They threw the blocks of ice overboard, fifteen, twenty at a time. She looked at the ocean, wide eyed and wild. Her husband and son were in those blocks. So were the rest of her klan from her father's side.
The pirates were back. They had kidnapped her kinsmen in the dead of night. A sedative from the trees in the pirates’ horrible homeland was administered, and ice water poured over her family until they froze slowly. Thrown in the hull like a cache of fish, and the women they let live - an elderly woman or two, and herself - they were kept alive to be watched, as they watched their family die.
She held her breath and counted, trying to remain calm. She knew this was coming, they all did. The men in her village had been preparing for weeks, slowly medicating themselves with bark from that plant. She had stolen it from the invaders in the last raid, and had cultivated a bit in the cairns, away from sight.
The ice blocks began melting, and the giant sea snakes began closing in around the vessel.