“Are you insane?” the Decurion shouted, desperately defending himself. “I’m not your enemy! I’m trying to save your worthless hides!”
I answered with an incoherent snarl as I slashed at his head. Our blades locked up, and we stood there nose to nose, straining against each other, my strength fueled by battle madness. He shoved me away, and I stumbled backward. I collided with one of the pirates, who responded by yanking his dagger out of the guts of a slave and thrusting the blade at my exposed neck.
Before I could react, the Decurion lunged forward and tackled the pirate, knocking him off the side of the ship . . . and saving me from a dagger through the throat. Without another word, he wheeled around and grabbed me by the shoulders, shaking me so hard my teeth rattled. The red fury cleared from my sight, and Decurion Varro thrust his face close to mine, his chest heaving beneath his armored breastplate.
“If you’re going to kill a man tonight,” he rasped, “I suggest picking one who’s trying to kill you!” He spun me around and pointed with his sword in the direction of the marauders rushing toward us.
I felt my eyes go wide as I switched up my grip on the sword in my hand and shifted my feet into a defensive stance. The motion of the ship reminded me of my chariot back home, and I bent my knees and rode the next surge, letting the momentum propel me forward as a pirate covered in elaborate tattoos lunged at me. There was no art to his attack—no elegance, certainly—and he wouldn’t have needed any if I had been just a slave. As it was, my blade slashed across his ribs, and I’d already moved on to fight the next man before he even realized he was wounded.
The rest of the fight was a blur until suddenly the Decurion had me by the arm and dragged me toward where the other captives were being hoisted over onto the escort ship. I saw Elka among them, as well as the dark-haired slave girl whose name I still didn’t know. I threw one leg over the rail as the captain shouted orders to cast off the grappling lines.
We’re safe, I thought.
Then I looked back over my shoulder and saw that Charon the slave master was still aboard the doomed galley. I watched as he struggled against the increasingly steep pitch of the deck, scrambling for a rope with one hand while hauling along a small wooden trunk with the other.
Mad, greed-eaten fool! I thought. He’ll die before he gives up a box full of meaningless possessions. But my next thought was: And what will happen to me if he does?
Charon was my captor. The man who’d hammered an iron collar around my neck and the source of all my recent misery. But he was also the only thing that had come between Hafgan’s brutality and me on that first ship. He’d rescued Elka and me from the Alesians. And as terrified as I was of my fate once I got to Rome with Charon, it was far more terrifying to think of getting there without him. I hesitated another moment. Then I swore angrily and, questioning my own sanity, threw my leg back over the rail. Barely holding on by my fingertips, I stretched out my other hand toward the struggling slave master.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Elka shrieked.
I didn’t have a good answer, so I ignored her and concentrated on not falling into the sea. When Charon saw me reaching for him, his face split into a strange, wild grin, the whiteness of his teeth startling in the gloom.
“Here!” he shouted, heaving the trunk up toward me.
“Leave the damned trunk behind and climb!” I shouted back.
“No!” He shook his head wildly, panting. “I need this.”
“You’re mad!”
The galley shuddered beneath my slipping, sliding feet. But it was obvious that whatever was in that box, Charon wasn’t going to leave it to sink. I grasped at the bronze handle of the trunk and pulled with all my might. The effort gave Charon just enough leverage to scramble up the rest of the way, and together we lifted the thing over onto the other ship, tumbling along behind it an instant before the two vessels drifted free of each other.
I shouted at him, furious. “How little you must think of human life that you’d risk your own—and mine!—for a box of trinkets.”
“Thank you,” Charon gasped, chest heaving from his exertion. “And trust me when I tell you, Fallon, this trunk holds the key to both our fortunes.”
He sat down heavily on top of it and wrung the water from his sleeves. I could only stand there, blinking at him dumbly as the firelight from the sinking galley was extinguished in the cold black waves.
I couldn’t, in that moment, remember ever having told him my name.
XI