The Silent Army by James A. Moore Page A

he looked carefully at the sword she was sporting.
    “You are Callan?”
    Callan nodded, suddenly very aware that he had to piss and that he was also extremely thirsty.
    “I am Donaie Swarl; I am the King in Lead, Chosen of Wheklam.” The words meant nothing. She was obviously not a king. Kings had finery and were, as a rule, men. But she had a sword and that was enough for him to let her keep her delusions.
    “Majesty.” He nodded his head. “I’m sorry, but who is Wheklam?”
    “Wheklam is the god of the sea, and seafaring warriors.”
    “I like him already.”
    She nodded her head and crouched down until they were eye to eye. “He likes you, too. He favors you. Your crew is dead. They served me no purpose. Your ship is gone, as you tried to flee.”
    He nodded his head. “Sorry about that. I thought you were trying to kill us.”
    “We were.” Donaie, King of the Mad, nodded. “We would have killed you, too, but Wheklam said you had a purpose.”
    “What purpose is that?”
    “You can talk to the scarred people, yes?”
    “Scarred like you?” He shook his head.
    “No. The others. They… write on themselves. They carve words in their flesh.”
    “Oh, yes. The Brellar. I speak their language.”
    “Excellent!”
    Without preamble she opened the door. Apparently it wasn’t locked. He hadn’t bothered to check, really, as the light shone through several portholes and trying to sneak off the ship would have required darkness. Still, in hindsight, he could have at least looked into the matter.
    Hard, callused hands grabbed Callan and pulled him to his feet. He did his best not to scream at the pain in his calf. It was bandaged and he could see that it had been cleaned, but still.
    Despite being a dead shade of gray, she was attractive enough. Still, he blinked when the scars around her mouth moved as she smiled her approval. As a rule, he found all women a worthwhile pursuit. He decided he could make an exception in this case.
    “You can stand. Good. Come with me.”
    Donaie Swarl moved and he followed. Her back was to him. He had no weapons, but if he were fast enough he could surely take her.
    Callan shook his head. No. The way she moved, he had no doubt it would be a mistake. And anyway, there was nowhere to flee. They wanted him alive. There would be chances to escape later once darkness fell.
    Callan could see other cells down the hallway they walked. They were, universally, uninhabited. They were slavers’ cells. He recognized them easily enough to understand that he was not on one of the black ships. This was a Brellar ship. Above him the deck would be vast, with enough space for three hundred men to stand comfortably apart from each other.
    As they walked up the narrow stairwell to the top level – several flights that made his calf scream with each stair climbed – Callan’s eyes adjusted to the changing light. He saw more and more of the scars that crossed the woman’s body. The Brellar inflicted scars on themselves, but these were different. He could see that they overlapped in many cases and some were faint with age, others newer. This was a lifetime of fighting and injuries. He had heard of the Sa’ba Taalor from Tataya, but he had never seen them up close until now.
    They were scary people. They were, judging by this one, survivors at any cost.
    The sky outside was overcast, and a quick look around told him they were near the shores of Roathes. The villages that should have been there were little more than ashes among more ashes. The hot air here was acrid, but calmer than the last time he had been through. Far behind him, he knew, there was an island growing in the sea. A fiery mountain at the center of that island continued to bellow fire and smoke and cast lightning into the waters. But it did so with less violence than before.
    The waters around the ship were littered with flotsam, jetsam and corpses. The sharks would come soon, he knew, even through the ashes that poisoned the