Chapter two
Oar-slaves in the swifters of MagdagWe rowed.
We oar-slaves pulled at the massively heavy looms of the oars, up and back and down and forward and up and back and down and...
A week. Give a galley slave a week, more or less, and he will be either dead or toughened enough to last another week, and then another, and then perhaps, if his stamina lasts, to live. If the existence of a galley slave can be called living.
The Xaffer, Xelnon, lasted five days.
He would have died sooner, but Green Magodont caught a wind swinging out of Magdag and so we slaves were spared much of the continuous hauling that is the killer. But he died.
He did not tell us what he had done to be condemned to the galleys. Usually Xaffers are given the lighter tasks of slaves, household chores, secretaria
