Down to the Sea

FIVE

He awoke to hell.

As consciousness returned, he could hear Sean O’Donald’s low rasping breath. Good, he was still alive.

Or was it good? No. Death was the only way out now, better if Sean had died from the last beating.

Eyes swollen nearly shut, Richard turned his head to look at his comrade, chains around their wrists, hanging suspended from the ceiling of the darkened cabin.

As the ship rose and fell, they slowly swung back and forth, Sean groaning as he brushed against the cabin wall, then swung away.

The only illumination came from a narrow slit of light through a slightly ajar wooden porthole cover.

Richard Cromwell wished that the room were completely dark so that he could not see the table across from them. Knives, pincers, and whips were laid upon the table, the only furnishing in the narrow room other than the chains that bound them.

How long had it been? He wasn’t sure. Definitely a day. Had there been a night? If so, he couldn’t remember now. His universe was focused on the pain; the racking thirst that was nearly as terrible; the realization that there was no way out, that they were the prisoners of the Kazan and death was the ultimate outcome.

He tried to become detached, to remember how it once was. He had a vague memory-or was it just what his mother had told him? — of a time when they had been spared the full horror of the Merki occupation of Cartha. She, as the mistress of Tobias Cromwell, was allowed a place to live, decent food, deliverance from the feasts and from the mines.

But then Cromwell had died, and the Merki had sent them into the mines. Even children of two and three had crawled into the narrow seams and retrieved loose rock.

Thus he had lived and grown until the end of the war. He had learned toughness, to look with cold eyes upon unspeakable horror, to watch as others died the most horrible of deaths and to feel nothing.

He wondered how it could be that he was not like so many others who had survived that time; the drifters, the beggars, the drinkers and murderers who had infested the city of Cartha after the war and the coming of the Yankees.

It was his mother’s love that had shielded him from that fate. He could remember her soft touch, her stories of her family, rulers of Cartha before the Great War. Her love had formed a shield around him and somehow kept a kernel within his heart alive and warm.

She had died on the final day the Merki fled from the Yankee gunboats on the coast, the liberation within sight. The Merki had massacred nearly everyone. But even among that dreaded race there could be acts of pity. Their master, ordered to slay everyone, had granted her a clean death, a single blow. Then he had looked down, blade drawn, and hesitated.

“Hide beneath your mother, little one,” he whispered, and left.

So he had hidden, feeling the warmth that covered him growing cold.

A Rus soldier had found him thus, taken him in and raised him. The old man had been kindly enough, a fisherman living alone, who had taught him to sail, to work, to read and write. The old man seldom spoke, for a wound to the throat from a Tugar arrow had made his speech all but unintelligible, but concealed within was a sharp mind and a gentle strength. They would take their small boat out upon the Inland Sea, and often for days not a word would be exchanged, but Richard had, at least with this lonely old man, learned the strength of silence and patience.

He had died when Richard was eighteen, and only then did Richard learn that this quiet, lonely man had been a hero in the Great War, a war of which the old man had never spoken other than to say that his entire family had died in the great siege of Suzdal and that Perm had sent Richard to replace those he had lost.

Several veterans came to the funeral, one of them the Yankee general Hawthorne. He was the one that suggested Richard attend the academy and offered to give a letter of recommendation, never realizing who Richard’s father had really been.

Old Vasiliy had often suggested that Richard take his name, but something within had always stopped him, a defiance toward the world, an unwillingness to concede this one final point. It had caused nothing short of an explosion when he had appeared before the review board to take the exams and placed his true name on the form.

The matter had gone all the way to Andrew Keane, who was not president at the time, but did sit on the Supreme Court. The four years at the academy had been, because of his defiance, less than pleasant. More than one instructor had denounced his father as a traitor and openly mocked his name. And yet his quiet defiance had, in the end, gained him a certain grudging respect.

Vasiliy had taught him never to admit that anything was impossible. Once their net had become tangled in some wreckage, and the old man had told him to dive down and loosen it. The net was too precious to cut away or abandon. He had tried and could not reach it, and Vasiliy simply sat back, lit his pipe and told him they had days if need be, but he would untangle the net.

It had taken a day, he had almost drowned doing it, but he had learned.

