On A Voyage

They were below decks, maybe the cargo hold, but Peter could hear voices passing above him. There were dozens of men up there shuffling about, walking, working. He heard laughter, banter, and occasionally a deep, authoritative voice that hushed the others as it barked orders.

“The captain ain’t too keen on moving bodies, but those Sukans are paying handsomely and we needs it. I haven’t seen a ring in weeks, and I want more than hard tack and ship slop.” A voice intoned. It was gravely, deep, and had a plaintive yearning to it.

“A nice spit roast would suit, that’s true. A sizzling pig, or deer. I am hungry for something different.” The response seemed calmer. Whoever the second voice belonged to was straining. The voice was short and breathy.

They had fallen on hard times and were settling moving prisoners for Rota Sukans. Peter didn’t care, but it did explain a few things. It explained the wary looks they received while they were being hauled aboard. These sailors were clearly uncomfortable with their haul. It explained the ship seeming more equipped to transport everything but live cargo. They were in what were probably animal pens. Peter recognized the familiar scents of fur and dung. And the majority of the spacious hold was cavernous and empty save for a few barrels and crates.

Peter knew nothing about ships. It was big, and wooden, and it made strange groaning sounds. Ramon said it was the sound of the wood stretching. Peter didn’t know wood needed to do that, but the house back home sometimes made strange noises as it settled at night. Maybe it was like that.

They had been walked up a wooden ramp, across the deck, down some stairs and were unceremoniously deposited in the cargo hold and promptly forgotten. The Rota Sukans acted with disdain at the conditions of the hold, but they acted to most things with disappointment. Peter took a twisted glee that the conditions of the ship were not up to their trafficking standards. The pens were dirtier than their cages, but Peter hardly thought it mattered. He was a prisoner either way. The cleanliness of the prison hardly made a difference.

The sailors looked disheveled and had manic looks about them. They tried hard to avoid glaring at the prisoners. They vanished into their work and only cast furtive glances. They were dirty and every one of them was sun kissed denoting hours outdoors. So, they were laborers. Peter understood that. They wore tattered uniforms that had suffered from neglect. They had worked for Sessainia at some point, but the empire was crumbling and so too did their job prospects it seemed. Peter had no empathy for them. He was being held in the belly of their ship, but it did explain why they had resorted to trafficking. Hard times made desperate men make questionable choices.

“You fools secure that rigging. We may not be working for the empire anymore, but that don’t mean we need to be sloppy! We gonna be off soon. We’ll transport the cargo, receive payment, and be off” The voice was low, formal, and commanding. Peter could here the distaste in the speakers voice. It didn’t make things better, he was the cargo the voice was talking about, but there was some comfort in thinking they were unhappy about it. There was shuffling, boards creaked above their heads, but there was there was no retort.

He also heard the heavy accent of the Rota Sukan leader, Sugo Pratt. It had become familiar and that angered him a bit.

“How long before we set sail?” The voice had an accent, but spoke Sessainian clearly.

“We are still waiting on two more caravans and then we can leave.” Sugo Pratt explained.

The hold was full of strangers. It wasn’t just the prisoners from Eldorn anymore. Most of the people he knew had dispersed into a sea of nameless faces. Ramon stayed close however. He fought to keep his position as other caravans deposited their cargo into the hold. People cried, screamed, jostled. The hold had a fishy smell, mixed with the stale scent of aging wood, and bodies packed too tightly. There was a distinct smell of feces too. People had already defecated in here. That meant weeks of smelling a hoard of people’s bodily functions. Weeks of being near filth.

There were mostly the young, some children. It seemed each caravan had different needs, but few had seemed to focus on the infirm or aged. The few elderly were mouthy dissidents like Ramon and young, capable people. Peter’s crime was wanted something more than to be a farmer. Well, he would get a chance now, but it was nothing like what he had hoped for. These people were cattle to be sold. The stock needed to be good. The buyers were probably all looking for different qualities. Some probably wanted breeding cattle, while others wanted beasts of burden, and still others were perfect for slaughter.

He didn’t want to see these people that way, but that was probably how the Rota Sukans saw it. It was cruel to him, but it was just business for them. With the defenses of the empire crumbling, they had not had this chance in the past. Peter lived far from Rota Suka, but they would have never even ventured into Sessainian lands in the past. Now with the empire in turmoil however, it was open season.

“It’ll take weeks to get to Rota Suka. Jallaspar is a backwater. It was a dodgy place even when the empire patrolled it. Who knows how it is now, but if the Rota Sukans feel comfortable using it as the easiest path back home it has to be pretty bad.” Ramon new a lot. He was old, smart, and had been out of Eldorn before. He had traveled the empire and beyond and had seen many things. His stories weren’t just fantasies he told to wow the children. They were real, practical, experiences.

“First, we need to survive the voyage, then we can worry about Jallaspar and beyond.” Peter craned his neck and surveyed the gathered mass.

“Too right, there are challenges to sea travel. We won’t be on the water for too long. They’ll probably hug the coast with the Thellasians acting up like they are.”

The Thellasians were sea people. Peter had never seen one, but the paper had images. They were vicious, alien looking fish-like people who wore no clothes and brandished wicked looking weapons. There were other races that lived in the sea. Ramon had mentioned them in his tales, but none were as isolationist and hostile as the Thellasians.

They raided the land every so often and had only become bolder since the emperor passed. Now, they openly attacked ships that were foolish enough to venture out to open waters. Only the bravest fleets risked the trade lanes. The Empire was no longer capable of keeping ships safe. Peter recalled a vessel, pride of Sessainian navy, sacked by the Thellasians. Open war had not been declared, but news even reached Eldorn, and those who made the journey to Hemnor, the neighboring coastal city, brought ill tidings.

