New Lands (THE CHRONICLES OF EGG) (11 page)

I tried to calm down by breathing deep, but I couldn’t take in any air through my mouth. Gradually, I figured out that the
problem was that some kind of cloth was stuffed in it, which also explained why I couldn’t talk or move my tongue…and then I realized I couldn’t see because something was covering my head…and I couldn’t move my arms or legs because I was tied up.

And I was upside down. Or at least my head was.

Eventually, I figured out that the thing hitting my face was the side of a horse. And it wasn’t hitting me so much as I was hitting it—I’d been jackknifed across its back like a sack of potatoes, wedged between the horse’s neck and the legs of what I guessed was one of the big Natives who’d attacked us.

Realizing I wasn’t blind or paralyzed was a relief, but other than that it was a pretty bad situation. My arms and legs were numb, and all the blood vessels in my head felt like they were going to burst, especially around my left temple, which throbbed with pain where I must have taken the hit that knocked me out.

Since I couldn’t see, there was no way to anticipate the horse’s movements, so whenever it shifted course my head banged against its flank, which made it hurt even more.

Judging by the heat of the sun on my back and the heaviness of the air, I figured we’d traveled through the night. This gave me some hope that whoever had kidnapped us—I could hear the clop of another horse, so I was counting on Guts being with us—would stop soon so they could rest, or eat, or at least pee, and when they did, they’d turn me right side up.

But they didn’t stop. For a while, we seemed to be climbing uphill, then down again. We crossed two rivers, one loud and roaring, and the other so deep that my head got dunked a couple of times.

Then, as the heat slacked off and I figured the sun must be setting, we entered a swamp—at least, that’s what I gathered from the buzz of insects and the
spluck
of the horses’ hooves.

By the time we reached the swamp, I’d had the whole day to think about what had happened. Not that I needed much time to figure it out. The Natives who’d attacked us had big dark eyes, just like Kira’s, and the fact that they’d shown up right after we told her where we lived made it pretty obvious they were Okalu, too, and she’d sent them to kidnap us.

The kidnapping seemed pointless. They were probably taking us to their territory, somewhere in the northern mountains, but we’d been planning to go there anyway. The senselessness of it—
why tie us up and carry us someplace we were happy to walk to?
—didn’t leave me too hopeful that they were reasonable people.

I realized I’d been thinking of the Okalu as somehow friendly, or at least harmless—like the fact that they were so hard to find, and had fallen from power and were losing their death struggle with the Moku, meant we had nothing to fear from them.

But there was no good reason to believe that. As I thought about it, dangling upside down with a throbbing head, it seemed just as likely that the Moku were trying to wipe them out because the Okalu were the worst of the worst, the most savage of the savages.

Then I remembered what the crew of the
Thrush
had said about Natives cutting out our hearts and eating them, and I started to get panicky.

I tried to puzzle out some way to bargain with them for our lives, but we didn’t have much to offer. Once I’d coughed up the
map—and I figured they’d torture me until I did—we were useless to them. Even if they didn’t go so far as eating our hearts, they’d almost definitely slaughter us without a second thought.

Maybe they like music, and they’ll let Guts live if he plays guitar for them.

But what are the odds they brought the guitar? Not good.

Maybe we can make one.

Make a guitar? Ridiculous.

Maybe they’d go back to Pella and pick it up?

Even more ridiculous.

How do I know Guts is even with us? Maybe they already killed him. Maybe she told them to take just me, because I’m the one with the map.

We’re doomed. We never should have trusted that girl.

What was it Millicent said to me? On the lawn of her mansion, the day we met?

The memory came bright and clear, right down to the green stripe on the croquet mallet perched on Millicent’s shoulder, and the sun in her hair and the freckles on her nose as she scrunched it up, a teasing grin on her face:

“Come now, Egg. All the books you’ve read, and you don’t know beautiful women are evil?”

I should have told Guts that, before he’d gone and shot off his mouth to a pretty girl and gotten us killed for it.

But it was too late.

And now I was never going to see Millicent again.

I tried to picture her in my head, the way she looked that first day we met: the deep brown eyes, the sharp cheekbones, the honey-gold hair that fell down to the middle of her back.

And the way she smelled…I don’t know if it was perfume, or something the servants in Cloud Manor used to wash her clothes, but she always smelled like flowers. And not the sickly sweet ones they sold in the shops in Blisstown, but the wildflowers, up on Mount Majestic, clean and crisp and—

The horse stopped moving. I heard the shriek of a bird, practically on top of us. Then an identical shriek, somewhere in the distance.

Then another one, close by, only this time I realized it wasn’t a bird but a human imitating one.

For a while after that, there was no movement except the horse swatting bugs with its tail and occasionally shifting position, stirring the water.

Then there was splashing up ahead, followed by muttered voices. I could’ve sworn one of them sounded Rovian. But that was impossible.

I felt arms pick me up and hand me down from the horse. Then someone was carrying me, splashing through the water, and they set me down—on my rear, with my head up, which was a huge relief after all those hours upside down—on something hard and dry.

I was still trussed up, and my legs felt dead and useless. I was starting to worry I might tip over when a voice barked, “Sit up! Hold still!”

I felt swoony and off-balance, but I did my best to sit up straight. A moment later, something heavy came down next to me, and I felt everything lurch downward, then pop back up again, and I realized I was in a boat, bobbing in the water.

I heard the voice again. “Sit up!”

It didn’t make any sense. Why were the Okalu putting me in a boat?

And why did they sound so much like Rovians?

The boat bobbed again as someone got into it. I heard the creak of wood against metal, followed by the sound of oars pushing through the water.

“’Bout time,” a voice grumbled. “Sick o’ this bog. Skeeters eatin’ me alive.”

“Dunno we’re leavin’,” said another.

