Alomitsu

Chapter 6: The Prisoner (1)

Time: 1364, 14th century Europe, early Renaissance.

Location: English Channel.

Crack~Crack~

The bottom of the ship’s bilge that smelled of corpses was swaying constantly, and the sound of the swaying planks indicated that it could break at any time.

I was sitting in the bottom of the ship with a roughed up nose and a swollen face. Around me were slaves of all skin colors, tied up just like me. Several slaves had long died under the ship, including children.

I lowered my head and couldn’t believe what I saw just now. “Damn you bastards, live for Lao Tzu to Eccles. Do you want to be eaten by the sea monster!”

(Note: Eccles is the name of a French city.)

At this time, a guard came down from the second floor of the ship. He kicked everyone to make sure that everyone was still alive. The dead would be thrown off the board by him.

The main purpose of throwing them down was to reduce the weight of the ship and to prevent disease from spreading. I looked at this man with a beard, his sturdy arms were covered with knife marks, It seemed that this man was not so easy to deal with.

He pulled a dead slave and dragged it up without mercy, and soon, I heard the sound of the body falling into the water.

I was nervous about all of this. I didn’t know where I currently was, I couldn’t figure this whole situation out by myself, and my face was hot, probably the pain from being beaten still being felt.

I just remembered being swept away in that terrible water column, then falling into a coma, and when I woke up I found myself under the cabin.

In addition to the sultry heat and stench, there were crowds of people here. Everyone was curled up. Some were even skinny, their eyes were full of despair and sorrow, and there were others with children.

I felt sad. It was now 1896, and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution had greatly changed people’s lives, but it could not stop the terrible behavior of human traffickers.

Sitting next to me was an Indian with feathers on his head. He was silent, but the brilliant light in his eyes couldn’t stop itself from occasionally bursting out. His body was also very strong, which made me question how such a person could be caught by traffickers in the first place. Indians were generally part of social tribes, so it was quite difficult to catch an Indian.

In order to find out my current situation as soon as possible, I decided to ask the Indian about the situation.

“Indian, I want to ask you something.” I spoke the Indian language, but I was far from fluent. I did speak enough to manage to speak in a friendly way to him however.

The Indian guy gave me a surprised look, but he didn’t answer me. He just turned his head to the other side.

The response of the other party made me silent. The other party was unwilling to answer me, which made him useless. I used the languages ​​of several countries to ask the people around me, and they all kept quiet.

In the end, I had no choice but to sit in place, and at this time, the Indian teenager beside me made an extremely hoarse voice. His voice was still extremely low, as if desperately squeezing it out.

“You are a ~ learned ~ person, why ~ why you want to kill ~ yourself.” The words of the young Indian made me startled, saying that I was trying to commit suicide?

His words made me discover the characteristics of the people around me. Their lips were dry, cracked and bleeding, and some of them had symptoms of dehydration and kept breathing heavily.

Only then did I understand why no one was answering me. I finally met the person who responded to me, and I could only force him in my own way.

“I will ask you something. If your answer is yes, nod your head. Shake your head for no.” My words made the Indian teenager next to me nod. His politeness made me look at the Indian again. He looked fifteen or sixteen years old, a few years younger than me.

“I only have one question, though I will try not to make you speak much. Are we now in the hands of traffickers?” My words made the Indian teenager shake his head.

“Then are they robbers?” I continued to ask. He still shook his head.

I was a little confused about the actions of the teenager. If they weren’t traffickers nor robbers, what were they? The Indian teenager looked at my puzzled eyes and opened his chapped lips again, “Eccles, France’s ~ war, we are ~ slaves.”

“French War?” These words beat me speechlessly. The Hundred Years War in France was four centuries away from the century when I was born, but the serious expression of this Indian teenager made me believe he wasn’t deceiving me.

I nodded and expressed my gratitude to the teenager, whom I originally thought my communication with would be difficult. Even if I asked the others, they would definitely not answer my questions, or even if they did, they would probably not be honest. I could only sit in the crowd and keep myself silent.

Soon, I understood why the teenager I talked to was in such a state. Under this stuffy and smelly ship’s cabin, my sweat kept dripping, and my throat felt like it was crawling with countless centipedes, dry and itchy. I was not far from being dehydrated.

I had never suffered like this in the past. I leaned on the fat black man powerlessly, and he did not act on my rudeness. In this extremely dry and sultry heat, I fell powerlessly into a lethargy.

I didn’t know that I slept for a long time. All I knew was that I had a beautiful dream. I was running happily on the green fields, eating apples happily in the orchard, and the sweet spring water seemed so beautiful.

“Wake up. Wake up. Come.” I felt someone beating my face with his hand. At this moment, I saw an Indian teenager sitting on my body, slapping my face with his tied hands, and I wanted to fight back angrily.

I saw the corpses of the Indian teenagers with thick fishhooks pierced into the jaws behind them. These corpses were inserted like fish with hooks. The sturdy guard looked at me and dragged the corpses along the wooden stairs and walked away.

I broke out in a cold sweat. If it weren’t for the Indian boy, I’m afraid my jaw would be pierced by a hook and I would be hooked up like a fish, and then thrown into the sea.

“Thank you. Thank you.” My thirsty throat kept thanking the Indian teenager.

“My name is Rui (fierce),” the Indian boy introduced himself to me.

“You can call me Dante.” My name made him look at me with strange eyes. He felt that I was deceiving him. The author of the Renaissance “Divine Comedy” was Dante. Of course he would feel strange about my name.

“Dante Reeves.” After I said my full name, I made this Rui believe me. After all, there was still a big gap between me and Dante in “The Divine Comedy”.

But this had also deepened my doubts about the present. The Eccles and French wars that Rui said before were all long wars that spanned for one hundred years. This war in my time had ended long long ago.

But If what he said was true, then the situation I was facing now was extremely dangerous. I had most likely crossed into this age. Of course, this was just my speculation.

I didn’t think that there was any power that could bring me to the past, but if I just assumed that I had come to this era, then what would I end up doing?

I immediately cut off my thinking, because this fear made me unable to continue thinking. All I wanted to do was escape, but how could I fight back against the enemy with my hands and feet tied up? The other side just sat in the gap in the upper cabin and watched. For us, as long as there was an escape attempt, I was afraid I would be split in half.

The night was coming soon. I was like other slaves. Now, I couldn’t say a word because of my dry throat. I could only wait for the restless future ending to come. Just when the light below the cabin dimmed, the guard walked down.

With a bow and arrow in his hand, he smiled at us with a vomiting smile.

“Except for women and children, all other men will go to the deck with me!” His words changed the faces of men around me, including Rui whom I trusted now that he had saved my life.

What did they want to do? My heart was throbbing inside my chest.