Patrick by Stephen R. Lawhead Read Free Book Online Page A

He came up spluttering andcoughing, flailing in the water with his good arm. The woman screamed and held out her hands to him, receiving a blow in the teeth with the shaft of the spear. Even then she did not desist. She wailed the louder through her bloody lips and stretched out her arms, trying to reach him. When that failed, she leaned out over the rail and would have joined him in his fate—indeed, she was half in the water before the thug noticed; he snagged her by the edge of her mantle and dragged her back into the ship. I saw the butt of the spear rise and fall sharply, and her cries ceased.
    I looked back in the water and saw the man’s hand flutter above the surface of the waves, fingers reaching for a last, hopeless, fleeting grasp of life. And then he sank from view.
    When I saw he would not rise again, I turned my eyes away, my face burning with pent rage at the way he had been treated. When my anger subsided, I saw that the land was now much nearer than before. Soon we were passing through the low scattering of islets and rocks of the darkly wooded coast of my new home.
    FIVE
    T HE BAY WAS wide and deep, stone-lined and sheltered by a high, craggy promontory on either side. On the rocks stood a rude settlement of mud huts, inhabited, so far as I could see, by barking dogs and barefoot, snotty-nosed brats. There were already four ships in the bay when we arrived, delivering their human cargo to the shore.
    I counted the captives as they went ashore; there were more than sixty in the first three ships alone. Then it was our turn. The raiders manned the oars, and the pilot maneuvered the boat to the loading place—a crude wharf where men with ropes and poles held the vessel in place while the boards were extended, one to either end of the boat. With shouting and gestures our captors indicated that we were to disembark. Because of the shackles, most of the captives had difficulty getting onto the narrow timbers; when prodding with spears did not help, the brutes would heave the struggling wretch onto the plank and push him along. More than one captive fell into the water, to the amusement of the ruffians on shore, who made great sport of it before hauling out the half-drowned victim.
    I, too, almost fell, but refused to give the thugs any delight in my misfortune, so went down on my knees instead and, gripping the edges of the board with both hands, made my way onto the rocks, where I joined the others. There were almost eighty of us now, by my reckoning. We were made to stand in the sun while the other ships unloaded their unwilling passengers. One ship after another entered the bay, and when I thought that must be the end of it, more arrived.
    In a little while we were marched a short distance into a clearing in the wood, where we were given water from the hewn-stone basin of a cattle trough. Drinking from such a vessel was humiliating, certainly, but I was thirsty, and the water was clean and reviving. I gulped down as much as I could before I was jabbed with the butt of a spear and forcibly moved on. We were then herded together into the center of the clearing, where we squatted on our haunches beneath the wary gaze of the guards, who cuffed anyone who spoke or moved. The surrounding trees provided a little relief from the sun, but we were given no food, and by this time more than a few were growing faint.
    All day long the ships came, and all day long we waited, our numbers swelling with each arrival. For a while, I occupied myself with trying to search out anyone I knew, but it was no use. Few town dwellers appeared among the captives—a dozen or so itinerant merchants, as it seemed to me—and no members of the nobility at all. I wondered about this. Had the noble families simply been slaughtered outright? Or had they been singularly successful in fending off the attack?
    Neither possibility seemed likely. Even given the enormity of the attack, some few noblemen must have escaped slaughter,