The Sceptre of Samnos

The Western Sea - Part 5

     The nome spoke with a strange accent, similar to Jerry's and yet not quite the same, as if they came from different countries. Thomas remembered Jerry telling him once that the nomish race was divided into two major sub races. Those living in the northern foothills of the Blue Mountains, a country they called Nomehome, and those living in and around the Majestic Mountains, a country they called Pastora. Jerry was a Blue Mountains nome, and so Thomas guessed that these were Pastoran nomes, a race that he knew almost nothing about.

     Jerry went to stand beside the Captain in case he was called upon to mediate, and some members of the ship's crew muttered to each other. These people had clearly been badly abused by someone and the sailors fingered their weapons in case they suddenly came under attack. Seeing this, the nomes drew back in fear, but the Captain stepped forward, reaching out with his empty hands to reassure them.

     "Thank you for your welcome," replied the Captain. "We realise that we are trespassing on your island, but had no way of asking permission before coming. If you've been shipwrecked here and want passage back to the mainland, we can help you there provided there aren't too many of you." The Captain was remembering the estimate made by one of his men that there might be several hundred individuals on this island, but these nomes might not represent the majority of the island's population. They might be recent shipwreck victims, forced to live among a hostile native population who treated them harshly.

     "Oh no, no, no, no, no," said the nome, shaking his head vehemently. "Our grandparents were shipwrecked here, that is true, and went to great efforts to escape, but we who were born and grew up here are very happy here, or at least we were."

     "What do you mean?" asked the Captain. "If you don't want to leave, what do you want?"

     "We have lived on the back of this creature for over a hundred years, and were happy here," said the nome. "We have everything we could possibly want or need. The trees provide us with fruit, timber and clothing. Animals and birds live among them, which we hunt, and we get even more from the sea. The soil, we call it soil for want of a better word, is rich enough to grow a wide variety of crops, and we have domesticated some of the native animals. Our only regret is that we cannot build our homes underground, and must build log cabins to live in, but that is a minor problem and does not bother us. Life here was as close to paradise as it is possible to get in this world, until about five years ago.”

     “Why?” asked the Captain. “What happened?”

     "One day there was a terrible storm, during which giant waves swept half way to the centre of the island. Two of our villages were completely washed away with great loss of life. When the storm finally died down, nearly one in four of us was dead or lost in the sea and our grief was very great. Worse was to come, though. We were in the middle of rebuilding our shattered lives when three lifeboats were washed up on the beaches, from a pirate ship that had sunk in the storm, and out of them came over forty shologs. We knew nothing of shologs then, having been cut off here all our lives, and our knowledge of the outside world consisted only of the stories passed down by our grandfathers. We would have welcomed them and offered to share the island with them, but they didn't give us the chance.

     "They have taken over the island and made us all slaves. We fought at first and killed some of them, but they killed many more of us. Most of the grown men were killed in that time, leaving only the women, children, the old ones and a few like us who were injured and unable to fight on but have since recovered. The shologs fight for the love of fighting, continuing to fight even after we had stopped resisting. They took everything we had. They beat us and whip us for any reason at all, or for no reason, and are as cruel to the woman and children as to the men..."