Captured

Captured; Entry Three

August 15th, 1703

My life has been swept away in the space of two hours. I am on my knees, pressed up against wooden bars as desperate people around me try and break free. I know there is no way out of here - the prison of the pale-faces. They stormed our village, directed by men of our own kind, yet strangers. From what I heard from others, they were from a nearby tribe. Betrayal in its most horrendous form. It made me wonder what the reward was for trading us over to the blasting whites like unwanted possessions. Maybe that tribe had now acquired some of the savage tubes that spurted death-rocks and fire. I'd never seen those contraptions before, but I was glad of that. They were loud, vicious, and fatal...

It is almost impossible to write this. Both of my wrists are now encircled with rusting rings that have already rubbed my skin raw. These rusty links of metal are linked by heavy chains to the rings of people beside me. On my immediate left was a middle aged man who had stopped thrashing several minutes ago and was now slumped, staring blankly into nowhere, on the floor. However, the younger man on my right is still yelling insults between the strips of damp wood to the snorting pale-faces who didn't seem to be listening at all.

We'd been herded into here, like wild animals. White men with savage tubes stood in a circle around the houses making it impossible to escape. Anybody who tried to get past them was thrashed with a horrific weapon. I was a handle embedded with nine strands of thick leather. When they came into contact with our people, the strings cut through their skin like a stick through water. I had to turn away. Me being my fairly cowardly self, with no sign of Mikkah, mother, father or my sisters, had handed myself over to them without a fuss. The sneering men fit my wrists with what I'd heard were called 'shackles' and from then on I was no longer free. I belonged to them.

As I attempt to write, a huge floating bowl is coming closer and closer to land. I can only guess that it is where we are all headed. I can only describe it as a vast 'canoe house' inhabited by these people - if that is what they truly are. Possibly, that is where we are all going to die - to free the land for a take-over. I just knew my happiness had finished and my life had finished. Under the control of another I had nothing. I would happily put myself at the front of the queue for the slaughter...