even if divested of their cargo. Sorcor had been adamantly opposed. ‘We kill the crew, free the cargo and sell the ship. But not back to other slavers,’ he had loftily stipulated.
Kennit was beginning to regret letting the man think he regarded him as an equal. He was becoming entirely too demanding, and seemed unaware of how odious Kennit found such behaviour. Kennit narrowed his eyes as he considered that the crew seemed overly pleased with Sorcor’s idealistic ranting. He doubted it was that they shared his lofty goals of suppressing slavery. More likely that they relished the thought of unreined carnage. As he watched two of his worthy seamen together loft a still-living man over the side and into the waiting maw of a serpent, Kennit nodded his head slowly to himself. This bestial bloodshed was what they craved. Perhaps he had been keeping too tight a rein on the men for the sake of the ransom that live captives bought. He tucked that thought away for later consideration. He could learn from anyone, even Sorcor. All dogs needed to be let off their leashes now and then. He mustn’t let the crew believe that only Sorcor could provide such treats.
He quickly wearied of watching the final slaughter. The slaver’s crew was no match for his. There was no organization to their ship’s defence, merely a band of men trying not to die. They failed at that. The mass of men that had met the pirate’s boarding party rapidly diminished to knots of defenders surrounded by implacable foe. The ending was predictable; there was no suspense at all to this conquest. Kennit turned away from it. There was a sameness to men dying that bored more than disgusted him. The shrieks, the blood that gushed or leaked, the final frantic struggles, the useless pleas; he had seen it all before. It was far more enlightening to watch the two serpents.
He wondered if they had not escorted this ship for some time; perhaps they even regarded it companionably, as a sort of provider of easy feeding. They had withdrawn when the Marietta initially attacked, seemingly upset by the flurry of activity. But when the sounds of battle and the shrieks of the dying began, they came swiftly back. They circled the locked ships like dogs begging at a table, vying with one another for the choicest positions. Never before had Kennit had the opportunity to observe a serpent for so long and at such close quarters. These two seemed fearless. The larger one was a scintillating crimson mottled with orange. When he reared his head and neck from the water and opened his maw, a ruff of barbs stood out around his throat and head like a lion’s mane. They were fleshy, waving appendages, reminding Kennit of the stinging arms on an anemone or jellyfish. He would have been much surprised to discover they were not tipped with some sort of paralysing poison. Certainly when the smaller turquoise worm vied with the larger one, he avoided the touch of the other’s ruff.
What the smaller serpent lacked in size it made up for in aggression. It dared to come much closer to the ship’s side, and when it lifted its head to the height of the slave-ship’s rail, it opened its maw as well, baring row upon row of pointed teeth. It hissed when it did so, sending forth a fine cloud of venomous spittle. The cloud engulfed two struggling men. Both of them immediately left off their own fight and fell gasping to the deck, writhing in a useless struggle to pull air into their lungs. They soon grew still while the frustrated serpent lashed the sea beside the ship into foam, furious that its prey remained safe aboard the ship. Kennit guessed that it was young and inexperienced. The larger serpent seemed more philosophical. He was content to hover alongside the slaver, watching expectantly for men bearing bodies to approach the railing. He then opened his maw to catch whatever was thrown, regardless of whether it was dead or wriggling. He would seize a body in his jaws, but made no effort at chewing it. His teeth seemed devoted to the purpose of tearing. These small titbits needed no dismembering. Instead the serpent would fling his head back and open his jaws far wider than Kennit would have believed possible. Then the body would vanish, boots and all, and Kennit could mark its progress down the creature’s gullet by the distension of his sinuous throat. It was a spectacle at once chilling and fascinating.
His crew seemed to share his awe, for as the battle subsided and there were but bodies and subdued captives to dispose of, they gathered their serpent victuals on the high afterdeck of the slaver and took turns feeding the serpents from there. Some of the bound captives wept and screamed, but their cries were drowned out by the approving roars of the pirate crew as each human morsel was flung over the side. It soon became a game to toss each victim or corpse not to a serpent, but between them, to watch the great beasts vie for the meat. Those men who had remained aboard the Marietta felt greatly slighted to be excluded from this pastime, for though they kept to their duties on the ship, it was with many a glance in the direction of their comrades. As the serpents became sated, their aggression diminished and they were content to take turns with their feeding.
As the final captives went over the side, the first of the slaves began to emerge onto the deck. They came up from the hatches, coughing and blinking in the morning light. They clutched their tattered rags about their bony bodies against the briskness of the sea wind. As hatch cover after hatch cover was removed, the fetid stink in the air increased, as if the stench were an evil genie confined too long belowdecks. Kennit’s gorge rose as he saw how scabrous these men were. Disease had always held a great horror for him, and he hastily sent a man to tell Sorcor it was time the vessels parted. He wanted good clean seawater between him and that pestilence-ridden hulk. He saw his messenger leap to his command, more than willing to get a closer look for himself. Kennit himself quit the afterdeck and went below to his cabin. There he set scented candles alight to ward off the trailing odour from outside.
Some moments later, Sorcor rapped smartly on his door.
‘Enter,’ Kennit invited him brusquely.
The burly mate came in, red of hand and bright of eye. ‘A complete victory,’ he told Kennit breathlessly. ‘A complete victory. The ship is ours, sir. And over three hundred and fifty men, women and children released from below her scurvy decks.’
‘Any other cargo worth speaking of?’ Kennit asked dryly when Sorcor paused for breath.
Sorcor grinned. ‘The captain seemed to have an eye for fine clothes, sir. But he was a portly man, and his taste in colours rather wild.’
‘Then perhaps you will find the dead man’s garments to your taste.’ The chill in Kennit’s tone stood Sorcor up straight. ‘If you have finished with your adventure, I suggest we put a small crew aboard her and sail our “prize” to port somewhere, seeing as how that wooden hulk is all we have to show for the night’s work. How many men lost or wounded?’
‘Two dead, sir, three cut up a bit.’ Sorcor sounded resentful of the question. Plainly he had been foolish enough to expect Kennit to share his exuberance.
‘I wonder how many more we shall lose to disease. The stench alone is enough to give a man the flux, let alone whatever other contagion they have bred in that tub.’
‘It’s scarcely the fault of the folk we have rescued if we do, sir,’ Sorcor pointed out stiffly.
‘I did not say it would be. I will put it down to our own foolishness. Now. We have the ship to show for our troubles, and perhaps it will sell for a bit, but only after we have rid it of its cargo and seen to its scrubbing out.’ He looked at Sorcor and smiled carefully as he phrased the question he had been looking forward to. ‘What do you propose to do with these wretches you have rescued? Where shall we put them off?’
‘We can’t simply put them off on the closest land, sir. It’d be murder. Half are sick, the others weak, and there are no tools or provisions of any kind we could leave them, save ship’s biscuit.’
‘Murder,’ Kennit cut in affably. ‘Ah, now there’s a foreign concept for you and I. Not that I’ve been tossing folk to sea serpents of late.’
‘They got what they deserved!’ Sorcor was beginning to look badgered. ‘And better than what they deserved, for what they got was quick!’
