Page 3 of Valka

She glared at him for a moment, the fear tainting her features beneath her bold facade. “Then do it faster!” she practically hissed at him.

The cry of the raptors up above the now opened hatch carried down into the hold, mixing with the sounds of the storm and the waves crashing above them.

“What is that?!” Delia asked, her face turned up toward the stormy sky peeking through the hatch above them.

“It’s the worst nightmare you’ve ever seen. Raptors from hell, big as two grown men, come to pick us off one by one, as if the storm wasn’t enough to kill us and send us to the ocean floor to face eternity with the fishes.”

“We can’t go up there!” another sobbed, shrinking away from the ladder that would take her to the deck if she bothered to climb it, since her wrists were already free.

“Then you’ll drown with the ship of your own free will. I’ll not be responsible for you then. At least I’ve given you the chance, I’ll not die with your deaths on my conscience.”

“Just release us…” Delia said, raising her chin defiantly. Her hands lifted from the wooden interior surface of the ship she and the others had been locked in for weeks. Unable to bring her hands together in front of her, she shook them out at hersides with the little leeway of movement she’d been allowed. Her eyes, accustomed to the dark after seeing nothing but since she’d awakened in the hold with the others, took notice of the three inches or more of water that had spilled into the hold since Ridley had unlocked and raised the hatch. This was nothing like the bucketfuls of water the crew poured down over them to ‘clean’ them from time to time. This was catastrophic. As the very thought cleared her mind, another wave crashed across the open hold, spilling down onto the women.

“We’re going to die!” one of them shrieked.

Others sobbed, but none of those already freed ventured up the ladder.

“It’ll be fine. Go up the ladder to the deck. Save yourselves,” Delia said.

“For what? To have some monster carry us away?” another asked.

“You’ll have more chance if you get out of this miserable hole!” Delia insisted passionately.

“Does it matter?” another shouted angrily through her tears. “We die now, or we die later! There’s no other outcome. I’d just as soon die now!”

“None of us are going to die! We’ll find a way.”

“We’ll all die either down here, or up there!”

“Yes, you will, with that attitude! Never give up! Do you hear me? Never stop fighting! Whatever you must concede, concede it, and live to fight another day. There is always a way to survive!”

“I’d rather die here, at peace, with prayers to our savior on my lips,” the weepiest of them all, Patricia, declared, her voice barely heard.

“If that is your choice, so be it. It is not my choice,” Delia said, watching the boy, just barely shy of being a man, work on the chains binding her. Her heart raced and she dared toembrace hope as she heard the click of the lock and raised her now free hand in the air, stretching her sore, stiff muscles as he began working on the next. “Come on, boy. Hurry up. I will not lose my life in this miserable place when I have the chance to fight for it above.”

“I’m trying,” he said, working feverishly at the lock on her other wrist.

Another deluge of ocean water rained down on them, causing all of them to scatter and hold their breath. Delia, the last to be freed, turned her body sideways to better weather the ocean waves soaking them from the open hold. She rested her still shackled wrist on the wooden beam at her back, and turned her face toward that side of the ship.

The ship listed again, throwing most of the women already freed against the opposite inside wall of the ship.

One of them, a plump, and Delia suspected delightful female under other circumstances, grasped the ladder and looked back at them all struggling to remain on their feet as the water dissipated.

“Yes! That’s it, Bettina. Go! Go and jump over the side. Swim, Bettina! Swim harder than you’ve ever swum before! You’ll make it!”

Bettina climbed up three rungs and looked back down hesitantly. “But…”

“Go, I’ll be right behind you!” Delia insisted.

Ridley fought against the rusted lock holding the last chain on Delia’s wrist, until finally the key he was using snapped off in the lock itself.

Delia’s gaze lifted slowly to his when she realized what had just happened. She swallowed calmly, her emotions well in check. “Go now, young man. You’ve done all you can. Take them with you,” she said, lifting her chin to indicate the seven womenhuddled at the bottom of the ladder, still too afraid to follow Bettina up and out of the hold.

Ridley stared at the lock still holding the oldest of all of them in place. His mouth agape, he took in the sight of the water that now stood at least five inches deep around her body where she sat, then finally looked into her eyes.

“You tried. It’s okay. Go before you can’t,” Delia said, blinking away a sudden rush of unexpected tears.

“No!” Ridley shouted angrily. “I will not have it!” he declared, and dropped to his knees inspecting the lock more closely through the water.

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