“And who do you belong to, little slave?” His dark eyes glinted.
Again, I closed my mouth, still unsure of whether or not to reveal my identity. The sword rested inches from my toes, and my fingers itched to reach for the weapon, but I knew that would only get me killed.
Charon stood and crossed the space between us, reaching for the blade himself. He pulled it free of the scabbard, and his thumb swept back and forth over the markings engraved on the blade, just below the hilt. The beauty of its clean, lethal lines still took my breath away. That sword, and the destiny it represented, meant more to me than anything. The design was a knotted triple raven—the mark of the Morrigan—and I remembered with stark clarity the day Sorcha had taken me to the blacksmith. I had perched on a high stool in the firelit forge and witnessed, for the first time, the birthing of a blade.
Sorcha had left the sword behind, hanging on the wall of our house, when she had ridden into battle. When she didn’t return, I had claimed it for my own, promising to honor her legacy as a warrior.
“Whose sword is this?” Charon asked again.
I felt suddenly as if my fate hung, suspended, on the cusp of tipping one way or another. The shadow of a seabird flew across the tent wall. Or maybe it was one of the Morrigan’s ravens.
“It’s mine,” I said in a dry whisper.
“Who gave it to you?”
I bit my lip and stayed silent.
“Tell me,” he said. And then, after a long pause, “Please.”
There was something about the way he said it that compelled me to speak the truth. Maybe it was just the unexpected “please,” but it seemed as though it went deeper than mere curiosity.
“It was my sister’s,” I said.
Charon’s eyes narrowed. “Your sister must be a fine warrior to handle a blade like this.”
“She’s dead.” The words sounded flat and ugly in my ears. “When I was young, she left one day to fight the Romans. She never came home. Now the sword is mine.”
I watched Charon’s jaw work as he chewed the inside of his cheek, lost in thought. Then he blinked rapidly and turned away, and it was as if a veil had fallen behind his eyes, his expression unreadable once more.
“It’s a fine blade,” he said, hefting the slender weapon and testing its balance. “I wonder that she didn’t take it with her into the field.”
“My sister could kill a man with a dull fish knife,” I said fiercely. “She was the weapon. The blade she used was of no consequence.”
It was true. Sorcha had owned many swords, many daggers—all of them marked with the same triple-raven knot—and yet this one was special. She’d said as much on the day we’d gone to the forge. It was a twin to the sword she carried, but this sword would be mine one day, she told me. And when that happened—when the day came that I was old enough and worthy enough and the sword passed into my hands—I was to guard it with my life. Because, Sorcha told me, it would mean my life. I hadn’t known exactly what she’d meant, but my sister had often said things like that. Sorcha, when she was alive, had made it a custom to spend long hours in close, secret conversation with Olun, my father’s chief druid. The druiddyn were the sages and mystics of our tribe. They dealt in portents and prophecies, and I’d often wondered if Sorcha had known something in the days before she left to fight Caesar’s men. Something she didn’t—wouldn’t—tell me.
I wondered if that was why she’d left the blade behind, as a legacy for her little sister. Maybe Sorcha had known she was going to die and leave me to grow up without her.
Even if she had, she still would have gone, I thought. Just like I would have. That is the warrior’s way.
“Such ferocity you have,” Charon said. “Following in your sister’s footsteps, perhaps?”
I felt a shiver across my shoulders at his words, like the brush of dark wings on my skin. Following in Sorcha’s footsteps was exactly what the druiddyn had foreseen as my destiny. The Morrigan, it seemed, had willed it otherwise. I could only hope that the path she’d set my feet upon would lead me to a fate as honorable as my sister’s.
“Can you fight?” he asked.
“I can fight,” I said, lifting my chin. “Better than you. Better than all of your men.”
Charon raised an eyebrow at me. “Really.”
“Give me back my sword and find out for yourself.”
“No . . .” He laughed and slid the blade back into its sheath. “No, I believe you. And so I’ll keep this out of your reach. For now.”
