A sick feeling twisted Erishen's guts. "When was this?"
"Eleven years ago." Hennaq's eyes narrowed. "Why do you ask?"
"No reason. What did you mean, you've changed your mind about our destination?"
Hennaq smiled. "I'm taking you home, honoured one. To Vinland."
"Vinland? What about my amayi? He is your cousin–"
"And many miles away. No. Too many have died already on this quest of yours."
Hennaq carefully unfastened the top two buttons of Erishen's doublet and loosened the neck of his shirt, then took something out of the pouch at his waist and held it up for Erishen to see.
"We found this in your baggage." He unfastened the spirit-guard and reached around behind Erishen's neck. "I cannot let you roam free."
"No!"
Coby did not struggle as they tied her to one of the upright timbers that supported the deck. The last thing she wanted was for them to bind her so tightly she had no chance of escape. But escape from a ship in the middle of the ocean required planning, and planning required time and a clear head.
To her relief Gabriel appeared to have come to the same conclusion, and was meekly standing against his post whilst the skraylings fetched another length of rope. Somewhere behind them, Sandy was talking to the captain and it didn't sound good. The captain was angry and upset by turns, and Sandy kept asking him questions, or so she guessed from his tone of voice. But if the captain was not interrogating his prisoner, what was he up to? Why bring them all this way, if he was not their ally? They must be near the coast of Africa by now…
She swallowed against the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, and glanced at Gabriel. Two healthy young people, fair of hair and skin, would fetch a high price in the slave markets of Moorish Africa. But on the other hand a shipful of skraylings was worth a hundred times that. Surely their captors would not risk enslavement themselves, just for the money they could get for her and Gabriel. Not if the reaction of the crew they had found on Corsica was anything to go by. It must be something else, then; something to do with Sandy and Kiiren and skrayling politics. Quite what, though, she could not fathom.
The skraylings finished tying them up and departed with their captain. Coby called out to Sandy, but he didn't respond. Maybe the captain had gagged him, or fed him a sleeping draught to keep him quiet. She realised she had no idea how the skraylings dealt with their prisoners. They did not seem like a cruel people, and yet she had heard some blood-curdling stories of the New World, of human sacrifice and mutilation. If the skraylings inscribed their flesh with needles for mere decoration, what might they not do to their enemies?
"Hendricks?"
She turned at the sound of her name. Gabriel grinned at her, his face a mask of blood, bruises and shadows. No, the skraylings would not have been so rough if they had intended to sell their human passengers to slavers. She took a sliver of comfort from the thought.
"You're not badly hurt?" she asked Gabriel.
"I gave as good as I got. You?"
"The same. I'm not sure about Sandy, though. He's been silent since the captain left."
She craned her neck. Sandy was trussed up tighter than his companions, and by the looks of it only the ropes held him upright. His head lolled forward, his features slack and eyes closed.
"Have you any idea why we've been taken prisoner?" Gabriel asked.
She shook her head. "It makes no sense. If the captain isn't our friend, why did he bring us all this way? Did he change his mind?"
"He could be taking us somewhere else."
"But where? Not Africa. I've seen for myself how much the skraylings fear slavery."
"Spain, then. You and I both work for Walsingham; I am sure King Philip would pay a bounty for the likes of us."
Coby shuddered. "They'd torture us for information."
"I dare say they would."
"You aren't afraid?"
"Terrified, to be frank. But we're not betrayed to the Spanish yet, so there's no point worrying about it, is there?"
"I wish I could be so sanguine."
The deck above them trembled with the passage of footsteps, and dust sifted down, sparkling in the thin beams of sunlight that pierced the planking. The captain shouted orders, and the entire vessel creaked and groaned as it shifted to starboard.
"What? Why are we heading west?" Coby cried out.
"West? Are you sure?" Gabriel looked around. "Perhaps we're turning back for England."
"Perhaps." It was a thin hope at best. "I think I can get out of my bonds. Mal's taught me a few tricks in the last year, and I have one or two of my own."
"Such as?"
She strained to look around. "I'd rather not say out loud. We can't be sure who's listening."
"Good point."
"Anyway, there's no use our getting free until we have a plan."
"And do you have one of those?"
"Alas, no."
Sandy sagged against his bonds, his stomach churning, though whether that was revulsion at the memories flooding his mind, or just the usual disorientation he felt whenever he put a spirit-guard on, he could not decide. Perhaps a mix of both. What had the captain said the young skrayling's name was? Daniel, or something like it. And Daniel had gone into the lion's den and not come out.
It had been a winter's night, eleven years ago, when Sandy and Mal had been woken by their elder brother Charles and taken on a midnight ride across the hills with the Huntsmen. A ride that ended in fire and mutilation and murder, an act intended to strike fear into the hearts of the skraylings and ensure they never ventured outside their enclave again. It was also the initiation of the two brothers into that secret order, against their will.
His memories blurred into a parade of images as unreal as the flickering shapes seen in a fire: distorted faces leering at him, candlelight that burned his eyes, houses flashing past the window of a coach… and through it all, the memory of the skrayling's cries of agony. He had not recognised him as the boy from the council meeting, of course – the trauma of rebirth had locked most of Erishen away in the depths of his mind –but seeing Tanijeel tortured and murdered by the Huntsmen had broken through the scars. Now the wounds bled afresh and he wept with guilt and grief. Hennaq was right. Too many had died already, and it was all his fault.