Raoul knew some words from other languages from his trading in different places; enough for some crude and basic communication and this way they learned each other’s names and began the basis of some initial conversations
at first she only stared into the water and barely noticed nor responded when Raoul tossed a hide to cover her against the winds from the sea
It did not occur to her to be afraid. Not at first. She only stared into the water
It was only when the other men on the boat started to notice her. When they would reach to steal touches of her body; when the raiding leader wasn’t looking and then, she became resentfully aware of another kind of danger when she kept hearing them refer to her as “Slav” and choosing not to show fear, from which she would raise her head up higher and look at them with disdain because she knew what that meant and knew her people were not of those parts
Sometimes when they said that she would spit with a sneer at them and reply with another word to clarify that she was, instead, from the other lands and spat,
“Keltoi!” at them because she remembered hearing about the lands of the Pyrenees from the ancient stories her mother told where the people were marked by the red of their hair like Elan and what her mother had too. And how her father had first come by her mother on his travels as a bard. Her mother had traveled with her Druid husband. He was come from the distant isles to the west from Tintagel; he was of the Cymry people with the dark eyes which Elan also had. Her face was a hybrid of cultures which caused men to stare because it gave her an exotic look
and so from place to place they had traveled often by mule with bags on their backs and sometimes by sea when her father had found passage with the peoples they traded with.
She knew of the Slavs from their travels and had seen how their people were often smuggled; kidnapped as slaves
But many times her father devised a way to help some escape the clutches of the Rus by putting them in the trunks they traveled with. Being a magic man he threatened curses as the means of protecting his property during those fearsome encounters with the Rus
....and she would slip potions in their ale
during the hours of the bard’s story-telling by the fire
when she had been required to sing and dance
and dangled like a toy by her father; the old Druid who told his news of the world through stories told sung through his song
her father would take out his harp and oblige her to dance and sing the chorus
as the warriors watched her; as her father dangled her
Those warriors who expected more than just her voice nor just to watch
She had little faith in the Druid spells of incantations but she had learned a lot about the plants —which aided to confuse during necessary times. She knew the healing plants too and the plants that could both give and take life
Once the shock wore off that the warrior had killed her father she began to be aware that her life was to be drastically altered. She had never imagined a life free of her Druid father beyond those childish dreams of youth that long vanished ....those dreams of rescue and of finding a good man that she had had glimpses of during those stops at towns where they traded. But those dreams were destroyed when her mother died and her father turned to his daughter for his lustful needs in his drunken and twisted grief. She had learned shame. And her dreams died with that shame. She had learned to feel a loathing for that kind of act
Freed of her father’s dirty intrusion of her body but replaced by the threat of a ship of savage warriors, even as she was not the only female on board, she was the one most prized and favored
Raoul was the leader and respected by the others but there were some who resented him, she quickly found and then.... it began to dawn on her ....that pirate who claimed her would expect more of that kind of shame.... that act of what she had learned to despise
Yet he would guard her during that voyage that continued to other trading villages
but he could not always be there
It was on such an event of being dragged by one at such a village .... it was on the event that she began to associate Raoul with safety
when he stopped a brutal encounter —one of his shipmates who stripped her of her dark blue robes; when she nearly lost her life as she fought the hands that invaded her body
Raoul had saved her
After Raoul killed him it began a kind of tension among the others from the ship and they all watched her with sidelong leers and called her the spawn of Loki.