He stepped out through the tent flap, and I heard him speak to Hafgan. “Take her back down to the hold,” he said. “Let the rest of the men know that she is not to be mistreated.”
“You keeping her for yourself?” Hafgan leered.
I froze. It was something I hadn’t considered.
“Just do it,” Charon said. “Tell them I’ll chop off the hand of the first man who touches her and feed it to the fishes.”
I silently thanked the Morrigan as I descended back down into the darkness of the slave ship’s hold, grateful for the smallest of mercies. Still, I knew that the journey ahead of me would be long and terrible . . . and Charon’s continued kindness was the very last thing I could count on.
VI
SCALP TO SOLE, I was one long mile of misery. I had lost track of how many days it had been since the Lughnasa feast in my father’s great hall. How many nights would it have been since they’d laid Maelgwyn’s body on the funeral pyre? If I closed my eyes, I could imagine it. His swords crossed on his chest, the flames climbing upward to lick at his face, hungrily consuming him.
Did Aeddan run all the way home, I wondered, or did he skulk back to watch from a distance as the smoke and sparks rose into the sky to carry his brother’s spirit to the Otherworld? I swore to myself—every day of that whole horrible journey I swore—that I would find a way to return and make him pay for Mael’s death. They would have to remove my chains at some point—either to sell me or to put me to work after I’d been sold—and when they did, I would run. Hide. Make my way home and have my revenge. I swore it on my soul.
Mine and Maelgwyn’s. I owed him that.
But as the weeks wore on, my oaths began to sound hollow in my ears.
As it did every day on that infinite stretch since we’d landed on the northern shore of Gaul and began our trek overland, the caravan rumbled to a stop around midday, as the sun reached its apex. The air around the cage carts would grow hot, rank with the stench of unwashed bodies and sickness and fear, and full of dust and flies beneath a glaring sun. My once-pale, freckled skin was burnt and tender. My eyes and nostrils were full of road grit, and my throat was parched and raw. I’d lost count of the towns and villages we’d passed through, where the townsfolk stared and the children dared each other to throw rocks at the cages.
But that morning, instead of the usual midday break, our caravan joined up on the road with another wagon train coming from the east bearing more slaves and trade goods. The two groups blended together, and I was moved into a larger cage cart. This one was populated entirely with girls—an even dozen of us altogether—around my age.
The girls in the cart all wore slave collars the same as mine, with a single long chain running through the rings attached to their collars, linking them together, and then through more rings that were bolted to the cage bars. I was prodded up into the enclosure and my collar attached to the end of that same chain.
Strung together, I thought, like twelve broken beads on a tarnished necklace.
We were also each chained to a partner, linked in pairs to the girl that sat opposite us by manacles around our ankles. I never had recovered my stolen boots, and without them for protection, the iron shackle chafed horribly and the skin on my ankle and across the top of my left foot quickly became blistered and raw. Over the next two and a half days, the agony grew so that I couldn’t take
it anymore. When Charon himself passed near my cage, I loudly asked why the leg chain was necessary.
“Raiders.” He nodded at the encroaching hills, cloaked in heavy forests. It was the first time Charon had spoken directly to me since we’d been on board the ship. “When Caesar broke Arviragus’s resistance and thrashed the Arverni tribe and their allies almost out of existence,” he continued, “the few survivors fled into these hills. They’ve nowhere to go and no other way to live. This is lawless country now, and I’d be a fool to make it easy for a raiding party to come and steal my property now, wouldn’t I?”
“Your already stolen property,” I said.
Charon laughed. “And how pathetic would you be if you were twice pilfered, little slave? You should be grateful I take such precautions. The raiders would not be so gentle.” He paused before moving on. “We’ll be traveling through the night,” he said. “It will be dangerous, but less dangerous than making camp. Perhaps you’d be good enough to offer up a prayer to your fearsome raven goddess that we don’t draw any unwanted attention down upon us.”
