Lila's Wolf (Out of Time Book 1) (10 page)

I made a token struggle when they fitted the thrall ring. They clamped it shut with the tongs and affixed a rope to the loop at the front. It felt alien, thick and heavy against my throat, and as soon as I moved, it chafed my skin and scraped over my flesh.

I had no words. I thought this was the end, but the humiliation was not over yet. In front of the smith and the soldier, the woman dragged me to my feet and cut a slice down the front of my tunic, tearing my clothes from me. I couldn’t hold back a whimper. I felt numb. This wasn’t happening. A shard of intelligence remained, and I thanked God my artificial leg had been well-crafted. The new limb had been fused to the existing bones and covered with a realistic coating of plast-skin. Apart from some residual scarring around the knee, it looked normal. I made myself think about my leg while I stood naked in front of my captors. I wanted the earth to open up and swallow me. My cheeks burned, the heat spreading down my neck, and I stared at my bare toes, unable to meet their eyes. My tunic, undergarments, sandals—all removed. In their place, the woman slipped a thin, coarse tunic that fell to mid-thigh.

The transformation was complete. Lila Cammell, accredited historian and specialist for this period, no longer existed.

Jared

Fuck knew how, but Jared managed to refasten his loincloth. It was pure stubbornness that made him hold his head high as he left Rowena’s bedchamber, staggering through the outer room to the corridor, where he leaned with his back against the wall to catch his breath. To be let outside again would have thrilled him a week ago. Now he could not think about escape while Lila and Marc were in danger.

He lifted his trembling hands to examine them.
Jesus
. The fingers had curled round and were stiffening in that position, the nerves and tendons burning with pain. Rowena knew full well he couldn’t work outside. She probably hoped he’d beg to stay with her, but he’d rot in hell first. They’d get out tonight.
Somehow
. He headed for the yard first and plunged his hands into a bucket of water, hissing in agony before the cold started to numb them. They needed to be bandaged, and he sure as hell couldn’t do it by himself. When little Kai appeared at his side, he felt like crying, he was so pleased to see her.

“Wait here.” She darted to the kitchen and then returned with clean strips of linen. It was just enough to cover the worst of the wounds and at least keep out some of the dirt.

“Thank you,” he whispered. He thought again of Lila, confined to the cellar. “You took my friend a drink?” The young girl nodded. “Thank you for that, as well. You didn’t tell me how you managed to get in and out. How did you do it?” Kai could be his way to break into the cellar. She might be able to distract the guard, allow Jared time to slip in unnoticed, to hide in the shadows and wait.

Kai looked down at her feet. Then across the yard and back to the water bucket. Anywhere but at Jared. His heart sank. “Kai?” His voice was gentle.

“I let the guard touch me.”

“
Touch
you? Christ almighty.” Horror flooded him and, for a second, took his mind off the pain in his hands. “For God’s sake, Kai, why?”

She stared resolutely at her feet. “You were kind to me. Nobody’s ever been kind before.”

God help him, if he needed to get back into the cellar—knowing what it cost her—would he ask Kai to do it again? He made a split second decision. “I want you to know something. I’m planning to escape, properly this time. My friends, the ones that are locked up, I need to free them and then we’re all getting out of here. And I don’t plan to leave you behind.”

Her eyes were dull when she looked at him. She would be no more than twelve, but the expression on her face belonged to a woman much older. “I wish I could believe you.”

•●•

Kai helped him to rig up a kind of sling that hung from his wrists and enabled him to scoop up and carry stones from the field. It wasn’t perfect, but it gave him a chance to work without incurring the wrath of the outside guards. It was agonising labour, under full sun, wearing nothing but a dirty loincloth around his hips. He toiled with two other male slaves, neither of whom spoke to him. By the looks of their dark tans, they spent most of their time outside, and he hardly knew them. It was still preferable to spending the day with Rowena, but out here, he didn’t know what was happening with Lila. It made him sick to his stomach to think of her locked in the cellar.

After a ten-minute break and a drink of water at midday, they were moved onto another task: gathering brushwood for a bonfire. Jared was glad of Kai’s help when she moved to work by his side, and together they dragged branches and twigs across the fields to the sacred grove. For the solstice celebrations, he knew there would be a number of bonfires around the farm, but this one was the largest and most important. By the time they finished, it stood almost shoulder high. Jared and the other slaves were weak with exhaustion and glad of the chance to wash in buckets of water.

He staggered back into the courtyard and stared in amazement at the level of activity. A carpenter was busy cutting wood and lashing poles together into some kind of frame, while unfamiliar horses and soldiers milled around. Jared caught a glimpse of a massive roan stallion and recognised it.
The warlord’s horse.
The others had to be his guests, just arrived by the looks of it. Jared ducked into the kitchen to see if he could coax a scrap of food and was grabbed by one the cooks.

“Wolf, Mistress Hilde asked me to watch out for you.” The cook gave him a brief smile. “She asked me to put salve on your hands and then send you to clean yourself and rest until dinner. Mistress Rowena will be busy for the next few hours and won’t need you.”

Lila

I stumbled over the courtyard and tried to concentrate, to organise my thoughts. I was a slave. Did this mean they didn’t plan to kill me immediately? I longed to rub my fingers around the rough edge of the thrall ring, to ease it away from my throat, but my hands were stuck out in front of me, led by the rope that still bound my wrists. Before I knew it, we’d arrived in the main building, and I was pushed to my knees in the corridor, outside an ornate door.

