Free The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin Page B

money!” he yelled, his voice hoarse and gasping. He ran on. And at once the street ended. No cross-streets, no stars before him, a dead end. Without pausing he turned back and ran at his pursuers. The lantern swung wild in his eyes, and he yelled defiance as he came at them.
    T HERE WAS A LANTERN SWINGING back and forth before him, a faint spot of light in a great, moving greyness. He watched it for a long time. It grew fainter, and at last a shadow passed before it, and when the shadow went on the light was gone. He grieved for it a little; or perhaps he was grieving for himself, because he knew he must wake up now.
    The lantern, dead, still swung against the mast to which it was fixed. All around, the sea brightened with the coming sun. A drumbeat. Oars creaked heavily, regularly; a man up in the prow called something to the sailors behind him. The men chained with Arren in the after hold were all silent. Each wore an iron band around his waist and manacles on his wrists, and both these bonds were linked by a short, heavy chain to the bonds of the next man; the belt of iron was also chained to a bolt in the deck, so that the man could sit or crouch, but could not stand. They were too close together to lie down, jammed together in the small cargo-hold.Arren was in the forward port corner. If he lifted his head high, his eyes were on a level with the deck between hold and rail, a couple of feet wide.
    He did not remember much of last night past the chase and the dead-end street. He had fought and been knocked down and trussed up and carried somewhere. A man with a strange whispering voice had spoken; there had been a place like a smithy, a forge-fire leaping red. . . . He could not recall it. He knew, though, that this was a slave-ship, and that he had been taken to be sold.
    It did not mean much to him. He was too thirsty. His body ached and his head hurt. When the sun rose the light sent lances of pain into his eyes.
    Along in midmorning they were given a quarter-loaf of bread each and a long drink from a leather flask, held to their lips by a man with a sharp, hard face. His neck was clasped by a broad, gold-studded leather band like a dog’s collar, and when Arren heard him speak he recognized the weak, strange, whistling voice.
    Drink and food eased his bodily wretchedness for a while and cleared his head. He looked for the first time at the faces of his fellow slaves, three in his row and four close behind. Some sat with their heads on their raised knees; one was slumped over, sick or drugged. The one next to Arren was a fellow of twenty or so with a broad, flat face. “Where are they taking us?” Arren said to him.
    The fellow looked at him—their faces were not a foot apart—and grinned, shrugging, and Arren thought he meant he did notknow; but then he jerked his manacled arms as if to gesture and opened his still-grinning mouth wide to show, where the tongue should be, only a black root.
    “It’ll be Showl,” said one behind Arren; and another, “Or the Market at Amrun,” and then the man with the collar, who seemed to be everywhere on the ship, was bending above the hold, hissing, “Be still if you don’t want to be shark bait,” and all of them were still.
    Arren tried to imagine these places, Showl, the Market of Amrun. They sold slaves there. They stood them out in front of the buyers, no doubt, like oxen or rams for sale in Berila Marketplace. He would stand there wearing chains. Somebody would buy him and lead him home and they would give him an order; and he would refuse to obey. Or obey and try to escape. And he would be killed, one way or the other. It was not that his soul rebelled at the thought of slavery; he was much too sick and bewildered for that. It was simply that he knew he could not do it; that within a week or two he would die or be killed. Though he saw and accepted this as a fact, it frightened him, so that he stopped trying to think ahead. He stared down at the foul, black