For a moment I didn’t understand how he would even know what goddess I prayed to. But then I remembered he still had my sword, etched with the Morrigan’s triple-raven knot. Charon had recognized it. And remembered.
The slave master grinned at me wryly. He unstoppered his leather water bag and sloshed a generous measure into the dust-dry cup that rested on the floor beside me. I was too thirsty to be astonished. I greedily sucked down the few mouthfuls of water, letting the cup fall to rest again on the wagon floor between my feet. My raw, raging thirst slaked for a moment, I leaned my head back against the cage bars and closed my eyes. After a long, silent moment, I could feel the other girls watching me with envy or dull curiosity. Or outright animosity.
I did my best to ignore them as darkness descended on the winding road and the shadows of the forest swallowed the caravan whole.
• • •
Hours passed, and a full moon rose high overhead in a star-spattered sky. I groaned and rolled my head on my stiff neck. The girl on the far side of the cage—the one I was chained to by my left ankle—was staring at me with bleak hostility. She had been ever since Charon had poured the water in my cup.
Beneath a high forehead made even higher by the white-blonde hair braided tightly back from her face in rows, her eyes were blue, but so pale in the moonlight that they almost seemed silver. And they were just as cold and hard. In the three days we’d been shackled together, I’d never heard her utter a sound. Until now.
Her voice, when she spoke, was deep and strong. Her words, harsh: “You think you’re precious, little vixen?”
The corner of her lips—as chapped and peeling as mine—lifted in a sneer. She spoke in Latin, probably learned from traders, the same way I had. Only hers was thickly seasoned with her native barbaric accent. I had heard one of the slavers say that some of the other girls were of the Varini tribe, a warlike people from cold northern lands. She certainly fit the description herself.
“Think you’re special,” she said. “Ja?”
Then she leaned forward and, heedless of wasting precious moisture, hawked and spat on the floor of the cart between my feet. The other captives were now awake and watching us with darting, anxious glances. I took a deep breath to cool the sudden burn of anger in my chest.
Then I frowned, tilting my head as I regarded the other girl.
“Forgive me if I’ve misunderstood you,” I said in the best trader-learned Latin I could muster. “Your accent, after all, is terribly ugly . . . but did you just call me a dog?”
Her sneer hardened into a mocking smile. “Fox.” She waved dismissively. “Small, pointy, wild dog. Cowardly things. Very noisy when they . . .” Her Latin failed her then, but the obscene gesture she made with her fingers more than conveyed her meaning.
I felt my shoulders go tight, and one of the other girls snickered.
“Scavengers.” The Varini girl shrugged. “But, ja. That’s all you seem to me. Not so very special.”
But I had been special, I thought. Once I had been special to a boy with steel-gray eyes who had loved me, and I had thrown all of it away. My hands clenched into fists at my sides. She noticed and raised an eyebrow.
“Not so very tough.”
As we glared at each other across the cramped space, the other occupants of the cage wagon shifted away from the two of us, rattling the chains.
The Varini girl shrugged again and nudged my empty water cup with the toe of her sandal. “Or maybe he doesn’t think you’re special. Maybe he just thinks you’re in heat, little fox—”
My vision blurred, and I heard myself snarl in rage as I launched myself across the cage. I was brought up short and sharp by the iron ring around my neck which, of course, was still attached to the chain that ran through the rings on all the other girls’ collars. Still, the force of my lunge was such that a girl on the other end of the cage cart was yanked hard over into the girl beside her, cheek mashing up against the other girl’s shoulder, who then fell against the girl on her other side.
They squealed in startled outrage, and the other girls began to scream and shout too as the Varini girl threw herself out of my range, dragging along the girls on her side of the cage. A chaotic tangle of limbs and chains writhed and thrashed as the endless days of fear and frustration boiled over into violence. The Varini was tall and lanky, and when she lashed out at me with one long leg, the leather sole of her sandal slapped painfully against my thigh. I grunted in pain and half rolled over. The girl next to me flailed at me with balled fists but didn’t really know how to fight.
