“But my daughter,” Alodia said through her tears. “I can’t lose her.”
“You won’t,” Malcolm assured her. He glanced back the way they’d come. “The man who took you?”
“Dead, I think,” Alodia said. She held up the bloody knife. “He tried to rape me. I made him pay for his lust.”
“Good,” Malcolm grunted. He took her free hand. “Now, let’s make the other one pay too and get Frida back. But we do it my way, understood?”
Alodia nodded, though Malcolm decided to keep a firm grip on her hand just in case. The two began to make their way south, walking for at least half an hour before they came to an open clearing. Dusk had fallen, and Malcolm could see dark shapes of horsemen milling about in the clearing. He pulled Alodia to the ground behind some thick bushes and studied the mounted men. Malcolm guessed there had to be at least fifty of them, with the riders surrounding two open wagons pulled by mules. He could see some of the women and children from the caravan sitting in the wagons weeping and holding each other, though it was too dark to make out any of their faces. All of the captured children appeared too large to be a two-year-old girl, though.
“Do you see her?” Malcolm whispered, studying the wagons.
Alodia shook her head, the grief she felt apparent on her face as she stared out at the men who had taken her child. “What do we do now?” she finally asked.
Malcolm remained silent as one of the men said something urgently to the others. “There’s nothing we can do,” he finally said with regret. “There’s too many of them. By the time we go back and return with more warriors it will be dark. They’ll be long gone by then.” The wagons began to move as if on cue, with the riders surrounding them protectively as they followed a faint trail to the southwest.
Malcolm watched bitterly as they left. He put his arm around the softly weeping girl to comfort her, knowing that they would never see little Frida again.
He would be proven wrong about that one day, though that day wouldn’t come for many years.
CHAPTER NINE
CLAIRE
The man stank of animal fur, sweat, and blood, with his hairy hand clamped solidly over Claire’s mouth. She tried to struggle as he carried her effortlessly under his arm, but she was only two years old and could do nothing against his enormous strength other than kick her legs helplessly. Claire had no idea what had happened to Frida’s mother. One moment, Alodia and the man dragging her by the hair had been beside them, and the next they were gone, with only the woman’s screams heard echoing through the trees.
Claire tried to say something to her captor as he ran—to plead with him to let her go even though she knew it was a waste of time. The man’s sweaty hand remained pressed firmly over her mouth, causing him to run awkwardly. But even if it hadn’t been there, she still couldn’t form words properly yet anyway and wouldn’t be able to make him understand. Not that she figured he would care either way what she said. The last two years had been the most frustrating of all Claire’s past lives, and she couldn’t wait until she could make herself understood again.
The handle of a bronze dagger jutted out from a leather sheath on the man’s hip, digging into Claire’s stomach, but she couldn’t get her short arms beneath her far enough to grab on to it. She’d seen Artturi running after her captors and knew he was looking for her and Alodia. But would the young warrior be able to find them in such a large forest as this, especially now that those captors had split up? Claire had seen Artturi’s shield with the Blackwood crest painted on it last year, so she knew that the Cimbrian warrior was really Gerald. But she hadn’t been able to communicate anything to her husband since then other than pitiful mewing noises and grunts, which had been incredibly frustrating.
The son of the Cimbri king was rarely close by, usually off scouting or raiding, and the few times that Claire had been near him had not gone well. Gerald had never cared much for babies—even when they’d had Julie—and he clearly hadn’t figured out who she was yet. He always seemed eager to get away from her and her noise as quickly as he could. Claire had tried to find Gerald several times on her own, anyway, though the migrating tribes numbered close to two-hundred thousand people now and were stretched out for twenty miles or more over rough terrain. Claire hadn’t gotten very far in any of her searches before Alodia had found her, scolding her for wandering off as she dragged the troublesome child back to their wagon. Having the intellect and experience of a grown woman trapped inside the body of a toddler was beyond maddening, to say the least. She also hadn’t expected her problems at attempting speech would continue to be this difficult.
