The Barbarian's Mistress

by Glover, Nhys

  Braxus lay on his back on the rocky outcrop. His body felt broken in a hundred places. How long he’d laid there he wasn’t sure. Days? It felt like it. Only the rain that had fallen the day before, or… whenever it fell, had kept him alive. Sparrow Hawks soared above his head looking for a meal, little crabs snapped at him, after the same meal.

  Neither would be satisfied. From somewhere deep inside him, he found the strength to lever himself off his back and flip over onto his side. His eyes were crusted with salt and sand, so he could barely see. The sun seemed far too glaring.

  A memory of how he got here surfaced like a dolphin. He’d been working with the crew, trying to keep them afloat. Some fool from below decks had opened a hatch. The wind had caught it, and flicked it up as easily as if it were papyrus. He saw it flying toward him, and only had time to reach out in front of him, warding it off, before the wooden hatch drove him over the edge of the railing and into the turbulent sea.

  Somehow, he’d held on to that hatch. It floated like driftwood. He’d dragged himself onto it, and passed out. When he came to, sometime later, he’d discovered he’d been washed up on a cobblestone beach. The hatch was gone.

  Damn, the chills were back. His whole body began to convulse with them. If thirst didn’t kill him then whatever this sickness was, certainly would. Had the odds ever been stacked so completely against him before? Even when he was stolen by pirates from his home as a lad of barely ten summers old, he hadn’t felt this hopeless.

  As he tried to get his sluggish mind to focus on his present predicament, images of that time played at the corners of his mind, torturing him afresh. His family had been fisherman, his home a small village off the mainland of Hispania. When the pirates had attacked, they’d killed his father, raped and killed his mother, and taken him hostage. They’d kept him for sex, and because he was as agile and fast as a monkey, climbing the mast and yardarm. He’d learned to be useful, unlike others of his kind that came and went, sold at slave markets or dead from abuse.

  There had been no hope of rescue. His people were all dead at the hands of those brutal men. His only hope was survival, and he learned that well enough. By the time he was big enough to kill anyone who tried to take him, he was ready to fight as a pirate in his own right. Somewhere between his eighteenth and twentieth year he’d finally fought his way to second in command. He’d lost count of the bodies he’d left in his wake.

  Then the Roman Navy had caught them, and he’d been enslaved for his crimes. Those early lessons of survival served him well for the three long years he’d fought and killed in the arena as a gladiator. Before he won his freedom. He’d been twenty three, by his reckoning, when he’d gained his manumission, and found himself adrift and alone in the underbelly of Rome for the first time. If Menolus hadn’t found him, drunk in some whorehouse, and offered him work, he might have died there.

  What pirates and gladiators hadn’t been able to achieve, alcohol and aimlessness had almost succeeded in doing. Now he only drank when he wasn’t working. It was his gift to himself only then: too much wine, too many women and too much food. For those interim days between jobs it made up for what he’d lost. It made up for what he’d become.

  He shook his head to clear the morbid memories. Too many of them to let them out now. If he let them take him, he was dead.

  Braxus had somehow managed to get himself above the high tide mark. As he crawled on shaking hands and knees, he found rock pools containing fresh water. He drank them dry and chewed on the creatures he found there. Having been raised on just such a barren shoreline as this made it easy enough to find food to appease his empty belly. Not enough. Not nearly enough. But it kept him alive. For the moment.

  He crawled under a rocky outcrop to shelter from the blistering sun. Then he allowed himself to rest. The darkness that took him then was not sleep.

  Ninia staggered along the rocks, her bare feet torn and bleeding. Her mind was numb, thoughts distant. There was no yesterday, there was no tomorrow. There was only this: glaring sun and a thirst that threatened to drive her mad. Somewhere a little voice of sanity warned her not to drink seawater. For the moment, she listened to that voice. But for how long…?

  Flotsam had washed up on the cobbled beach. None of it was human. None of it was useful to her. But there was a great deal of it. Where had it come from? Her mind wouldn’t tell her.

