Read Online The Mad Giant (Shioni of Sheba Book 3) by Marc Secchia - Free Book Online

force through the cracks. Enough to shift them? No way! Pulling herself up and out of the pool, Shioni padded lightly over the tops of the boulders, leaping a couple of places where needed. Here was a nice flat spot already warming with the sun. She could lie down and close her eyes…
    Ooh, the sun was lovely. Now this was the way to relax! Despite her better intentions, Shioni felt her eyelids grow suddenly heavy.
    “Now isn’t this nice? The ferengi has her own private pool!”
    Shioni jumped. Had she fallen asleep? For how long?
    “Aw,” agreed Yeshi, smiling nastily down at Shioni. “Too good to use the same water as the rest of us, ferengi? Afraid we’d dirty your precious white flesh?”
    Shioni’s heart was an earthworm trying to burrow back underground with a robin’s beak tugging at its tail. Three faces loomed over her–Yeshi, her arch-tormentor, and her two cronies: Almaz, a large, strong girl with a flat, unfriendly face, and a wiry girl nicknamed ‘Tiny’ by everyone, who had a reputation for fighting. She was always chewing something and her normal expression suggested that whatever it was she had in her mouth, it tasted horrid.
    The trio pounced! In a trice, they wrenched Shioni’s arms behind her back and she felt a leather cord bite into her wrists. She fought back, furious with herself at having been caught napping in the sunshine, but the three older girls were bigger and stronger than her.
    “Aw,” said Yeshi again. She was rarely imaginative, except when it came to nastiness. “Gave you a fright?” She raised her foot and shoved Shioni backward into the pool!
    The water was only about waist deep in that place, but Shioni was so shocked that when she was unable to use her hands to catch herself, she sank with a startled ‘glub!’ She swallowed rather more of the river than she would have wanted before she was able to draw her legs under herself and push her head up, coughing and spluttering.
    Her hands were well and truly trussed. How had they managed that so fast? She wrenched her wrists this way and that, but only succeeded in hurting herself.
    “It’s time for your lessons, ferengi,” said Almaz, jumping into the pool and wading towards her. Shioni backed away. How had she not heard them sneaking up on her? “Come here!”
    “A tiny lesson in obedience.” Tiny tittered at her own joke.
    Shioni backed away faster, trying to decide if she should scream for help. But even though the waterfall had only ten feet or so to drop, it was loud and constant enough that she doubted her screams would be heard.
    Yeshi grabbed her arm and jerked her around. “Bow to me!”
    Cruel fingers dug into her cheeks, making her face up to Yeshi’s cold smile. Her fellow slave’s free hand came to rest atop her head. “You know what comes next, don’t you?”
    Shioni felt her knees buckle and managed to snatch half a breath before the water rose over her mouth and tried to invade her nose. She was kept under for a while, and then let up. “My turn!” laughed Almaz, and dunked her with a heavy hand.
    Twisting her body like a speared fish, Shioni broke away from the older girls. She kicked out with her feet as she had been taught. But she felt so awkward without the use of her hands! And her breath was short! In a moment, she had to surface and the older girls immediately started wading toward her.
    “Naughty, naughty Shioni,” Yeshi ticked her off. “People like you don’t have parents. They’re spawned by slimy worms underneath a rock somewhere.”
    These girls were not going to let up. Maybe they wanted to drown her? Or just half-drown her, Shioni thought. If she knew Yeshi, humiliation would be uppermost in her mind. The water was getting shallower. If she could just keep them at bay for a moment… but then her foot caught on a rock and she sat down with a splash.
    Almaz was quick est to capitalise. She leaped forward, driving her knees into Shioni’s chest with all of her sizeable