He laughed and put a hand to his ear in mockery. "This pursuit you keep talking about? I don't hear it!" He bent close. "You're my guarantee there'll be no pursuit, daughter of Rome, because if there is one, it will be your death warrant, not mine. You're hostage for our safety, and if the cavalry finds us, then you and your slave here will be the first to die. Understand? Pray that your new husband forgets about you."
Valeria looked at him, trying to mask her disquiet with an expression of contempt. She didn't believe for a moment that no rescue would come. And she didn't believe he'd kill her when it did. He wanted something from her, or he wouldn't have come again. For just that reason she had to get away.
"Do you understand what I'm saying?" he persisted.
"You murdered my friend, Clodius."
"I killed a Roman soldier in fair combat that he didn't have to seek. He was a fool the first time I met him, and had his throat marked in warning. Men who are fools with me a second time don't live to regret it."
She had no answer for that.
"We can't sleep on the dirt!" Savia protested instead.
Arden looked at her with interest. "Now here's a practical objection. And where would you sleep, slave?"
"This is a Roman lady! In a proper bed! Under a proper roof!"
"Why? Grass is as fine a bed as there is, in summer, and the sky the best roof. Rest easy. We'll not disturb you."
"It's too chilly to sleep!"
He grinned. "Cold enough to keep down the insects and the snakes."
"Savia, be quiet," Valeria muttered. "We'll cuddle together with our cloaks in the mud where his kind prefers to live."
"What do you mean to do with us?" Savia persisted.
The barbarian considered them solemnly. Then he smiled, his teeth as bright and clean as his scrubbed skin. He didn't display any of the ignorant squalor Valeria expected, and in fact had a rather annoying sense of self-satisfaction and apparent pride. Perhaps he was vain. Primitive people often were, she'd heard.
"For the lady here, I intend to take her home and teach her to ride, in the Celtic manner."
His meaning was unclear. "If you touch me, my ransom will be less."
"As for you," he said to Savia, "I intend to free you."
"Free me?"
"I don't like slaves, Roman or Celt. They're unhappy, and I don't like unhappy people. They're unnatural, because all other creatures run free. So when you're in my hills you'll be a slave no longer, woman."
Savia sidled closer to Valeria. "I'll not leave my mistress."
"Perhaps not. But it will be your choice, not hers."
The slave couldn't help asking it. "When?"
"Now." He stood. "You're still captive, but not a slave. You're tied up as a free woman under Celtic law, and thus are the equal of your mistress." He walked away.
Valeria watched him angrily. "He's very arrogant. Pay him no mind."
"I certainly won't." Yet Savia watched Arden go with some regret, and felt guilty at her own longings. "Being free under him is more frightening than being slave under you," she finally offered. "It's an empty promise he made."
"He's a brute and an animal and an ambushing murderer, whatever he says about fair combat," Valeria said. "The cavalry will come, you'll see, and all these terrible brigands will hang. If they sleep, we might slip these bonds and reach the horses-"
"I can't outride these barbarians!"
"You will, or you'll stay here to mop out their pigsties. Or worse." She glanced around. "Those cavalry mounts are closest and… oh!" She gave a little cry, staring at the nearest picketed horse.
"What?" Savia said, turning.
"Don't look!"
So of course the slave did. What she saw were four Roman heads, gaping and sightless, tied with twine and suspended from the four horns of the saddle. Whenever the horse shifted its feet, the heads rocked in unison, as if to give a mournful shake of warning.
By late morning they were moving again, riding ever farther from the Wall. Valeria had been unable to sleep and felt increasingly exhausted. Her body was sore from the kick she'd received, the long ride, and the hard ground. Her refusal of food had been a mistake. Yet no one offered her anything more or even bothered to look at her. She wasn't used to being ignored, and that annoyed her as well.
In the daylight she began to get a better sense of the barbarians' country. They rode a few fragments of old Roman roads, long abandoned after the retreat from Caledonia and recognizable principally for their straightness. Yet their general direction was more circuitous, as if to confuse both hostages and any pursuers of direction, so for the most part they followed the meandering cattle tracks and game trails that doubled as human pathways. There were no towns and few fences, the farmsteads scattered so widely that livestock grazed free. All the homes were Celtic in style, the squat round huts topped by conical thatched roofs, but they seemed meaner and poorer than the habitations south of the Walclass="underline" lower to the ground, stained by the smoke of peat, and with more rubbish in the side yards. Chickens roamed, dogs barked, naked children played in the doorways, and each habitation stank of smoke, cooked meat, hay, manure, and leather. Yet a few paces away were fields of grain, meadows of high green grass, and flocks of sheep and prancing ponies.
Their abductors never stopped. Maybe this Arden was more frightened of pursuit than he pretended. They rode into a snarl of hills, the ridges cutting off distant vision and any sense of progress, their gallop occasionally setting off an avalanche of sheep as they breasted a flock. On and on they cantered, even the Celts beginning to slump, and just as Valeria felt so dizzy, sick, and weak with hunger that she feared she might tumble from her saddle, they finally paused for evening. She was in a daze. Her home and her Marcus already seemed impossibly far away, the Wall lost in a blur of hard riding. The stabbing of Clodius was like an unreal nightmare. The country ahead looked steadily higher and more rugged, its farmsteads degenerating into grubby hovels and its fields giving way to raw moor. She was being swallowed by the wilderness.
Their camping place was by a stream in a grove of pine, brown needles forming a cushioning carpet. The horses were picketed once more, a fire was built, and the smell of cooked meat and porridge made Valeria's stomach twist with anxious longing. Brisa brought them cheese again, and this time she accepted it eagerly, gobbling like a wolf. A skin of some kind of liquid was offered, and she squeezed it to release her first taste of acrid, foamy beer. It was awful but she drank anyway, sensing the nutrition in its dark grain. Thoughts of escape had been replaced with sheer exhaustion.
Then the Celtic woman strung her longbow, notched an arrow, motioned for Valeria and Savia to get up, and pointed to her crotch and some bushes.
"You don't have to be crude." Valeria spoke for the first time in Celtic. "I understand your tongue."
The woman was instantly wary. "How does a Roman know the language of the free tribes? You've never been in our country."
"I've been learning from the Celts at Petrianis."
"Why? Are you a spy?"
"I wanted to understand your people."
"You learned from your slaves, didn't you?"
"My helpmates."
"Your captive dogs, whipped and shorn of pride. They are Celts no more." Brisa glanced at Savia. "Does this woman know our tongue?"
"Enough to answer you," Savia said.
She considered them. "I admit that it's a novelty to meet Roman girls less stupid than the donkeys that pull them about. I've never seen one who cares for anything but her own comforts."
The savage pretended to superiority! "If you'd rather, we can try your Latin," Valeria said to put her in her place.
She motioned them to move. "You can piss," she allowed, "but if you run, I'll kill you."