Philip Palmer - Hell Ship

I caught Sharrock with a tentacle and threw him on my back. Then I tentacle-flipped away.

The Kindred did not give chase; they knew me too well.

“The fucking bastards!” roared Sharrock.

“I wanted you to see for yourself.”

“This is why,” said Sharrock, piecing together the parts of a puzzle that, until that moment, he had not realised was a puzzle. “This is why you put me with the arboreals, not with others more akin to my physical type.”

“Nine hundred cycles ago, the Kindred enslaved all the biped species. I was unable to prevent them.”

“Why would they do such a thing? To their own kind!”

“The Kindred are the Kindred; they have no ‘kind.’ ”

“And I am the only ‘biped’ who is free?”

“Yes.”

“Why? What makes me so special?”

“You are under my protection.”

“You mean, you’d fight for me?”

“No,” I conceded. “But the Kindred rely on me; I make their rivers flow, and their crops grow; I discourage rebellion among the giant sentients; I keep the world from falling into anarchy and Despair. The Kindred rule the Valley. They have biped slaves to dominate; and so they are content. We other sentients keep apart from them. We lead our own quiet lives.”

“Well, that’s going to change,” said Sharrock, quietly smiling now.

“No, it will not change.”

“Just watch, sweet beast. Now Sharrock is here, the world will come to its senses, and freedom will prevail!”

“No! We cannot have freedom! Things must not change,” I said angrily, “For what we have achieved here is precious beyond all measure: it is equilibrium. ”

And Sharrock stood up; and his eyes shone with fury; and spittle came from his mouth when he spoke, so great was his wrath.

“Sai-ias, hear this!” said Sharrock, and I knew I was in for a poetic rant; a common foible amongst battle-worshipping warriors.

“I have come to know you Sai-ias, and I know your heart is full of love,” said Sharrock, with his usual withering condescension; oblivious to the fact I am old and wise, and large enough to keep him in my mouth for years on end and yet not notice his presence when I dined.

“And yet you are a fool,” Sharrock continued; and his voice had a rich timbre, as if he were addressing a hall of drunken wastrels who needed to be inspired to commit acts of glory. “You allow yourself to be used by these monsters, these Ka’un! You preach obedience; but that is just servitude. You teach acceptance; but that is just another way of making slaves more docile. And worst of all, you all-”

I was bored by now; so I picked him up with one tentacle and shook him as a child shakes a toy that has lost its rattle in the hope it might yet make some kind of rattling noise.

Eventually I dumped Sharrock on the ground. He was dazed, winded, dizzy, and began vomiting profusely.

“All the biped slaves on this world,” I told him coldly, “volunteered to be so. They prefer it that way. You may despise that decision, but you will respect it. Or else, I shall carry you to the valley of the Kindred myself; and watch as they bind and shackle you and put a whip to your back!”

This was an idle threat, in fact; for, however much he vexed me, I could never be so cruel to him; but I hoped that Sharrock would not realise that.

Sharrock finally managed to get back to his feet. He staggered a little, getting his balance back. He spat the last of the vomit from his mouth. His eyes were out of focus, and he was in shock; but his body was, I knew, resilient, and he would recover swiftly.

Yet though he was now standing, he did not seem to me to stand as tall as before. And when his eyes refocused, they had lost their piercing stare.

“Why would anyone,” he asked, with a bafflement like that of a child discovering that her parents are fallible, “ choose to live as a slave?”

I had no answer to give him.

The Days passed.

Day the First.

Day the Second.

Day the Third.

Day “Come,” said Lirilla, and I came.

I found Sharrock in the centre of the grass amphitheatre. He was unconscious; one arm was ripped and bloody; there were savage sword wounds in his torso; and both his eyes had been gouged out. Fray stood by, scratching the ground with her hooves.

“What happened?” I asked, after a few moments of feeling overwhelmed with sorrow.

“The aerials called me,” said Fray. “They found his body high on a mountain crag. I clambered up, and carried it here.”

I touched my tentacle tip to Sharrock’s throat; no pulse.

I lifted his body up with one tentacle and put it in my mouth. And I breathed in through my spiracles, and out through my mouth; in; out; in; out; filtering the air so that all that remained in my mouth cavity was pure oxygen.

Then I spat Sharrock out gently. His body twitched; his blood was oxygen-rich now. His heart had started beating.

“Can you heal his body?” I said to Fray, and Fray grunted an affirmative, and stood up on her huge back legs; and began to piss upon Sharrock’s bloodied body. Fray drank every day from the well of the water of life, and her piss was running clear; so I knew this was the best way to heal Sharrock.

And after a few moment’s stupefaction, he realised that that Fray was pissing on him.

And Sharrock groaned, and sat up, and tried to dodge the torrent of healing urine; but in his confused state, he turned the wrong way, and his eyes and nostrils and mouth took the brunt of the cascade of hot, steaming Fray-piss.

“No need to thank me,” said Fray, in her kindest tones.

It took Sharrock two days to recover sufficiently to speak. When he did, though blind and scarred, he was unrepentant.

“You fought the Kindred?” I asked.

“Indeed, I fought those wretched, cowardly, viler-than-a-Southern-Tribesman Kindred,” he said, proudly.

“And lost?”

“I concede that I lost,” said Sharrock proudly, “yet I was not defeated. For Sharrock will never ever EVER be defeated!”

I sighed, from my tentacle tips. “Did you learn nothing,” I said acidly. “From your experience with the arboreals?”

“Yes,” said Sharrock. “I learned that monkeys shit a lot when they’re up trees; you really have to keep your wits about you.”

“You learned that revenge is futile!” I roared. “That was the lesson. That was why-”

“My people,” said Sharrock, “are in captivity. It’s up to me to save them.”

“Even if they don’t want to be saved?” I asked him, nastily.

“Even then,” said Sharrock proudly; and his nobility, and his courage, revolted me.

“Come,” said Lirilla, and this time I found Sharrock in the desert; stripped naked and baking in the sun. The Kindred had cut off his ears and his eyelids, and carved strange inscriptions on his bare flesh from head to toe. His red skin was burned and blistered by the sun’s rays; and he was parched, and croaking.

And his eyes, so recently healed, were now blinded once more by the sun’s rays; yet even so, there was about him a look of triumph.

“Come,” said Lirilla, and once more I came.

I found Sharrock this time in the encampment of the Kindred. His body was broken and bloodied; his teeth had been smashed out; he had lost one eye (those poor eyes!). And I began to seriously wonder if his body could continue to regenerate after these tremendous beatings; it was taking him longer and longer to return to his full warrior strength after each appalling defeat.

But today, I realised, he was surrounded by scores of kneeling Kindred; who were offering him obeisance.

I looked around. The slaves were no longer in shackles. They were free.

And Gilgara, the giant Kindred Chieftain, was on the ground; blood flowed from a terrible cut in his head; and no one paid him any heed. There was a slow thundering noise; a clapping; the Kindred were saluting Sharrock’s triumph in what had evidently been a long, and bloody, and brutal unarmed combat between Sharrock and Gilgara, the leader of the Kindred.