Dawn of the Ice Bear by Jeff Mariotte

Author:Jeff Mariotte
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2010-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

DONIAL FOUND TARAWA on deck, standing at the port side, staring off into the night. Stars glimmered overhead, occasionally reflected in the churning, deep water of the sea. Where sea and sky met was darkest black.

“Are you ill?” he asked, concerned.

She turned and graced him with a smile.

“Not at all,” she said. “Merely . . . entranced, in a way.”

“By what?” Donial could not see much to be entranced by out in the distance. Just the night.

“The sea,” she said, indicating it with a wave of her muscular arm. “The sky. I had begun to think that Stygian nights were all I would ever know.”

The idea of slavery was repulsive to Donial, and he felt uncomfortable even discussing it. Instead he tried to shift the conversation in a different direction. “Have you ever been at sea?” he asked.

“Not on the deck of a ship,” she said. “In a cargo hold, when I was brought to Stygia originally.”

“In the hold?” Donial echoed, aghast.

“They were not particularly concerned about our comfort,” Tarawa said.

“How many were you?”

Tarawa considered for a moment. “Around ninety, I suppose,” she said. “About half of our village, at any rate.”

In spite of his initial discomfort, Donial found himself fascinated. Staggered. He caught hold of a ship’s line, wrapped it around his wrist as he stood there. “Half? That is incredible.”

“But true,” she said. She sat down on the deck with her legs crossed, causing Donial to believe she was planning to tell a long story. “My village, called Dugalla, was at the border where vast savanna met thick, deep jungle. Dugalla was little more than a collection of thatched huts where we slept, surrounded by pens where we raised cattle, and fields where we tended some crops. The land provided us with everything else we needed, and we were contented and at peace for the most part. We were not all as primitive as this sounds—my father had been to Aquilonia, as I mentioned, and believed it important that his children know languages and hear about the world.

“Early one morning, I woke and came out of my hut to a strange stillness in the air. Dust motes seemed to hang there, as if suspended on strings. The embers of the previous night’s fire glowed without apparent heat or sound. I looked around, and could see a few dogs lying in the early sun, a few people bent over their morning meal. Nothing looked odd, but for some reason I could not shake the feeling that something was wrong.

“And then—” Tarawa’s voice broke, and she paused, but only for a second. “And then the stillness was broken by a sudden, brutal attack. Slavers, swarming out of the jungle. They charged us with crossbows, with spears, with swords and axes and other weapons I don’t even know the names of. There were several hundred of them, far more than we numbered. Everyone took up arms, but in the end we were too few, and they wore armor that protected them from our weapons.

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