And now it is time to die, he thought. I should have died nearly twenty years past. Every day since had been but an extra drawing of breath. At times he half believed in a God, Perm, and Kesus as old Vasiliy called them. At other times, in the face of all the cruelty he had witnessed, it was impossible to believe in any sense or order to the universe, for surely if there was a God he had to be mad to allow such a world as this.

The ship rose on a wave and corkscrewed back down, slamming both of them against the bulkhead. Sean groaned, a shuddering sob racking his body.

“Richard?”

“I’m here.”

Sean looked over at him, face contorted with agony. “I can’t take it again.”

Richard said nothing. He had learned how to block out beatings. In the mines they were the primary way to force children of four and five to work, or simply to amuse a bored Merki master. He had once seen a child slowly beaten to death across an entire day in the same way human children would torment a fly.

The beating of the previous day, however, had not been done for amusement, but for the simple purpose of breaking him down. He understood the method well enough, to push the agony to the limit of endurance, made even more maddening because no questions were asked, nothing demanded as of yet. Pain was simply inflicted, the lash snaking out against their naked bodies until both of them were bloody masses of peeling flesh.

He knew the questioning would come next. They’d be offered yet more torture or a quick release from the pain if they talked.

He looked over again at Sean and saw the terror in his eyes. He wondered if Sean, in turn, could sense the fear within his own soul as well.

“Listen to me,” he gasped, pausing to lick his split and bloodied lips. He swallowed to clear his throat. “Lie to them. We’ll have to talk, but we can lie.” He whispered softly, suspecting that just behind the half closed shutter and porthole a guard was listening. That’s why he spoke in English, doubting that any of their captors knew the language.

“Our ship, the Gettysburg, its an old ship. We have ships three, four times as big. Let’s say, twenty of them. We saw them pulling the wreckage of our flyer in, so tell them the truth about that, but say it’s our smallest aerosteamer. Tell them our army has half a million men under arms and can call up another half million. We have to agree on this now. They most likely will separate us soon.”

Sean, eyes glazed, stared at Richard. “Why?” Sean whispered.

Why? He was so incredulous, he couldn’t respond for a moment.

“It’s our duty, that’s why,” he finally replied.

“Duty? Duty got us into this. I joined because I had to. I was the son of damnable Senator O’Donald. Now look at us.”

A shuddering sob escaped him, and he lowered his head.

“Damn it, Sean, we have to agree on this. It will make it easier for both of us.”

“Easier?”

“I know how these creatures think. They respect strength. Show weakness, and they’ll drag out the agony for their own amusement.

“When they start in again, try to hang on as long as possible. When you simply can’t take it anymore, act as if you’re breaking, then spill it out quickly.”

He looked over at the table where the implements of torture were neatly lined up.

“They get careless sometimes. If you have a chance, throw yourself on one of their blades.”

He had seen that done often enough, and though it was easy to say, he wondered if he would have the courage to do so if the chance should arise.

“Then what?”

If we’re lucky, they just might cut our throats, Richard thought, but looking at Sean, he realized he’d better not say it.

“The moon feast. That’s what they are planning for us, isn’t it?”

Richard shook his head. “They only do that to fresh victims.”

Sean groaned as another wave rolled the boat, swinging them back against the bulkhead.

A burst of light flooded into the room, and, startled, he looked up. The door was open. Two of them were standing there, both in white robes, unlike their tormentors of earlier, who were stripped to the waist and wore black trousers.

The two entered, the second one far taller than normal for one of the Horde, head inclined low even though the ceiling was over eight feet from the deck.

Richard gazed at him warily. He was thin, almost cadaverous for a Bantag, eyes a strange pale blue, a rarity amongst that race. His gaze was penetrating, cutting directly into the soul.

Richard knew that some were able to do this. The terrifying Tamuka, the fallen Qar Qarth of the Merki, had been one, although those with the power usually stood behind a Qarth or even the Qar Qarth as their adviser.

This one, he sensed, had cultivated the ability to see within beyond anything the Hordes of the north knew or comprehended.

As the blue-eyed one gazed at him, Richard fought to show indifference; the look of a slave who was beyond caring and beyond fear.

There was the flicker of a smile, and then he turned to look at Sean.

Richard watched the silent interplay. Sean gasped for breath, eyes drooping. Again the flicker of a smile.

