The Valiant (The Valiant #1)(20)

We’d both been lucky, it seemed. I whispered a prayer to the Morrigan that our luck would hold just a little longer.

“Do you think he’ll come after us?” I asked. “Charon?”

Elka opened her mouth to answer, but suddenly the hairs on the back of my neck rose, and I grabbed her wrist, pulling her down behind rubble that used to be a wall. I hissed at her to be quiet. Shadows at the edge of the weedy town square stirred and grew long, and I feared that my very words had conjured Charon and his men out of the night. Beside me, Elka held her breath.

But I was wrong. It wasn’t the slavers.

It was worse.





VIII



A PAIR OF MEN stepped out from between two burned-out houses and moved silently through drifts of gathered mist on the worn soles of their leather boots. They were long-haired with thick beards and dirt-smudged tunics. For a brief instant, I thought that they might be ghosts—shades of the Arverni dead—but they stepped into the clearing, and the moonlight didn’t shine through them. And the mist moved where they walked.

Elka shifted closer to me so that we were crouching shoulder to shoulder.

“You said the Varini are a warlike tribe?” I murmured, nodding at the sword in her hand. “I hope they taught you how to fight with something more than your knuckles before they bartered you away.”

She spat a quiet curse as the taller of the two gestured in our direction. They knew we were there. They were coming for us. And they were not alone. Other shadows detached themselves from the darkness, and suddenly another pair of men was moving across the town square toward us too. I hissed at Elka and nodded in the direction of the new threat, and I could almost hear her pulse start to race. With nowhere to run, Elka and I stepped into the middle of a wide, clear space where we had unobstructed views on all sides.

“Back to back,” I said tensely.

She shifted her body so that her shoulder blades jammed up against mine.

The slave chain hissed along the ground as the men closed in around us. I kicked at it to keep it out from underneath my slippers, and one of the men—the taller of the first pair—swung a short-hafted pike at Elka’s head in an artless, horizontal slash. She ducked without blocking and shifted to the side, bending around my left flank so that I could move with her. I saw what she was doing and dropped into a crouch as she twisted. The man reared back again, and while his attention was focused on Elka, I sprang forward with a low, darting thrust that tagged him solidly on the upper thigh. He howled in pain, flinching as the point of my sword pierced his worn breeches and sank into the muscle there. I pulled my sword out and blood spilled down the front of his leg. It was the first time I’d ever wounded a man, and I felt a savage rush of excitement.

“Not such easy meat as he thought.” Elka’s voice was in my ear, panting with fear or exertion—I couldn’t tell which. “That was nice, little fox.”

“Thanks,” I said. “For all the good it—”

“Hai!” Elka exclaimed and threw herself against my spine, hard enough to knock me forward. Blades clashed beside my ear as Elka fended off her attacker, but I was too occupied in that moment to help. The partner of the man I had wounded had learned from his companion’s misfortune and came at me with a feinting attack instead of a direct swing. I saw beneath the matted tangle of his overgrown beard that he wore an iron collar. Just like me.

Only not like me at all. Because if the slaves of the Gaulish tribes were anything like the ones owned by my own tribe in Prydain, they weren’t allowed to be schooled in the arts of war. And I, most certainly, was.

“They’re slaves!” I shouted at Elka. “They’re not trained!”

“Tell them that!” Elka shouted back as she dropped to one knee and threw herself to the side to evade another clumsy blow that—training or no—would have broken her head open.

As she dodged, I covered her, scything through the air with my sword and screaming curses that startled the man so much he actually backed off a few paces. Elka scrambled to her feet, and together we faced them, shoulder to shoulder.

“They’re just girls!” the brigand with the leg wound shouted. “Cut them down!”

In all my life, I’d never actually been in a real fight. Never gone on a raid, or warred over territory, and—in spite of all my declarations of warrior prowess—I think I’d always secretly wondered if I’d be able to handle myself in an actual battle when the time came. Now, one look at the men backing off, one of them clutching a wound made by my blade, told me that I would. I had. The first taste of real battle was sweet on my tongue, and I felt a surge of hope. We could do this. We could win this fight.

Maybe.

“Just girls my ragged arse!” one of the other brigands spat. “Demons is more like!”

They were afraid of us. A spark somewhere deep inside of me flared to life. The tiniest blue flame, with nothing of tinder to catch onto except the delusional hope that I could somehow fight my way back to freedom. The spark snuffed out the moment the brigand attacked again . . . and the rusted blade in my hand shattered into shards.

I gripped the hilt of the broken old weapon and desperately wished it were my own gleaming sword, the one Charon had taken from me.

The brigand in front of me lifted his weapon high. And then—

“Enough!” Charon’s distinctive accent roared through the ruins, echoing off broken stone walls. As if my very thoughts had conjured him out of the thin night air—summoned his shade like an Otherworld demon—the slave master stepped out of the darkness and into the moonlight. And suddenly, there was nothing but empty space in front of me.