  She staggered on around the headland and into yet another little inlet of cobbled stones and pockmarked rocks. A sparrowhawk circled overhead, its call eerie and mournful. Prickles ran down her spine.

  Out of the corner of her stinging eyes she saw an outline. At first she dismissed it as shadows from the rocky overhang. But it was too dark, too well-defined to be merely shadow. Deviating from her aimless path, she scrambled toward the dark shape. The closer she got, the faster her heart began to beat. It couldn’t be a man, could it? Not here in this desolate, lonely place?

  By the time she was sure of what she saw, she was crying, crawling on her hands and knees to get to him. He was probably dead. How couldn’t he be dead in this deathly place? But hope dragged her on. When she finally fell at his side, she reached out to feel his skin.

  Not cold. Warm, too warm. She leaned in and placed her head on his chest. A heartbeat. She could hear a heartbeat!

  Suddenly a hand came up and clutched at her hair. Ninia jerked back in terror and surprise. Dark, salt crusted eyes opened and stared at her. They were so bloodshot they looked more red than brown. Half his face was crusted with sand.

  ‘You’re alive,’ she told him. His cracked and bleeding lips curled up at their edges.

  ‘Do you know where we are?’ she questioned him, even though the sane part of her mind told her he was in no fit state to answer her.

  ‘I’m so thirsty,’ she told him, just so she felt some kind of bond with this stranger who had obviously survived the storm as she had done.

  ‘Rock pools…’ His voice was more hoarse croak than words, but she understood him. Frowning, she shook her head.

  ‘Salt water. We can’t drink salt water.’ Her explanation made her want to cry.

  ‘Rainwater…’

  She looked across the flat, pockmarked plateau of rock they sat on. They were above the waterline. Could he be right? She remembered rain as she’d floated. It had fallen into her mouth and had saved her. But could there still be some here?

  Carefully, she crawled over to one of the little pools. She leaned over and lapped at the water like a dog. It was hot but fresh, and she swallowed more of it until the pool was empty. Then she collapsed.

  When she felt more revived, she crawled back over to the man. He hadn’t moved an inch, still propped up against the rock wall, his head bent forward. Dead. He looked so dead.

  Tentatively, she reached out to feel his chest again, just to assure herself he was still alive. His body shuddered once, twice, and then curled into a ball, rigid.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she demanded, brushing his long dark hair back from his face so she could read it more clearly. The sand encrusted side lay against the sharp rocks, the other side, face up, was pale as a ghost.

  ‘C…cold…so…. Cold,’ he managed to get out.

  ‘But it’s hot! Stifling hot!’ Ninia said in confusion. The sweat was running in streams down her back. Being under the overhand kept the sun off them, but it didn’t mitigate the heat.

  ‘C…cold…’he contradicted, without lifting his head from the rock. He was shivering so much now, his teeth chattered.

  What should she do? Her sluggish brain didn’t want to co-operate. Then she found she was lying down on her side, her arms reaching out to him, wrapping around him, as if they had a mind of their own.

  He gave one last shudder and then curled into her, seeking what she offered. As his face nuzzled in to her neck she felt an odd tenderness for this stranger who was far worse off than she. Without moving from her position around him, she began to stroke his hair, and murmur words of comfort.
>
  When he fell into a deep sleep, she began to draw back from him. But his hand clamped tight to her arm, holding her in place, even in sleep. Resigned, and not unhappy to stay where she was, she shuffled into a more comfortable position, and let herself fall into sleep too.

  The sun was setting when she woke again, her thirst clawing at her throat. At first she didn’t realise where she was, or who she was with. Then the memory of the man came back to her. A shipwrecked stranger. Sick.

  She drew back from him, and this time he let her. He was awake, and as she eased off him, he dragged himself up into a seated position again. In the golden glow of the setting sun, the side of his face she could see looked gauntly handsome. Hispanic? His features seemed to indicate as much. Several days’ growth covered his hollow cheeks and prominent chin.

  ‘You need water. I can’t bring it to you. Can you make it to that little sinkhole yourself?’

