Reva heard a woman screaming somewhere, feeling a hard thumping in her forehead and a warm trickle of blood cascading down her face. A Volarian voice barked at her and she felt rough hands pulling her back from the bars, now bloody from where she had pounded her head against them. She heard the woman’s screams fade and choked over the sudden catch in her throat. She found herself staring up into the face of the red-armoured man from the beach, the one who seemed to command the others. His grin was gone now and he regarded her with an expression of faint puzzlement, head tilted like a cat regarding a shiny novelty.
His face dimmed and she knew that fatigue, pain and despair were conspiring to drag her into unconsciousness. She found enough hate to keep it at bay a moment longer. “I am the elverah,” she told the red man in a hoarse rasp. “I have killed more of you than I can count, and I am far from done.”
• • •
She awoke to find herself no longer alone in the cage. The face of the man slumped opposite her was concealed by a lank cascade of blond hair, swaying with the motion of the wagon. Reva could tell he was tall, and no stranger to work or war judging by the strength evident in the scarred and powerful hands resting on his knees, the shackles tight on his well-muscled wrists. Reva sighed, not for the first time wondering at the Father’s inexhaustible supply of trials for a sinful soul.
“Wake up, my lord,” she said, kicking out to nudge his bare foot. Like her, his boots had been taken.
The blond man stirred but failed to wake, voicing only a faint grunt. Reva kicked him again, harder. “My lord Shield!”
His head jerked up with a shout, blue eyes wide with alarm and, she noted to her dismay, not a little fear. His panic faded at the sight of her, though his survey of their surroundings provoked a barely concealed moan of despair. “I dreamed I died,” he muttered, head slumping. “It was a good dream.”
“They took you on the beach?” she asked.
His head jerked in affirmation. “A dozen or so of us. I managed to cling to some wreckage in the storm with a few others. We swam to shore at first light. We were heading north, making for the landing site, then they came.”
“The slavers?”
“No, the others.” The Shield’s hands tightened into fists, his chains giving off a faint rattle.
“The men in red armour?”
“We had no weapons. Nothing to fight with.” A strange guttural sound escaped him and she realised he was laughing. “So they gave us swords. Each of us, given a sword by our enemies. I fought so hard . . . But I couldn’t save them. When it was over they killed the wounded and took me, the only one left, too spent to even stand. They seemed to find me . . . entertaining.”
“Garisai,” Reva murmured.
The Shield’s head came up again, his gaze suddenly bright. “What?”
“One of them called me that when they took me. You know what it means?”
He leaned back, some vestige of his old humour showing in the sardonic twitch of his brows. “Yes, it means we would have been fortunate if they’d killed us.”
• • •
The succeeding days in the wagon took on a dreadful monotony. They were never allowed release from the cage; their food, consisting of two bowls of gruel a day and two cups of water, was shoved through a slat in the wagon’s iron-braced sides. No utensils were provided so they were obliged to eat with their fingers. They had been provided a bucket for bodily waste, emptied whenever they stopped by means of a collaborative effort to tip the contents out through the bars. They had learned to wait until the slaver driving their wagon had stepped down from the board as he took great delight in spurring the oxen on a step or two in order to douse them in their own filth.
“Redflower,” the Shield observed on the morning of the tenth day, gazing at the passing fields of crimson blooms. “Puts us perhaps forty miles from Volar.”
“You know this country?” Reva asked.
“Came here as a boy sailor many years ago. Merchant vessel, before I saw the wisdom, and profit, of a pirate’s life. The Volarians grow the best redflower, and it always brings in decent coin, if you can stomach their ways long enough to strike a deal.”
“Your hatred was birthed before the war, then?”
“Hatred? No, merely vague disgust in those days. My people are rich in faults, I know, but slavery has never been amongst them. Any Meldenean captain found to have carried slaves would soon find himself shunned and shipless.”
