Somewhere in the East
One year ago
Hinjen woke. Waves kissed his feet. He opened his eyes. Night loomed over the ocean.
Inland, the dense jungle sprawled. He frowned. He knew the Far Isles well, but not this place. As he scanned the shoreline, he remembered rumors. Mad sailors spoke of islands far to the east – islands populated by savage men and forgotten beasts.
He started to roll onto his back. The pain in his leg made him cry out.
The pain brought his memory. Mutiny! He ground his teeth, pounded his fist into the sand.
He thought of Katya, the girl turned tigress. She had led the traitors. “I’ll kill her,” he said. She had seemed so small, so wounded when he met her four years ago, a pleasure slave in a Darnaki bathhouse. He could still remember her clutching him as he helped her escape to his ship and a free life on the open sea. He’d taught her to sail, taught her to fight. Perhaps he’d taught her too well.
He closed his eyes and remembered his final minutes on The Blood Moon.
“Just slit my throat and be done with it!” hissed Hinjen, sunblind. Longjaw and Maxson were holding his arms, and Dirklar had both his legs.
Katya stood before him now with laughing eyes. She suffered from still tongue. Voiceless, she spoke with motion and glance. Her look now said more than any words could. At her signal, the men lifted Hinjen’s battered body to the rail. With a fluid movement she reached down to Hinjen’s boot, plucked his hidden dagger from its sheath, brought it up, and thrust it into his thigh.
Hinjen screamed and surged against the men holding him. Their strength held. He tried to fix his gaze on something, anything. The main mast taunted him, twisting and spinning as Katya used the blade on his flesh. He felt he might faint from the pain as she butchered the meat of his thigh.
Longjaw snickered. “You go to Roth’Ki this morning Captain. If’n you sees old Donto, tell ‘em I says hello.”
“Shut it Longjaw!” snarled Maxson. “He’ll die today, but he don’t deserve taunting by a foam eater like you.”
Longjaw sneered, but fell silent.
Katya removed the blade. Hinjen reeled. Blood streamed down his leg from the deep dagger wounds. He swiveled his head to look at fat Maxson. “Thank you Max,” he panted through blood caked lips. “It’s always nice to see mercy in a traitor.”
Maxson looked down. He inched away a bit. He looked to Katya again. She pulled a necklace of pearls from her hinchbelt and slid them over Hinjen’s head. “What have I done to deserve such a death, Katya? If you must kill me, do it with blade or rope or hammer. Do not give me to the Shark God. Better that I hang from the riggings or boil in Jiggo’s stew pot.”
Katya’s eyes did not answer. She reached again into her hinchbelt and produced an ornate silver box. She opened it. Hinjen’s belly lurched as he saw the ash it contained. The rites of Roth’Ki required blood, pearls and ash. Hinjen’s blood would summon Roth’Ki’s children soon after the scent hit the water. The pearls served as an offering to the vain god himself. And the ash represented the spiteful burning of all things that Roth’Ki could not reach. “When did you become a mistress of The Shark?”
Katya dipped her thumb in the box and smeared the ash across his forehead. Hinjen shivered in spite of himself.
She returned the ash box to its pouch in her hinchbelt. She then leaned in to kiss him. She lingered, licking the blood off his lips. She nuzzled his face with her nose the way she had done a thousand times before.
Maxson’s grip slackened during the kiss. Hinjen thought frantically. He might wrest an arm free, but then what? Grab her? Take her with him?
His eyes darted to the rest of the crew. They could not look him in the face.
Katya stepped back. Endgame. He had to act fast.
“Maxson, Dirklar, hold for a moment,” he pleaded. “Katya, my last words. Give an old pirate his due . . . please.”
Her eyes narrowed into slits underneath her platinum hair and she tilted her head. There were a few grunts of ascent from the crowd.
“No!” shouted someone. “A curse that’s not uttered has no power! Don’t let him talk, or he’ll hex us! ”
“Wrong!” shouted another. “We’ll bring the curse by not letting him speak his last.”
“He belongs to The Shark now,” added Topper. “What harm can it do?”
