CHAPTER SIXTEEN

In late autumn Datzcrig was visited by an emissary from Beune, King of the Theigans. He was inquiring, he said, into the whereabouts of a prince of Sair who had been on board a ship which became lost somewhere between the kingdom of Eujinni and his own capital of Jeggan.
Datzcrig advised Chaldez at once of the emissary’s arrival. "You can leave with him now, or remain here as my guest until the winter is over and the seas are more placid," he said.
Chaldez had no wish to be shipwrecked a second time; neither had Dan, who dreaded another storm at sea even more than his friend did.
The emissary was brought before Chaldez, shown that he was safe and well, and informed of his decision. He said in that case he too would wait until the spring, and then escort the prince to Jeggan.
Datzcrig and his household wintered in his headquarters, a stronghold overlooking his capital of Derrid. With the coming of spring they removed to one of his numerous forts, and it was from there that Chaldez, Dan and four comrades rode out to go hawking shortly after Chaldez's 16th birthday.
Dan's bird was stooping on to a pigeon, the aerial drama completely enthralling them, when there was a shout, and looking in the direction from which it seemed to come, they saw a number of armed men advancing up the hill towards them. Their immediate mystification gave way to alarm, and then something close to terror as they noticed other groups converging on them from every side. They were about to be attacked, but they had no weapons to speak of and there was no escape. They could only remain where they were and await events.
Ordered to dismount, and pushed, shouted at and cursed, they were roped together and led over the hills towards the coast, where they found themselves on a bluff overlooking a bay. Riding at anchor in it were five ships, and pulled up on the beach were a dozen or so slender boats, these without masts.
The captives negotiated a steep path leading down to the shingly shore; when they reached it they were made to sit. Presently it started to rain.
At irregular intervals during the rest of the day more captives, women and children among them, were brought down to the beach. Some were roped together, but more generally they were herded like animals, with whips and sticks.
The island had become a crucible in which the certainties, the small pleasures, the ordinary cares of ordinary lives, had been converted into anguish, distress and fearful apprehension, which now flowed out of it and down to the beach. Chaldez stared about him, dumbfounded.
Watching the path down which the prisoners were brought he thought he saw Venna, but could not be certain.
The long boats which had been drawn up on the shingle were put into service, ferrying the captives out to the ships. Chaldez's group was among the last to be taken off the beach. The sun by now was low in the sky.
On the deck of the vessel they were brought to there was only just enough space to sit cross-legged. Somewhere a child was crying, but elsewhere the people were silent, shrouded in their own brooding thoughts. Later, when the sails were set, the anchor weighed and the ship was slicing through the water towards its unknown destination, they began to talk and to compare their experiences. Some had been rounded up without much violence; others had suffered cruelly, and there were those who were still in a state of shock, having witnessed appalling scenes of rape and mutilation and murder.
"What of the Lord Datzcrig?" asked Chaldez. "Does he not know what's happened?"
"Datzcrig's dead," said a voice. "He and his people were taken by surprise - all of them killed, even before they could get to their weapons."
Chaldez searched for the speaker. "Not everyone was killed, surely?"
"Everyone." said the voice, and now Chaldez could connect it to a balding, grey-faced man quite close to him. "You saw it?"
"It's what I've been told."
Chaldez saw Doo's body lying in the mud, bleeding and lifeless. It was such a terrible picture, such a real picture that he was unable to bear it and quickly he put it out of his mind. He gazed at the grey-faced man; he must have been ill-informed: Doo could not be dead.
After the initial burst of chatter, the captives became silent again. At intervals they were ordered to their feet, and then the motion of the vessel made them stagger and stumble into each other. Shortly before sundown they were given bread. They were wet and cold and their bodies ached. The pungent stench of excrement and vomit wafted unevenly among them, and some were unable to stand when ordered to their feet.
When dawn broke at last, lighting the horizon with a cold silvery light, Chaldez felt as though he had spent most of his life on the cramped deck of that hellish craft. The bodies of those who had perished during the night were passed silently from hand to hand to the side of the ship, to be pitched into the tossing sea.
The nightmare voyage continued remorselessly, and all the while the other four vessels of the fleet could be seen tilting and plunging and pressing ever onwards, their decks black with despair.
At about midday a rumour spread that they were approaching land; Chaldez supposed it was another Theigan island. The ships rounded the coast until a wide estuary opened up, and there they heaved to, to await the flood tide. Late in the afternoon they were on the move again, sailing up the rapidly narrowing river mouth until they reached the quays and jetties of a small port. Here the captives were disembarked and paraded through the mud streets before the populous, which had turned out in the fading light to enjoy the spectacle.
The captives were brought into a wide square where they were put into groups of ten and taken to different parts of the town. The group with Chaldez and Dan in it was taken back towards the river, and installed for the night in an empty house.
The next morning, after a meagre breakfast, they were marched out into the country. They walked for the best part of the day, passing villages which seemed to be deserted. The houses were built after the manner of those on Datzcrig's island, but many were in a state of delapidation, their roofs falling in and their walls crumbling. Everywhere was the appearance of decay and abandonment, but only when he passed a burial ground outside one of the villages did Chaldez understood why. The place was enormous, considering the modest size of the adjacent village, and the recently-dug graves made it look as though it was infested by a colony of giant moles. In Eujinni he had once seen something similar, and was told then that there had been a plague and that nearly everyone had died of it. There was, he recollected, the same eerie emptiness; the same air of neglect and catastrophe, and in the faces of the survivors, the same weariness.
It was to become clear that the purpose of the raid on Datzcrig's island was to replenish the island's depleted workforce.
The village to which Dan and Chaldez were taken was occupied by a handful of people belonging to just five surviving families, and they were at once put to work in the fields.
The severity with which they were initially treated soon mellowed, and while there remained no doubt about their status as bondmen to the natives, friendships sprang up and their tasks became less arduous.
They were assigned to different families, but often saw each other, and within a year they had both gained their owners' confidence to the extent that they were frequently entrusted with errands to neighbouring farms and villages. It was after just such an errand that Dan, in great excitement, sought out Chaldez.
"I've seen Doo!" he exclaimed.
The emotions which that named stirred up in Chaldez were so intense that for a few moments he was transported into a kind of trance. Then at once he was angry with himself for having fallen into another of Dan's traps.
There were a number of things about Chaldez which irritated Dan; one of them was his gullibility and another was his tendency to over-react, and he would therefore tell him things simply to watch him make a fool of himself. Lately, however Chaldez had begun to grasp what was going on, and to treat Dan's assertions with circumspection. But here he was, making a fool of himself again. Then he wondered: could Dan really have made up such a thing? Surely he could not have known that Doo was occupying his thoughts more now than she had done at any time since the raid.