“Ain’t this the lot of ’em?”

“Reckon. Lotta work afoot, tho’.”

“Not fer us. Fer the soldiers. I ain’t stormin’ no—”

“Shhh! Ain’t s’posed to jaw ’bout it.”

After that, it was quiet for a while. The numbness slowly left my legs, but when it did, they started to feel like they were getting stabbed with a thousand needles.

Then there were more voices, from somewhere above us. The boat knocked hard against something, and I almost fell over.

Then I was getting picked up again, and turned and prodded, and suddenly I was jerked up off my feet, squeezed tight across the chest by whatever I was tied up in, yanked higher and higher into the air—and then in an instant all the pressure released and I fell in a heap onto a wooden deck.

“Get that sack off ’im. See wot we got.”

What felt like several pairs of hands picked me up and shook me out of whatever I’d been stuffed inside. Then they dropped me back to the deck, my arms and legs still tied.

It took a moment for the starbursts in my eyes to clear, and when they did, I wished they hadn’t.

I was staring up at four Rovian men, large and rough-looking. Three of them I’d never seen before.

The fourth was Birch.

Birch, who worked for Roger Pembroke.

Birch, whose twin brother had pushed me halfway off a cliff, only to wind up at the bottom instead of me.

Birch, who’d tried to kill me with a knife the last time I’d seen him.

He cocked his head to one side as he peered down at me. A smile slowly crept across his thick lips.

“Been waitin’ fer you,” he said.

Then he kicked me in the belly with his boot, so hard it knocked the wind out of me. I gagged on the rag in my mouth, and my nose started to run and my eyes teared up and it was hard to breathe and I thought I might puke but I tried to hold it down because with the rag stuffed in me there was no place for it to go.

I was curled up on my side, fighting to breathe, when I felt something go
thud
on the deck next to me and start thrashing every which way, and somewhere in the back of my head I felt a pang of relief, because I knew it was Guts and he was still alive.

“Even better,” I heard Birch say. Then he kicked Guts like he’d kicked me. Only he didn’t stop at just one.

When he was finished, I heard him growl an order.

“Put ’em below. On the plank.”

MOST SHIPS’ HOLDS
smell awful. Even the cleanest ones carry a tang of puke, along with some undercurrents of rotting food and bilgewater. But the hold of this ship was beyond foul, and not just from the usual filth. There was something worse in the air.

It smelled like death. And as I lifted my head from the plank where they’d chained me, my neck straining against a steel collar to see through the dim light of a small oil lamp hanging from an overhead beam, I understood why.

We were in a long compartment made up of two wide rows of low planking with an aisle running between them. The planks were big enough for several dozen men to lie side by side across them. Three sets of chains ran the length of each row. The first held manacles for the feet; the second, manacles for the wrists; and the third, steel collars for the neck.

There was no question the hold had been built for human cargo. We were on a slave ship.

At the moment, the only slaves were me and Guts.

Birch’s three henchmen had cut me free so they could properly chain me to the end of one plank. With the steel collar on my neck, I was able to raise my head just far enough to watch them chain Guts to the end of the plank opposite me.

They’d taken his hook away, and his stump was giving them trouble—without a left hand, they couldn’t chain him by the wrist. In the end, they had to get a longer chain and clamp it on his arm above the elbow. As they did, Birch watched impatiently, arms crossed, leaning against the ladder that led to the upper deck.

Guts didn’t give them much of a fight, which made me think he was either waiting for the right chance, or he was hurt pretty bad.

Once they’d chained us up tight, Birch pocketed the keys to the locks and ordered the others upstairs to prep the ship for sailing.

Left alone with us, Birch took a seat on the edge of the plank by my feet and looked back and forth at me and Guts with a satisfied grin.

“Ye stupid — —s,” he cursed us, slowly shaking his head. “Coulda been clean away by now. Halfway to the Continent, all the time ye had. And wot ye do? Set up in Pella, make a spectacle o’ yerselves.”

He leaned across the aisle and smacked Guts on the bottom of his feet. “Ay! Ye like bein’ toast o’ the town? Was it worth it? My boys didn’t even need to ask round! Says they walked in the square, saw ye struttin’ the palace steps like a peacock!”

“It wasn’t her who helped you?” I asked, meaning Kira. I don’t know why I thought he’d answer the question. Or why I thought it mattered.

Birch looked at me quizzically.

“Wot, yer girlie friend? Won’t see her no more. Daddy put her on a ship to Rovia. Some fancy boardin’ school. Ye’ll be long dead ’fore she comes back.”

By the time I realized he was talking about Millicent, he’d stood up and walked around to the side of the plank so his face loomed directly over mine, staring down at me with his yellow eyes.

“Speakin’ o’ Daddy…” Up close, I saw his face was pitted with tiny scars. It was hard to tell whether they were from the kind of craggy pimples my brother, Adonis, used to get, or a blast of grapeshot Birch had caught in the face. “Boss got plans fer you. Special-like. Shame of it is, I ain’t s’posed to lay a hand on ye.”

Birch’s mouth split into a grin, showing two crooked lines of gray teeth. “Course, he’ll never know long’s I don’t leave no mark.”

He brought his fist down like a hammer in the soft middle of my belly, right where he’d kicked me.

This time, the pain was bad enough that I went fuzzy for a
while. When things finally came back into focus, Birch was on the other side of the hold, sneering down at Guts.

“…’Member when ye bit me?” Birch pushed back the sleeve on his right forearm to reveal a deep, ugly wound, still unhealed and sewn together with ragged black stitches. It was the bite Guts had given him to stop Birch from killing me back on Deadweather.

“Like a dog, ye was. Gonna show ye wot I do to dogs. ’Cause the boss don’t care a whit fer
you
—I can do whatever I like to yer dirty carcass.”