Most children begin speaking between eleven and fourteen months old, but even with Claire’s brain to guide her, Frida’s vocal cords just couldn’t seem to form the words. In fact, she seemed incapable of it for some reason. Claire was beginning to wonder if the child might be handicapped, as the motor functions required for speech seemed to be missing in her. She’d heard of aphasia occurring in children, though it was extremely rare, with damage to one of the brain's language areas appearing most often in middle-aged people after a stroke. Frida had a severe infection when she was six months old, and Claire had been convinced that the infant would die, sending her back into the timestream. It was an outcome she was ashamed to admit that she’d hoped for, as the child’s death would have released her from her tiny prison.
Frida was nothing if not a fighter though, and the infant had survived with no apparent side effects at the time. But now Claire was beginning to wonder if that was actually true, as she knew aphasia could sometimes be brought on by infections just like Frida’s. The question was, even if Frida’s brain was damaged somehow, why wasn’t Claire able to override that damage and get her to form words? She could take control of everything else in the bodies she found herself in, so why not this? It was a puzzle, one which Claire hoped would eventually sort itself out as Frida grew older.
Claire was suddenly brought back to the present as the man holding her cried out in surprise. He’d jumped onto the trunk of a fallen tree, and the termite-riddled wood had given way beneath his feet in a cloud of dust and wood splinters. The man pitched forward, losing his grip on Claire, throwing her into a stand of bushes. She landed heavily, lying stunned for a moment, while behind her, she could hear her captor moaning in pain. Claire pushed herself to her feet and fought her way out from the bushes as the branches pulled stubbornly at her tiny dress. This was her chance, she knew, preparing herself to run the moment she was in the clear. Then she saw the fallen man’s dagger lying on the forest floor two feet from the edge of the bushes. It must have gotten hooked on her somehow and been dragged from its sheath as she was tossed clear from his body.
Claire hesitated, glancing from the weapon to her captor, who lay moaning, unaware of her standing there. The man’s right foot was jammed in the collapsed trunk, and his leg above it was twisted at an odd angle, clearly broken at the shin. The bastard couldn’t catch her now, Claire thought with satisfaction. Then she frowned, realizing that if some of his companions showed up, he would tell them about her, which meant they would come looking for her. Claire knew she couldn’t allow that to happen, so she carefully bent and picked up the dagger, struggling with the weight as she moved to stand over the groaning man. The injured warrior still hadn’t noticed her as he cursed and fought to extricate his foot. Finally, the man swiveled his head around and saw her, blinking up in surprise when he realized what it was that she held in her tiny hands.
“Here now, little one,” he said gently. He held out his big, hairy hand, gesturing to the dagger. “What say you give me that before you hurt yourself?”
Claire hesitated, already feeling her arms tiring from the weight. Would she even be able to use the weapon? Her muscles and coordination belonged to a two-year-old, which was something she had to remind herself every time she tried to do anything physical. Could she even lift the dagger to strike the man down when the moment came? But even more important, woul
d she be able to murder someone in cold blood? Claire had never had to kill anyone directly in any of her lives yet. She wasn’t relishing the thought of doing it now, no matter how necessary that death might be.
The warrior clasped and unclasped his hand impatiently as he held it out to her. “Enough of this now, child. Give me that before I beat your ass.”
Claire smiled, holding the dagger's hilt tightly as she shuffled her feet forward. Her captor relaxed, even managing a condescending smile back at her as Claire bent toward him.
“That’s a good girl,” the man said. There was no suspicion in his eyes, Claire saw, only pain and impatience.
Claire looked at his outstretched hand, then slapped his palm with her right hand as the weight of the dagger drew her other arm down. She balanced the point of the blade on the ground, relieving her aching left arm as she made a high-pitched sound that was Frida’s way of giggling.
The injured man frowned, his smile disappearing. “Stop playing around,” he snarled. “Give the knife to me right now!”
