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.
I crouched in the darkness of the hold, the mingled stench of fish-rot, mildew, sweat, and fear clogging my nostrils. My boots were soaked through with river water, and my feet had gone numb because of it. I slid the boots off and put them aside, rubbing my cramped toes between my palms. By the light of a single, swinging lantern that guttered and smoked, I could make out a handful of others chained, like I was, to posts. Men and women, most of them young or at least not old, all of them able-bodied. The dark-haired man was clearly a discerning trader. And a thief. The people in the hold of that ship—myself included—hadn’t been bartered for or bought in Durovernum. We’d just been taken, like cattle in a raid. But by the time the sun rose and any of their masters noticed they were missing, the slave galley would be safely down the river and sailing out to sea, on its way to make the channel crossing to Gaul.
And taking me along with it.
I stared at the swinging lantern and thought of the ones hanging in my house. Just like one of Sorcha’s lamps, I was about to travel across the world, to a place where I would be sold for a handful of coins. Something brushed against my ankle, and I jumped, shuddering, as the eyes of a rat flashed up at me, red and gleaming in the dimness. I tucked my cloak tighter around my legs and feet. Time passed with the rocking of the ship and the stink of rank seawater sloshing. I heard the hard snap of canvas sails in a freshening wind, and a leaden weight of despair made my heart sink. I knew we must have reached the mouth of the river where it emptied into the sea.
I thought of Maelgwyn, dead in the fog.
I’m never going to see him again, I thought, and the realization hit me like a killing blow. I’d only just begun to see Mael as something more than a brother or friend, and suddenly he was gone. Gone from me forever—and not just him. My father, my tribe . . . they were all as good as dead to me. I squeezed my eyes shut, but everyone and everything I was leaving behind were there, floating like ghosts in my mind. I didn’t know what else to do, so I whispered a prayer to the Morrigan, the triple goddess of blood and battles. Maybe not the most appropriate deity, under the circumstances, but the one to whom I most often prayed. My throat was parched, and my voice, when I tried to say the first of the three names of the Raven Goddess, came out as a crow’s rasp.
“Macha . . .” I licked my lips and tried again. “Macha. Red Nemain. Badb Catha . . . hear me. Wind, carry my words. Shadows and darkness, see my plight. Let the Morrigan hear my plea. Give me strength to vanquish my enemies and wreak my vengeance . . .”
I whispered the prayer over and over again until finally I slipped into a deep, exhausted sleep.