The Sea-Ogre's Eager Bride (Aspect and Anchor)
Chapter 1
VALESSA
I t’s funny how the Lords of Fate work. One day, I’m in a slave pen, chained up with seven others and waiting to be sold the next morning. The next day, the woman that was going to sell me is chained up next to me on our captor’s ship.
And she is loud .
“This is an outrage!” Lady Dywan screeches as the slave chained to her left pukes on her gown. “I demand that I be treated as a lady!” She rattles her chains, determined to get to her feet, but one look at the slavemaster and Lady Dywan sits back down, a pout on her spoiled face. “I am a noblewoman . My husband is the Lord Ruler of Parness.”
One of the soldiers on the ship just laughs. “You were a noblewoman,” he says. “But Parness has fallen to Aventine, praise be to the Butcher God.” He makes a gesture on his chest, his fists closing over his heart as if he holds Aron the Battle God’s axe. “And now you’re just a slave. And since you’re an ugly slave past her prime, you’re chained up with that lot.”
He gestures at our group, and Lady Dywan sputters in outrage. He’s not wrong, though. Lady Dywan is bony and gray-haired. When the Aventine soldiers broke through the walls of Parness and sacked the city, they stole every woman and child that could walk and that might fetch a price in the Sunswallow slave markets. We’ve fared better than the men—those that were left were put to the sword. The Aventine soldiers looted and burned all of fair Parness, and loaded the newfound slaves onto their heavily laden ships. As they did, they sorted us into two groups—the pretty slaves and then the rest of us.
I’ve been through this before, and I know I don’t want to be with the pretty slaves. Even now, the men are touching them and flicking up their skirts, enjoying the women’s screams of outrage. Nope. In this particular instance, it’s far better to be ugly. So I’ve knotted up my thick curls and fixed a stupid look on my face. I’ve rubbed dirt on every bit of my exposed skin, and it looks terrible next to the bruises on my arms and legs. I hitch up my ill-fitting Parnessian tunic, which belts right under my very large breasts and makes me look as if I’m carrying even though I’m not. And I’m tall. Tall, dull, and pregnant? I’m not going to be bothered, not when there’s prettier girls nearby.
I should probably be more upset that I’ve been enslaved (again), but there’s a spiteful sort of pleasure in being chained up with the haughty Lady Dywan. She ruined my life. I guess it’s only fair that I get to watch hers be ruined, too.
Six years ago, my father’s farm on the outskirts of Parness was “claimed” by Lord Dywan. He needed my father’s funds to support his emptied coffers, and the war with Aventine was right at the city’s doorstep. My father refused…so Lord Dywan had my father killed and his only child—me—sold into slavery. Luckily, I was sold to an elderly man who wanted a kitchen wench, and I was happy to bake and cook for him. One of the other slaves—a kind man named Luseth— had purchased his freedom and offered to purchase mine so I could marry him. I wasn’t in love with Luseth, but a respectable wife instead of a slave is a much better living. I was hand-fasted to Luseth, only for him to be put on the front lines to defend Parness in the ongoing war.
Luseth didn’t last long.
Now, here I am, still a slave, but glad, at least, to see Lady Dywan suffering next to me. She and her husband have brought this awful war down on Parness, and now the city is destroyed, all its inhabitants decimated. I don’t even know what the war was about. Some sort of land dispute, but I’ve heard over and over that Lady Dywan is the one responsible. She wouldn’t let her husband call off the war, because she didn’t want to lose face. It was Lady Dywan’s greed that caused my father’s farm to be snatched, and Lady Dywan’s arrogance that made the war continue on and on and on.
So am I smug that she’s sitting next to me? A little.
It doesn’t change the fact that my status is still in danger. I’m still a slave. And I’ve got to figure out how to save my own hide so I don’t end up in the Sunswallow brothels for the rest of my days.
