Chains scrape around his ankles and wrists, weighing him down as his captor bargains with a merchant.
“It’s true he’s blind, but look at him. All his limbs work. He’s healthy. And he’s as good as brainless. Doesn’t even remember his own name.”
The merchant grunts disgustedly. “You’d offer me a lame horse by telling me that it’s easier for walking children to keep up with it? Nay, twenty sceattas for him.”
“Twenty! Robbery! I’ll take forty, but only because he’s blind. His hearing is sharp as a dog’s. Look how strong he is!”
“Strong? Looks like he’s in a stupor to me. He’s probably mute and touched in the head to boot.”
Moist hands test the muscles of his arms, squeezing and measuring. They pause to tap at metal.
“What’s this pretty piece? Bronze, and cunningly worked, too. That would bring you a fair price down at smith’s street.”
“It won’t come off,” replies his captor reluctantly.
“Won’t come off?” Fingers grope at the armband given him by the skrolin, the last thing he possesses that links him to what he was before he forgot everything. “What kind of fool—ai! Uh! Uh! Shit! It burned me!”
“You think we wouldn’t have taken that off right away, if we could have? It’s some kind of magic piece. A curse, maybe.”
“Magic! Curses! Fifteen sceattas is more than generous for the likes of him.”
“Fifteen! Thirty five is my last offer.”
What are “skrolin”? The word hangs in his memory, but he can make no image, can only remember the sound of clawed feet scuffling on stone. After all, he is blind.
The merchant’s hands run down his flanks and prod his buttocks. Once he had clothing, but it has been stolen or sold. He wears only a loincloth and a frayed, stinking blanket thrown over his shoulders. The wind chills him, but it also brings to him a panoply of noise wrapping him around and drowning him.
“Oysters! Oysters!”
“Have ye heard the news? Two Salian ducs have each claimed the throne. It’s said their armies are marching.”
“Are we safe here?”
A cart rumbles past. Chickens cluck. He smells the dusty aroma of unmilled wheat, tinged with decay—the last gleanings from a winter storehouse. He hears the steady, careful blows of a workman chiseling stone, the rasp of an adze dressing wood.
Two women laugh, but their voices fade as they walk on; like everyone else they take no notice of the interchange in progress. He is beneath notice, submerged into the background, just another commodity at the market town waiting to be sold.
A pig squeals as its throat is cut, an awful noise that goes on and on before, between one breath and the next, cutting off:
He shudders all over.
“Well, he can’t likely escape if he’s blind,” agrees the merchant in answer to an unheard question. “I think I know who could take a lad like this, dumb and witless and blind but otherwise hale. Thirty sceattas. Take it, or go elsewhere.”
“Done.”
The last root parted under his ax. He thrust up with his legs and burst out of the water, gasping for air, hollow with rage. From the other ships, men cried out in horror. Planks creaked as plants lashing up from the depths tried to pull apart planks and drag down keels. He sputtered and grasped the side of the listing ship. Tenth Son was first to reach him, hauling him up and over the side. He fell to his knees, grabbed the standard, which was lying untouched on the deck, and with his lungs on fire and his body shedding water and mud he struck the haft to the deck three times.
Roots withered and fell back into the muck. The churning waters stilled.
Next to him, a dog growled.
Still coughing, he surveyed the fleet. He had no time to dwell on the vision that had almost drowned him. One ship had capsized, its warriors and dogs lost to the swamp since RockChildren did not swim. Yet men would be lost to battle nevertheless. This battle had already begun as the magic of the tree sorcerers retreated before his talisman.
He lifted the standard. Drums sounded the advance as oars stroked to a beat. They closed with the shore. Flaming arrows shot by the Albans lit arcs through the sky and fell against shields held in place by warriors clustered on the foredeck of each ship. Before them the three islands rose out of the swamp. A hastily constructed earthen dike ringed the land, topped with a crude stockade neither stout nor tall. The enemy had scoured the island clean of vegetation for building, for fire, for fodder, and the stink of their overcrowded encampment drifted over the waters. Rising above all, at the height of the tallest island, the stone crown dominated the scene.