  He nodded and leaned forward onto his hands. Then, painfully, he shifted his legs under him and began to crawl the few feet to the hole she indicated. It still held water, and he dropped his head into the fluid and drank thirstily.

  Ninia found another one still full of rainwater a little further away. The heat of the day had evaporated some of the holes, but the larger ones still contained water. Never had she drunk anything that tasted as good.

  When she was revived, she moved back to his side.

  ‘Now all we need is food. My stomach is cramping with hunger.’

  He lifted his head and began to study the rocks at shoreline. ‘Down there. You’ll find oysters. Do you know what an oyster looks like?’

  She nodded. She’d had to shell enough of them for her mistress’ parties over the years. But how would she get at them? She didn’t have a knife.

  As if reading her mind, the man began patting his way around his waist. On the side away from her, he suddenly stilled and then withdrew a short, sharp dagger. It was an ugly thing, but in that moment Ninia didn’t think she’d ever seen anything so beautiful.

  She took it from his shaking hand, and struggled to her feet. They hurt her badly, but her knees were in no fit state to be crawled on that far. So she gingerly made her way across the rocks and down to the water’s edge.

  It was neither high nor low tide. And she could see the dark, ugly shells clamped to the underside of the rocks here. She dug at them with the point of the knife, prying them away from their homes.

  It was slow, painful work, but as the sun finally slipped into the gilded sea, her pile of shells grew big enough to make a meal from. Tearing up the side of her tunic, she placed all the shells into the fabric, and carried them back to her companion.

  He gave her a small smile of acknowledgement. He may as well have clapped her on the back and told her he was proud of her. Her heart soared.

  Embarrassed by how pleased she felt by his response, she sat down beside him and began to open the oysters. But after a moment, he reached over and took the dagger from her. When had her fingers begun to bleed?

  With more dexterity than she would have expected, the man began to work on the shells, laying them open in front of them. After he’d done about half their number, he took the last he’d opened and cut the meat away from the smooth interior. Then he handed it to her.

  Flustered, Ninia took it and lifted it to her lips. She tipped the shell up and let the slimmy, salty creature slide down her throat. It was the first oyster she’d ever eaten, and she wasn’t sure she liked it. But it filled her aching stomach, so when he offered her another, she took it without protest.

  By the time they’d shared all the oysters, Ninia was replete. Her skin was burned raw, her hands and feet were bloody and stinging, her whole body ached as if she’d been run over by a chariot, but she was content for the first time since she’d woken in this desolate place.

  ‘Did your ship sink when the dust storm hit?’ she asked him, as she sat back against the rock under the overhang beside him.

  ‘Not sure if it sank. I got knocked overboard when some fuckwit opened the hatch, and it blew off, taking me with it.’ His disgust and foul language didn’t worry her. He deserved to feel as he did. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I… I can’t remember a lot. I remember the storm and the foresail they hadn’t got down in time driving us along so fast. But it was the wrong way. Someone was yelling that it was the wrong way. Nobody could see anything, the dust… it was awful. I was supposed to be below deck, but I’d come up to get air. I don’t handle confined spaces very well. But there wasn’t any air. It was just flying sand. Oh…oh gods…’

  Her stomach threatened to reject the oysters, as her memory threw up an image of her father, his dark face twisted in fear as he reached for her. The ship was breaking up. The ship was breaking up.

  He moved swiftly for a sick man. In less than a second he had her shoulders in his hands and he was shaking her hard. ‘Stop it. Don’t think about it! It’s over now.’

  She felt her head beginning to spin. Why was it so hard to breathe? Why did his face keep going in and out of focus in front of her? What was wrong with the side of his face?

  He shook her again. When she gave a hiccoughing cry, he pulled her in close. Ninia didn’t even realised she’d wrapped her arms around his waist until she was clamped, chest to chest with him, her head resting against his shoulder.

