The Gladiator Prince (19 page)

“Scream again.”

Submitting to them filled her chest with grief; her instincts shrieked at her to fight. The gleam of the Roman dagger filled her eyes, and her lip quivered against his hand. Phaedra went deathly quiet and he laughed, taking his hand off her mouth. “I asked your name.”

“Priscilla,” she lied.

“Well, Priscilla,” he said, putting the knife away. “Since you have run away from your master, it is our duty as legionnaires to return you post haste. Well…” he smiled up at his companions, “maybe not so haste.”

Without warning, he grabbed the front of her tunic and ripped the fabric down to her waist. With slow precision, he took the shoulders of the tunic from either side and slid it slowly down her arms until her breasts were exposed. One man whistled softly, and the other snorted a laugh.

“Please do not hurt me,” she pleaded through her tears, but the officer ignored her and yanked the garment to her hips.

“You are a beauty. I do not think your master would mind our taking the reward for finding you out in trade, do you?”

Phaedra tried struggling again, but her body was shaking so much, there was no strength in it. There was nothing she could do.

“Hold her,” he ordered up to one of the men.

The soldier got behind her head and grabbed her at the same time the officer lifted his weight off her. Pulling her wrists painfully behind her back, he got her to her feet, but then forced her to her knees. Phaedra thought he would break her arms. Her struggles were no more effective than a bird in his hands. She never felt so weak. It made her clinch her teeth.

The officer brushed his hands and unbuckled his
balteus
in front of her eyes, very close to her face. She tried to turn away, but the second man laced his fingers in her hair and twisted her head back. All she could see was the blood red of the officer’s tunic and the gleaming silver of the layered lorica circling his torso. He grabbed her chin and lifted her face to sneer at her.

“Do exactly as we tell you, and I might not return you to the merchant in pieces, girl. If you fight me,” he snapped, “there will only be scraps for him to retrieve. Is that clear?”

Phaedra tried to nod, but the hand in her hair held her so tight she could not move. The officer ordered the man holding her head to let go. Blood rushed back into Phaedra’s face making her nauseous. She lowered it, trying to get the feeling back, but the officer grabbed her hair with one hand and reached under his tunic with the other. When he pulled out his swelling erection, he tightened his grip on her hair until she opened her mouth to scream. With one thrust, he jammed the rod into her mouth and forced it between her teeth.

“If you bite me, I will slit your throat,” he growled. “Hold her tight!” The other man came over, got one of her arms from his partner and knelt down beside her.

Phaedra tried to shut off her mind when the officer began to move his swollen muscle in and out of her mouth. Closing her eyes, she forced the smell of him out of her head, the sounds, the sensations, willing herself somewhere else… anywhere else. It was no good.

“Open your eyes!”

The officer slapped her hard holding her head so it would not move. Phaedra opened them, but could not see for the tears.

The first soldier gave her hand to the second, and Phaedra tried to recoil, but without success. He removed his knife from his side, making certain Phaedra could see it, and she screamed around the other man’s erection, but they all laughed.

Taking the knife, the soldier slipped it slowly under the material of the tunic around her waist and finished splitting the garment with one flick. When he yanked it off her, he leaned in close to her ear.

“Spread your legs, girl.”

She could not stop the whimpering; as her eyes filled with tears, her nose plugged, making it hard to breathe around the man’s phallus in her mouth. He stopped and pulled out of her, and she gasped to get in air.

The soldier at her back pushed his knees between her legs and forced them apart, until she was kneeling before the officer fully exposed to him. He sank down in front of her and pushed his hand violently against her folds, then forced them open with a finger until he was able to push it inside her the full length.

“She is wet,” he said over her shoulder, “and she is tight. I believe the trader lied to us, gentlemen. If not a virgin, then pretty nearly so. Is that right, girl?”

“Please,” she begged. “Please let me go.”

“When we are through. If you do not resist, it will go better for you. I have no wish to harm you, but I will take what I wish from your body.” The officer smoothed his face, giving her a sympathetic expression. “I am not uncomely, am I? You might even enjoy it.” With that, he pulled back her head, latched his mouth onto one of her breasts to feed and pushed the finger in further, sawing in and out slowly. Phaedra tried to shut down, willing herself away.

The next moment, the man was suddenly gone, her hands free. There was a blur of motion above her head then something wet and sticky slopped across her face, forcing her eyes shut. She fell to her hands and knees and threw up. It seemed to take forever.

Trembling on her hands and knees, she wiped the wetness from her face. When she opened her eyes, blood covered her fingers. Three forms loomed in front of her. It took her a moment to make sense of what she was seeing, but there was no mistake; lying on the ground were two headless bodies, belly up to the sky, pulsing blood from the empty necks. They jerked spasmodically in front of her in a macabre dance. The blood that soaked their once silver loricae disappeared into the red tunics underneath. The officer was leaning against another man, a protrusion coming out of his back. Tears and swollen eyes obscured her view. The new man was nothing more than a large blur.

With one kick, he got the soldier off his chest. The Roman fell to the ground without breaking his own fall. His dead eyes stared at her as blood bubbled out of his mouth and his breath stopped.

The crazed eyes staring at her from across the clearing terrified her. They seemed to change into the cold eyes of an animal. It was too much; she fell and oblivion darkened her world.

Chapter XX

The wagon was standing on top of a hill, looking down into the city at their feet. Thane watched Phaedra sleep in his arms. He feared the worst, not knowing how far the soldiers had gone with her.

When he came upon them, the red fury of his rage had blinded him to everything except the death of the three men who held her. All he remembered was seeing two heads lifting from wide shoulders and an eerie vision of them sailing through the air. He ran the officer through as if he were standing still. Until he had Phaedra in his arms, nothing else was clear.