So not only were they being transported as livestock, they might be attacked by fish people that would drown them and eat them. Peter felt even more forlorn than he had earlier.

——-

There was no attack from Thellasians, but there was plenty of death. The voyage had only been a few weeks, but a lot of prisoners had perished. The water was meager, the food was stale and scarce. Many died during the night. A few had even ended their own lives. It was understandable. The conditions were terrible and the torture proved too much. The crying and moaning were dying down. It was probably a mixture of death and a callow acceptance of their fates.

“The Rota Sukans say it weeds out the weak ones.” He heard a voice say from above.

“A shame really. Starving people like that.” The second voice sounded genuinely remorseful.

Peter glared at the men assigned to remove the bodies. He had forsaken the bowl of slop wondering if it was dead prisoner, but he also heard regular splashes and cheers after the dead were removed. It had made more room. Peter felt guilty, but the extra space did make the experience more palatable. These were people. Suffering farmers, and masons, and old, mouthy men that didn’t know when to shut their mouths. Still, Peter found himself growing numb to the experience with every new body they removed. He said a soft prayer after he heard to body splash into the water. Maybe being condemned to the sea was preferable to what awaited them.

Ramon had grown ill. He was still holding on, but he rarely woke, hardly spoke, and ate little. Peter whispered facts to him. The passage of time. Sunlight shined through the boards. The hold was shrouded in dark unless they came down to feed them or remove bodies. There was a pool of sun near the grate where they unloaded goods. In the beginning he had longed to touch it. To feel its warmth, but he had grown accustomed to the cool, damp, belly of the ship. The idea of the outside, of freedom, was already fading.

The old man might have years, but he proved tenacious. If Ramon responded it was short, truncated comments, and they were always weak whispers.

“When we get out of this, I am going to have a nice glass of Levan’s wine.” Ramon whispered. He managed a smile on his sallow, wizened face.

Peter stroked his thinning, grey hair. “That sounds like a good idea.”

Peter smiled to himself. They would never go home again. Even if they survived, they would never be free. He saw no harm in letting a sick, old man dream of better times. Ramon had been through much in his life if half his stories were to be believed. To end such a large life ill and a prisoner on a ship heading to a foreign land seemed unfair.

Peter felt resentment building within him. These were decent people, young people, there were even babies. Those that died were discarded, and those who survived still had the future in Rota Suka to worry about.

“Too many are dying.” A plaintive voice criticized overhead.

“You were payed, I don’t see why it matters.” The voice was unrecognizable, but clearly Rota Sukan.

“They’re people!” The plaintive voice raised.

“They’re property playing at personhood. Calm yourself, Ulcheck. Concern yourself with captaining your vessel and leave my cargo to me,” said the Rota Sukan.

The argument continued. The captain, Ulcheck, was heated, but the Rota Sukan was calm throughout. Sugo Pratt rarely conversed with his subordinates during their travel, this Rota Sukan might be his equal. Peter imagined the leaders of other wagons. Large, mean, monsters who had stolen people in the night, threw them in cages, and carted them far from their homes to sell as a commodity. Sugo Pratt was bad enough, a dozen of him, was horrendous.

It was true, but it was also true that it was the Iron Wolves that had detained him. Iron Wolves who were definitely not Rota Sukans. And the mercenaries had proven to be monsters. There motivations were political. Their leader had a problem with Lord Shalemourne. The Lord he had sworn himself to only weeks earlier. He would have been ignored if he had just kept his head down, remained a farmer’s son, and never got involved.

It was true that keeping people as property was monstrous, even the elves found it distasteful, and they loved ruling over the lesser races and seeing them as beneath them. Still, it was the elves that demonized the Rota Sukans. The Sessainians had leveled every accusation at the Rota Sukan empire. He was not alive for it, but after the war the enmity only grew. The Rota Sukans had successfully resisted elven expansion. They had the audacity to refute the chance to be civilized how the elves saw it. Hostilities between the two people’s had only reached a crescendo when the rumors of the prince’s assassination was leveled at the door of the Rota Sukans. Of course, the Emperor had died, the Empire was weaker than ever and they had no ability to retaliate with anything but defamatory claims.

His neighbors were wary of outsiders. They were friendly to travelers, but they had only welcomed one stranger into their midst to stay, and even then they kept him at arms length. Still, the vintner Levan, remained an outsider despite his support of the town. They were insular, ignorant of the world. They were all settlers from various regions. Most were refugees from Sessainian expansion. The oldest families rebuffed anyone they didn’t like by making them feel unwelcome. Eldorn, for all its pastoral beauty, and the Botos mountains that protected and isolated it, wasn’t a perfect place.

There were those that tried to settle in the valley, but were rebuffed. They continued on into the mountains and were never heard from again. There were tales. Wild men. Yeti. That wandered the snow, hunted stragglers and probably ate them.

Peter was wondering if anyone actually ate people. It was starting to seem like a tactic now to criticize your enemy. He eyed the slop. He was very hungry, he had heard the splashes. This wasn’t dead prisoner. Probably.

The Rota Sukans wore sophisticated dress, acted like city people, and carried themselves with ritual and honor. Peter was having a hard time reconciling what was happening to him, what he was told to believe about the Rota Sukans, with what he was seeing. Keeping prisoners was cruel, throwing the dead overboard was callous, but he had started to reflect on other people’s, even his own home, and wondering just how different they all really were.

It dominated his time and distracted him as the days went by.