The Valiant (The Valiant #1)(19)

“What happened?”

“The Varini—my people—sold as many of us as they could to the Suevi, so there would be fewer mouths to feed, and then they moved on. To a place where the Suevi weren’t.”

Something about the way she told the bald truth of her tale made me look at her twice. Her face was impassive, but I thought I saw a shadow flit behind her gaze.

“Who sold you?” I asked.

“My mother.”

“What?”

“She got a good price,” she said flatly, then turned her head and spat. “May she rot in filth in Hel’s icy wasteland until the end of days.”

I was staring at her, openmouthed, I knew. And as I stared, I saw her mask slip just enough for me to recognize it. Pain. “I’m sorry.”

She laughed harshly. “I don’t need pity from the likes of you, little island fox. Pity is for the weak.”

Silence spun out into the darkness all around us. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t like her. At all. And I suppose I could have felt a kind of grim satisfaction about the hardships this rude, brutish, irritating girl had endured. But I didn’t. I couldn’t imagine how that had felt—to have your own kin treat you like a possession. A cow or a cloak or a sword to be sold or bartered away. But then again, wasn’t that what my own father had been willing to do to me? Give me away like some kind of prize to Aeddan? Maybe the Varini girl and I weren’t all that different.

“What’s your name?” I asked her finally.

“Why?”

“I don’t pity you,” I lied. “But I would like to mourn you if the time comes when I have to kill you. And I can’t do that if I don’t know your name.”

The blonde girl’s winter-cold eyes narrowed slightly. Then she uttered a sharp laugh and slapped me—hard—on the back. “I am Elka,” she said.

“That’s it?” I coughed, catching my breath after the blow. “Just Elka?”

“You don’t like my name?”

“No.” I shook my head. “No, it’s a good name.” I stood up taller and dipped my head in what I hoped she would interpret as a gesture of respect. “I am Fallon. I mean, I was Fallon ferch Virico, daughter of a king. Before all this. But I guess I’m just Fallon now.”

Elka considered that for a moment and then nodded. “Ja,” she said. “It’s better that way. We belong to no one, you and me.” She looked down at the chain that stretched between us. “Only to each other, until we can find a hammer or a good heavy axe.”

The remnants of the town’s shattered edges had begun to smudge and fade with a mist that rose as Elka and I searched from ruined house to ruined house to find some kind of useful implement with which to free ourselves from our shackles. I wondered silently what would happen when we did. Would my reluctant companion leave me to my fate and disappear into the forest as fast as those long legs could take her? Would I do the same to her?

“Tell me something,” Elka said, poking at a drift of leaves and refuse with her rusted sword. “What did you do to gain his favor? The slave master.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the water.” She tilted her head. “And how you always got porridge in your bowl before any of us. And the way Charon talked to you almost as if you were a person.”

I straightened up from searching. “I don’t know.”

“Really.”

“I don’t!” Although I knew, of course, what she was thinking. “I wouldn’t. All I know is that Charon told his men they weren’t allowed to touch me.”

Elka raised an eyebrow at me.

“On the ship, Hafgan—the ugly one with the mismatched eyes,” I muttered, feeling my face grow red, “he . . . he tried to . . .”

Elka’s expression darkened as she realized what had happened, what I couldn’t put into words. I tried to shake off the surge of revulsion and fear from those moments in the slave ship’s hold. “Nothing came of it,” I said in a rush. “Charon found us and stopped him before he could do much more than tear the hem of my tunic. He told Hafgan in plain terms that he’d cut the hand off the next man who so much as laid a finger on me.”

Elka’s angry frown turned contemplative. “But he never told you why?”

I shook my head.

“Maybe he wanted you for himself.”

“Pfft.” I rolled my eyes. “That must be why he never laid a finger on me either.”

“You’re lucky.”

“Did they . . .” I didn’t know how to ask the question. Or even if I should.

“No.” She shook her head. “One of them tried. The brute with the long orange beard. You know the one?”

I nodded.

“I bit off half his ear and kicked him in the balls so hard he still limps. You might have noticed.”

I had noticed, actually. He not only limped, he scowled. A lot.

Elka grinned fiercely. “If we hadn’t run away, Charon would’ve had to pay that bastard blood money, taken out of whatever price I fetched once we got to Rome,” she said. “But I also heard him say that whoever bought me would wind up paying far more than the price of bruised balls and half an ear. He seemed pretty sure of it, so I guess he decided I was worth keeping alive. Anyway, none of the other slavers felt much like trying their luck after that.”