Splash!
A liquid cold as ice hit my face, scouring away the remnants of nightmares and dragging me forcibly into a reality far more cruel.
The water was salty, tainted with filth.
"Wake up, trash! Wake up or you'll be fish bait!"
The voice was like stones grinding in a mill. I opened my eyes though they felt leaden. My vision was layered, seeing strange ripples of light before catching the silhouette of a burly, muscular man with a wooden bucket in his hand. He smiled mockingly.
The smell of cheap ale and his foul sweat assailed my nostrils. The morning's chill bit deep. My hands were bound tightly behind my back by coarse rope alongside dozens of other children, forming a pitiful human chain.
We were herded like cattle to the slaughter. Small, wounded feet stumbled over the rocky path, through a gloomy wood, and up a steep slope. Until, at last, we arrived at the edge of a cliff.
I tried to cast my gaze about. Below, hidden behind the sea mist, lay Nidhogg's Bay. The great port city of Blackwater. Its fortress rose dark and grim, its harbour teeming with scores of transport ships.
We were led down and given a perfunctory wash in a small, turbid stream. The water made the fresh wounds on my feet sting anew. The goal was singular: to make us look 'presentable', not too foul-smelling before being sold off.
Screee...
The shriek of rusted hinges assaulted our ears as the city's great wooden gate opened. A sight unchanged since I first set foot here. The cynical, indifferent, disgusted glances of the inhabitants, the occasional spit, felt all too familiar.
Crack!
"Arggh!"
The skinny, tousle-haired boy beside me arched his body. His thin back had just been kissed by a leather whip. The perpetrator was Gashed-Nose, the man who had doused me.
"Don't slow down, you maggot!" he barked.
The boy stayed silent, bearing the pain. I saw his withheld tears and the hatred blazing in his gaze. As if he wished to crack Gashed-Nose's skull open.
Blackwater's docks were indeed a human market. Hundreds of people—children like me, along with some grown women and men—were traded here. Their faces were the very picture of despair.
Other children began to weep but stifled it for fear of the lash; I could see their shoulders trembling. Some cried in utter silence.
I observed my surroundings. Most children to be sold here seemed around my age, between ten and fourteen winters, I guessed. Some faces I might have glimpsed in the outlying villages I'd passed through, but I could not recall their names.
My attention fixed on the child bound directly behind me. His hair was blond, but dull and matted with grime. His features were too fine, too pretty even, for a boy. And since earlier, he had been like spilled water.
His sobs were constant, monotonous, maddening. Though perhaps only I heard them clearly—for he was right at my back.
"Shhh, Leon, be quiet," whispered a brown-haired boy, his voice trembling. "They'll hear you."
Leon? Hmm... So they know each other. Good. Perhaps they can console each other in the dark corridor of fate that lies ahead.
The two had been brought in on the same day, one day after the smugglers took me. I noticed the skinny boy now tied before me always paid mind to the blond one.
Blaaarrrrt!!
A metal trumpet blared. Several warships bearing the golden lion crest of the Veridian Kingdom docked. Knights disembarked in gleaming plate. Behind them came nobles draped in furs and silks. Yet, I saw another sight as well. A group of Priests, from the Thymolt Fellowship, I reckoned. I knew them by the golden pin shaped like a thorny rose that once adorned the necks of their holy executioners—back when I was very small, and still with my kin.
"Hic... Hic..."
I heard soft sobs; this time it was the boy named Leon weeping. But still restrained.
"Leon! Quiet!" the skinny boy hissed, panic plain on his face.
Crack!
A whip landed near the feet of a crying child farther from us.
"Silence that, or I'll use your tongue for bait!" Gashed-Nose growled. Their leader, The Bearded One, was seen parleying with some men from the ships. And moments later, the buyers began to circulate.
It was the first time I'd seen such a thing. A nobleman gripped a little girl's chin, prying her mouth open to inspect her teeth. A knight-captain pinched a boy's arm muscle as if appraising a horse. And now, a priest with a piggish face observed Leon with a gaze that turned my stomach.
Leon's desperately held-back tears finally burst, becoming a wretched, hysterical shriek. The skinny boy ahead tried to reach for him, causing the rough rope binding us all to chafe incessantly. My already raw wrists began to bleed anew.
"Shut it, you bastard!" I snarled, my voice hoarse as a crow's. "Or they'll come and flay us alive!"
The skinny boy stared at me, his eyes seeming to blaze, his tears and fury directed squarely at me.
"You little devil! Can't you see... he's terrified!"
