The Valiant (The Valiant #1)(15)
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—”