’s crew,
nor was he really a captain here. There was a limit to how far he dared push
these men and how much resentment he was willing to risk creating. And so he
allowed them to continue, though it pained his quick-witted mind to listen to
it.