above the hook that secured it to the boat. ‘We’ll take our chances with the serpents, you bastard!’ he screamed at Kennit as the undulating serpent sank beneath the waves. ‘Rodel, cut your line loose!’
Rodel, however, did not share his skipper’s optimism regarding the serpent. The terrified sailor gave a cry of despair and flung himself from the dangling boat back to the ship’s deck. Kennit disabled him with a cut to his leg and then put his attention back on the boat. He ignored the cries of the squirming sailor who tried vainly to stem the flow of his blood.
With a single stride Kennit sprang into the swinging boat. He set the tip of his blade to the captain’s throat. ‘Back,’ he suggested with a smile. ‘Or die here.’
The seized-up block-and-tackle suddenly broke free. One end of the suspended boat dropped abruptly, spilling men into the sea even as the serpent once more erupted to the surface. Kennit, lithe and lucky as a cat, sprang clear of the falling boat. One hand caught the railing of the Sicerna, and then the other. He was hauling up his dangling legs when the serpent lifted its head from the water to regard him. Its ruined eye ran ichor and blood. It opened its maw wide and screamed, a sound of fury and despair. Its blinded eye faced towards the men who struggled in the water, while Kennit dangled before the good eye like a fishing lure. Frantically he swung one leg up over the railing and hooked it there. As softly as a well-trained pet takes a titbit from its master’s fingers, the serpent closed its jaws on his other leg.
It hurt, it burned like a red-hot leg-iron, and he screamed. Then the pain suddenly flowed away from him. A chill, delightfully numbing, chased the pain away as hot water purges cold from the skin. He felt it flowing up his body. Relief, such relief from the pain. He felt his leg relax with it, and then the numbness was flowing higher. His scream died away to a groan.
‘NO!’ The whore shrieked the word as she flew across the deck. Etta must have been watching from the deck of the Marietta. No one blocked her way. The deck was mainly cleared of live men; they had probably fallen back at sight of the serpent rising again. Some impromptu weapon, a boarding-axe or a kitchen cleaver, flashed in the sunlight as Etta brandished it. She was screaming, a stream of gutter invective and threats directed towards the serpent that even now was lifting him up. Some reflex made him cling to the ship’s railing with all his might. That was not much any more. Strength had fled him. Whatever venom the serpent had put into his wound was already rendering him helpless. When Etta seized him in a wild embrace that also included the ship’s railing, he scarcely felt her grip. ‘Let him go!’ she commanded the serpent. ‘Let him go, you bitch-thing, you slimy sea-worm, you whore’s arse! Let him go!’
The enfeebled serpent tugged on his booted leg, stretching him out over the water. Etta hauled determinedly back. The woman was stronger than he had thought. He saw more than felt the serpent set its teeth more firmly. Like a hot knife through butter, those teeth sheared through flesh and muscle. He had a glimpse of exposed bone, looking oddly honeycombed where the serpent’s saliva ate into it. The creature turned its great head like a hooked fish, preparing to give a shake that would either tear him loose from the railing or snatch his leg from his body. Sobbing, Etta raised her weapon. ‘Damn you!’ she screamed, ‘Damn you, damn you, damn you!’ Her puny blade fell, but not as Kennit had expected. She did not waste the blow on the serpent’s heavily-scaled snout. Instead the blade cracked loudly against his weakened bone. She severed his leg just below the serpent’s teeth, cutting it off a nice bite, as it were. He saw blood gout from the ragged stump as she hauled him hastily backwards crabbing across the deck with him in her grip. He dimly heard the awe-stricken cries of his men as the serpent raised its head still higher, and then suddenly collapsed back into the sea, boneless as a piece of string. It would not rise again. It was dead. And Etta had fed it his leg.
‘Why did you do that?’ he demanded of her faintly. ‘What have I ever done to you that you would chop my leg off?’
‘Oh, my darling, oh, my love!’ she was caterwauling, even as the darkness swirled around him and took him down.
The slave-market stank. It was the worst smell that Wintrow had ever encountered. He wondered if the smell of one’s own kind in death and disease were naturally more offensive than any other odour. Instinctively, he wished to be away from here. It was a bone-deep revulsion. Despite the misery he saw, his sympathy and outrage were overwhelmed by his disgust. Hurry as he might, he could not seem to find an escape from this section of the city.
He had seen animals confined in large numbers before, even animals gathered together for slaughter, but their misery had been dumb and uncomprehending. They had chewed their cud and lashed their tails at flies as they awaited their fates. Animals could be held in pens or yards. They did not need to be secured with both manacles and leg-irons. Nor did animals shout or sob their misery and frustration in words.
‘I can’t help you, I can’t help you.’ Wintrow heard himself muttering the words aloud and bit down on his tongue. It was true, he assured himself. He could not help them. He could no more break their chains than they could. Even if he had been able to undo their fetters, what then? He could not erase the tattoos from their faces, could not help them flee and escape. Evil as their fates were, it was best if he left each one to face it and make the best he could of it. Some, surely, would find freedom and happiness later in their lives. This extreme of misery could not last for ever.
As if in agreement with that thought, a man passed him trundling a barrow. Three bodies had been dumped in it and despite their emaciation, the man pushed it with difficulty. A woman trailed after him, weeping disconsolately. ‘Please, please,’ she burst out as they passed Wintrow. ‘At least let me have his body. What good is it to you? Let me take my son home and bury him. Please, please.’ But the man pushing the barrow paid her no attention. Nor did anyone else in the hurrying, crowded street. Wintrow stared after them, wondering if perhaps the woman were crazy, perhaps it was not her son at all and the man with the barrow knew it. Or perhaps, he reflected, everyone else in the street was crazy, and had just seen a heartsick mother begging for the dead body of her son, and had done nothing about it. Including himself. Had he so swiftly become inured to human pain? He lifted his eyes and tried to see the street scene afresh.
It overwhelmed him. In the main part of the street, folk strolled arm in arm, dawdling to look at booths just as they might in any marketplace. They spoke of colour and size, of age and sex. But the livestock and goods they perused were human. There were simple coffles standing in courtyards, a string of people chained together, offered in lots or singles, for general work on farms or in town. At the corner of the courtyard, a tattooist plied his trade. He lounged in a chair beside a leather-lined head vice and an immense block of stone with an eye-bolt worked into it. For a reasonable price, the chant rose, a reasonable price, he would mark any newly-purchased slave with the buyer’s emblem. The boy calling this out was tethered to the stone. He wore only a loincloth, despite the winter day, and his entire body had been lavishly embellished with tattoos as a means of advertising his master’s skill. For a reasonable price, a reasonable price.
There were buildings that housed slaves, their specialities advertised on their swinging signs. Wintrow saw an emblem for carpenters and masons, another for seamstresses, and one that specialized in musicians and dancers. Just as any type of person might fall into debt, so one might acquire any type of slave. Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, Wintrow thought to himself. Tutors and wet-nurses and scribes and clerks. Why hire what you could buy outright? That seemed to be the philosophy here in the slave-market, yet Wintrow wondered how those shopping for slaves could not see themselves in their faces, or recognize one’s neighbours. No one else seemed disturbed by it. Some might hold a lace kerchief fastidiously to the nose, distressed by the odour. They did not hesitate to demand a slave stand, or walk, or trot in a circle the better to inspect him. Latticed-off areas were provided for the more private inspection of the females for sale. It seemed that, in the eyes of the buyers, a failure of finances instantly changed a man from a friend or neighbour into merchandise.
