Ship of Dragons (Quest of the Nine Isles Book 3) by C. Greenwood

Author:C. Greenwood [Greenwood, C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-11-27T22:00:00+00:00

As the day wore on, it grew warm, swinging in our cages beneath the glaring sun. At least we had the sea breeze to offer us some relief. But we were given nothing to eat or drink.

My mouth soon grew parched, and I thought longingly of our waterskins, now in the pirates’ possession, like everything else.

Birds began to alight on my cage and peck at me through the bars. These weren’t the nervous white gulls I was familiar with but larger, bolder birds with black feathers. I swatted at them, but they weren’t easily frightened away.

With nothing else to do, I unwound the bandage Helia had wrapped around my forearm the other day and checked on my injuries. The salve must have been powerful stuff. The wounds made by the jungle cat’s teeth were healing quickly. Soon there would be nothing left but a row of scars shaped like puncture marks, assuming I lived long enough to develop the scars.

Watching the pirates scuttle around on the decks below all day, I was unable to ascertain what their long-term plans for us were. I was grateful we hadn’t been killed immediately but couldn’t help wondering if we were being kept alive to suffer some fate worse than instant death. Maybe they meant to leave us in these cages until we died? But that seemed unlikely. Captain Ulysses had gone to a great deal of trouble to hunt me down not once but twice. Right from our first meeting, he had been fascinated by the glowing magic I carried in my hand. I was positive he had a use in mind for my power. I just didn’t know what it was.

One thing was sure. If we were left to hang in these cages beneath the sun much longer, we might not survive to reach the mysterious Bleak Coast Ulysses had spoken of. Without water, we wouldn’t last long.

The sun burned its way across the sky, and the shadows of masts and sails grew long across the deck below. Still no one paid us any attention. Once, Basil tried to shout down to a cluster of pirates that we needed water. But if they heard him they pretended not to. The crew busied themselves with their work, seeming to forget we hung suspended above their heads.

It wasn’t until the setting sun was painting the sky with hues of rose and gold that our situation changed. I was slumped in the bottom of my prison, reexamining the wounds on my arm, for lack of anything better to do, when something squishy splatted against my back.

I gave a startled exclamation and looked down to see who was throwing things at me.

“Take that, you filthy cowards! It’s no worse than you deserve,” shouted a voice from below.

I looked down to see that a single pirate, this one scrawny and dressed in a ragged coat, was standing directly below, hurling bright round objects up at us. My hand shot out between the bars of my cage to catch the next missile before it could strike and splatter me with its sticky liquid.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.