Jean Rabe: The Silver Stair

The thick iron chains were uncomfortably heavy. Beneath the manacles, sores festered that the creature could not scratch. He did his best to ignore the pain and concentrated instead on the cries of the gulls circling overhead. With each breath, he pulled as much fresh air as possible into his lungs. The air was crisp, almost brittle, on this late fall morning, and it was laced with the scent of sea bass that had been caught a number of hours ago and was now threatening to spoil. It carried with it a worse and all-too-familiar odor-the stench of his captors. The creature growled softly and gritted his teeth as a whip struck his back.

"Move!" A grim-faced sea barbarian cracked the whip again. "Faster, you stinking beast!" There were other words that were more vicious-sounding, an unending stream of expletives that the barbarian thought the creature could not understand and that he rattled off for his own pleasure. "You're the slowest of the lot! Move!"

The creature called himself R'vagho, and had stated his name repeatedly to his captors. They thought the word was only a growl.

Another lash.

Reluctantly he sped up his pace, chains clanking sonorously above the snap of the billowing sails. Bow to stern and back again, across a deck that had become deeply scarred by the chains dragging over it, the walk was achingly brief and monotonous, but it was far better than staying forever in the stuffy, urine-reeking hold. It gave the creature some semblance of exercise so his muscles would not atrophy-and so he could fetch a better price.

Thirty-odd creatures rested in the belly of the cog currently called The Hope of Kothas . The ship had changed its name twice since it had taken the creatures on as cargo, and it had flown a dozen different flags. All of that subterfuge was lost on the beasts.

The creatures were to be sold as slave labor for an inland mining company within the week in a port called Goodbay. R'vagho had never heard of Goodbay, or of Abanasinia, the country in which it rested. He only knew that they were heading south. The rising and setting sun told him that much.

At one point there had been more than a hundred and fifty of the beasts crammed into the hold. Most had been sold in small ports to the north, along with chests containing relics from the Blood Sea, always at night, when the palms of sentries were filled with enough steel coins so they would look the other way. The barbarians' merchant captain, whose face was always hidden by a voluminous hood, had an accomplished sorcerer under his command. The sorcerer, also obscured by his expensive, billowy clothes, kept the creatures in line and waggled his fingers to magically put to sleep any on the docks who might object to the slaving operation.

"Move!"

The walk ended all too quickly, and the creature was returned to the hold. Another captive was taken up top, then another. R'vagho and his fellows passed the day in the close darkness of the ship's belly as they always did-eating the barbarians' scant leftovers, listening to the timbers creak softly, and trying to remember just how long they had been gone from their home.

Sleep came with difficulty, as usual, and the creatures were rudely roused from it. R'vagho felt the ship lurch wildly. He stood, only to be driven to the hold's floor as the cog rose and fell with what must have been an especially large wave. His breath was knocked from him as one of his fellows stumbled into him, then the pair scrabbled to their feet. Another bucking motion, and the creature was tossed against the hold's side, his head striking the rough timbers. He grabbed at his stomach in a pointless attempt to keep it from giving up his meager dinner.

A storm. They'd been through several during the trip. Some had been worse than others, but this felt like an especially bad one. The creature clung to a beam and tried to shut out the growling complaints of his fellows. He picked through the noises, trying to sort out what was going on above.

The timbers were groaning, as they always did during strong winds. The sound was different this time, not the gentle, almost soothing sound he had come to consider pleasant. If the timbers were living things, the creature would have believed these were groans of pain. Straining his ears, he heard the faint snap of the sails, but this, too, was different. He heard the crash of waves across the deck, the fearful bellows of the barbarians, the creak of the masts-louder than in the previous storms, if R'vagho's memory served him.

The wind whistled shrilly, and the sound grew to a keening wail as the minutes passed and the others in the hold finally grew quiet and listened to the sounds of the storm. A rumbling started, at first soft, like the growling of an empty stomach, then within the space of a few breaths becoming so thunderous it fairly overpowered their senses. It brought lightning with it, the cracks sharp and frightening. The ship rocked with an ever more frantic pace, wildly rising and falling and lurching unpredictably from side to side.

R'vagho barely made out the voice of the captain. He was shouting orders, panic clearly evident in his voice. Feet pounded across the deck, though amid the crescendo of the storm, the footfalls sounded faint.

The largest of those in the hold, a tall, hulking brute, was making his way to the ladder that led up to the hatch. The brute's thick chains thudded dully against the rungs as he climbed.

R'vagho steadied himself and made his way to the ladder. He grabbed another beam and doubled over as the bucking motion of the ship caused him to lose his balance and retch.

More of the creatures were surging around the brute on the ladder who was now slamming his fists against the door of the hold. The wood was slowly giving way, just as the previous hatch had done during an earlier unsuccessful escape attempt.

R'vagho numbly watched them. When they broke through the hatch, they would be severely beaten, as they had been following the earlier attempt. Perhaps this time the brute would be scorched by the sorcerer's horrible, tiny lightning bolts or maimed by the frightening fire-magic. Maybe the creatures would be keelhauled.

More pounding fists echoed against the hatch. Growls of encouragement came from those clinging to the ladder beneath the brute. The faint cries of the sea barbarians drifted down from the deck. Then finally the sound of wood splintering cut through the chaos. Success! The brute scrambled through the broken hatch and onto the deck. The others followed quickly up the ladder behind him.

R'vagho let out a deep breath, closed his eyes, and waited for the sound of the sorcerer's terrifying spells and the thuds of his fellows falling to the deck in fiery death throes.

Instead, all the creature heard was the howl of the storm. The wind and the thunder rose eerily louder now, the broken hatch carrying a chill gust into the hold where it echoed like a maddened ghost. The rain was coming with it, a driving sheet that spattered in a staccato rhythm against the hold's floor.

His brethren would be lashed by whips and put to sleep by the magic they all loathed or else they would be killed. Still, R'vagho was curious, and joining his fellows on deck would be better than staying down here in the foul hold.

The creature pushed away from the beam, staggering as the ship continued to pitch wildly. He fell twice before he made it to the ladder, and he clung to the rungs to steady himself before he began a slow ascent.

Despite the black sky overhead, it was somewhat lighter on deck. Dark gray clouds were intermittently illuminated by lightning. The wind was fierce. It had broken the rear mast, which lay amid torn sail and rigging and the unmoving bodies of a several barbarians. The captain ordered the mainsail to be taken down.