Over the course of the next few weeks Zantheus reluctantly managed to settle into a rhythm of routine on board the ship.

He was still none the wiser as to how he had got here, but he decided that he would just have to make the most of his situation until he was.

On the whole the other twenty-or-so crew members avoided him, eyeing him suspiciously when they passed him; in any case they all had strange foreign names which Zantheus had difficulty remembering.

His only real company was Tromo, who was unable to speak. They spent most of the day working at various menial tasks together about the ship, punctuated by stints in the crow’s nest.

He continued trying to piece together parts of the boy’s story to give himself something to do, but with little success. The most he could ascertain was that the boy and his family had been attacked by someone or something when they had put into port in Shul.

At meal times they sat next to each other in the long dining room, silently eating whatever meal they had just been helping Chortas, the ship’s cook, to prepare.

It was an odd sight, the towering knight sitting next to the timid child as they spooned down their broth in tacit comradeship. The rest of the crew ignored them as they prattled on about this and that concerning the upkeep of the ship, or speculating as to how long it would take them to reach Dahma.

To this second topic in particular a great deal of their discussion was devoted.

Thalassa ate separately in the captain’s quarters with Hudor, his first mate, so at meals the crew got to voice opinions that might be contrary to his own.

It became clear to Zantheus that some of them, the majority, even, were beginning to doubt whether they would ever reach Dahma, to which they were sailing from Shul as refugees, or in some cases whether it existed at all.

When the latter view was voiced, those in support of Thalassa would make reference to the “Sky-Man” and the crew would glance down the table at Tromo and Zantheus.

The chief issue seemed to be whether or not they would run out of food before they got to Dahma.

Chortas was often consulted as to the quantity of the remaining supplies, and he would reply “There’s not enough, not nearly enough.”

Zantheus wondered how he could know this, seeing as none of them really had any inkling about how far off they were from Dahma.

Their spirits had been raised by the arrival of Zantheus, who everyone secretly assumed must have swum or drifted to them from the Dahman coast, but with each passing day they began to question this theory and wonder more and more about Tromo’s unbelievable report of him falling out of the sky.

Chortas’s comments about the food supplies were in turn used as a weapon against Hudor, who had to eat a good deal in order to fuel his considerable bulk. Zantheus perceived that, gradually, those in support of Thalassa were becoming increasingly outnumbered as the ranks of dissenters increased. He started to hear murmurings of ‘turning back’.

He sincerely hoped that the pessimists were wrong. The prospect of never getting back to Awmeer did not bear thinking about for him.

Indeed, Zantheus tried very hard not to think about it. Not knowing how he had arrived on this ship and whether he would ever get home was a kind of unceasing, unspoken agony.

However, one small piece of respite came Zantheus’s way.

One evening it was his and the boy’s turn to take the late shift on look-out duty, the last of the day. After the sun had set, they descended the rigging to turn in for the night.

On this night however, Zantheus just could not get to sleep.

He was accustomed to uneasy nights, but for some reason this time the visions that usually waited to creep up on him in his dreams were right there in front of him, inescapably vivid in his tiny cabin: an enormous mirror and two big arms threatening to enclose him and launch him into the air. He got out of his hammock and went for a walk above deck.

Up here he was joined by millions of stars, sending down their soft glow to meet him. He felt a sudden desire to get as close to them as possible.

He found himself climbing again to his least favourite place, the crow’s nest, just to get a better view of them.

Out here on the ocean they were a breath-taking sight. Somehow in those countless points of light, separated from one another by impossible blackness, but gently shining all the same, Zantheus took comfort.

They spoke hope to him. If they could cross that void of blackness to bring their light to him from all the way up there, then surely he could cross the great distance that lay between him and his home.

Soon this became Zantheus’s refuge. Every night before going to sleep he would ascend to the look-out post and watch the stars, dreaming of his return to Awmeer. You will get back, they told him. You will get back. You will not wander forever.

It was one night after one of his stargazing sessions in the crow’s nest that Zantheus was returning to his hammock when he heard a noise in the corridor outside his cabin, a kind of muffled whimpering.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

It was not long before he identified it as coming from behind one of the doors. Carefully he edged it open. The room was even smaller than the one in which he slept, a store cupboard.

All that it contained was a small chest, a mat in the corner and on it, sure enough, Tromo, wrapped in a blanket. He had his back to Zantheus and was shivering uncontrollably in his sleep, letting out the whimper.

It was the only noise Zantheus had ever heard him make with his mouth. For a while he just stood in the door with no idea what to do. He could not understand such weakness. Why did the boy tremble so? The shivering bundle was the most pathetic thing he had ever seen.

Zantheus heard a movement behind him. “He’s always done that,” Thalassa said quietly at his side. “That’s why we put him to sleep in here.” Apparently the Captain could not sleep either.

“Why?” said Zantheus, also in a whisper. “Why does he tremble like that?”

Thalassa let out a quiet sigh. “Let’s talk up on the deck, so we don’t wake him.” Zantheus stepped out of Tromo’s tiny room with him and shut the door as quietly as he could.

Above board, they moved over to the rail and watched the seething mass of blackness that was the sea. The only other person in sight was one of the other sailors, half-asleep at the ship’s wheel, but out of earshot. Thalassa began to tell his tale.

