The Triumphant (The Valiant #3)(91)

“You were never broken,” he said. “And you’ve always been beautiful. But I would wear a torc made from that iron proudly if your father would have it so. If you would have it so.”

Cai might have been right when he said I was never broken. Not completely. But I’d come close. So close. And he’d been there time after time to keep me from shattering completely—like he was doing this very night. I slipped the collar back into the scrip on his belt and smiled up at him. Then, in the darkness beneath the stars and moon, he kissed me. He kissed me until it felt as though he would steal every last wisp of breath from my body. I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him back just as hard. The earth beneath our feet tilted on its axis, and we sank down into the cool, long grass. The dew sparkled gemlike in the light of the bonfires, cooling my heated skin, and I had never felt as free in all my life as I did in that moment. So untethered to worry or want or thoughts of what might happen next.

The Morrigan guided my swords. Cai carried my soul. In the morning I would rise to meet my destiny, whatever it would be.

But that night was mine to cherish.



* * *



—



At the very break of day, we rose from our grassy beds and entered the town walls of the port of Gesoriacum. The fields were dotted with the smoldering remains of bonfires and scattered sleeping bodies wrapped in cloaks and each other’s arms. But if I’d been worried that a night spent drinking and dancing and getting very little rest would in any way dull the senses of my companions, there was no such worry now. There was a sense of fierce anticipation, of barely leashed excitement, among the girls.

“Finally!” I heard Ceto say to Lysa as I passed by on my way to the wagons. “We’re going to fight—really fight—and not just each other.”

“I thought after the ludus fell that I’d never see a real battle,” Lysa agreed, sighing contentedly, as if speaking about a lover returning home after too long.

I whispered a prayer to the Morrigan that they both felt the same way in the aftermath of what was to come.

We sold the carts and draft horses in town. Prydain was a land largely without roads. The tracks through field and forest would accommodate a chariot easily enough, but for the rest, the way to Durovernum once we landed would be made on foot. We used the money to hire transport across the narrow sea to Prydain. Most of the commerce done in that town was trade back and forth across the water, and we managed to find a trader with both a ship and a livestock barge. It certainly wasn’t the luxurious accommodations our Aegyptian beasts had grown used to crossing the Mare Nostrum, but it would do for less than a day’s journey, port to port.

The captain of the boats was a northman, stolid and competent-seeming, with a weathered, experienced crew on both vessels. “We leave within the hour,” he said. “And if the gods will it and the weather holds, you’ll step foot on the Island of the Mighty not very much after midday.”

I glanced at the horizon. That much, at least, seemed to be in our favor. There wasn’t a cloud in sight, and only a slight, freshening breeze that lifted my hair as I went to speak to the pair of boys who would be manning the barge carrying the chariot horses. They were from the Iceni tribe—friends to the Cantii, holding territory to the northeast of my own folk—and mostly hired for their expertise with horse and cattle. But because the Iceni lands were on the coast, they were also seasoned sailors and had made the crossing on merchant ships and transport barges countless times.

“Were there others who’ve crossed in the last while?” I asked, speaking to them in their own language. “Men? Recently . . . maybe dressed in black—”

They started nodding and said that, indeed, there had been a man with a black cloak and very bad manners who’d wanted to be taken up the east coast as far as the Wash—a large natural harbor controlled by the Coritani.

“What are they saying?” Cai asked, frowning.

I told him and then turned to question the lads further.

“They say their master doesn’t trade with the Coritani, though,” I relayed to Cai. “Not since they started transporting human livestock . . .”

“Slaves?”

I nodded, listening. “But the man in black found other passage with a less scrupulous trader, and he and his men went on their way.”

“When?” Cai asked.

The boy shrugged.

“Two weeks, maybe,” I relayed. “He’s not exactly precise on the passage of time.”

As with most of the tribes of Prydain, things took as long as they took, or as short. You got to your destination when you did, or you didn’t. It used to be that way for me. But now I’d never been more starkly aware of the passage of time. I couldn’t get anything more precise from the two Iceni lads, though, and they were far too interested in the horses to pay me very much more attention. So instead, I told Cai to gather everyone together, and we went over what I knew of what to expect on the other side of the crossing—which wasn’t all that much.

The girls gathered around, crouched in a wide circle on the beach as I drew a simple map in the sand. “We will land here,” I said, pointing to the north-curving line I’d made. “Just east past the sacred white cliffs, at the mouth of the River Dwr. Then it’s a simple matter of following the river until we wind up at Durovernum. My home. There are docks on the river about a mile south of the actual town, so we should be able to disembark without being seen, and we’ll make our approach from the west, following a track to the farmsteads there. That way we’ll hopefully avoid detection if Aquila is already at the town walls. Because he”—I continued the coastal line I’d drawn up from the line marking the river—“will have traveled up the coast to here.” I pointed to the curve that marked the Wash. “Once he gathered his warriors, he would have had to travel south. Through Catuvellauni territory.”