<br /><br />Belly of the Beast: Part 6a – The Hulks

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Monday, September 8

Belly of the Beast: Part 6a – The Hulks

Kham was manacled hand and foot and marched out to a dock, along with four of his fellow prisoners.

“Shouldn’t Lucius be here?” asked Kham, looking around.

“Aye, but ‘e was in The Tombs,” said Price. “They’ve got ter go get 'im. Don’t matter mate, you’re gon'a get a boat load ov new friends.” He looked almost sad.

At the end of the dock, Kham felt a tingling, probably some kind of magical defense. Six dwarves, their faces covered in ash and soot, stood sullenly at the end of the docks.

“Get in,” said the guard captain gruffly.

“See yew in a 'undred years.” Price waved at Kham and then marched away.

Kham was practically thrown into a rowboat, dragged along with the four other prisoners. The guards piled in after him.

“Now row,” said the captain.

The rowing was long and hard, but it gave Kham plenty of time to take in his new home.

The two hulks, the Defense and the Unite, were moored head to head. The bulky hammock-houses were reared upon their decks, their barred portholes and their rows of prisoners' linen swinging from between the stunted poles that served them as masts. Nearly a mile farther down the heavy form of another hulk, the Warrior, moored close alongside the Dockyard, with the little, ugly Sulfur, a washing-ship, lay in the offing.

The Warrior’s appearance was particularly striking. Her square-cut stern and quarter-galleries stamped her at once with the hallmark of antiquity, and her bluff bow showed that she, at any rate, could never have distinguished herself for a high rate of speed.

The prisoners rowed past a cordon of buoys moored around the yellow-painted hulk at a distance of about seventy yards. Kham took note of it.

Kham was to be elevated to the deck of the Warrior by a rough lift. All five of them were pushed onto it. Other prisoners slowly winched them up.

When the prisoners were finally hauled up onto the deck, bristling dwarves and something large and metallic loomed over them. It strode with thundering steps; one arm was a gigantic crossbow with two large bolts the size of a man’s arm. The other had three stubby fingers.

“Get a good look,” said the guard captain, pointing at the sky. “That’s the last breath of fresh air you’ll take as a free man.” [MORE]