Claire slapped his palm playfully again, then darted around him as she dragged the weapon along the ground with both hands, forcing the man to twist his head back to try to focus on her. That’s when Claire moved, the child-like innocence of Frida replaced by cold precision as she brought the dagger up and cut determinedly along the warrior’s exposed neck with the sharp blade. The man’s eyes widened in surprise and he swung an arm at her, knocking her backward even as his lifeblood spurted out, spraying into the air. Claire fell on her rump, the dagger spinning from her hands to land with a clang against the rotted tree trunk. She sat where she was, watching in horrified fascination as the mortally wounded warrior gurgled, desperately trying to staunch the flow of blood before finally he slumped sideways and lay still.
Then Claire stood and started to run.
Kingdom of Noricum, 113 BC
Claire was seven years old and a slave, though she still couldn’t speak—which was one reason her new owner seemed to value her so highly. She was a house slave to a member of the powerful and influential Barbii family from the Roman city of Aquilea. Her current master, Quintus Barbii, was a man who liked to talk, plan, and scheme without worrying that anyone would repeat what they’d overheard. Quintus was overly paranoid that his secret deals with the Norici traders and suppliers would get out—told by loose lips—and so he’d surrounded himself with slaves unable to talk just like Claire. Unfortunately for those other slaves, however, their inability to make words wasn’t natural like Claire’s was, as they’d had their tongues cut out to make certain nothing said would end up in the ears of Quintus’ many rivals. The Kingdom of Noricum was a fount of riches for an ambitious trading family like the Barbii’s, and Quintus had no intention of letting the wealth of the Celtic kingdom fall into his competitors’ hands on his watch.
Claire was tending the gardens in the peristylium, which was an open courtyard at the center of the sprawling, single-story dwelling known by the Roman name as a domus. It was the only one of its kind in the Norici capitol city of Noreia, built specifically for Quintus Barbii, who spent half of his time either in Noreia or Aquilea. Claire thought back to the attack on the caravan five years ago as she worked. She had wandered for three days after killing the warrior with the broken leg, becoming disorientated and unable to tell one direction from another in the vast forest. She had been a city girl in the twenty-first century, after all, and knew nothing about surviving in the woods.
Claire had finally been discovered exhausted and starving by a tribe of Celts called the Scordisci, who turned out to be fleeing from the raiding Cimbrians and Teutones. The Scordisci had taken her in, believing her to be just another victim of the savage horde of migrants. Had they known she had been with them, they would likely have just smashed her head against a rock and moved on. But they hadn’t, selling her instead a year later to a slave merchant after becoming tired of her constant wanderings. Claire had been sold three times since then, marked as a troublesome slave and a runaway. Her back was crisscrossed with puckered scars as proof of her disobedience, though the floggings hadn’t stopped her from trying to escape.
“Marcella!”
Claire jumped at the harsh tone, her eyes automatically lowering as she paused in her work. With each subsequent sale to a new owner her name had been changed, with Marcella being her latest. The name meant war-like in Latin, which had seemed to amuse Quintus Barbii for some reason when he’d given it to her. Quintus was Claire’s first Roman owner, as the others had all been Celts. A shadow fell over her and she involuntarily winced, expecting a smack from the elm-rod—known as the ulmas—to go along with the reprimand that she knew was coming.
“Is that the way I showed you how to do it?”
Claire swallowed and shook her head as the manageress of the Barbii household scowled down at her. The woman lowered the ulmas and rubbed the tip along Claire’s back gently, but Claire wasn’t fooled. There was no gentleness in this bitch. Her name was Camilla—a slave like Claire—though one who had been given responsibility for running the domus when the master was absent. Camilla had been captured years ago by the Romans from one of the northern Germanic tribes—Cherusci, Claire believed they were called. Despite that fact, Camilla had little sympathy for others of her kind, and if anything, seemed to enjoy tormenting them. Especially since most of the slaves in the domus couldn’t even talk back.
