It is not the first time he is shaken roughly, hauled away from the cacophony of howls that haunted him. ( Unaware, as ever, that the Spanish screams were in fact his own, echoes of a burning manor and repetitions of dying soldiers ) His eyes fall upon the man who has taken everything from him – again, so lost in his own mind he can no more tell the difference between one redhaired demon and the next.
He offers nothing – not daring to speak in his own tongue, the language this man was determined to rip from him even if it meant tearing out his spirit strip by strip. He does not speak the language of these cursed, evil people because every time he does, he feels farther from home than ever – and more afraid that with each passing day, he is becoming more and more like them.
Instead he stares, quiet and angry and full of impotent hatred that means no more to this man than his silence. The devil will have his due, he always does. Jandro does not believe he will succeed in his defiance, but he cannot bring himself to surrender, either. So he waits, his body shivering in the English cold, his mind far afield of the scorching heat of a becalmed ship, and expects an attack that has already come and gone.
Ocean Archive 