“Zantheus, let me tell you a little about myself,” he said. “I come from a land called Shul, as you know, in the West. It is ruled by a wicked king, who oppresses his people violently, and those that oppose him are few and far between. I was a Sergeant in the Shulite army, and I slaughtered many at his whim. Dissenters, rebels, escaped slaves, even regular townsfolk, if an example needed to be made. I am not proud of it...”

He paused for a moment. If Zantheus was meant to respond in a certain way, he was oblivious to what it was.

“Until one day, that is,” Thalassa went on, “when I was ordered to murder the passengers on a ship that was to put in at a certain port—a ship that was carrying emissaries from Qereth. So, I did. But that was also the day on which I realised that what I was serving and doing was a very great evil.”

There was another awkward pause. If Zantheus had been more aware he would have asked “What happened?” Instead, the silence merely hung in the air, interrupted only by the sound of the waves lapping against the ship, until Thalassa resumed his story.

“We were raiding the ship, you see, having killed all the men on board, and looking for plunder. It was this ship, in fact, the very same on which you are standing now. As I was raiding it, I came to that room you were just standing in—the cupboard where Tromo sleeps. Inside, I was met by a young girl with that same brown hair that he has. She was terrified of me. She stood in the corner while, mad with greed, I helped myself to all the valuables I could find in there. But as I did so, I noticed that she was trying to keep something from me, trying to block me from noticing something with her body. Behind her there was something with a blanket thrown over it –that same blanket, he always sleeps in it. I asked her what it was and she became hysterical, lying to me that it was nothing, that it didn’t matter. I pushed her aside and flung off the blanket to find a chest underneath. That chest in the cupboard. She clung to my arm and begged me to leave it, she even bit me when I wouldn’t…”

Thalassa halted his narrative once again. It seemed as though he genuinely needed to pause before he could go on.

Eventually he said “So, I slit her throat. Then I forced the lock on the chest and opened it. There I was, mad with lust for my own wealth, expecting to find gold or jewels or some priceless artefact from a foreign land. But instead, what did I get? That little boy, staring up at me and trembling with fear.” Thalassa spoke the words ‘that little boy’ with a mixture of resentment and compassion. “I don’t know why, Sky-Man—or ‘Zantheus’ if that’s what you’re really called—but for some reason when faced with that cowering child, hidden in the chest, something broke in me. For some reason, at that moment I realised the full extent of my wickedness, the depths to which I had sunk in serving the ruler of Shul. Funny that it should happen then...I suppose it must have been the shock of it…I was convinced the girl had been guarding something valuable and priceless locked up and hidden in that chest. Instead, I got the boy. I know I do not deserve forgiveness for my deeds...”

Thalassa looked at Zantheus. All at once his expression changed and he became suddenly self-conscious. “But I suppose you know nothing of this—I imagine you have never committed a wrong deed in your life?”

“No, I have not,” said Zantheus in complete seriousness.

The pair were left in excruciating silence.

Zantheus supposed that he should say something more, that he was expected to say something by way of reply to the tale, but he had nothing to say to the man.

He was disgusted by what Thalassa had told him. Why had he felt it necessary to tell him about this? Zantheus did not want to hear about such abominable deeds.

He had no sympathy for the Captain: it was a despicable thing that he had done; there was nothing more to it than that. What was more, he had ruined Zantheus’s crow’s nest pastime of trying to think up questions to ask Tromo.

So that was all there was to know: the boy was the son of some emissaries from Qereth, who had been killed by Thalassa and his men in carrying out the orders of the wicked ruler of Shul. Nothing mysterious or out of the ordinary there. He had no more questions left to ask the boy. How would he keep his mind busy whilst on look-out duty now?

If only for the sake of breaking the silence, Zantheus asked “What did you do after you found him?”

Thalassa hesitated. “I slumped to the floor and sat with my back to the wall while Tromo watched the girl die on the floor next to me. For the first time in my life I felt guilty. I was overwhelmed.”

“Then what did you do?”

“…after a while I recovered myself, and I covered the boy’s mouth to stop him crying and hid him back in the chest, until the raid had finished. Then I snuck off the ship with him and deserted the army, abandoning my men. I stayed in the port, Sephinah, with him for some time, wondering what to do. After a few days I discovered that there was a…group of men in the town who were looking to sail east to Dahma as refugees. So I joined them, led the re-capture of this ship with them, and here we are. We have sailed this sea for what seems like an age, with no clue as to whether we are any closer to our destination. Until you joined us, that is, by falling out of the sky.”

“I see,” said Zantheus.

Just then Thalassa’s vulnerability seemed to disappear and his gruff manner resumed. “I don’t know whether you are telling the truth, Sky-Man, whether you really did come from the sky like Tromo says, but I sincerely hope you will serve as a useful guide to Qereth once we are in Dahma. You probably think that nothing I could do could make up for my actions, but when we reach Qereth I intend to find the boy’s living relatives, if he has any, and return him to them. Maybe then I will be able to live out the rest of my days contentedly in a more peaceful country...”

Zantheus wanted this conversation to end. “Maybe you will,” he said abruptly, and went down to his cabin, shutting the door firmly but quietly behind him so as not to wake the other slumbering crewmen.

He went to his hammock that night a little more disrespectful of Thalassa, a little more sympathetic for Tromo, and a little more desperate to land in Dahma.