until there was nothing left inside him and he thought his innards were going to spill out of his mouth. Between the constant rocking sensation and the foul stench, scarcely an hour passed when he didn’t feel the need to empty his gut. Puddles of piss and dark mounds of excrement lay mingled with vomit, blood and other assorted filth on the floor beneath him. The one saving grace was that it was too dim to see the putrid mess in all its glory. Cracks in the planking above allowed a few narrow shafts of light to illuminate the faces of his fellow prisoners, but they didn’t reach far enough to penetrate the darkest recesses of the cargo hold.
Someone kill me, he thought miserably. The Redemption had set sail the night before, and while the small carrack was making good time they still had the better part of a day and night before they reached their destination.
Of the forty men on board, almost half were consigned to the cargo hold. Their ankles were shackled to ensure they didn’t try to escape. The rest of the ship’s passengers were above decks: Kramer, the disgraced former admiral of Dorminia’s fleet, now captain of the Redemption, and his first mate, a bald-headed brute of a man named Vargus; their crew, ten of the bravest – or stupidest – men they could convince to sail the ship; a dozen Crimson Watchmen to maintain order and help operate the small arsenal of heavy artillery in case of attack; and finally Falcus, the lisping Augmentor overseeing the expedition. He’d already murdered one captive for refusing to return to the hold after they’d been allowed on deck for their morning meal. The Augmentor had clucked in annoyance, whipped out his crossbow and put a quarrel through the man’s head at point-blank range. The body had been hurled overboard to sink to the bottom of the Broken Sea.
Cole’s ankles were chafed raw from his shackles, his ribs still ached and he’d been pissing blood ever since Goodlady Cyreena had clobbered him in the balls and shoved a needle in him.
She had been waiting down at the docks to watch them depart. Cole had longed to spit in her face or break away from his captors and drown her in the harbour. When she’d met his gaze with those strangely familiar eyes of hers, however, he’d felt his legs turn to jelly and promptly vomited all over the Crimson Watchman beside him. That had earned him a rough backhand across the face.
I want to die. He’d never known suffering like this. He was trapped on a cramped and filthy ship, his body a mass of agonies, any single one of which would likely incapacitate a lesser man. Even a hero had his limits.
Not for the first time Davarus Cole cursed his ill luck. He was on his way to the Swell, a place sailors spoke of only in the most fearful of whispers. The odds of him returning to Dorminia and the glorious future he had been promised were growing worse by the hour.
‘Stop your snivelling, boy,’ spat Three-Finger. He was an evil-looking fellow, with dirty grey stubble covering his scabrous face and piggish eyes staring from beneath a brow that seemed permanently furrowed. His left hand was missing its index and middle fingers. As a boy he had been caught stealing in the Bazaar.
From the other captives Cole had learned Three-Finger was also missing half a cock, having more recently been charged with numerous counts of rape and sentenced accordingly. He scowled at anyone he caught looking at him whenever he decided to take a piss, which was often.
‘My nose is broken,’ Cole replied sullenly. ‘I wasn’t snivelling. You don’t know what I’ve been through.’
Three-Finger laughed. ‘Aren’t you a special snowflake. Take a look around, kid. Every man in this shithole has a sorry tale to share. You think I want to be here? It was this or swing in the Hook until the crows pecked off the rest of my prick. I figured the Swell would be quicker and a good deal less painful.’
One of the other captives coughed, a horrible hacking that told of some illness in his lungs. ‘I didn’t even have a choice,’ the man said, once he’d wiped the blood away from his mouth. ‘The Watch burst into my home. They told me I’d been found guilty of treason.’ He coughed again before continuing. ‘Taxes were raised so high to fund the war