Vrade in the front laughed openly. “Will he promise revenge? Shall the pirate king damn his mutinous crew?” Vrade held up his crookblade. “Hinjen, if you plan on returning after Roth’Ki has finished with you, I’ve got this to stick up your shark-eaten ass.”
Some of the men laughed. Jok yelled “throw him in already! I can smell him pissing his pants!”
Katya smiled. She raised her hand to silence the men and nodded for him to speak.
Hinjen breathed to calm himself. He needed all his wits. A pious man might pray to the gods now. Not him. He would sooner spit in their eyes. So he prepared for death, even as he spoke to avoid it.
“Lads!” he raised his voice to the men. “For fifteen years I served as your Captain – fifteen good years! You’ve stolen or spent more coin in that time than a thousand other rogues!”
Katya eyed the crowd. He pressed on as she chewed her lip. “I gave you all fair terms – I never cheated or harmed any of you.”
“You killed Nummy!” shouted Deadhand.
“And Yilkru and Dark Dehlia!” said someone else.
Hinjen gritted his teeth. “Nummy was stealing from us – his fellow thieves! What would you have me do with him?”
Silence from the crowd. Then another shout came. “What of the others?” Hinjen recognized the voice, but couldn’t place it. No doubt the ringing in his ears from the beating he’d gotten at the hands of the crew had jarred his memory. Still, something nagged at him about that voice. He scanned the crowd. The voice had come from somewhere near the main sail.
Beside him, Maxson began to shuffle. He’s anxious to end this. Hinjen focused. “Yilkru was a raper of children. I’d kill him again if he stood here, and I hope each of you could say the same.”
“And Dehlia? What of her?” shouted Nimble Nik.
In spite of everything, Hinjen smiled. “Nobody tolerates a screeching harpy forever!” he shouted. “You dogs cheered when I tossed the cunt overboard! Besides, what’s the use of being a pirate captain if you can’t kill a horrible bitch now and then?” The crew howled with laughter at this.
“Anyway lads,” he said. “I never done wrong to them that’s hearing me speak, and I’ve made you rich to boot. I’ve given you all a good wind at your back – I deserve no less from you.” Katya’s eyebrows furrowed as he spoke. “Give me one of the small boats and water enough for three days, and I’ll make a blood oath never to cast my shadow near your filthy hides again.”
The winds blew over a mute crowd.
Dogboy broke the silence. “And if we don’t?” shouted the hairy little man.
Hinjen darkened. “If you do not grant my request, I can only say this . . .” He paused. Half the men leaned forward to hear him over the wind. “My death may be certain, but so too is my undeath. If you betray and murder me now in this way, my angry shade will stalk you until the end of your days!”
The men began murmuring. Some argued openly.
Like a cat, Katya sprang up the stairs onto the quarterdeck to be seen over the crowd. With one hand she gestured to Hinjen. With the other hand, she produced a parchment of some kind and held it up. Hinjen squinted. A bright orange seal cried out from the bottom of the document – the seal of The Council of The Wheel.
The sight of the paper brought a cheer from some of the men, though many still looked sober. Hinjen didn’t know what the paper said, but he knew who said it. “They say that The Wheel is ever turning!” he shouted. “The Lords of Commerce serve only their own interests. Right now, rewarding you may serve their immediate goals, but do not doubt that their interest will one day shift, and they will turn on you as well. Their malice matches their greed, and you can trust none of them!”
“They can trust one!” came the familiar voice behind the main sail again. A handsome man dressed in the fine silk and leather stepped into view. A golden cape flapped about him in the wind, and his hand rested on the hilt of a menacing black rapier. Hinjen didn’t need to see the family crest or the motley black and white hair to know this man. Even squinting into the morning sun, Hinjen recognized him at once.
And he realized as quickly that all hope of escaping death was gone.
It was Sarvius Dal’Fanak. As heir to the Dal’Fanak fortune, Sarvius had assumed House Dal’Fanak’s seat on the Council of The Wheel after his father’s ill health had forced him to his bed. Though the youngest member of the eight person Council, Sarvius had nevertheless displayed remarkable ambition and had consolidated significant power.
