The Defiant (The Valiant #2)(47)

Elka, of course, had theories based on her own tribe’s struggles for dominance.

“Men have always drawn power from death,” she said, keeping her voice to a low murmur as she stirred the embers of the brazier between us. “And not just the death of their enemies. Sometimes the death of friends. My tribe—the Varini, and others like them—in times of trouble, they would take the war captives out into the forest and return home without them. When I was a girl, I came across what was left of one of those captives when I got lost one day gathering wood. He’d been blood-eagled. Split open and strung up between the branches of a tree as an offering to our gods and a warning to our enemies.” She shrugged and reached for a mug of ale. “Sometimes, when there were no captives, they’d take one of our own. An ‘honor,’ it was called. And don’t tell me that you Celts never do similar things. I know that you do.”

It was true. The druiddyn, the spiritual leaders of my tribe, sacrificed men to the bogs to propitiate the gods. The warriors of the tribes took the heads of their enemies as war trophies. I’d heard tales that some—the Catuvellauni, mostly—even hung them from the rafters and on the doorposts of their houses as talismans of power. My father, to my knowledge, had never done such a thing. And he hadn’t ever allowed it from his war band.

And maybe that’s why he failed on the field of battle, I thought. Maybe that’s why he was a weak king . . .

What if there truly was power—real power—to be found in the death of others? Or was it just the way small men made themselves feel larger? I thought about the Morrigan and the demands she made of her faithful, and I wondered. What if, one day, the goddess demanded that kind of sacrifice from me? The life of another for something as base as political gain?

She wouldn’t do that, I argued silently. Would she?

Not even here, in Rome? Not even if it meant gaining power over Romans and their gods? I honestly didn’t know. But the thought was enough to give me a chill on my skin that even the fire’s warmth couldn’t banish.

? ? ?

Word came the next morning—finally—that we had a ship. Cai gave me the news himself, and I noticed that his brooding mood had seemingly lifted overnight. My own foreboding vanished too, in a freshening wind of fierce anticipation. We would leave Arviragus’s prison house that very day, at dusk.

“I’d like to come with you.”

I jumped down from the back of the wagon Cai and I had been loading with gear and stood staring up into Arviragus’s bearded face, not knowing quite how to respond.

“That is, if you think you could use an old warrior,” he said.

“Uh . . .”

Until that moment, it hadn’t even occurred to me that he’d want to come with us. But there was a naked apprehension in his gaze—I think he was actually afraid we’d leave him behind—and I didn’t know what to say. True, since we’d descended on his prison home, I’d only seen him drunk once or twice—and not dead drunk or raving drunk or sick drunk—but he certainly wasn’t the warrior he had been all those years ago. Not close to it. And he didn’t exactly cut the most inconspicuous figure. It would be risky even getting all of us to the docks and aboard ship without the vigiles catching wind as it was.

“You are somewhat . . . recognizable, lord.” Cai delicately voiced at least that much of what I was thinking.

The look on Arviragus’s face broke my heart when he nodded and began to turn away, shoulders slumping. I reached out a hand, but Junius had heard the exchange and came over to us.

“I think I can help with that,” he said.

Arviragus peered at him suspiciously.

“I’ve my soldier’s shaving kit and a stash of civilian garb in my trunk,” he said. “The tunic’ll be a mite tight and the cloak a mite short, but if you stoop and keep your head down, you won’t look like the thundering great backwater barbarian you are. Come on.”

I watched them walk back into the cell where Arviragus had spent the last seven years of his life. Where he would spend who knows how many more until his great heart gave up beating and his soul escaped, finally, to the halls of the valorous dead in the Blessed Isles of the afterlife. If we left him there.

Cai was watching him too.

“You don’t think this is a good idea,” I said.

“His hands shake.”

I lifted my arm and held out my hand, fingers splayed wide. “So do mine.”

Cai took my hand in his. “Your strength will return.”

“So will his.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

Then it didn’t, I thought. And Arviragus the legend became Arviragus the liability. But I knew I’d already made my decision. “I’m not leaving him behind,” I said. “Like I left Tanis and the others . . .”

“You said it yourself, Fallon.” He smiled at me gently. “That was only a tactical retreat.”

“Right.” I nodded. “And Arviragus is a masterful tactician. His experience could come in handy.”

I knew I was concocting the thinnest of rationalizations for bringing him along, but I didn’t care. Arviragus had earned my faith in him. And if that faith was misplaced, then . . . what? Was I willing to risk the fates of many for the benefit of one who’d had his chance at glory a long time ago? Whose name was already, forever, a shining silver thread woven into every bard’s tapestry of songs? I wondered what Sorcha would do if our situations were reversed.