The blue-eyed one said something unintelligible, and his companion pulled a drinking flask out from under his robe, uncorked it, and held it so that Richard could drink.

He gulped it down. The taste was strange, tinged with a slight bitterness, like a strong herb. The flask was withdrawn and offered to Sean, who drank as well.

The second one drew back and then left the cabin. At first Richard felt some of his strength returning, but then he sensed something else, a strange drifting. The pain was still there, but somehow he felt as if he were floating.

The blue-eyed one smiled.

“Yes, it was drugged.”

Richard was startled. The words were in English.

“I seek answers to a few questions. That is all, and then this will end.”

Richard wanted to make a defiant reply, but decided that silence was still the best path.

“Just end it,” Sean cried, his voice near to breaking.

“It will end.” His attention turned to focus on Sean. “Tell me, are you the son of Senator O’Donald of the Republic.”

Richard could not help but betray his shock. The blueeyed one smiled. “We know quite a bit about you.” As he spoke he snapped his fingers.

A man came through the door, a human wearing a white robe, the same as the blue-eyed one. And yet something about him made Richard uneasy, even frightened. The man was tall, matching Richard’s height, but beneath the robe he could sense a physique that was perfection. The man moved catlike. There seemed to be a coiled and deadly power to him, his gaze cool, almost mocking.

“Years ago I sent a dozen like Machu here north, to learn a few things. Your Yankee language was one of the things he returned with. My Shiv learn such things quickly.”

“Shiv?” Sean asked.

He smiled. “My name is Hazin, and you, Sean O’Donald, will learn soon enough who the Shiv truly are.”

“I doubt that,” Richard snapped.

The gaze turned, fixing on him. Yet again he felt the sense of uncovering, of staring within.

At a subtle gesture, Machu stepped forward. The back-handed blow was delivered in almost a casual manner, but the force of it stunned Richard. For a moment he thought his jaw had been shattered, and he gagged on the blood, which nearly choked him.

The man turned on Sean, and the beating began. Within less than a minute O’Donald was sobbing, begging for it to stop. The whole time Hazin ignored Sean, all attention focused on Richard.

He could feel the drug taking hold, the strange floating, the sudden awareness of the finest nuances of the narrow universe of the cabin, the way motes of dust floated, the scent of salt air drifting in, such a pleasant relief washing away the fetid stench.

He heard the sharp rasping snick of a knife being drawn, and the Shiv held it up before Sean’s eyes. As Sean rocked back and forth, suspended from his chains, the Shiv remained motionless, the point of the blade raised so that with each forward swing it barely touched Sean’s skin, drawing blood from his arms and chest.

Hazin, meanwhile, continued to stare at Richard.

Not you, he seemed to whisper. The other one is the one I know will break.

“What is it you want?” Richard gasped.

“You know,” Hazin whispered.

“No, I don’t.”

Sean was crying, beginning to beg. Richard froze, closing his eyes, trying to block out the sound, and yet still he felt as if Hazin was looking at him, probing within, seeking for something that could not be described by words.

“No, not that, God no.”

Richard opened his eyes and saw with horror that the Shiv had lowered his blade and was preparing to make the most cruel of cuts with it.

Sean was shaking his head back and forth, feebly kicking, his cries drawn out into a long pitiful moan.

Richard looked back at Hazin. “Stop it,” he gasped. “I’ll tell you what you want, just leave him alone.”

“No, you would lie, Cromwell. You would try to save your friend, but still you would lie.”

“I’ll tell you anything,” Sean begged, “just not that.”

Richard lowered his head, and in spite of himself tears welled up. He had never had room for pity in his life. There was no room for pity in slavery, it could only lead to death. Yet now he felt it for a comrade who had been pushed beyond the limits of endurance. He wondered as well if he would have broken with such a threat. He wondered if Hazin, who somehow seemed to be inside his very thoughts, knew the answer to that question.

He heard the snick of a lock opening. The Shiv had unsnapped one of the manacles holding Sean and then unlocked the other. O’Donald fell to the deck, sagging down onto his knees. The Shiv effortlessly picked him up and carried him out of the room.

But Hazin did not follow. Another Shiv came in, this one almost identical to the first. He had the same muscular build, the same sharklike eyes devoid of emotion. Richard wondered if the torture was to continue.