"That terror will draw them here!" I shot back. "And if they come, there will be naught but pain! Why cling to protecting him? If he died now, he'd feel no more pain." I said, turning my face slightly away.
The skinny boy stared at me, shocked.
"Have you truly no heart?" he retorted, as if choking on the words.
"Hearts only make you hungry. I'd rather sell your friend for a meal today," I said with a cynicism that made the boy's jaw drop in disbelief.
"You monster—"
Crack!! Crack!
"Arrgghhh!"
We both screamed in agony. The whip had caught our legs. Gashed-Nose stood there, breathing heavily.
"Quiet! Or I'll carve out your tongues for good!" His leather whip rose again, but before he could swing, The Bearded One shot him a look that told him to stop. He merely gave us a light kick and walked away.
The whip's pain was sharp, hot like a brand on my calf. And without us realising, the commotion had drawn eyes. The knights and some nobles standing nearby glanced our way. Not with pity, but with cold, appraising disdain. Like... watching slave-children scuffle over scraps.
Among those nobles was a boy, clearly a lord's son. He was looking intently in our direction, or more precisely, at the blond boy named Leon behind me. His manservant was seen speaking with The Bearded One, all the while keeping us under observation.
The day crawled towards evening, the sky above turning the colour of cast iron. One by one, the ropes binding us were cut. The skinny boy—Max, I heard his name when Leon whispered it before he was bought by the royal knights along with other boys. That lad thrashed like a wild thing as the soldiers dragged him toward the ship.
As for Leon himself, he was taken by the noble boy who had watched him earlier. I saw the young lord near him, seemingly speaking, but Leon remained mute. They led him away with unsettling gentleness among the monks, but one thing gave me pause... when his pale, vacant blue eyes glanced back and met mine for a fleeting moment—before he vanished behind those white robes.
A strange feeling stirred in my chest when he looked at me. Like something slithering beneath the skin. I knew my words had been cruel, but in this land, only cruelty let you survive. Even if a full belly and a soft bed were but illusions.
Yet, those who left had a destination. While I and a handful of others remained. Scrap goods. Their lot might be better, I thought with a weariness grown stale. They at least knew which hell they would inhabit.
"Tch!"
My throat was parched, choking dry. I saw Gashed-Nose and his lot begin to gather coins and laugh boisterously. They couldn't even be bothered to look my way, let alone offer water.
"Damn it all! This one still won't sell!" snarled The Bearded One, pointing at me. "Not even for a single copper will folk come near!"
"It's his eyes, Boss," replied another of his men, voice a hiss. "Devil's Eyes. Plain bad luck. Toss him. Better we return without carrying a curse home," cut in The Bearded One, turning his face away.
Panic seized me. My breath hitched, irregular and tight, as if claws were gripping my insides.
Devil's Eyes. That's what they called them. The entire whites of my eyes were jet black, the pupils a pale yellow like a wolf's. The cursed heritage of the Vars blood flowing in my veins.
"Release me! I can work!" I yelled as rough hands gripped my armpits.
"Enough! Off to the deep with you, demon-spawn!"
They dragged me to a dark edge of the dock, where black water echoed hollowly below. The shadows of ships loomed like slumbering giants.
"No! I—!"
"Cease."
A voice cut through, arriving like a breath of calm night wind, flat, yet severing all noise. A man in a robe of deepest black, its cut simple yet alien, stood several paces away. His face was shadowed beneath a hood, but I could feel his gaze like two points of pale light in the gloom.
"This is our business, stranger," growled The Bearded One, though his voice held a thread of doubt.
Clink.
Something glimmered softly in the air and landed with a dull thud on the wet planks between them. A coin. But no common gold. It was dark, like iron forged in absolute darkness, with a strange symbol gleaming faintly upon it.
"As you said," said the robed man, his voice resonating oddly, as if coming from all directions at once. "One coin. For him."
He did not even wait for an answer. He was already turning, his dark robe stirring in the wind, and began to walk away, his steps silent and certain.
The smugglers fell silent, exchanging looks. The dark coin seemed to emanate a cold aura. One of them, with a quick and slightly trembling motion, cut my rope and shoved me down to my knees.
"Heh. Be off, devil-child! Seems there's a strange one who likes refuse," muttered the smuggler, but his eyes weren't on me, but on the dark coin on the planks. "May you bring him ill luck, not us."
I remained there kneeling, breath still ragged, watching the black-robed man recede into the distance—a lengthening shadow.
My body tensed; something within me stirred as if wanting to thrash, to rebel. For I had to accept the bitter truth that I had just been bought for a single dark coin...