_________Available on Kindle for $2.99 and in paperback__________ The cell door clanged shut loudly. Longknife kept her feline, emerald eyes fixed firmly on the filthy straw covering the rough stone floor, until the gruff laughter of the slave raiders had faded down the hall and out of sight. Her muscles were sore and battered. Her normally sleek brown and white fur was still matted with blood. Some of it hers. Her wrists were manacled. A single smoky torch was the only light in the entire hallway. She snarled derisively to herself. Slave raiders like DiMarco gave legitimate pirates like her and her fellow Castaway Rats (as they had come to call themselves) a bad name and an even worse reputation. From what she could tell, the dim stone corridor consisted of the slave holding pens of the island of Half Moon Bay. They had been shanghaied here after their run in with Draga’s Dragoons who had sold them to DiMarco. The front of the cells were closely set floor to ceiling bars (so potential buyers could more easily view the merchandise) but the other three walls were thick stone, carved out of the gut rock of the cliffs. The island, called Half Moon Bay, was one of several under the control of a small but particularly nasty group of scoundrels from a nearby army of marauders calling themselves “Draga’s Dragoons.” This particular section of paradise was overseen for Draga by a nasty piece of work named DiMarco. The dragoons raided the ships and pillaged towns all along the western and northern shores of the Azure Sea. They razed villages, took scores of captives, and sold them in the slave markets of Highport, Jass, Blu and a handful of other ports that traded in such things. They were ruthless, cruel and not a band to run afoul of. But a card cheat was a card cheat, and Draga’s slimy saurian (lizard folk) raider drew on her first. Her sharp eyes had already adjusted to the dimness and her feline hearing (unusually acute, even for a bastett) told her that the guards were far off and laughing distractedly. She smiled briefly, and withdrew the lock pick she had managed to conceal between her cheek and gum. In the cell across from her, Doc Tiny (a gentle giant of a half ogre cook and healer) lay unconscious. The bleeding from his scalp was just starting to congeal. He too was shackled, but with extraordinarily large and thick manacles. (Perhaps Draga’s slavers weren’t quite as stupid as they looked) In the cells beside Doc Tiny, she made silent eye contact and nodded to Mustafa, the shirtless, sandal footed, ebony skinned physical adept. He flashed a short, dazzling white half smile as he returned her nod. On the other side of Doc Tiny, was Fazil – the flamboyantly dressed, plume capped dwarven quartermaster of the now scuttled Siren’s Melody. His normally jolly humor had dampened to grumbling annoyance by their current predicament. That left Indigo Red, her acrobatic first mate, somewhere out of sight, but no doubt close by. The rest of the Siren’s 15 man crew had fallen to the blades of Draga’s Dragoons or gone to the bottom with the burning wreckage of their vessel. The manacles came free nearly effortlessly with Longknife’s quick and deft touch. The confident smirk played over her fanged jaws briefly once more. The cell doors would not be so easy. From what she could tell, those were sealed by enchantments as well as locks. Any attempt to unlock them with anything other than the proper key would not only set off an alarm, but would no doubt prove injurious or even fatal. But it would only be a matter of time before the right opportunity presented itself. They had been in tougher scrapes than this, and now she had her hands free... amazon/s/ref=la_B00LT3O594_B00LT3O594_sr?rh=i%3Abooks&field-author=Chris+Martineau&sort=relevance&ie=UTF8&qid=1405742946
Posted on: Sat, 19 Jul 2014 05:45:28 +0000
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