The Valiant Page 4

  The shouts of the sentries were closer now. Aeddan glanced wildly over his shoulder and then back at me. For a moment, he hesitated. Then he bolted into the fog, running in the direction of Durovernum’s wall. In an instant he’d disappeared, swallowed whole by the night.

  The world around me turned red.

  If Aeddan managed to escape Durovernum that night, he would vanish into the forest and run all the way back to his own halls deep in the heart of the Trinovante lands, where he would be safe. A murderer . . . but safe. I angrily wiped the tears from my eyes as I began to run, heading in the direction Aeddan had gone. That wasn’t going to happen, not while I drew breath. When I reached the town wall, I scrambled up the mud-slick earthworks and tumbled gracelessly down the other side. Crouching, I peered at the ground. Aeddan had left a clear trail of footprints in the muddy earth. As I stood, a thick drift of clouds swept over the full moon, like snuffing out a flame. It didn’t matter—I knew which way to go. The forest in front of me was hung with shadows, but I plunged into the trees, following the path of freshly broken branches that marked Aeddan’s way. He was headed toward the cart path that would lead him to the main road.

  He was running like a coward. A murderer.

  The sword I’d stuffed inside my bedroll rattled in its sheath as I ran, the sound keeping time with the single thought that repeated over and over in my head.

  Mael’s dead . . . Mael’s dead . . . Mael’s dead . . .

  I stumbled blindly on, deep into the forest, with one singular purpose: vengeance. It was only after I had run far longer than it should have taken to pick up the cart path that I realized I was lost. I stopped and listened. Over the plashing of rainwater dripping from the forest leaves and the rasp of my own breathing, I could hear another sound.

  The sound of rushing water.

  No.

  I was near the river. I had gone in the exact opposite direction from where I’d meant to go. I cursed loudly, then clamped my hand over my mouth. Aeddan could be somewhere nearby. I’d be a fool to alert him to my presence. The only way I wanted him to know I was there was when he looked down to see my sword in his guts.

  Cautiously, I pushed through a screen of saplings and found myself at the broad bank of the River Dwr. A break in the clouds spilled down moongleam, and I looked down to see my reflection staring back at me from the dark water, green eyes glowing like the eyes of the cats we kept to kill rats.

  And I will kill a rat this night, I thought.

  I wrapped my heart in fury to keep the despair at bay as I knelt on the sodden grass of the riverbank to retrieve my sword from my bedroll. Before I could reach it, the moon disappeared behind the clouds again. As the river turned back to blackness, I caught the glimpse of a shadow looming up behind me in the reflection. I spun around, thinking Aeddan had found me first. My hand went instead for my dagger, only to remember I’d left it lying in the embers of my home fire.

  It wasn’t Aeddan.

  A broad-shouldered man swung his fist like a mallet at my head. I fell, consumed by a dark red tide.

  • • •

  When I awoke, I knew from the motion of the wet planks beneath me that I was on a boat, gliding silently down what I guessed was the Dwr.

  Out of the cauldron and straight into the flames, I thought as a cold dread pierced the nausea that already knotted my guts. This was the second time I’d been hit on the head in less than a day. I groaned and opened my eyes.

  The man from the riverbank was sitting on a bench in the middle of the little skiff, staring at me. Seeing that I was awake, he crouched down in front of me and grabbed my chin, forcing me to look up into his face. His eyes were two different colors—one watery blue, the other muddy brown. I opened my mouth in anger, but he put a finger, rough and calloused, to my lips.

  “Shh . . .” He grinned, an ugly twisting of his mouth behind a matted beard. “Cry out and that’ll be the last sound you make. You understand?”

  His other hand pressed a knife blade up under my left ear. The scream building in my throat died instantly. I couldn’t escape if I was dead.

  “There’s a good little Cantii bitch.” His mismatched gaze roamed over me. “She’s not too ugly,” he called quietly over his shoulder to the skiff’s other occupant, a dark-haired man who pulled easily at the oars. Then he turned back to me and rolled the dagger blade over my cheek. “If you behave, I won’t have to ruin your face. You might even fetch a decent price.”