Claire was aware that Quintus was due home today and knew that Camilla was crankier than normal, as this time he was returning with a new wife. The master’s first wife—an unpleasant old crone who Claire had known for less than a week—had died of malaria. A new wife could mean disaster for Camilla if the manageress and she did not get along. Claire dearly hoped that would be the case, as she would love to watch the bitch get a taste of the ulmas herself.
“If you expose the roots that way the flower will die, you stupid child,” Camilla said with an exaggerated sigh. “I swear the gods not only took your ability to speak, they took your ability to think, too.” Camilla was short and stocky, with a boil on her chin and a wide nose that was always peeling. Her stola—which was a long, pleated dress—matched Claire’s olive green, but was made of fine wool rather than linen, as Camilla was favored by Quintus.
Claire nodded in understanding, carefully working the warm soil back around the roots of the sweet-smelling, white and golden narcissi flower that had so raised Camilla’s ire. She really should have been paying better attention and knew a good whack with the ulmas was probably justified. Claire waited, but the expected strike didn’t come. Finally, she chanced a glance upward, surprised to see the manageress staring down at her in puzzlement.
“I don’t understand you,” Camilla said. Claire noticed the ulmas was no longer caressing her back. “Your eyes are different from the others. I don’t know what it is.” Camilla paused, tapping the elm-rod lightly against her thigh as she studied Claire. “Sometimes I think I see the eyes of an old woman in you, not a child.” The manageress finally shrugged. “Perhaps you’ve seen enough not to want to talk, eh? Maybe that’s what your old eyes are saying?”
Claire kept her head down, focusing on her work. She knew she wasn’t safe from the rod just yet.
“The Master has arrived in the city and has stopped to speak with Tristram,” Camilla stated.
Claire knew Tristram was the name of the city’s mayor, who had just been elected that spring at the vernal equinox. The Norici elected a new mayor every year at that time from a pool of respected family leaders.
“He will be home shortly, and I want you and Lucilla to help Antonius in the kitchens. He tells me he’s preparing something special for the master’s return.”
Claire stood obediently, wiping her knees free of dirt.
Camilla lifted Claire’s chin with the ulmas, peering into her eyes suspiciously. “I’m giving you some responsibility against my better judgment, child. But I swear by the gods, if you use this as an opportunity to run again,
I will make you wish that you’d never been born. Do I make myself clear?” Claire swallowed noisily and nodded. “Very well, then,” Camilla said. She lowered the elm-rod, gesturing with it toward the passage that led to the kitchens. “Then off with you.”
The meal that night turned out to be a smashing success, with the first course boiled eggs in spicy sauce and honeyed wine, followed by the main course of peacock and ostrich, sea urchins, and raw oysters. Figs, nutcakes, and fine pastries were served for dessert. The master had invited some guests to join him and his wife for dinner, and these included the mayor of the city, three rich cattle owners, and several important merchants that Quintus was eager to do business with. There was also a representative from the Norici king, who had arrived in the city only a short time after Quintus and had sent a messenger requesting a meeting with the Roman trader as soon as possible.
The Barbii family were interested in many aspects of trade, be it tin, copper, salt, or gold, but what had them so enthused about Noricum was the vast amount of superior-grade iron ore in the kingdom. Quintus had been instrumental in designing a modern smelting center in the mountain settlement of Magdalensburg, where the ore was prevalent. Claire knew he also had ambitious, though controversial plans for a trading colony to be built at the base of that mountain, one which would be connected directly to Rome and Aquilea by road. Claire knew from the conversations she’d overheard that Quintus was convinced Noricum iron ore was far better than any of the Roman versions and that someday it would be all the legions would use. He was determined that the Barbii family would have a monopoly on the supply when that happened.
“Girl,” the mayor of Noreia grunted, looking annoyed as he wiggled his empty goblet. He was a tall man with a gruff voice, a heavy mustache and beard, and thinning grey hair.
Past Lives (The Past Lives Chronicles Book 1) Page 10