The Valiant (The Valiant #1)(11)

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.