  A slave trader, I thought, numb with disbelief. The lowest kind of creature—cunning peddlers always looking to capture and barter the lives of anyone unfortunate enough to cross their path unawares. My tribe came by most of our bond-slaves through war and raids. Traders were reviled as parasites, a blight that had accompanied Rome to our shores.

  This one wore no torc. No arm-ring. No ornamentation of any kind to mark him as a freeman or anything other than lowborn. Of course, I realized, neither did I in that moment. I wore none of the embellishments that would have marked me as the daughter of a king. I had disavowed that status. My arms and neck were bare. No gold dangled from my ears. My boots and tunic were muddied and torn from my mad dash through the forest. They probably thought I was just a lowly thrall, easy picking. They were wrong. And I’d show them that—as soon as I could get to my sword.

  “Were you running from someone, little slave?” asked the man at the oars. He spoke Latin like all the traders did, so I could understand him well enough, but his voice had a rolling lilt that I couldn’t place.

  I ground my teeth together and said nothing. They laughed quietly at my silence. Over his shoulder, I could just make out the shape of a galley riding low in the water.

  “No matter,” he said, guiding the skiff toward the ship. “Whoever it is, you’ll be far enough away from them once we get to Rome.”

  • • •

  Rome.

  The word stunned me like another blow to the head. Over the sound of the waves lapping the sides of the skiff, I could hear muffled voices drifting down from the galley deck—male, gruff, hissing hard-edged words into the night, and a smaller, forlorn noise. Weeping. A girl. Maybe a young boy. Silenced with the sharp ring of a slap. It seemed I wasn’t the only prey the slavers had hunted that night. But I was probably the only one foolish enough to have run right into their arms.

  The skiff bumped against the side of the ship that loomed above us like a sea beast from a child’s bedtime tale. Someone threw down a rope ladder, and Odd Eyes motioned me toward it with his knife. The boat rocked as I clumsily rose to my feet, almost pitching me into the black water. For an instant, I thought I might just do that—fling myself overboard and swim for all I was worth.

  Almost as if he heard my thoughts, Odd Eyes grabbed me by the hair and forced my head up, pointing with his knife. Standing at the railing, I saw a stocky form holding a bow, an arrow already nocked and the bowstring half-pulled.

  “You even think of taking a bath and my mate there will put a hole in you before you hit the water,” he hissed in my ear.

  I had no choice but to climb the ladder, Odd Eyes and the dark-haired man following close behind. I’d never been on a seagoing vessel before, and my knees buckled as the deck of the ship tilted beneath my feet. I took a deep breath and tried to imagine that the rolling motion was the swaying of my racing chariot. This was just another challenge, I told myself. Just another adversary to beat.

  I looked around for any possible escape, but Odd Eyes was right there, shoving me roughly toward a hatch in the middle of the deck that yawned like a gaping black maw. I heard the scrape of iron on wood as the anchor was dragged slowly on board, and I felt the ship lurching forward in the river current. As the forested riverbank slid away behind us, I bolted toward the ship railing. I made it three or four steps before Odd Eyes grabbed me and dealt a lazy backhand to my jaw that sent me reeling.

  “Take her
below,” Odd Eyes growled, pushing me toward a heavily muscled man. “She’s got an urge to run. Convince her otherwise.”

  V

  EARLIER THAT NIGHT, I had knelt on the floor of my house and slid the slender silver torc from around my neck. The torc had been a symbol of my status within the Cantii tribe. The daughter of a king. I had cast it onto the flames of the brazier and thought I’d never feel the cool, heavy caress of metal around my throat again. I was wrong.

  This new ring of metal was colder. Heavier.

  And it marked me in just the same way—only now my status was “slave.”

  The collar was made of coarsely wrought iron. Dull and chafing, hammered on with a bolt and tethered to a stout post in the hold by a chain through a ring. It was loose enough that it sat on my collarbones, but I still felt like I was choking. My people were fiercely protective of our freedom. To be a freeman or freewoman was to have status in the tribe. Respect.

