Chapter 16 #2
Without moving her head and risking his slitting her throat, she surveyed the wood around them. This man was alone. She had sent Maonos for help. With any luck, if she brought this man closer to Dun Creg, their warriors would already be coming for her and would deal with him.
She pointed in the direction Maonos had taken.
“Alive?”
She gave a slight nod.
“Up.” He tapped the underside of her chin with the flat of his blade.
Sorcha struggled to her knees, then her feet, trying to avoid the prick of the sword still pressed against her neck.
He pulled a ribbon of rawhide from a pouch at his waist and bound her wrists. “Up.” He pointed to Maximus where he stood nearby.
She mounted awkwardly.
He tied her wrists between the front pommels on her saddle and pulled the reins over Maximus’s head and looped them around his arm and remounted his horse. To Sorcha’s surprise, he returned to the brook where she and Maonos had been ambushed.
By the time they departed, the two soldiers’ bodies were hidden under deep leaf litter. Her captor led her to two horses tethered in dense cover over the ridge and secured them to his saddle. Once he was mounted again, he led Maximus over the ridge, in the direction Maonos had taken.
Sorcha couldn’t begin to understand his actions.
Was it better to continue through the woods or lead him along the roadway to Dun Creg?
As soon as he saw the fort, wouldn’t he turn back to the army and report, taking her with him as prisoner?
She needed to lead him via the longest route to give Maonos time to reach Dun Creg.
And she didn’t want the Romans to realize there was a track all the way to the peninsular fort.
Every time the Roman sought a direction from her, she pointed onward through the woods. At the first hillfort, he led her inside so he could inspect the place. This slowed their journey so much that it was nightfall by the time they reached Dun Dows, the second-last fort before Dun Creg,
Sorcha dreaded what he might do to her under cover of darkness, but she would endure anything rather than endanger her people. There was a chance that she could seize his sword while he slept and dispatch him.
Inside the single rampart and ditch fort, he pulled her from Maximus’s back and pushed her towards the largest roundhouse.
Head down, eyes searching for a weapon, she walked slowly toward the building and her fate. There was nothing she could use. His sword bit into the back of her neck.
Inside, he pulled more rawhide from the pouch at his waist, pushed her to the ground, and bound her ankles. Now she knew how Lucius had felt when he had been captured — frustrated, disbelieving, powerless.
Anger burned in her stomach. Anger at her captor and all he stood for. Anger at herself for getting captured.
He backed her into the darkness.
This was it. Now he would attack her. She had heard terrible stories of what the Romans did to the woman they captured and enslaved. She’d had nightmares from the retellings.
Sorcha braced herself for what was to come. It wouldn’t be like lying with Lucius, which had fulfilled her lust-filled dreams. This would be soul-destroying and brutal. The Roman pushed her to the ground.
And walked outside.
The longer he was gone, the more her body descended into a trembling mass of fear and dread. She cringed in the darkness. Floor-rushes pricked through her tunic. Their mustiness itched her nostrils.
The Roman returned an age later and settled their saddles onto the floor near the empty fire pit. Within minutes he had kindled a fire with his flint. He heated water in a bronze cooking pot and started making some sort of vegetable stew, adding a fishy-smelling paste to it.
Sorcha’s empty stomach growled for food.
He pulled a wooden bowl from his saddle bag and filled it.
To her surprise, he brought it to her. He held the bowl and a wooden spoon out to her.
She looked up at him. The food smelled enticing.
He dipped his chin in encouragement. “Eat.”
Sorcha took the offering, trying to hide the tremble in her hands and he returned to the fire pit to eat from the cooking pot he had used. She relaxed a little.
Sorcha tasted the stew tentatively—a strong, strange flavor. She gulped it down.
“Lucius is your hostage?” he asked, his voice carrying across the room.
She nodded. “You pay for him?” she asked in halting Latin.
“Maybe.”
“You don’t have enough money?” She wished she knew more about uniforms of the different ranks of Roman soldiers so she could determine whether this man was high-ranking enough to afford Lucius’s ransom. He did not dress like the other Roman soldiers.
“How much?”
“Me… in exchange for him.”
He quirked his eyebrow, as if he was skeptical that she would be worth as much to her people as Lucius was to the Romans. “Who are you that you think you are equal to a Roman of the Equestrian class?”
Should she reveal her identity? Would it help her cause, her return to her people, preferably unharmed? “I am the daughter of the former king of the Durotriges.”
He snorted. “The Durotriges are a defeated tribe, and the old king is dead.”
A stab of grief gripped her chest. Take comfort, Sorcha. Arthmael is in the Otherworld, waiting to return to this world in his next form. She tipped her chin higher. “The Durotriges may be defeated, but they still hold Lucius Gallus Antonius hostage.”
He sneered. “Not for long. I have you to exchange, don’t I?”
You’ll see, Roman.
“What’s your name, Durotriges princess?”
“Sorcha, daughter of Arthmael.”
“Do you have anything I can send to your people to prove I hold you?”
Only one possession remained on her that could establish her identity. “I do.”
He nodded. “Give me the evidence and tell me how to ask to parley with your people.”
She told him the procedure as best she could with her broken Latin.
He stood and approached her, holding out his hand. “Give me the proof I need.”
Sorcha pulled the glass bead that Garamaros had crafted with love for her mother from beneath her tunic where it nestled warm between her breasts. A stab of loss at parting with it pierced her heart, but she had nothing else to give. He already possessed her sword and dagger.
The Roman rolled the exquisite golden bead between his fingers. A smile lit his face. He tugged the bead on its leather thong over her head, then moved to the fire to examine it in the light. “Hmm.” He slipped the leather over his head and tucked the glowing bead beneath his tunic.
Sorcha had never imagined giving up the precious token that represented her parents’ love for each other, and for her, to an avaricious Roman. A tear slid down her cheek. She rested her head back against the roundhouse wall and blinked back the threatening tears.
The soldier laid out his bedding. Before he could fall asleep, she requested the latrine, and he escorted her outside.
The churring trill of a nightjar sounded in the quiet night.
The Roman leaned against the doorway of the roundhouse, his arms crossed over his chest. “Don’t make me search for you,” he called as she shuffled away into the privacy of darkness.
“The army is on the way, and they know how to deal with truculent natives.”
Sorcha returned to the roundhouse in good time. There was no need to annoy him when he was treating her well. She settled down on the hard floor inside, hopeful of some sleep now she was not so afraid of him.
Tomorrow she would know her fate.
Exchange for Lucius, or death from the Roman army. Either she would enter the Otherworld or her heart would shatter from the loss of Lucius.
Which would it be?
Either would be a kind of death.