The Just and the Wise

Chapter 8

We spent the night in a cold dungeon with a few other people.

Once we've woken, the repulsive slave traders drag Lucy, Eustace, and I into a room full of other young people. The man takes Eustace and puts him with a bunch of boys about his age, and Lucy and I are sorted with the girls.

I hear horses and wagons accompanied by a woman screaming. I hear a small, sweet voice outside calling for her mother, and I conclude that the woman crying out is the voice's mum. Soon after, a man's voice joins the mix.

"Walk forward!" A gruff voice distracts me from the noises outside.

I step forward and maintain a neutral facial expression as two slave traders look me over like a piece of meat, lifting my arms and hitting my legs with their swords. They do the same to Lucy behind me, and I see out of the corner of my eye that she's scared. Not that I'm not, but these men will never know it. They don't have that power over me.

"This one's going to make us some money," one of the traders laughs and hits me from behind.

"Y/n!" Lucy cries out.

"I'm alright," I say through gritted teeth as chains are put around our necks.

The men drag us outside, and we watch at the woman who had been screaming out yells at her young daughter chasing the cart she's in. They load the people in the cart into a rowboat, but there's no one rowing. They push it out into the water with enough force to propel it fairly far.

"What are they doing?" I whisper to Lucy, who they luckily seated next to me outside.

The clear sky morphs into nasty black clouds, and the air immediately grows thick and heavy. Thunder roars over the water, and the sea turns a deadly shade of gray. As the shadow moves across the water, a green, serpent-like mist slithers over the water quickly towards the boat. It makes human-like whispers, groans, and whisper-screams as it moves. The people in it begin to panic as the mist approaches them, but before I realize what's happening, the people have vanished.

"It-it ate them!" Eustace shouts from down the line.

The girl whose mother had been taken cries, and a man I assume is her father scoops her up and holds her.

"Is that what they're going to do to us?"
Lucy asks me.

"I don't know," I whisper back to her nervously.

"Get up, wench," the nasty man who had hit me before drags me up by the chain around my neck.

"I'm your Queen, you pathetic excuse of a person," I hiss at him as he drags me up on the stage.

"Make your bids," the man announces to the crowd.

Men start throwing numbers out at me until I'm sold and handed off to a man in the crowd. The same happens to Lucy. Eustace is then presented to the crowd, but he's not getting the same reaction Lucy and I did.

"Come on, now! He may not look like much, but he's strong!" The trader pokes at Eustace with his staff.

"He's strong alright!" Someone in the crowd jeers. "Smells like the rear end of a Minotaur!"

Everyone laughs, and I even chuckle a bit with that one. The man holding me is displeased with my amusement and pulls me into him, spitting in my ear to be quiet.

"That's an outrageous lie!" Eustace cries out defensively, "I won the school hygiene award two years running!"

The crowd continues to laugh at him.

"I'll take him off your hands," someone in the back says. "I'll take them all off your hands!"

Suddenly, many of the people in the crowd pull their robes off. Thank Aslan, it's Caspian's crew. Relief floods through my veins, but that feeling is quickly stopped when the man who bought me begins dragging me away by my hair.

I thrash against him, but it's no use as he's so much larger than me. I see Reepicheep free Lucy and take down her "owner," but I can't scream out for help because the man has now put me in a headlock.

"Y/n!" Lucy shrieks and runs towards me.

I manage to break my arm free and elbow the man in the stomach, allowing me to pull away quickly. Lucy throws me a sword and I cut his thigh, causing him to fall to the ground in pain.

I run back to the Narnians, and I see that Caspian and Edmund had appeared with an older man. The local people join the fight against the slave traders, and, eventually, they're all taken down.

"Y/n!" I turn around only to be immediately engulfed in Edmund's arms. I all but collapse as he holds me tightly, and I finally let myself relax.

"Lu!" He grabs Lucy from behind me and holds us both tightly until I tap on him, signaling him to let me go. "Are you two alright? They didn't-they didn't-do anything to you, did they? Because if they did I'll go back there and-"

"Edmund, we're fine," Lucy says calmly, hugging her brother. We weren't "fine," per se, but we could have been worse.

"Oh thank goodness you're alright," Caspian's eyes flood with relief as he sees Lucy hugging Edmund and me standing by them. He pulls me into a hug after he runs over to us.

"You're alright? Aren't you?" He asks, looking the two of us up and down. I nod. "Good. Let's get back to the ship."

Edmund puts his arm around me and holds me at his side very tightly, and I reach back and take Lucy's hand as we walk back to the boats.

"Your majesty! Your majesty!" A strained voice moves towards us quickly, and Edmund pushes me behind him and reaches for his sword, as does Caspian.

"Daddy!" The same voice I recognize from earlier follows behind him: the woman's husband and daughter.

"It's alright, Ed," I say, urging him to leave his weapon at his side.

"My wife was taken just this morning!" The man pleads with Caspian. "Please, I beg you, take me with you."

The little girl hangs on her father's arm, and a woman comes up and pulls her away from him.

"I want to come!" The girl says.

"No, Gael, stay with your aunt," he says, moving her aside. "I'm a fine sailor. I've been on the seas my whole life."

"Of course," Caspian nods and puts his hand on his shoulder. "You must."

Caspian, Edmund, and I walk ahead. I take Edmund's hand as the man says goodbye to his daughter.

"Ed?" I say quietly to him, starting to feel the nerves I'd been suppressing for the last few hours.

"Yes, my love, what is it?" He says, immediately stopping to look at me seriously.

"I..."

"Y/n, what's wrong?" Edmund says, earnestly searching my face for some kind of sign.

"I-"

"My king! My king!"

The older man Caspian and Ed had with them walks towards us from the docks.

"Ed, who is that?" I ask.

"He's one of the seven lords," he replies, staring at the man as he carries something towards Caspian.

"This was given to me by your father," he says, presenting an old, crusted sword to Caspian, "I hid it safely in a cave all these years."

"That's an old Narnian sword," Edmund says surprised.

"It's from your golden age," the lord nods to Edmund and Lucy, "there are seven such swords, gifts from Aslan to protect Narnia. Your father entrusted them to us. Take it."

The lord offers Caspian the sword. Caspian takes it.

"Thank you, my lord," Caspian says, a bit caught up in the mention of his father, "And we shall find your list citizens."

Caspian shakes the lord's hand as he makes his promise. We walk back towards the ship, and Caspian hands Edmund the sword, patting him on the shoulder and nodding as he does so. Edmund looks the sword up and down and smiles at it proudly. We make our way back to the ship, and Edmund does not let me go from his tight arm around me until we get back to our room.