Adrastos told him it looked as if the soldiers had not gone too far, and the Greek hoped for the best, but Thane’s guilt was making it impossible to think. Had he not also raped her, taken her virginity, stole the one thing she had left? Cursing himself for his weakness, Thane promised to the gods that he would never touch her again. It was his fault the bastards had hurt her.

They had returned to the
Iter III
the night before, camped in a clearing just inside the woods, and started out that morning only three hours earlier. Phaedra stirred into fitful nightmares and screamed in her sleep. The Greek had given her something to calm her, but only shook his head when he looked at Thane.

Thane could now see Londinium in the distance. It was only another day to
Rutupiae
and they had time to rest at the inn where Thane planned to stop. However, killing then hiding the bodies of three Roman soldiers, one of them an officer, had not been in the plan. If he had hoped to stay out of the notice of Romans, that hope had been dashed. They would scour the woods looking for them, and Thane had no doubt he had very little time. The Romans were nothing, if not thorough. Thane hoped it would be days before they discovered the bodies, but knew that would resolve itself one way or the other.

Adrastos came out of the back of the wagon with a draught for Phaedra. He held it to her lips, and as soon as the liquid hit them, she drank. Her eyes flickered a moment, spun around half-closed then fell again. Thane adjusted the reins into his other hand.

“Will she never wake?” he asked the Greek.

“Soon, I think,” he replied nodding. “It will not be a pleasant awakening. You will need to comfort her when she does.”

“Me?” Thane’s voice came out thick, and he amended it with a growl. “I doubt she will want to see me.”

Adrastos raised his right brow and flicked the last of the moisture from the wooden ladle. “You blame yourself,” he said simply and Thane scowled.

“Of course I blame myself. Who else is there?” Phaedra stirred in his arms, and he lowered his voice. “It is my fault. I should not have taken… That is, if she had only not…” Words were useless.

The medico touched his arm, and his eyes sparkled up at him. “Peace, my friend. Phaedra knew what she wanted from the first day. Your compassion was a kindness, your love a balm for her broken heart. The secrets she holds have withered her, Prince, made her a wisp in the night. You have given her fire, longing… life. The responsibility of saving her is yours.”

Thane pulled in a deep breath and looked down at her. “What can I hope to do but damage her further, Medico? If I had only been gentler, she would not have run.”

The Greek chuckled. “Oh yes she would. Have you never deflowered a girl, man?”

“Many,” he said, thinking of the mass of superstitious mothers who thought the gladiator’s touch would guarantee their daughters fortunes. “But none of them…”

“I mean a woman who meant something to you.”

Thane had to think back, it had been so long ago. “My wife, but she did not run from me.”

“Are you certain? Think back. Was she there for you the next day?”

Thane threw back his head and examined the gathering evening clouds. It came back to him in a rush, and he widened his eyes. “No. She was gone next morning when I woke leaving word that she was with her mother.”

The Greek gave him a prudent nod. “You see? Phaedra has no women to whom she can run, no one she can share this experience with…”

“You mean my wife told her mother that…”

“No, that is not what I mean. Even a tacit female presence after such a life changing event would go far to set balm to a woman’s emotions. Phaedra will survive. She is strong… stronger than you think. She will surprise you.”

Thane looked down at the bundle in his arms and touched her hair. “She already has.”

He flicked the reins to guide the wagon down the hill toward Londinium.

* * * *

Londinium was a skeleton of its former self. Four years before it had been razed to the ground by the sweeping fury of
Boudiga
and her hoards of angry Brits. Nothing had been left save the charred cement fragments of a few buildings. Those who escaped came back to a leveled wasteland.

Thane had to admire the Romans; soldiers and civilians alike stripped to their loincloths worked together to rebuild the city. Ramshackle houses and tents sprang up everywhere mixed in with piles of lumber, clay pots of paint and mounds of lime, mortar, sand and brick.

A grand forum and basilica were nothing more than a spider web of scaffolding, but Thane knew they would get it back to its former splendor; indeed more so. Since Julius Alpinus Classicianus had taken over as procurator, relationships began to heal with the Brits. An intermixture of Brit, Roman and even Gauls scurried about the city like ants building their hills.

It took them an hour to move through the town, skirting building sites and vendors crying from the street. They stopped only once to get loose meat slathered with butter tucked into unleavened bread, a delicacy Thane had learned to appreciate after the Roman occupation.

When they arrived at the lodging of Thane’s friend, Adrastos went to sell the wagon and ox for horses since the wagon would be too slow for the rest of their journey. They got Bahar settled in one of the rooms where he slept. His color had improved, and he had even managed short conversations. Thane told him nothing of Phaedra, and thankfully the drugs Adrastos had given him kept him mostly out.

His Gallic friend asked no questions, and Thane volunteered no answers when he carried Phaedra into the house. When he had her settled into a bed, he lay down beside her and put his arm around her waist. Exhausted and unable to think any more, he fell asleep.

The nightmares were potent, but he could not remember them when he would start awake, always surprised to see Phaedra still clucked in his arms. When a bright light finally shone into his eyes, he thought it was a torch and shielded them, reaching for his sword, but there was nothing there. A soft coo brought him back to reality, and he realized the light was a sunbeam shining in through the shuttered windows. Phaedra was looking back at him sadly.

“Are you all right?” he asked softly.

She reached up and touched his cheek. “I am now.” Tears started in the corners of her eyes. “If I had not left you…”

He quietly pulled her close to his chest. “We can talk about it later. Now you need sleep.”