Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 Galvin, Aaron (classic fiction txt) 📖

Set me free, sir, please! I’ll swim for the shore, honest I will. You have my word!

Your words mean nothing, Garrett thought, frowning as Ishmael grinned at him a final time, then swam off with the others to deliver Arsen to the Hammer tribe. I should have done it, he thought then, watching as several of the warriors with Ishmael looked back at him and sneered. If he’s going to die anyway, I should have killed him and proved myself to the Nomads before they do the same for me.

Cursion drew Garrett from his inner debate with a light touch. Come, my son. Swim below me with awhile and let us forget these troubles above.

How? Garrett wondered, even as he obeyed. How am I ever supposed to forget all of these things I’ve seen and done?

And though Garrett repeated the question to himself, praying for a response, neither his conscience or the Salt came back to offer him an answer as he followed the Nomad high chieftain into deeper waters for answers that no one could give.

19

LENNY

Trekking across the Bouvetøya cavern floor of ice and stone, Lenny led the column of Selkie prisoners he and Jemmy T had helped to rescue from the killing fields and crematorium work. At the rear of their train, Tom Weaver escorted a lone Orc prisoner – the crematorium guard, Yusuf, bound and gagged.

At the head of their column, Lenny was afforded the primary view of what awaited them back at the Sailfish train and loading platforms. Some of those who fought in Røyrkval had cracked open barrels of the Orc supplies and divvied up portions of bread and fish among the slew of newly freed Selkie prisoners, all huddled and sat together. For all the masses gathered there, the weeping and whispered chatter among them, it was those beyond the Selkie groupings that drew Lenny Dolan’s attention most.

Vasili and others far taller than he stood in a semi-circle on guarded watch over the wounded Orc leader, Commander Pohl, and near a dozen of his Orc soldiers. All were seated or lain upon the platform with their hands bound behind their backs and gags in their mouths. Their blood-streaked skin and armor bore the hallmarks of battle, their faces lined with defeat. Most appeared as though they had resigned themselves to their fate. A few wrestled and failed to free themselves of their bonds. Commander Pohl did not fight his Selkie captors, or his bonds. His eyes trained instead on a pair of his soldiers lynched bodies’, both swaying at the end of ropes that had been tied to a support beam railing above the platform steps.

Lenny’s gaze narrowed on those who presided over the Orc condemned – Henry Boucher and his gang of Lepers.

Brutus worked alongside them too. Man-handling the corpse of an executed Orc, he lifted the body free of the noose it swung from, all to make room for another soon to come. Brutus tossed the dead Orc soldier aside, then headed for the platform as if meaning to choose his next victim. He hesitated when catching sight of Lenny and those returning.

“Oi! Found another to dangle, have we, Dolan?” Brutus asked, then waved his hand toward the platform. “He’ll have to take a place in line. We’ve others here to go first that have been waiting too long already.” He pointed one of his brat-sized fingers at the prisoners there. “Aye, and their dear Commander Pohl there is to go last of all. Meant to run him through with my sword, so I did. When I saw the wee children and the women he put away to suffer and starve though . . .” Brutus stroked his red-faced cheeks, the veins in his neck popping for each word spoke. “Well, let’s just say a blade would be too quick for him and such crimes.”

You haven’t seen the worst of it. Lenny thought, stopping shy of the platform as the others in groups came to stand along with him. The Orc prisoner, Yusuf, was trembling in Tom Weaver’s grip as he was brought toward the fore.

“No,” Yusuf wept. “Please, not this. Don’t let them hang me.”

Brutus took the Orcs in his sights. “Want to live, do you, lad? Mayhap you should’ve thought of that before going around slaughtering innocent women and children, eh?”

“I didn’t,” said Yusuf. “I didn’t kill them. I couldn’t.”

“No?” Brutus asked. “Then, why are you still here? Your dear old commander over there don’t seem the sort to tolerate a good-hearted soldier, like the sort you claim to be.”

Yusuf turned to Tom Weaver, clinging to him. “Please, sir, don’t let him kill me. Please! You know that I couldn’t hurt the Selkies. That’s why they put me in the crematorium, sir. Commander Pohl knew that I couldn’t hurt the prisoners.”

You’re barking up the wrong tree, Orc. Lenny thought when Tom shook Yusuf hard enough to keep him from blathering on.

“Oi, Tommy,” Brutus called out. “What’s this about a crematorium, eh? Got one here, have they?”

“Aye,” said Tom. “They’re burning the bodies of all those they killed.”

Brutus sneered. “Burning the evidence, you mean. That way none can say elsewise as to how many they’ve killed, if it were ever found out what they’re doing here.”

“Don’t think they care about numbers,” said Lenny. “They got all the Selkie skins peeled off and stacked up back there too. Suppose someone could count them, if they wanted to.”

“Is that so?” Brutus asked, eyeing the Orc prisoners one by one. “Well, then, I reckon dangling at the end of a rope is a bit clean for these here too. Might be instead we ought to flay them first, then add some of their skins of black and white to that mess they’ve all got piled up.” He looked to Henry and his gang. “What say you, Leper? You and your boys suited to such a task as they served up for all those like us?”

Henry’s cold, dead eyes made his answer plain