Free The Boar Stone: Book Three of the Dalriada Trilogy by Jules Watson

– or a chain.
    ‘It’s a slave shackle.’ Cian’s voice was as thin and pale as his face.
    ‘I know.’ Her heart plummeted. ‘I know.’
    ‘They are slave traders … I should have known …’ Cian rolled his head on the wall, then thumped it back. ‘They ply their filthy trade in Alba, and the Roman soldiers turn a blind eye to it – fewer barbarians to kill, after all.’
    ‘But we aren’t barbarians.’
    ‘No.’ Cian’s eyes, she could see now, were shadowed underneath. ‘Just in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
    They were in that place and time because of her.
    ‘Gods! Don’t look at me like that, Tiger.’ His voice was sullen with suppressed fury. ‘I was beyond stupid. I knew we should have walked away.’
    ‘But I made you come with me in the first place!’
    Cian mustered a tight smile. ‘Made me? I’m not a pony to be led about by a girl – and a clumsy one at that.’ She clenched her fingers, her eyes stinging, as he shifted to ease his back. ‘Think on this,’ he said. ‘Slaves are like any other goods. To get the best price you must look after them. If they were thieves they could have killed us there and then, but now they won’t.’
    It was a bleak assessment either way. She closed her eyes, sick with guilt. ‘Do you know where we are?’
    ‘I woke up yesterday. We stopped in some port where they were still speaking Latin. But whether we are for Erin or Gaul or Rome, I don’t know.’
    Minna turned her cheek on the wall. She would never see Broc, or breathe the air of home again. She was a slave, after her family fought so hard to be free. She slowly curled on her side, her bound wrist caught by the chain. The drug that Jared had called the red flower still pulsed in her blood and she gave herself up to it now, tightening into a miserable ball.
    An argument, raging above her head on deck, roused her many hours later.
    ‘But Jared,’ one of the men was whining, ‘she’s pretty flesh, what does it matter?’
    ‘You damn well know where we’re going, and it does matter,’ came Jared’s voice. ‘Those savages at Dunadd pay good money, but only for unmarked flesh, and if she’s a maid I want her to stay that way.’
    ‘Gods, Jared!’ another protested. ‘The barbarians don’t give a bear’s ball about women’s holes, open or shut!’ His tone turned wheedling. ‘So let’s have her, then, all of us. Finest flesh we’ve had aboard for years. Better than those poxed whores worn out by dirty Romans.’
    There was a silence as Minna lay in the blackness, her skin crawling. ‘Few care for such things, aye. But some do, and they pay for it.’ There was a stomp of feet up and down. ‘So she stays untouched, or I’ll have your balls off with my knife here, and your cock not far behind.’ A few dared to grumble, and Jared raised his voice. ‘I have your whole year’s wages hidden ashore, you bunch of mangy mutts, and only I know where it is, and it ain’t on this ship. So obey me, or you’ll lose more than your cocks!’
    The men dispersed, muttering, while Minna stared into the empty darkness, shame a burning trail from belly to throat. When she at last heard Cian stir she turned her head. Dawn had crept over the world outside and beneath the hatch she could see his face was grey, bleached of feeling.
    ‘We are going to Dunadd,’ she whispered fearfully. ‘Where is that?’
    Cian’s eyes were suddenly blank. ‘Alba,’ he said. ‘It is a fort in Alba.’
    *
    On the fourth day the sickening yaw of the boat calmed. The blows of the waves echoing around the hold turned to slaps, and they glided on more sheltered waters.
    For Minna and Cian, the taint of the red flower had lifted only gradually, dulling their minds and tongues. By the time Minna felt the ship nudge against something solid, however, a yearning for land had shaken off her malaise. She strained her chin up, longing for air.
    Ropes rasped across wood; feet thudded on decks. ‘We’ll be ashore