Okay, these next two chapters are from the novella that is going to end my book, they haven't undergone any major editing yet, also they are all I have so far. Please read them with a critical eye and tell me what you think. This Novella is named
The End.
The End
Chapter 1: Kidnapping
In recent years, there was born a prince in Iraat who was the crown prince. As he grew, his father noticed that he lacked the hate of Beman that an Irati prince should have. This troubled the King of Iraat so much that he changed the boy’s tutors, punished him severely, and tried to find a way around the law that said that a king’s first-born male child must inherit the thrown. The king was getting pretty desperate as his son began to come of age.
The king knew that the law stated that the day his son married, he also inherited the kingdom. His son was far too smart for the king to employ stratagems that would prevent his son from finding a wife. Drastic measures would have to be taken. It was completely unacceptable for the King of Iraat to be friendly toward the Bemanese; it flew in the face of Irati tradition and threatened the structure of the Irati economy that made much money by preying upon Bemanese shipping lanes.
Drastic measures. The king decided that these would include having his son kidnapped by a crew of mercenaries led by a crooked Bemanese sailor who, more often than not, was under Irati pay. It was to be done shortly before one of the great Bemanese festivals and the prince would be brought through the northern ocean and landed on the west coast of Beman on the day that the Bemanese celebrated their Reconquista that is their independence from Irati rule. The king hoped that this plot by the “Bemanese” would awaken his son’s wrath against the longtime enemy of Iraat. Barring that, the king would be able to stir up trouble among the people that would cause his son problems when he did take over the kingdom.
It was not easy to convince his son to go down to the port on the evening when the kidnapping was to take place. The king was just about to change his plans when one of the prince’s friends sent a message to the prince. The message was announcing the prince of his friend’s arrival back in Iraat. The boy had recently been to Zamboosie and wrote about wishing to tell the prince everything he saw on his trip. He lived near the docks.
Prince Iani therefore lost no time in rushing to the docks. Had his friend known the trouble that they both were about to get into, he would have postponed his message or not sent it at all. As it stood, within minutes of Iani meeting his friend, they were set upon by roughs. The roughs were really Palatial guards in disguise, but it was all part of the kings plan to scare the two boys a little about their fellow citizens.
Both were taken aboard a ship called the Avenger bound hand and foot. The men then left them in the hands of their captors. After the captain had remitted a large sum in Irati drovents, the common currency used in Tiafa, Iraat, the masked roughs left the boat and disappeared into the darkness of the streets. The people who took over their shackles were rather rough with them too but did not actually beat the boys. Iani and Diego were brought down into the hold of the ship until the crew had maneuvered it into open water. For the first few days, in fact, the young men were left in the hold until three days into the voyage and the crew was not friendly toward them at all.
There was a marked change in the crew’s behavior on the fourth day because on the fourth day, the paid mercenaries did as they were wont. They quarreled with and became very dissatisfied with their leader. They actually even refused to follow his orders. The mutinous behavior started with the crew showing kindness toward their captives. They let them have more liberty than they were supposed to and also fed them better food than had been given to Iani and Diego since they were brought aboard. They did all of this against their captain’s wishes.
With his crew against him, the captain did everything that the crew demanded short of abandoning his foolish mission. He became more of a prisoner on the ship that he owned than the two boys who were supposed to be his prisoners.
Iani made the best of it; thus far, he had not been allowed to take many sea voyages and only one had taken him away from the Irati continent. Besides that, the men making up the crew were by no means the cruel, blood-thirsty mercenaries who would just as easily turn and kill their employer in the other side paid better; half were even Irati by birth. The Irati’s on the crew were in the same straight as Iani in some ways, they could not find honorable jobs in Tiafa because they too held the widely unpopular view that the Bemanese were not awful people. They had led the rebellion against the crooked captain. All the others were of varying nationalities; only two, other than the captain were actually Bemanese at all. One was the ships cook and the other was the doctor; they had not known that their new employer was crooked until they got into the port at Tiafa.
One night, the captain got so angry that he marched out of his cabin, grabbed Prince Iani, and started beating him with a bullwhip. The crew heard the young man’s pained cries and came to his rescue. They were perfectly willing to accept payment for the few less than honorable things that Captain Daniel had employed them in before, but they were not going to stand by and let him beat the prince of Iraat to death. In the scuffle that ensued, somehow the captain fell overboard. Though they did search, they were not able to find him in the water. In their opinion, he got off to easily for his crimes; he did not even have to face the Irati courts for his crime against their future king.
With the captain gone, all remaining pretenses of animosity and inequality were completely dropped by both the crew and the boys. It was no secret to Iani that his father had been behind this ridiculous kidnapping; the guards’ disguises had not completely fooled him. He knew his father had been up to something and that was confirmed when Iani recognized at least two members of his father’s personal guard among the “roughs” who brought him and Diego onto this ship. The crew, when they were finally told whom they had kidnapped, was livid. The two Bemanese knew that they had been chosen to work on this boat because they could become scapegoats when the voyage was over. The Irati sailors were still loyal to the land of their birth even if it did not want their loyalty; they would be charged with treason if they ever set foot in Iraat again. It was found that none but the captain and king would have gained anything by this kidnapping.