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Grieve released his hold and let Bannon drop unceremoniously to the slanted deck. He raised a heavy battle-axe in his hand, threatening, and that provoked a delighted reaction from Chalk. He crowed, “The axe cleaves the wood! The sword cleaves the bone!”

Bannon didn’t know what the shaman meant, but his jabbering often made no sense. Chalk looked at Bannon and nodded, as if he expected the young man to agree with him. “The axe cleaves the wood! The sword cleaves the bone!”

Grieve dismissed his odd friend. “My axe can cleave bone just as well, and it will take off this one’s head as soon as the ship repairs are done.”

“Not yet, my Grieve. Not yet.” Chalk stroked Bannon’s long ginger hair, which made his skin crawl. “Not this one.”

Slave crews got to work among the numerous damaged vessels. The Norukai fleet had consisted of a hundred serpent ships sailing up the Killraven River and closing on Ildakar. The raiders had intended to climb the bluffs and overwhelm the city’s defenses, but they didn’t know anything about the besieging army of General Utros on the other side of the city. Bannon and his morazeth partner Lila had fought with hundreds of other defenders on the cliffs, hurling down projectiles, battling with spears and swords to drive the raiders away, but the Norukai had overwhelmed them.

He had fallen from the cliff, been knocked unconscious and taken captive. Bannon didn’t know what had happened to Lila since then, and even if he managed to escape from the countless hundreds of watchful Norukai all around him, he did not know how he could reunite with his friends. Nathan had been leading a huge raid against General Utros when the city vanished beneath the shroud of eternity, and Nicci had gone on another mission, to warn Serrimundi. Bannon had no hope of meeting up with any of them ever again, so he would have to fend for himself. If he ever got away.

When Elsa’s transference magic had frozen the entire river, the ice-locked ships were structurally damaged. The angry Norukai now worked like ants, making repairs and forcing their captives to do the hardest labor, cutting down trees in the swamps, dragging the logs back, and sawing the wood into lumber.

Some of the serpent ships had sunk to the silty river bottom. Those wrecks were stripped of ropes, which were used to repair the rigging of other ships. Sheets of midnight-blue sailcloth were moved to the intact ships and mounted as sails. Workers sawed the masts from the scuttled ships and installed them on other vessels; salvaged wood provided new hull boards where needed. Expert Norukai shipwrights like Gara moved from vessel to vessel directing the repairs, commanding slave teams.

Always looking for his chance to escape, Bannon reluctantly hauled lengths of rope from one deck to another, carrying tools and supplies. During the hot, endless work, he considered using the mallets and pry bars as weapons. He knew he could harm several of the slavers, but it would be an impotent gesture against thousands of ruthless Norukai, and he would just end up dead. He wrestled with what to do.

The day before, one of the Ildakar slaves attempted to fight back and succeeded in injuring one Norukai, who was taken by surprise with his back turned. Though Bannon applauded the man’s effort, it was poorly planned, and the Norukai instantly subdued the rebellious slave. They were not quick about killing him. They forced Bannon and the other captives to watch as they broke the bones in the slave’s arms one at a time, then his legs. They piled heavy weight stones on his chest, one after another with a long pause in between, until his ribs cracked, his eyes hemorrhaged, and blood spouted from his mouth. When the poor man gasped for mercy, one of the Norukai simply stepped on the weights, slowly pressing until his sternum cracked.

Though Bannon wanted to murder these tormentors, he wouldn’t waste his life to no purpose. He watched and waited, knowing an opportunity would arise, and he hoped he could help the other captives as well as himself.

Sullen slaves dismantled a sunken wreck, using pry bars to detach the hull boards for patching holes in other vessels. The exhausted workers were fed little and allowed no rest. They had only the greenish river water to drink.

King Grieve bellowed from the prow of one of the nearly finished ships. “I want to sail soon. Finish these ships so we can head back to the Norukai islands and launch our war.”

Bannon muttered, “Since so many Norukai were killed here, you’ll need fewer ships going home.” The shipwright reached over and slapped Bannon hard on the face, bloodying his lip and leaving a bright red mark on his cheek.

Chalk laughed as if the young swordsman’s remark was the funniest thing he had ever heard. He squatted in front of Bannon and nodded, grinning. Unfortunately, the king also heard the comment. Grieve grabbed him again, ready to kill him, but Gara hissed her warning again. “We need him to work!”

The king lifted Bannon and tossed him over the side of the ship and into the river. “He can work at the waterline, soaking up mud and slime.”

With a yelp, Bannon fell, plunging into the river. Spluttering, he struggled for something to hold on to. He trod water and looked up, his reddish hair hanging in muddy strands like weeds. Grieve leaned over the rail and growled from above. “Next time I’ll put weights on your ankles! Then you can repair the bottom of the boat until you drown.”

Chalk peered over the rail, staring down at Bannon with incomprehensible concern.

Gara threw a mallet down to him, which splashed in the water. Four other slaves were tied to the listing ship alongside spare boards and wooden buckets filled with nails. The river sounds hummed in the oppressive humid air around them. Norukai guards passed close in landing boats, ferrying equipment and people from one serpent vessel to the next, while also keeping watch on the slaves working at the waterline.

Bannon realized that further resistance—today—would accomplish nothing more, so he grudgingly took the floating mallet and followed instructions. For now. Picking up one of the patch boards, he reached into a bucket of nails that hung on a rope and joined the other slaves in pounding the wood into place, overlapping hull boards. Another slave dug his hands into a pot of warm pitch and slathered a waterproof seal across the wood.

A nearby slave commiserated, “Terrible duty, but better than bilge work.”

Bannon had seen other slaves going into the dark and stuffy lower decks of the damaged ships, hauling out buckets of water so the vessels could float higher. “I guess we can always think of something worse.” Optimism had often been Bannon’s saving grace, and he clung to hope that frequently turned out to be foolish. But it was the core of his personality. He would find a way to escape these disgusting captors, and he would make things better. He wouldn’t give up.

The slave beside him let out a bitter chuckle. “This is much better than the bilge—” Suddenly, his face twisted in an expression of pain and terror. He flailed at the rope holding him, but something yanked his body beneath the water before he could scream. The rope stretched tight, then snapped, and blood blossomed in the water.

Bannon instinctively reached out to save the man, but the victim was snatched away. The other slaves scrambled to get out of the river as the knobby reptilian back of a swamp predator broke the surface and swam briskly away with the poor man’s broken body in its scissorlike jaws. The swamp dragon dove under the water, taking its meal.

The slaves in the water screamed, pulling on their ropes as they tried to lift themselves to safety. Bannon grabbed the snapped cable that had held the victim and used it to climb the hull, reaching down to help the others. Norukai rushed to the rails with boat hooks and spears. They jabbed downward, knocking the slaves away. “Back in the water. Back to work!”