"Shirley Meier & S. M. Stirling - Fifth Millenium 02 - Saber and Shadow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Meier Shirley)

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pain to proof. Probably more errors missed than usual. Feel free to fix missed
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CHAPTER I

The Fehinnan ship floated on a sea that glowed in the sun like a heated copper
plate, becalmed with all sails set and hanging limp. The water stretched out
to a sulfur-colored horizon in swells like ripples in thick oil. They'd lost
the wind a week ago in the journey west across the Lannic.

The Fair-Wind Flycatcher, a baroque-rigged two-hundred tonner, had weighed
anchor out of the colony city of Niibuah near the Pillars of Heaven guarding
the strait to the Closed Sea. She carried a tight-packed cargo of nearly five
hundred slaves, ivory, dyestuffs, pepper and metal for Illizbuah, the capital
of Fehinna across the Lannic Ocean; that had been over thirty-three days ago,
more than long enough for a crossing with favoring weather. Over the days, the
press of bodies in the hold had lessened as the dead were thrown to the sharks
following the ship. When the coffles got small enough, they were brought on
deck to be fed and hosed down and exercised. The stink of shit and blood and
fear was soaked into the ship's wood, hovering, clotting as it sat, trodden
into the boards of the deck as the slaves shuffled to the sound of the
slave-dance drummer. Now, with the ship becalmed, the sharks circled rather
than following, waiting.

Megan Whitlock watched her feet lift, then fall, lift then tall to the
drumbeat, pale toes gripping, a stinging sensation rising from the oak
manacles where they'd torn old scabs off. There wasn't much bleeding though,
for which she was thankful. So tired, she thought.

Tight-packing slaves was a gamble on good winds. The captain of the Flycatcher
had lost.

The Zak woman was shorter than the rest of her coffle, though not by much.
Along with black slaves bought from the Poquay, the fortified trading posts
strung along the coast of the southern continent, there were a few criminals
from Niibuah and its settlements-Fehinnan stock and shorter than most naZak
she was used to. Where they were olive-skinned, she was pale as milk, and
though her hair was as black as theirs, it fell like straight silk, when
unbraided, rather than clinging in wiry curls. The sun burned her skin. How
many times had they been dragged up to dance? At least the slavers had stopped
demanding that they sing.

Dance. Dance to exercise us. Pound the stupid drum, pipe on the silly wooden
whistle. I'm not going to die on this stinking tub. I have to live to have my
revenge. The idea of revenge burned quietly now, put away in the back of her
mind. There were more important things to pay attention to; like holding to
life, fighting not to become a dumb beast in chains. She ignored the watching
crewfolk with crossbows and spears, and the ones with long switches ready to