Instead there was a blessed relief as the manacles around his wrists were unfastened. He tried to remain on his feet as he dropped to the deck, but his knees gave way. The Shiv pulled him back up and roughly tossed a cloak over his shoulders, covering his nakedness, then pointed at the door.

Legs wobbly, Richard did as ordered. It was difficult to walk. The pain was beginning to float away, replaced by a strange warmth, and yet his mind still seemed focused on his awareness of Hazin.

Stepping into the sunlight, he breathed deeply. The ship was strange, its lines sleeker than the Gettysburg, no masts; its deck painted a dull gray and scorched here and there with battle damage. Part of the deck forward had been split apart.

The ocean was a vast expanse of a deep, lush blue, sparkling with whitecaps driven before a warm, tropical breeze. He felt, at that moment, as if it were the most beautiful experience he had ever known-the ocean, the scent of the wind, the rocking of the ship beneath his feet as it plowed through the gently rolling sea.

Hazin stepped past him, motioning to him to follow, and Richard went up a ladder and through an open door. The light inside was muted. What appeared to be an altar of black stone rose at the far end of the room, which was filled with the sweet scent of incense.

Silk curtains over the portholes were drawn shut, but a soft, diffused light filtered through, giving the room a gentle, comfortable feel Hazin motioned to a chair set by a table. On it was an open decanter and a single crystal goblet beside it.

“Have something to drink. Cromwell.”

“Is it drugged as well?”

Hazin smiled. “Of course. You can refuse, but in the end thirst will compel you, and you will drink. So why endure the wait?”

Richard looked at the decanter and hesitated.

“Your friend is drinking even now.”

Richard looked bitterly over at Hazin. But his back was turned, facing the altar, holding a burning taper to light a candle.

“Cromwell, we can play this game for the rest of the day. You can even try and kill yourself by not drinking. But I can assure you that you will be forced to drink.”

Hazin turned and smiled. “O’Donald is telling us everything-the size of your fleet, your army, types of weapons, he’ll tell us all.”

“Your spies told you already, so why torture him?” Richard snapped.

“Interesting. You seem more worried about him than yourself.”

“I know what to expect.”

“I understand your body was covered with lash scars even before the current unpleasant treatment. Were you a slave of the Bantag?”

“The Merki.”

“Even crueler. A primitive people, the Merki. It shows a certain toughness on your part.”

Richard continued to eye the decanter. It contained a swirl of color, a rainbow sparkle of light that was infinitely pleasing.

“The information we have on your Republic is old. Half a dozen or more years. After the treaty we of course sent spies in, but recent events caused my order to shift its attention elsewhere. Frankly, the appearance of your ship was a bit of a surprise for me, but in the web of things I feel there might be a use for it-and you.”

Hazin drew closer, and, pulling out a chair on the other side of the table, he sat down. Richard looked at him warily, gaze flickering to his belt, hoping to see a knife. Though all of this race had an overwhelming physical strength, they were usually slower, even a bit clumsy, and a human moving quickly could at times snatch a blade or weapon.

“I’m not armed, at least not with the type of weapons you seek,” Hazin announced dryly, as if bored with Richard’s intentions.

“What the hell do you want, then?” Richard snapped. “If poor Sean is breaking, you have what you need. I’ll just lie, and you know that. So finish it, damn you.”

Hazin chuckled softly. “Spirit. That’s why you are sitting here with me while ‘poor Sean,’ as you call him, is being questioned in a slightly different manner.”

Richard bristled, and Hazin held up his hand.

“No. The torture is finished. That was just a way of making one of the two of you pliable. You intrigue me, Cromwell. I just want to talk.”

“How did you know our names?”

“Foolish question. I expected better. Your names were written on the seams of your clothing, and both of you had your commission papers in your wallets. Poor security, flyers should never be allowed out like that. One of my Shiv recognized the name O’Donald, and I of course had heard of your father.”

Richard stiffened and lowered his eyes.

“Yes, the traitor of your Great War, Did you know him?”

“No. My mother was a Merki slave. He died when I was an infant.”

“Yet you kept his name. A certain pride there. I approve of that in anyone, of my race or of yours.”