He also hated Hinjen with every fiber of his being.
“I keep my promises,” said Sarvius, walking among the crew. “I have put more gold in the hands of these men today than you have in fifteen years, just as I promised them I would.” He looked to the men for affirmation. Several men nodded. “My actions speak for my character, and I’ve shown them that they have no cause to doubt me. What have you shown them lately, Hinjen?”
Hinjen closed his eyes. He hoped the first shark bite would take his head off cleanly. He knew it wouldn’t. His lip curled. “Forgive a surly pirate Sar, but I have no wish to spend my final moments listening to your rambling.” Hinjen turned to the men holding him. “Throw me over lads.”
The man’s eyes flashed. “Hold! Consider it counsel for your next life, Hinjen.” He strode over toward Hinjen, but still kept a safe distance.
“As your crew can attest,” continued Sarvius, “you promise them gold, but lately deliver only risky adventures with few rewards. Pirates don’t run to the aid of damsels in distress, Hinjen. Pirates put the damsels into distress in the first place.” Laughs burst from the crew.
Hinjen did not miss the reference. Sarvius spoke of the ill-fated rescue of a merchant’s daughter from the Mines of Madness. They had saved the girl, but at an awful price. All told, they lost thirteen men in the rescue – five to the jaws of a nameless horror in the dark, and eight more to the “killing dreams” it had caused.
Sarvius droned on, smiling as he paced back and forth in front of the crowd. “What’s more Hinjen, pirates don’t hunt imaginary dragon hordes, they hunt real loot.”
Hinjen winced. He had embarrassed himself last year by taking a job from a senile old warlock to find the lair of an ancient wyrm. Hinjen was to keep whatever he found in the dragon’s hoard with the sole exception of some kind of “decorative hourglass.” Hinjen was not one to cross wizards lightly, but after three months of fruitless searching around the same seven islands, the men had grown restless and he had felt compelled to abandon the search. He had not yet felt such a compunction to return the wizard’s down payment, however.
“Finally Hinjen, pirates do what they do for the wealth. They don’t wage personal wars based on their own philosophy or personal principles.”
Hinjen shrugged at this. “I’ve been called a lot of things in my time Sar, but never principled.”
Sarvius ignored him. “Unlike you Hinjen, I keep my promises. And I recall that I once made a promise to you!” He hissed these last words. Katya had returned to the main deck, and now moved to Sarvius’ side, leaning into him as he gingerly slipped an arm around her delicate waste. “And as you see, I fulfill that promise now.”
Katya nodded to the men holding Hinjen. And with that, they tossed him out of his own ship, and out of the only life he had known for the past twenty years. The last thing he saw before he hit the water was Sarvius’ gleeful face.
Now he sat on an unknown beach, gods knew how many leagues from even the smallest of villages. His thigh throbbed and he remembered his wound. Why had the blood not drawn the sharks? What of Roth’Ki? How had he escaped the belly of some fish?
For the first time, Hinjen looked down at his mangled leg. Tight seaweed strips circled his thigh. Someone had bandaged his wounds. But who? The vacant beach and unbroken sand offered no clues.
He looked at the seaweed wraps again. Small shells and tiny bits of coral decorated the intricately woven strips. He shivered as it came to him. Merfolk. Now he understood how he had survived the sharks.
He did not believe in merfolk, or at least he hadn’t before this moment. If he recalled the legends though, he now owed a life debt to one of the gilled men or women under the sea. Such life debts could prove very difficult to repay. In the stories, such debts often made the debtor regret having lived in the first place.
Hinjen couldn’t concern himself with such things now though. It was getting cold. He needed shelter. He fought through the agony and managed to get up onto one leg. His bad leg would not support his weight, but he managed to hop toward the jungle before him.
As he neared the tree line he wondered what he feared more, discovering that the island was populated with the dreaded savage men, or discovering that he was hopelessly alone. He gritted his teeth as he looked vainly for some kind of crutch.
Then he heard the sound of drums. He had his answer.