  I crouched in the darkness of the hold, the mingled stench of fish-rot, mildew, sweat, and fear clogging my nostrils. My boots were soaked through with river water, and my feet had gone numb because of it. I slid the boots off and put them aside, rubbing my cramped toes between my palms. By the light of a single, swinging lantern that guttered and smoked, I could make out a handful of others chained, like I was, to posts. Men and women, most of them young or at least not old, all of them able-bodied. The dark-haired man was clearly a discerning trader. And a thief. The people in the hold of that ship—myself included—hadn’t been bartered for or bought in Durovernum. We’d just been taken, like cattle in a raid. But by the time the sun rose and any of their masters noticed they were missing, the slave galley would be safely down the river and sailing out to sea, on its way to make the channel crossing to Gaul.

  And taking me along with it.

  I stared at the swinging lantern and thought of the ones hanging in my house. Just like one of Sorcha’s lamps, I was about to travel across the world, to a place where I would be sold for a handful of coins. Something brushed against my ankle, and I jumped, shuddering, as the eyes of a rat flashed up at me, red and gleaming in the dimness. I tucked my cloak tighter around my legs and feet. Time passed with the rocking of the ship and the stink of rank seawater sloshing. I heard the hard snap of canvas sails in a freshening wind, and a leaden weight of despair made my heart sink. I knew we must have reached the mouth of the river where it emptied into the sea.

  I thought of Maelgwyn, dead in the fog.

  I’m never going to see him again, I thought, and the realization hit me like a killing blow. I’d only just begun to see Mael as something more than a brother or friend, and suddenly he was gone. Gone from me forever—and not just him. My father, my tribe . . . they were all as good as dead to me. I squeezed my eyes shut, but everyone and everything I was leaving behind were there, floating like ghosts in my mind. I didn’t know what else to do, so I whispered a prayer to the Morrigan, the triple goddess of blood and battles. Maybe not the most appropriate deity, under the circumstances, but the one to whom I most often prayed. My throat was parched, and my voice, when I tried to say the first of the three names of the Raven Goddess, came out as a crow’s rasp.

  “Macha . . .” I licked my lips and tried again. “Macha. Red Nemain. Badb Catha . . . hear me. Wind, carry my words. Shadows and darkness, see my plight. Let the Morrigan hear my plea. Give me strength to vanquish my enemies and wreak my vengeance . . .”

  I whispered the prayer over and over again until finally I slipped into a deep, exhausted sleep.

  • • •

  Thin beams of sunlight crept through the cracks between the deck planks and pierced the gloom. I blinked blearily in confusion for a moment before I was able to figure out where I was and what had woken me. Odd Eyes crouched on his haunches in front of me, grinning. His mismatched gaze raked my face and limbs.

  “Not too ugly,” he said again, as he had on the skiff. But he spoke not in Latin this time but in the language of my own people. His accent told me he was Catuvellauni, and the sound of it turned my fear to anger. The slaver was a Celt. But from a tribe notorious for their sly, thieving ways. I decided once I escaped—and I would escape—I would cut his throat in vengeance for this affront to the Cantii and the house of my father.

  He must have seen the defiance flare in my eyes.

  “Prickly Cantii bitch. Think you’re better’n me?”

  “I know I am,” I said.

  “Ha!” he barked. “I’m not the one with the collar around my neck.”

  “No,” I said. “I suspect your thieving kind wouldn’t know the feel of metal around your neck.”

  He grabbed a handful of my hair and forced my head back, thrusting his face so close that I could feel his hot, sour breath in my ear. “Don’t insult my honor, little thrall,” he growled. “You stink of the swamps and the muck of that bloody island same as I once did.”

  “At least I don’t stink of Rome,” I said through gritted teeth.

  The blow came almost before the hated word had left my tongue—a short, sharp jab to my stomach. Gasping for breath, I couldn’t cry out as I felt Odd Eyes grasp at me, his thick fingers fumbling at the lacing of my tunic. I kicked and swore at him, but I was chained, and he was much stronger. I didn’t know if I could fight him off. I heard the sound of my tunic ripping—

  And then he was gone.

