It was a dark, moonless night when the pirates came to the village. The locals had long known of the dangers the sea brought and had watchtowers manned on nights such as this, but fortune was against them: a later-summer fog had rolled in from the sea during the night just ahead of the sleek raiding ships that slipped into the sheltered cove below the village and ground on the sandy beach. The pirates swarmed quickly up the hills inland, following well trodden paths towards the village.

The first Athal knew something was wrong was when she awoke, coughing in the acrid smoke which filled her family’s modest hut. “The thatch is alight!” Athal’s mother told the girl of 18 summers. “Go and fetch the pail. Maybe we can extinguish it before the wood takes flame!” Athal nodded, jumping from the bed as her mother busied herself waking Athal’s sisters.

Clad in naught but her thin white shift, her straw-blonde hair tied back loosely with a length of ribbon, Athal stumbled through the cramped, pitch dark hut to the door. The maid thought only that one of the neighbors had been careless extinguishing their fire and a wayward spark had settled on their hut. The teen was entirely unprepared when, as she poked her head out into the cool night air, she was roughly seized by the pirate lurking outside the door. A large, meaty hand was clasped tight over Athal’s mouth, stifling her cries.

The maid’s eyes went wide with fright as another pirate: tall, broad-shouldered with dark mustache in sailor’s garb approached, rope in hand. Swiftly, he bound Athal’s hands together and tied a long rope halter around her neck. A band of cloth was bound across her mouth to silence the girl.

By that time, noise from inside the hut told that more of the family were coming out. One of the pirates held the struggling Athal while the others gathered around the door. The maid could only watch in mute horror as each girl stumbled blindly out of the smoke-filled hut and was immediately seized by one of the pirates. Hands slapped over their mouths to prevent the girls from giving those following any warning. More ropes were brought out and each girl had her hands tied, followed by a gag between her teeth and the halter rope fastened around her neck, tethering the family together.

When the girls’ mother came out, last of all, having stopped to collect a few valuables from the hut, now well ablaze, she was confronted by the awful sight of her four daughters tied together in a short coffle, sobbing fearfully through their gags, lit by the reddish glow of the burning wood hut. Swiftly, the older woman was seized and joined the girls in the ropes.

One of the pirates, brandishing a leather-wrapped cudgel, ordered the captives out into the road. The rest, meanwhile, dashed ahead to the next house. Their method was the same: one of the pirates took out a closely shuttered lantern and used the tiny flame inside to light an oil soaked firebrand. This was instantly thrust into the roof of the cottage. The damp thatch did not light immediately, but smoldered and smoked. The raiders lay in wait till the growing flames woke the family within. As they rushed out the door in their nightclothes, seeking safety, the peasants were immediately seized by the waiting pirates, bound and gagged the same as Athal and her mother and sisters had been. Flaring lights all over the village spoke of other groups of pirates at work.

The captive women stumbled down the street, joining the throng of other bound peasants, their friends, family and neighbors, all being herded in the same direction: the winding dirt road down to the cove. They moved haltingly, each step as slow and reluctant as possible. They knew so long as they were on land, there was a chance, however slender, they might slip the tight ropes binding them, dart into the night and escape. But once they were confined aboard the pirate’s ship, all hope would be lost. The next time the captives set foot on land, it would be at some distant slave market.

The pirates were aware of this too, though, and of the ever present danger of counter-attack from the other nearby towns and villages that increased the longer the pirates lingered ashore. They made every effort to hurry their captives. With cudgels and whips and curses, they drove the terrified peasants down to the cove like livestock, letting none stop till they reached the sandy beach.

There, the pirates had drawn up their ships. Three were long, sleek raiding galleys with tall curved prows painted in the snarling faces of sea serpents. The captured men were split off from the rest and dragged aboard these, each pirate captain fighting to claim as many fresh slaves as possible to man the oars of his ship. The women and girls, meanwhile, were herded towards a fourth vessel. It had the fat, broad hull of the merchant ship it had doubtless once been, relying as much on the large square sails on its two masts as the single bank of oars. In the darkness it loomed menacingly at the captives as they approached: a floating wooden prison.

With the rest of the women, Athal stumbled up the steep, narrow gangplank onto the wooden deck. No sooner had she climbed then the teen was hurried down a ladder into the hold. The dark space, which in other hands might have carried any sort of cargo from tuns of wine to bolts of cloth or barrels of olives, had been converted to one purpose alone by its present masters. The large hold had been divided into two, makeshift decks, divided in the middle by a narrow corridor. Wooden grates had been fitted, further dividing the low decks into numerous wooden pens. Pale, frightened faces peered out through the gaps, victims from previous raids confined in the hold.

Athal and her family were forced into one of the empty pens, followed by the wife and daughter of one of their neighbors. The wooden hatch was shut and fastened by a pirate, confining the women inside. In the darkness, they curled up, looking to one another in fright. The gags they still wore prevented them from voicing the thousand terrors each felt at the night’s dark events.

Not long after, the hold echoing with the sobs and moans of the living cargo, the pirates shoved off from the beach. The floating wooden prison turned, following the tide out to sea and the distant slave market that lay at the end of their voyage…