"Paws on the oar, otter. One more time and the whip won't miss."

Banagher Vale heaved a breath and placed his callused paws upon the oar he shared with three other beasts: a male shrew who Banagher suspected was mute, a female hedgehog, fairly young, who cried when she thought no one was watching, and a male squirrel. The squirrel was a new arrival. Banagher had watched curiously with the rest of the oar slaves as the gray squirrel had been shoved into the oar galley, his arms and feet bound with ropes. Unable to catch his balance, he had rolled until he crashed against the gunwales, where he lay still. The sea rat in charge of the slaves had grabbed the squirrel's shoulder to see if he had been injured, and he was given a nasty bite on the paw for his troubles. The squirrel was fine.

For the little trick he had pulled the squirrel was given enough lashings to silence him for a week. Then the rats had chained him to his oar, like the rest of the slaves, and there he sat, rowing in silence, his lips clenched in the straight line of rage that every slave has for the first week or two. Banagher knew it would fade, when the anger had paled to a vague hopelessness.

Banagher had been on the ship for nearly a year. He had heard, by way of the sea rats, that the ship had covered the oceans from the Mediterranean to the South Seas. He had felt the air get hotter as the boat moved toward the equator. He had taxed his muscles to their breaking point when the ship hit the doldrums in the tropics. He had heard the ominous creaking of the ship as it rolled on the crashing waves of a hurricane. A few times he had seen the sky - but it was never as pretty as he hoped it would be. The calluses, the rock-hard shoulder muscles, the strained back - these lend a gray pallor to everything when you're an oar slave.

"Stroke, you pathetic slaves!" the lead rat roared, and the slaves reached deep into their stores of energy and pulled their oars into their chests with a quiet desperation. If any of them heard the low rumble of thunder in the distance, they gave no indication of it. Banagher sneaked a glance over at the gray squirrel at the end of his oar - his brown eyes were hooded, his mind was miles away.

If the slaves hadn't heard the thunder, the rats certainly had. They watched the sky with a fearful uncertainty as the black clouds began to form on the horizon. They all knew what the peculiar changes in the air meant, and even though most of them had been through a hurricane before, it was never easy, and it was never certain whether the next one would be their last.

Finnigan Cahir watched from his position near the forecastle. His arms folded across his chest, his face - rather handsome for a sea rat - unreadable. But he had killed one of the mates earlier in the morning, so the crew knew to tread lightly on deck, lest they fall under his critical gaze.

A portly rat approached cautiously, his hands nervously twitching at his sides.

"Captain Cahir," he began, his expression pained. "D-do you want us to change course, try to avoid the s-storm?" The captain remained silent. The rat thought perhaps he had not heard him.

"Cap-!" His words were cut off by a hand around his throat. The captain had turned with lightning speed, his sharp teeth flashing.

"Maintain your course!" he spat, releasing the rat with a shove that sent him sprawling on the deck. "All of you!" he shouted, turning to his crew. "I told you to steer for Sumatra and that's what you'll do! Who are you more scared of, me or the monsoon?" The crew averted its eyes in unison. The answer was unanimous.

The storm came at night, and, of course, the slaves were still rowing. The frightened eyes of the crew relayed the sense of urgency that pervaded the ship. The command was made to ship the oars as the waves began to swell, and it was also an opportunity for the slaves to rest until they were needed.

Banagher heard two of the crew rats talking about the proximity of the coast. If the shore was as close as the rats indicated - and as treacherous - the slaves would be needed tonight, to keep the ship off the shoals in the fury of the storm.

The otter ate his ration of hard tack with a sense of calm. Like most of the oar slaves, he had two hopes in life: that he would be rescued or that the ship would go down in a storm. Being a rational beast, he had mostly eliminated the first one as being out of the question. A storm was the only chance for freedom, even if it meant death.

"Rotten food," a voice growled to Banagher's right. He looked over - it was the new squirrel. He was regarding his hard tack with an expression of disgust.

"It's all you'll get," the hedgehog maid piped up, watching him with very big, very sad eyes. The squirrel seemed nonplussed.

"Then I'll die of starvation," he muttered. Banagher looked at the squirrel, trying to guess his age. A little older than himself, he reckoned, definitely far from middle-aged. He was dressed in simple longshore attire, or the remnants of it. If he had a coat or boots they had been taken by the rats, leaving him with simple gray pants and a very ragged cable-knit sweater.

"What are you looking at, riverdog?" The otter suddenly found the squirrel's hooded eyes directed at him.

"I'm Banagher," the otter replied, not put off by the squirrel's attitude.

"I didn't ask your name," the squirrel grumbled, turning away. Banagher continued to watch him for a moment before he, too turned his eyes to the front.

Outside the black water blended into the black night sky. The only indication of the coming danger was the movement of the ship - a sickening heaving that was only the beginning.

Continue to Chapter 2