  I fell forward into empty air, and my eyes flew open. Dust motes danced crazily in the slivers of sunlight through the deck planks, swirling around a silhouetted figure. It was the dark-haired slave master from the skiff. He stood above Odd Eyes—who was suddenly flat on his back—and he held a long knife in one fist. There was a moment of stillness that stretched out between the two men, broken only by the hitching sounds in my throat as I tried to catch my breath.

  “Get up, Hafgan,” the slave master said calmly.

  “I was only—”

  “I said, get up.”

  Odd Eyes lurched to his feet. “Wasn’t doing anything with the little slave that hasn’t been done a hundred times, I’d wager.”

  “Enough, Hafgan.” The slave master turned to me and said, “Did he hurt you, girl?”

  I shook my head, tugging my tunic down where it was ruched halfway up my thigh.

  “Good.” He sighed and resheathed the dagger at his belt. “Means I don’t have to hurt him.” He turned back to Odd Eyes—Hafgan—and said, “Bring her up on deck. Unscathed.”

  He pushed past Hafgan and stalked toward the ladder. “Now, Hafgan.”

  I scrambled in the semi-darkness for my boots, but they were gone. Stolen while I slept. None of the other slaves would look at me as Hafgan muttered darkly, unfastening the chain attached to my collar and yanking me roughly to my feet. Up on deck and blinking in the watery sunlight, I could see off in the distance the white chalk cliffs—sacred to the goddess, guardians of the Isle of the Mighty—soaring above the breaking surf. I had never seen the shores of my home from so far out on the sea before. The sight of the cliffs diminishing as the sails billowed in the wind and the ship gathered speed made me want to weep.

  Hafgan prodded me forward across the deck toward the canvas tent near the stern. He reached out in front of me and slapped aside the flap. I squared my shoulders and cast a black glare at him before I ducked my head and stepped into the interior. The slave master sat in a low backless chair in the middle of the tent, watching me with a frown. He was younger than I’d thought, perhaps only in his mid-to-late twenties. But his full, neatly trimmed beard and rich garments—and the cool look in his eyes—made him seem older. He carried himself with an air of authority and must have been utterly ruthless to have achieved an elevated station among his gang of brutes at such a young age.

  He had my sheepskin travel roll resting across his knees, and I swallowed against the knot of fear in my throat as he dismissed Hafgan with a cursory wave. The si
lence that followed stretched out between us as he regarded me wordlessly. Eventually, he seemed to come to some kind of decision about me. His lip twitched, and he looked down at his loosely clasped hands.

  “They call me Charon,” he said finally. “I’m from Macedonia. I don’t expect you would know—or care—where that is.”

  I shrugged. He was right. I didn’t know where Macedonia was, but it sounded very far away.

  “And who are you?” he asked.

  I hesitated, surprised. Were slave traders always so curious about their property?

  Charon’s eyes flicked back up to my face. “What’s your name?”

  Perhaps, I thought, if I told him who I really was he would ransom me back to my father. But the stirring of hope in my heart was extinguished with my next thought.

  Why would he believe you?

  There was absolutely nothing I could do to prove my identity short of demanding they turn the ship around and go knocking at the doorpost of my father’s great hall to ask if he’d been missing any wayward daughters of late. And if—say, by the capricious will of the goddess—that actually happened?

  In running away, I had no doubt humiliated Virico, and I was certain Aeddan’s snake-tongue had already poured poison lies into his ears. My father would probably just give me back to Aeddan and be done with it. He’d made it plain in his feast hall last night that he didn’t really care what happened to me. I watched Charon warily as he reached for my sleeping roll and unfurled it with a sharp tug. My few possessions spilled out across the deck between us, and my sword dropped to the planking with a dull clank. I stared at its decorated bronze and doe-skin sheath, a twist of longing tightening in my chest.

  “Where did you get that?” Charon waved a hand at the blade. “Did you steal it?”

  “I didn’t steal it!” I glared at him. “I’m not a thief like you.”

  He raised an eyebrow at me. “And what is it I’ve stolen, exactly?” he asked.

  “Me.” I jerked my chin in the direction of the ship’s hold, where the other slaves were chained. “Them. We don’t belong to you.”