“We have to have a leader now. Whom will you choose?”
There was only one answer to that. They roared his name until it deafened him, and Carse felt a savage pleasure at the sound of it. After days of torment it was good to know he was a man again, even in an alien world.
When he could make himself heard he said, “All right. Now listen well. The Sarks will kill us by slow death for what we’ve done— if they catch us. So here’s my plan. We’ll join the free rovers, the Sea-Kings who lair at Khondor!”
To the last man they agreed and the name Khondor rang up into the sunset sky.
The Khonds among the slaves were like wild men. One of them stripped a length of yellow cloth from the tunic of a dead soldier, fashioned a banner out of it and ran it up in place of the dragon flag of Sark.
At Carse’s request, Jaxart took over the handling of the galley and Boghaz carried Ywain down again and locked her in the cabin.
The men dispersed, eager to be rid of their shackles, eager to loot the bodies of clothes and weapons and to dip into the wine casks. Only Naram and Shallah remained, looking up at Carse in the afterglow.
“Do you disagree?” he asked them.
Shallah’s eyes glowed with the same eery light that he had seen in them before.
“You are a stranger,” she said softly. “Stranger to us, stranger to our world. And I say again that I can sense a black shadow in you that makes me afraid, for you will cast it wherever you go.”