16th of Spring, 510 AV.
7th Bell
7th Bell
One of the most unpleasant ways to wake up is with a hangover. Stefan knew it for experience, and now he remembered more than ever, for his head was pounding like a war drum. But between pounds, he barely remembered something that happened last night... Jaben, a murderer... the injuries that Stefan suffered in his hand, arm and leg... the running without a proper direction... all was evidently just nonsense.
He was still in his bed in Alvadas, hungover, but safe anyway. He just needed to get up from the bed, drink some water, take a Hangover tonic, and have breakfast with Jaben, then go back to work, as always. So he got out of bed, just to realize that he couldn’t. In fact, not only was he not in his bed, he wasn’t even in a horizontal position, and could barely move. Stefan was tied with a tick rope, with the full sun on his face.
Looking up, he could only see an infinite mass of greenish blue water, bathed in the sun, with no land in sight. The salty breeze hit him in the face, and when he tried to move, he could only shriek in pain, as his left arm and right thigh burned horribly.
He suddenly realized than this was not a dream. Everything that happened last night was real.
His scream alerted someone to his conscious state. “He woke up, he woke up!” The foreign voice shouted with a hammering voice. A few seconds later, Stefan was surrounded by at least a dozen of men and women, wearing sailor attire, – if there was any non-Svefra, he didn’t saw any – staring at him, as if waiting for him to do something. Stefan looked at them without saying anything, barely opening his eyes to shield them from the sun. He now realized how hungry and thirsty he was, but he didn’t dare to say anything, instead trying to figure out where he was. Indeed, he was in a ship on the high seas.
His waiting was awarded with strong steps on the wooden deck after some long minutes of silence. The men stood aside to let a woman through, who stared at Stefan inquisitively. Her blue sea eyes showed a Svefra, and her tricorne showed her position as captain. Her clothes distinguished her from the other sailors, establishing her authority. A Laviku amulet on her neck, leather jacket, boots and belt –adorned with a cutlass, of course –, cloth shirt and pants, along with a collection of rings in her face gave her a rather unique appearance.
“Well, look who’s awake” she said mockingly, while her crew only smiled along “It’s rather funny to walk by the deck one morning and find an human, covered in blood, lying around, you know. That’s really unexpected, especially on a port.”
“Where... where I am?” He replied weakly, exhausted, even after sleeping all night.
“On the Middle Suvan Sea, you idiot, and on the Laviku’s Pride, the deadliest brigantine to ever cross the Suvan, to be more specific, and if you don’t want me to cut off your precious tongue, you better answer instead of asking. “The Svefra continued to speak firmly. “First of all, I want you to tell me the reason of why you appeared on my deck this morning, and covered in blood. I’m sure that’s an interesting history.”
“I... I was attacked...” the words of Stefan came out like a pathetic whimper “I can only remember... alcohol... an old Benshira... a corpse... a knife... I can’t remember anything else...”
The Svefra captain shook her head in disapproval, only to speak again“You’re not good at telling histories, aren’t you? What if I tell you one? The one about the people like you that we throw overboard to feed the sharks. Right now, I don’t see any reason for not do it. You’re already bleeding, anyway.”
She was right. Stefan was bleeding, and these sailors didn’t have any reason to keep him alive. Stefan found himself between a sword and a hard place. Or in this case, between an unforgiving crew and the mast of a ship. His options were few.
The only thing that crossed his mind was to take refuge in audacity.
“Wait! Do you really think that’s the history? Oh no, the real story is much more interesting... but I can’t tell you the history right now... being mortally wounded affects creativity, you know.” He said with a weak voice, almost desperate, forcing a smile and trying to keep the good humour.
The captain, along with her crew, looked baffled for a moment, as if asking themselves if this was some kind of joke. But after a couple of minutes, the captain was laughing thunderously, with the rest of the sailors surrounding her following suit.
“By Laviku, you really have guts” she said, almost crying of laughter “But we kill outsiders that have guts. But you did make me laugh, so that’s something!”
After the laughing fit, the Svefra put two fingers in her mouth and whistled strongly, giving the order to a sailor to cut the ropes, making Stefan fall, face first, onto the wooden deck, in front of the captain’s boots, staining the deck with his blood.
“I’ll tell you what we’ll do, shall we? We are going to let you stay until you heal, and then I’ll listen to your history. If I don’t like it, we’ll use you as a sacrifice to Laviku, but if I like it... we’ll see, got it?”
The fall stunned Stefan, but he understood. He just nodded, and the captain smiled.
“Take him, and treat him well. It would be a shame to lose such a handsome body.” she replied before leaving. Immediately, two sailors picked Stefan by the arms like a ragdoll, making him clench his teeth in pain, as his wounds were still open.
Now, something that Stefan would never forget in his life, even as much as he tried, was the way his injuries were healed. The sailors brought him under the deck, and carried him all the way towards a wooden bed with a white blanket inside a quarter, filled with sharp metal utensils, where a man with solemn demeanour with a dark jacket waited for him. Wincing in pain, with his wounds bleeding, and being held by the strong sailors, Stefan couldn’t distinguish his race.
The process happened without the doctor anything at all. First, he poured a liquid inside a glass, and forced Stefan to drink it. Slowly but surely, after a couple of shots, Stefan calmed down. While the liquor anesthetized him, the sailors continued to hold him firmly against the bed while the doctor took of his clothes, and cleaned his wounds carefully with a wet rag.
After the doctor ordered the sailors to put a wooden block between the young man’s teeth, the easy part was over.
The young man saw as the doctor smeared a poultice on his wounds to stop the bleeding, making him scream, as the poultice burned his wounds like a hot iron rod. The sailors pinned him down, to keep him from struggling while the doctor smeared the burning substance, and then stitched the wound skilfully. As Stefan was forced to watch while his shoulder was sewed with catgut, he bitted down on the wooden block as he yelled. The entire process lasted at least one tortuous hour.
After five Chimes, the doctor retired the wooden block from Stefan’s mouth. The young man couldn’t feel his jaw, so it was easier to make him drink another shot to numb his body. After the young man stopped his squirming, the doctor put the block again in Stefan’s mouth, and the procedure was repeated with the injury in his thigh; applying the poultice and sewing the wound took a little more than a hour.
“He will live, the wounds will not become infected.” The doctor finally said to the sailors, who loosened their grip on Stefan, as his body was so exhausted to move anyway. “We don’t need to worry about his hand, it only needs some cleaning and a bandage and the sunburns are mild, but he needs some rest anyway. He will need it if he wants to be useful here.” And with these words, Stefan finally was allowed to faint again, only this time, he was sure this was not a dream at all.
