CHAPTER FIVE: Ling Kray's Rumble
Ling Kray was a pirate. His trade was killing on the high seas. The tools of his trade were the rusted knives and tarnished swords lying scattered about on the rough plank floor of his cabin.
"You are my new cabin boy," he announced, flinging a captive Arwen Evenstar ahead of him into his private quarters below decks. "The last one got his head cut off for disobeying my orders. Now grab a rag and some grease and polish my blades for battle."
"Are you mad?" Arwen's sharp voice sounded unusually loud in the closed-in cabin. Her head was still throbbing from the blow that had knocked her unconscious up on deck. "What's to stop me from seizing one of these blades and driving it into your pirate heart?"
"Common sense," the pirate captain replied. He flung himself down on a heap of brightly colored cushions in the corner of the cabin. "If I wanted to kill you, princess, I would have done it before, when you were out cold and helpless. I'm keeping you alive so I can sell you (for a very high price) at the great slave market in Zin Zaraboob. You can't escape on the open sea, but on shore you may have better luck. Other men are easier to kill than Ling Kray."
"You're a killer, and you deserve to die." This time Arwen only muttered her words of defiance. Her head was killing her. Resistance was futile.
Ling Kray was already settling down to sleep.
The work of polishing the pirate blades was harder than she expected. Arwen sat cross-legged on the hard wooden floor, her long black hair falling into her eyes as she examined each blade in turn. The hammering pain in her head was a torment, and the air in the pirate's cabin was hot and stuffy. Soon her shoulders ached from polishing each rusty blade, and the sweat ran into her eyes and made them sting.
All this was nothing compared to the turbulence in her heart. Time and again Arwen ceased her labors and turned to glare at the sleeping pirate captain. He wasn't a man. He was an evil beast. He had killed her friends, and stolen her ship. He deserved to die.
And yet she hesitated. Standing over the sleeping form of Ling Kray, Arwen drank in the evil beauty of his hard bronzed body, and the stern perfection of his exotic, high-cheekboned face. The black-haired, eastern pirate wasn't like Aragorn. He wasn't like any of the fair men of the west. He was a sleeping tiger. Even the arrogant curve of his lush cruel mouth seemed somehow indecent, obscene. Her hand was shaking when she finally picked up the knife.
"None of that, my lovely!" Arwen gasped in shock as the bold pirate seized her arm. How could a man sleeping soundly awaken in a split second? Ling Kray crushed her wrist in an iron grip. Then he gave a twist and the sharp blade fell from her grasp, clattering uselessly to the floor. But the true humiliation came when he yanked her across his knee and spanked her. Ling Kray's hard flat palm smacked her firm, rounded bottom quite soundly, and before long the proud daughter of Elrond lost all her elven dignity and positively howled for mercy.
"Now get back to work, princess. I don't want another peep out of you." Ling Kray lay back down to sleep, then opened one ebony eye to pierce her soul. "Not even a rumble."
Burning with shame, Arwen picked up her rag and went back to work. This time her head wasn't the sorest part of her body. And it wasn't sweat that made her eyes sting.