  ‘He drowned. I couldn’t hold him on the planks… he slipped off…’

  His strong arms tightened around her, and she let them, clinging to him as she had clung to that piece of wreckage. Her father had got her onto that wood because she couldn’t swim. And then he hadn’t had the strength to get himself up with her. He’d gone under, and never come up.

  ‘It’s over… you’re alive. Don’t think about the rest.’ His voice was a deep growl under her ear. It made sense. She knew it made sense. But all she could see was her beloved father sinking into that boiling, sand-scummed water.

  For a long time he held her. He wasn’t gentle. He wasn’t kind. He just gave her what she didn’t know she needed. Something to hold onto. Something living, breathing.

  Eventually she drew back, flustered by her display. He let her go, and didn’t even look in her direction.

  ‘Was it your man who drowned?’

  Ninia frowned. Her man? She didn’t have a man. Would never have a man, after what Publius had done to her.

  ‘You’ll find someone else. You’re pretty and young. Time heals…’

  ‘No it doesn’t. What would you know? It… it was my father who drowned saving me.’ She gulped back more tears that threatened.

  ‘I know about losing what you love. My father died trying to save me, too.’

  She looked in his direction, some of her fierceness evaporating. It was now so dark she couldn’t see more than his general outline. ‘I’m sorry. How old were you?’

  ‘Ten. We need to get out of here as soon as it’s light. Those pools might give us enough water for one more drink in the morning, but after that … If this sickness comes back… you’ll have to leave me. Try to get as high as you can to get a better sense of the lay of the land. Who knows, there might be a settlement around the next headland.’

  ‘Why do men shy away from talking about what hurts them?’

  He jerked around and scowled at her. It wasn’t that she could see his scowl, it was more that she felt it.

  ‘Are you calling me a coward?’

  ‘No. Just… it doesn’t matter. It isn’t my business.’

  ‘Little girl you have no idea what hurts, and why I don’t talk about it. If I told you …’

  ‘I know pain. I know… Don’t call me little girl, as if I’m some simpering patrician.’

  ‘I was buggered for four, very long years. Until I killed the last man who tried it. Is that the sort of sharing you want?’

  Ninia was shocked by the crudity of his words, and the coldness in their delivery. Why had she pushed him on this? They were strangers. Their wounds didn’t need to be s
hared. She’d never wanted to share like this. Not even with Anni. But part of the reason for that, her little voice said, was that her innocent mistress couldn’t know what it was like. No one could, unless it had happened to them.

  Like this man.

  ‘I…I’m sorry.’ Her voice was no more than a whisper.

  ‘You have no idea…’His was harsh and angry.

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  His turned in her direction again, and his stony silence challenged her to go on.

  ‘I don’t talk about it… Ha, just a minute ago I was complaining that men don’t like to talk about such things. I think I’m going mad… ‘

  His posture didn’t change. He had taken her challenge, and now he was issuing one of his own. It would be easy enough to look away, and change the subject. He didn’t need to hear her story. Maybe he’d raped some girl himself, along the way… She might give him ideas.

  But she’d started this. And she liked the respect that she’d won from him in the hours they’d been together. If she backed off now, she’d lose that. Men like him didn’t respect cowardice.

  ‘When I was thirteen, my master’s son wanted to punish his sister. She’d learned not to show how much he hurt her, over the years, so he was always looking for something worse to do to her… to make her cry. He knew she loved me like a sister, even though I was only a slave. So one day he mounted me like a dog, and forced her to watch. And he laughed harder, the more I struggled, the more I cried.’

  ‘It happened only the once?’ His voice was oddly tentative, oddly croaky.

  ‘Yes. His mother found out and put a stop to it. Not because she cared, but because I was valuable. You don’t break something valuable. And for a long time, I was broken.’

  ‘You could have poisoned him, and got away with it. ‘

  Of all the things she’d expected him to say, that was the last. How could he have known that the thought had crossed her mind a hundred times? If Publius hadn’t left her alone, if he hadn’t started leaving Anni alone, she might have found some way to hurt him. The guilt over those thoughts had taken her even deeper into that dark place.