I knew how to fight.
In the confined space, hemmed in by bars, it was easy enough to land blows—but it was just as easy to have them land on me. I took two glancing hits from the Varini girl’s long-reaching fists before I felt my own connect solidly with her ribs. She yelped and twisted to avoid a follow-up punch, dragging the chain-linked girls in her wake. The cage cart tilted perilously as it raced along the dirt track.
The driver, sitting in front of the cage on a wooden seat, swore loudly as our frenzied thrashing rocked the cart, and he banged on the bars of the cage with the stout oak club he carried. He shouted at us to settle down or he would stop the wagon and give us all a beating.
I barely noticed. I was too busy reeling from a punch to the face.
Pain exploded from my left cheek, and a red mist descended in front of my eyes. After all the days and nights of dull despair and helplessness, the fierce urge to fight something, anything—anyone—welled in my chest. I howled in fury and swung my clenched fists in a double blow that caught the Varini on the temple and sent her reeling.
“You’re both mad!” a girl with long black curls shouted above the chaos. “Stop! You’ll get us all killed!”
In the darkness, the skinny wheels of the wagon bearing our prison cage weaved crazily in the rutted tracks of the road. The driver, had he been thinking, could have immediately dealt with us at a standstill. But Charon had warned his men not to stop, and there was no wagon behind us to notice the commotion. Ours was the last vehicle in the caravan that night, except for a heavy, guarded ox-pulled provisions wagon that was even slower. Slow enough to have fallen far behind and out of sight.
Which meant that there was nothing to stop me from trying to shove the Varini girl’s ugly insinuations back down her throat. I only had to reach her first. I wedged my left hand beneath the metal ring that circled my neck so I wouldn’t choke, and then I hauled on the slave chain with all my strength. I managed to gather just enough slack to connect to the side of the Varini girl’s head with the full force of my right fist. Her head snapped back. She fell heavily against her side of the cage with enough force to send the whole cart careening sideways.
The slave driver shouted in alarm as the wagon rocked wildly on the uneven road. As the cage suddenly
tipped over and began rolling down a steep embankment, girls screamed and grappled for anything to hold on to. My shoulder hit the roof of the cage with enough force to send blinding pain shooting through my whole body, and the girl chained on my right landed on top of me, driving the wind from my lungs. When the cage came to a halt at the bottom of a ditch, there was a moment of utter stillness, broken only by the spinning creak of the two wheels churning away uselessly above our heads. The other girls began to groan and whimper, pushing themselves to their hands and knees, tangled in their chains and each other’s limbs.
The cage had split apart like a rotten fruit, and I staggered to my feet and stepped free of the broken bars. The two cart horses, their shattered yokes hanging from their necks, scrambled to their feet and bolted back up the embankment. I sucked in my breath at the sight of the slave driver, who’d been pinned beneath one of the animals. His head was bent at an unnatural angle, and his mouth was frozen open in a silent cry of shock. A slick of dark blood painted the side of his face, and his eyes were empty and staring.
I stumbled back a step, and the chain that had held me tethered to the other girls by the ring around my neck slid free and fell to the ground in pieces, broken links chiming tuneless music as they hit the stony ground beneath my feet.
I’m free! I thought as elation surged through me.
No. Not exactly.
I cursed as I saw that the shackle that circled my left ankle was woefully intact. I was still bound by the short length of stout iron links to the Varini girl, who was clambering unsteadily to her feet. She seemed to realize—at the very same moment that I did—the irony of our situation. In the trees high above our heads, I heard the throaty chuckle of a raven and imagined it was the wry laughter of the Morrigan, amused at my predicament. My goddess was capricious in her affections. I’d always known that. But I was beginning to think that when she’d called me daughter, it was only to mock my efforts to live up to that honor.
The Valiant Page 5