If an opportunity arises, I have to take it, no matter how terrified I am. This is a time to be brave and bold, because I might not get another chance. The last thing I want is to spend the next several years next to Lady Dywan in a whorehouse. So I edge closer to the water as the ship slices through the waves, and I twist my hands in the cuffs. If I can get free close to shore, I’m going to swim for it, I decide.
By the gods, if I get my hands free, even if we’re not close to shore, I’m still going to swim for it. I’d rather face the monsters of the sea than the ones on land. At least if they kill me, it’ll be quick.
So I sit on the heavily laden, crowded ship and I plot. I keep my ears pricked and I listen for any sort of opportunity. I’m not going to let these raiders decide my fate.
I’ve had enough of that sort of thing.
“Land!” one of the men cries.
I sit up straighter, my senses pricking with attention. The afternoon sun has been beating down upon us captives for hours on end, making the travel in the boat a miserable experience. Add in salt water, hunger, thirst and the endless weeping of the others and I’ve never been more miserable in my life, not even when I was enslaved the first time…and that’s saying a lot.
At least when I was first sold, I knew I wouldn’t be killed unless I misbehaved. A slave is valuable alive, not dead. But after watching the “pretty” slaves get fed food and water, and our group does not? I’m worried that they won’t feed the rest of us until we get to Sunswallow, and whoever lives gets sold. Whoever doesn’t probably gets tossed overboard. The situation just keeps getting worse and worse. I lick my dry lips and send a prayer to Vor, the God of the Seas. Help me survive this , I pray quietly. I have no offering to send to the depths at the moment, so I’ll have to hope he’s in a benevolent mood. I’ll sacrifice the biggest fish I can find if you help me find safety. Please, great Vor.
We sail into the shadow of a large cliff, cooling my overheated skin for the first time in hours. I breathe a sigh of relief and hope that’s a good sign. The gods are fickle, Vor especially so, but sometimes they help. I can only hope.
“What do you mean, land?” The captain pushes past the soldiers manning the oars of our long, flat boat and strides toward the far end of the deck. “Of course there’s land. We’re hugging the shore because we’re too heavy.”
“No, I mean land on all sides.” The man gestures ahead, holding out his spyglass for the captain. “Look.”
I crane my neck, trying to look, too. We’re still passing the tall cliff in the middle of the water. A strait, someone called it a while ago. Land is on the other side, the cliffs just as high and forbidding. I could swim to shore if I wasn’t chained…not that there’s a shore. There’s just cliffs and more cliffs.
And between the two cliffs, up ahead blocking the way? Is something that looks like an island. It’s mostly flat with a gentle slope towards the center, and there it looks like a tent of some kind is set up, and a spindly tree right smack dab in the middle of the strange island. It doesn’t seem all that threatening to me.
As the captain raises the spyglass to his gaze, his man continues. “We’re trapped.”
“We can’t be trapped. This is open sea. This is…” He trails off as he squints into the spyglass. “Is that a turtle?”
“A hamarii turtle,” the navigator agrees. “And Vor protect us, but it’s got a sea-ogre on its back.”
A thread of terror races up my spine. Vor is apparently not in a good mood this day. A sea-ogre? A giant turtle? I’ve never heard of such a thing except in legends, but the expression of fear on the navigator’s face is very real. I crane my head to look, fascinated despite my fear. It could be a turtle shell, I think. One covered in thick moss, but still a shell. But why is there a tree? And a tent?
As I try to get a better look at the mysterious island, it somehow moves, turning slightly in the waters, and seems to wedge itself even tighter between the cliffs. A figure emerges from the tent and stares at our wide, heavily laden ship, at our dead sail and our flustered oarsmen.
The tingle of terror in my spine turns to a knot of dread in my belly. Some of the soldiers break into terrified prayers to Aron of the Cleaver. A few others grab their weapons, and I flinch back against the other captives huddled in the center of the boat.
“Not here,” another slave hisses at me. “Go away. You’ll drown us all. We’ll capsize.”
