No, he wasn't Weasel anymore, he reflected wryly as he headed back toward the dock and the Springeve. Poor Weasel never had cindin like this.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Pirates And Captives

They're pirates, you damn fool!” Kyle spat at Sa'Adar. “Muster your men to repel them. we've still got a chance to get away. With Wintrow at the helm, Vivacia will…”

“Yes, they are pirates,” Sa'Adar agreed triumphantly. “And they fly the Raven flag. They're the pirates that every slave in Jamaillia prays for. They capture slaveships and free the slaves. And they feed the crews to their own stinking serpents.” The last he uttered in a low growl that was at odds with the joyous smile on his face. “Truly, Sa has provided,” he added, and then he was striding away from them, to the waist of the ship where the gathered slaves were pointing at the Raven flag and shouting joyously to one another.

The word had spread through the ship like fire. As the Marietta came alongside, grapples were thrown. Wintrow felt Vivacia's apprehension as the sharpened hooks dragged across her decks to catch in her railing. “Steady, my lady,” he breathed to her again. Her anxiety mingled with his own. They had no crew with which to resist the capture, even if he had had the stomach for more fighting and blood. He felt his exhaustion hung on him like a heavy, cold garment. He kept her wheel, even as the other ship hauled in tight to her. Like an outpouring of ants from a disturbed nest, gaudily dressed sailors were suddenly swarming over her sides. Someone in the waist was barking orders, to slaves as well as sailors. With a swiftness and order that was almost magical, men began to flow up the masts. The sails were quickly and neatly reefed. He heard the anchor chain rattle out. Someone was barking orders in a voice of authority that the slaves responded to as they crowded out of the way of the pirate crewmen.

Wintrow kept still, and he hoped, inconspicuous among the other slaves. A feeling of almost relief welled up in him. These pirates were taking over his ship, but at least they moved competently. She was in the hands of true seamen.

The relief was short lived as, a moment later, bodies began to splash overboard. The white serpent that Wintrow had supposed left far behind in the storm suddenly broke to the surface to gape eagerly for the corpses. Several others, more gaudily colored, lifted their heads at a distance to regard the ship both warily and curiously. One suddenly lifted a great crest around its neck and flourished its head with a challenging bellow.

Vivacia gave an incoherent cry at sight of them. “No! Get them away!” she cried out. Then, “Not Gantry, no! Do not give him to the foul things! Wintrow! Make them stop, make them stop!”

The only response was a terrible laughter.

He glanced at his father. His eyes looked dead. “I have to go to her,” Wintrow apologized. “Stay here.”

His father snorted. “There's no sense in bothering. You've already lost her. You listened to that priest and let the pirates just board her. You just stood here and let the pirates take her. Just as last night you did nothing to warn us when the slaves rose against us.” He shook his head. “For a time, last night, I thought I had misjudged you. But I was right all along.”

“Just as I stood by and did nothing as you changed my ship into a slaver,” Wintrow pointed out bitterly. He looked his father up and down slowly. “I fear I was right, too,” he said. He looped off the wheel and went forward without a glance back. The ship, he told himself. I do it for the ship. He did not leave the man there alone and injured because he hated his father. He did not leave him there half-hoping someone would kill him. He only did it because the ship needed him. He moved towards the foredeck. When he reached the waist, he tried to thread his way inconspicuously through the gathered slaves there.

By daylight, the released slaves were an even more ungodly sight than they had been in the dimness of the holds. Chafed by chains and the movement of the decks beneath them, their rag-draped hides showed scabby and pale. Privation had thinned many to near bones. Some few wore better clothes, stripped from the dead or salvaged from the crew's belongings. The map-faces seemed to have appropriated his father's wardrobe and seemed to be more at ease than some of the others. Many had the blinking, confused gaze of animals caged long in the dark and suddenly released. They had broken into the ship's stores. Barrels of biscuit had been dragged out onto the deck and stove open. Some of the slaves clutched handfuls of ship's biscuit, as if to promise themselves food readily available. Freed of chains, they looked as if they could not yet recall how to move freely or act as they wished. Most shuffled still, and looked at each other only with the dull recognition that cattle have for one another. Humanity had been stolen from them. It would take them time to regain it.

He tried to move as if he were truly one of the slaves, slipping from one huddled knot to another. Sa'Adar and his map-faces stood in the center of the ship's waist, apparently offering a welcome to the pirates. The priest was speaking to three of them. The few words that Wintrow overheard seemed to be a flowery speech of welcome and thanks. None of the three looked particularly impressed. The tall man looked sickened by it. Wintrow shared his feelings.

They were not his concern. Vivacia was. Her futile pleas had died away to small inarticulate sounds. Wintrow caught sight of two map-faces on the lee side of the ship. They were systematically throwing the stacked bodies of slain crewmen and slaves overboard. Their faces were detached, their only comments relating to the gluttony of the white serpent who seized them. Wintrow caught a glimpse of Mild as he went over, and would recall forever the image of bare feet dangling from ragged trousers as the white serpent seized his friend's body in an engulfing maw. “Sa forgive us,” he prayed on a breath. He spun away from the sight and got his hands on the ladder to the foredeck. He had started up it when he heard Sa'Adar order a map-face, “Fetch Captain Haven here.” Wintrow halted an instant, then swarmed up it and raced to the bow. “Vivacia. I'm here, I'm here.” He pitched his voice low.

“Wintrow!” she gasped. She turned to him, reached up a hand. He leaned down to touch it. The face she turned up to him was devastated with both shock and fear. “So many are dead,” she whispered. “So many died last night. And what will become of us now?”

“I don't know,” he told her truthfully. “But I promise that of my own will, I will never leave you again. And I will do all I can to stop any further killing. But you have to help me. You must.”

“How? No one listens to me. I'm nothing to them.”

“You are everything to me. Be strong, be brave.”

In the waist there was a sudden stir, a muttering that grew to an animalistic roar. Wintrow didn't need to look. “They have my father down there. We have to keep him alive.”

“Why?” The sudden harshness in her voice was chilling.

“Because I promised him I would try. He helped me through the night, he stood by me. And you. Despite all that is between us, he helped me keep you off the rocks.” Wintrow took a breath. “And because of what it would do to me if I just stood by and allowed them to kill my father. Because of who that would make me.”

“There is nothing we can do,” she said bitterly. “I could not save Gantry, I could not save Mild. Not even Findow for the sake of his fiddling could I save. For all these slaves have suffered, they have only learned to disregard suffering. Pain is the coin they use now in all their transactions. Nothing else reaches them, nothing else will satisfy them.” An edge of hysteria was creeping into her voice. “And that is what they fill me with. Their own pain, and their hunger for pain and…”