I might have guessed this would be Rowena’s room. A minute later she stood in the doorway and gazed at me. “Well,” she murmured, an amused smile playing across her face. “Not quite so high and mighty now.” She glanced over her shoulder at a noise from her rooms and then gave me her attention again. She held up three fingers. “One. Your new name is to be Mudd. If I hear the name Lila mentioned again in this hall, I will personally thrash whoever says it,
and you
, until you cannot walk.” She folded down her forefinger. “Two. I’ve had a change of heart about what to do with you. We have a number of valuable allies arriving today, and the chieftain will be pleased to be gifted a new slave to keep his bed warm.” The middle finger folded down and her smile grew.
Keep his bed warm? She meant me?
My heart stuttered so hard, I thought it would stop.

“And three. Your precious husband is going to ensure we have a successful harvest this year, when we present him as an offering to our goddess. Such a shame you never had the chance to say goodbye.” A cold, hard ball of anger stirred in my stomach, and bile rose in my throat. I’d been right about the
Blót.
I prayed Jared had a plan to rescue Marc. And if I was
very
lucky, it would involve inflicting pain on Rowena.

“Get her out of my sight.” Rowena closed the door and the woman yanked on my rope, leading me along more corridors while I tried to memorize my location.

“Where are you taking me?” She ignored me. “Please—”

She stopped abruptly and turned to face me. Anger flashed in her eyes. “You have a number of lessons to learn, Mudd. The first is that you do not address anyone. You only speak when spoken to. Understand?”

I clenched my fists. “My name is
not
Mudd—”

Quick as a flash, she jerked the rope and dragged me a step closer. Pressing her face to mine, she snarled at me. “Your name is whatever Mistress Rowena wishes to call you. And you will be grateful she has chosen you to be gifted. The alternative is for you to be given to our lady
Frige
with your husband.”

Frige
, their goddess of fertility. I swallowed down my next protest. Making a fuss was not going to help Marc. I hung my head in the way I’d seen the slaves behave, and followed her meekly.

She led me to a long high-roofed room at the back of the hall. There were only two high, small windows letting in a tiny amount of light. It smelled of stale sweat and unwashed bodies. The slave quarters, I guessed. The straw on the floor seemed clean, though, and I noticed several buckets curtained off. Presumably latrines. Rough blankets littered the floor in what I thought was a haphazard fashion, until I realized these were the sleeping spaces. Metal rings, some with chains attached, lined the walls and it was one of these that she led me to at the back.

“This is your bed. Until you go to your new master.” She smirked as she affixed the chain to the loop on my thrall ring. “You might want to get some sleep. I imagine you’ll be busy later.” The soldier trailing behind us stepped up and hammered the link shut then unfastened the rope from my wrists. I was going nowhere until they released me.

Jared

Jared had to find out if Lila was still locked in the cellar and even now that he knew the cost to Kai, he’d ask for her help. After washing as best he could with a bucket of water, he’d charmed one of the kitchen assistants into sneaking him some dried fruit and he nursed this carefully, wrapped inside a scrap of clean linen. This was for Kai. He fidgeted by the entrance to the kitchen, unable to stand quietly, while he pretended to be cleaning cooking pots.
Come on, Kai.

At last she walked up to him, her eyes darting left and right. The yard was busy and, for once, nobody paid any attention to the two slaves. All attention was on the string of ponies trotting in.

“She’s gone. The cellar is empty.”

“Where? Where did they take her?”

“I don’t know.” Kai touched his arm with her fingertips. “I’m sorry, Wolf.”

He sucked in a ragged breath. She had to be here somewhere. He remembered to give Kai the parcel of fruit and she stared, wide eyed, at the raisins. “For me?” He nodded. It was a shitty reward for what she’d done, but it was the best he could do for the moment.

“You
will
be coming with me, Kai. I promise I won’t go without you.”

He needed somewhere to sit and think, and the slave quarters seemed the best idea. At this time of day, late afternoon, they would be deserted, and he had permission to rest, from Hilde. He trudged through the back corridors, heartsick with worry. Was it worth asking Hilde for help? Asking if he could go to see Marc again? Solstice was tomorrow. He had twenty-four hours to plan their escape, and this was laughable. He’d been here two years and had failed to escape by himself. What chance did he have of taking three others with him, one of whom was held under lock and key, while another was God knew where?

For once, there was no guard on duty near the slave quarters. A pleasant change. Jared yawned as he walked into the room, and then stretched and rolled his shoulders. The cool was welcome after the heat of the day, and he curled his toes around the straw enjoying the softness under his feet. As he’d thought, it was empty.

Or was it?

At the far end, a small figure huddled against the wall. He squinted as he stared. His own space was closer to the entrance, and he headed for his blanket. Now that he’d finished work, his hands were hurting badly. What he wouldn’t give for some modern pain relief.

He paused when he reached his bed. The person at the far end sounded as though they were crying, and he battled with himself. The other slaves mostly hated him, and he knew from painful experience that trying to make friends never ended well, but he couldn’t ignore her. He knew it was a girl from the sound of her muffled sobs. Maybe she’d been brought in with the warlord. Positive he’d regret the decision, he carried on down the hall and stopped dead.