“The captain got greedy. We’ve got too many slaves. Look at how low we’re sailing in the water. If one takes a shit we’ll go under.”
I eye the edges of the boat and we do seem to be rather low in the water. That just adds to my panic, and I twist at the chains again, frantic.
I have to get off this ship. Now.
As I stare ahead, the large form dives into the water from the turtle’s back and disappears. More soldiers panic. “Is he gone?”
The captain snaps the spyglass shut. “Turn us around. Quickly.”
“There’s no room. We’re too heavy,” the navigator says again. “I warned you?—”
The captain backhands him. “Enough! I want solutions, not complaints!”
Before the navigator can answer, the boat dips and tilts to one side. Everyone screams in alarm, and then the sea-ogre hauls himself onto our already struggling boat.
The screams abruptly stop.
He’s terrifyingly huge. Water trails off his skin in rivulets, and his greenish body gleams despite the shadows of the cliffs. He’s got four big arms, two on each side of his body, and all of them thickly muscled and strong, with tiny fins along the backs and next to his wrists. His chest is massive, and he wears nothing but a loincloth made of some strange dark material. Criss-crossing his chest and along his waist are a few belts covered with what look like small knives, and I have no doubt he could tear us all apart with ease. He has the look of a predator to him.
The strange sea-ogre has no hair, just a large fin-like crest atop his head, and as he looks around at the ship, a membrane slides back from his gaze. He barely spares a glance in the direction of the captives and instead seems to be sizing up the soldiers.
I am too, and they’re not going to win if he picks a fight.
Instead, he gives a cruel smile and puts his large foot on the other side of the boat and shoves. The entire craft bobs again, and more of the women scream. “Stop that!” the captain yells, and the message is clear—we could sink at any moment. The sea-ogre has our lives in his hands, all four of them.
I want to laugh hysterically, because a few moments ago, I was in danger of being sold as a slave. Now I’m in danger of dying at the bottom of the ocean, because if he topples us, I’m still chained to everyone else, and I know they won’t be able to swim. I just know it.
The crest on his head flicks and he straightens, giving the captain a challenging look as if saying, well, what are you going to do about it?
“We didn’t realize this was your territory,” the captain says, his shoulders flung back and his chin in the air. “We are simply passing through.”
The sea-ogre crosses his arms over his chest. He glances back at the massive turtle as big as an island, blocking the strait, and then at the captain again, as if to point out that we are not going anywhere.
“We are at your mercy,” the captain says, his gaze on the foot still on the side of the boat, and I can’t help but notice how close to the water’s edge we are. A few more people on board and the ship would sink from the sheer weight of its passengers. The captain seems to be thinking along the same lines that I am— that greed is going to get us all killed—and he eyes the sea-ogre, standing tall. “We must pass through. Surely you see that we cannot turn our ship around. You have us pinned in place. Move your hamarii at once.”
The ogre puts one hand out, palm up.
Lady Dywan jumps to her feet, jerking on the rest of our chains. “I demand to be freed!” she cries. “I am the lady of Parness, stolen from my lands unlawfully—” She cuts off with a yelp as one of the soldiers brandishes a knife in her direction. “Idon’tbelonghere!”
She blurts the words out quickly and then thumps back into her seat near me, cringing away from the knife-wielding soldier.
I hold my breath, glancing at the sea-ogre to see what he’s going to do. Is he going to help Lady Dywan? Or barter with the enemy soldiers?
The sea-ogre gives the lady a dismissive look and then focuses on the captain again. He rubs his fingers together and then flattens his hand, his request the same. Pay me.
“Make a deal with him,” the navigator whispers.
The captain shoots him an ugly glare, but I know we’re all thinking it. Just pay the monster and let us through. But the captain? No. The captain has to think about it. He looks the ogre up and down, and after a long, terse moment, states, “Name your price. Surely we can pay you something.”
The sea-ogre lifts his foot off the side of the boat and stands at his full height, that strange crest of his drawing the eye. He says a single, ominous word.
“Bride.”