“The Shiv?” Richard asked.

Hazin stood up and returned to the altar, then leaned against it, looking back at Richard. “The future for this world.”

“The Republic is the future. If you come after us, you will never win.”

“A loyal answer, but then, you only know of your Republic. You know nothing of us, of what we are and shall be.” Richard thought of the ship he was now on, how easily it had smashed the Gettysburg, of the man with the cold eyes who Richard sensed could kill with effortless efficiency.

“The Shiv are your future, Cromwell. Across ten generations we of my Order have been breeding humans, seeking the traits desired: physical strength, intellect, and cunning. Those who pass such traits on to the next generation are allowed to continue to breed. The others,” and he smiled, “well, they have their uses as well.”

Richard looked at him, incredulous. He knew he should feel outrage and disgust, but the damnable drug was making itself felt. The room was drifting, floating. The way the light shone through the porthole, catching Hazin’s strange blue eyes, held his attention.

“Imagine what fifty thousand such warriors could do to your army. But there does not have to be a fight. It could instead be a compromise, an understanding without needless bloodshed.”

“The Republic will never surrender, as long as Keane and those who think like him are alive.”

Hazin nodded. “Yes, I know. Just a dream of mine.” He sighed.

Strangely, Richard felt a sympathy, almost a desire to somehow please, to understand. He fought against it, trying to stay focused, to find something, anything in the room that he could fight with, to kill, to go down fighting.

“You have a remarkable strength, Cromwell. I admire that. Everyone else is far too transparent and malleable. It is actually rather boring at times.”

Hazin drew closer and remained standing, looking down at Richard.

“I could force you, I want you to know that. The Shiv are bred to the needs of my order. At five they are taken from their mothers, who offer them up gladly, and for the next fifteen years are trained mainly by those of their own race. Half die in that training for war, or for other work, or for our special purposes.”

“Special purposes?”

“We can discuss that later.”

“I give them something to believe.” He nodded to the black altar. “Combine such strength with religious belief, and you have a force that is terrifying to behold. You, unfortunately, would never believe. Always there would be the memory of childhood, of other things. I could deaden you with what is in that decanter, make you pliable for a while, but you could never be fully of them.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I’ve never had the opportunity before,” Hazin replied. “It intrigues me. You are not of the Shiv, not of the millions of other humans who live among us as slaves. Being different, there must be a use for you. Focusing on that will be an interesting experiment for me.”

Richard struggled for control, to somehow avoid the eyes, the sudden thirst, the desire to let the power of the drug expand. After the war, in the rare times that he and Vasiliy had gone to Suzdal, he had seen more than one crippled veteran who had become addicted to the morphine given to them in the hospital. They would sit in a shady corner, oblivious to their squalor, drifting in dreams. Is that what they are doing to me now?

He looked back at the decanter and then, with a slow deliberate gesture, knocked it over. As the decanter fell off the table, it seemed to hang suspended. Fascinated, he watched as it ever so slowly fell, the golden container upending, crystal blue liquid gurgling out onto the dark wooden floor.

His gaze shifted to Hazin.

“No,” he whispered. “I suggest that you find your entertainment elsewhere.”

“I could make it far more painful that you could ever imagine. We could slowly cut your friend apart in front of you for starters, then turn on you.”

“Go ahead. We’re dead anyhow.” The brave words spilled out of him, even as the thought of what was to come.

Of course, he had proclaimed the usual amnesty, even praising those of the court who had so loyally served his brother. Once settled in, he could begin the quiet process of elimination and vengeance.

And yet the question of Hanaga’s survival still lingered. A survivor from Hanaga’s flagship had been fished out of the water and claimed to have seen him abandoning ship just before it had exploded.

It would be like him to survive,” Yasim muttered, looking over at the slight diminutive form wrapped in the white and gold robe of the Grand Master.

“And which ship did he flee to?”

“The sailor did not know.”

“Undoubtedly one of ours.”

“One of yours?”

The Grand Master chuckled. “But of course. Don’t you think there is more than one captain of a ship who is secretly a member of our order?”

Yasim looked over nervously at the Grand Master. “You said that Hazin was reliable, that he would fulfill the contract.”

“Yes I know.”

“I sense uncertainty in your voice, Grand Master.” There was no reply.