The Trail of Chains: A serialized historical Christian romance. (Sonnets of the Spice Isle Book 5) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Captured and Chained

  Episode 6, The Joy of the Morning

  By Lynnette Bonner

  The

  SONNETS OF THE SPICE ISLE SERIES

  is a serialized historical Christian romance novel

  by Lynnette Bonner

  Episode order:

  — Find All the Episodes Here —

  On the Wings of a Whisper, Episode 1

  Lay Down Your Heart, Episode 2

  Made Perfect in Weakness, Episode 3

  A Walk Through the Waters, Episode 4

  The Trail of Chains, Episode 5

  …and The Joy of the Morning, Episode 6, Coming September 13th, 2016!

  — To be notified as each episode releases, sign up here —

  Other books by Lynnette Bonner

  PACIFIC SHORES SERIES

  — Contemporary Christian Romance —

  Beyond the Waves, Book 1 — Also available in audio

  Caught in the Current, Book 2 — Also available in audio

  Song of the Surf, Book 3 — Also available in audio

  Written in the Sand, Book 4 — Also available in audio

  ISLANDS OF INTRIGUE: SAN JUANS

  — Christian Romantic Suspense —

  The Unrelenting Tide — Lynnette Bonner — Also available in audio

  Tide Will Tell — Lesley Ann McDaniel

  Deceptive Tide — Janalyn Voigt

  THE SHEPHERD'S HEART SERIES

  — Christian Historical Romance —

  Rocky Mountain Oasis — Also available in audio

  High Desert Haven — Also available in audio

  Fair Valley Refuge — Also available in audio

  Spring Meadow Sanctuary — Also available in audio

  HEART'S OF HOLLYWOOD SERIES

  — Contemporary Christian Romance Novellas —

  My Blue Havyn

  Mistletoe & Mochas

  Find out more at LynnetteBonner.com

  The Trail of Chains

  SONNETS OF THE SPICE ISLE, Episode 5

  Published by, Serene Lake Publishing

  Copyright © 2016 by Lynnette Bonner. All rights reserved.

  Editing by Dori Harrell of - Breakout Editing

  Cover design by Lynnette Bonner of Indie Cover Design - www.indiecoverdesign.com

  Images ©

  www.istock.com, File: #000016618097, Girl

  www.bigstock.com, File: #596635, Lion

  www.bigstock.com, File: #26740817, Old Map of Equatorial Africa

  Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  Made Perfect in Weakness is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity and are used fictitiously. All other characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  Published in the U.S.A.

  Psalm 107:14

  He brought them out of darkness,

  the utter darkness,

  and broke away their chains.

  Captured and Chained

  While Chief Banda's Village is Sacked

  RyAnne pressed her face into her hands but didn’t bother wiping the tears that tracked down her cheeks. The manacles around her wrists and ankles were padded on the inside with leather, presumably to keep her skin from scarring. RyAnne had hoped the padding would give some leeway that might allow her to pull herself free, but all her efforts had been fruitless—the blood seeping along one of her wrists was proof of that—and the other end of the chain had been locked to the sturdy, thick trunk of an acacia tree.

  Khalifa had chained her a ways back from the village, with a spear-carrying native standing guard. But even though she was in a sheltered thicket of acacia with an occasional baobab, she was close enough to smell, and even see, the thick black smoke lifting from the roofs of the village huts and to hear the cries of the people she had come to think of as her people, as they attempted to escape capture. For Khalifa hadn’t contented himself with merely capturing her. Moments ago he’d sent his men in to ransack the village with instructions to “capture only the healthiest and strongest.”

  Though her tears cascaded, a numbness had started in RyAnne’s chest the moment she’d seen Trent fall, and had steadily been spreading through her in a chilling wave ever since. She should be worried about Nyimbo, Moyo, Nyanja, June, Kako, and the other villagers, like Yani and her newborn baby and young daughter, yet all she could think about was Trent, who at this very moment lay dead or dying, while she remained impotently powerless to help him.

  As she vainly tried to free her wrists once more, a cry of sheer frustration rose from inside her.

  The guard’s expression remained impassive.

  Another roil of belching black smoke billowed into the sky. RyAnne shuttered her gaze, feeling the bite of the manacles against her wrists as she clutched handfuls of her hair in both fists.

  Thank God Papa had passed on before Khalifa’s attack!

  It seemed forever, and yet it seemed as though hardly any time at all had passed, when Khalifa reappeared. The violin that Commodore Llewellyn Cornwall had gifted to her through the captain landed with a thud at her feet.

  “It is done. Stop blubbering. You will carry this on our journey to the coast. Once the bidders hear your talent on the instrument, the price we’ll get for you could double.”

  RyAnne glowered at him. She would sooner hurl the instrument into one of the fires raging behind the man than play it and give him even a shilling more of profit.

  Khalifa sank to his haunches before her. He jabbed a thumb in the direction of the sacked village. “You do realize the fault for all this is yours, Miss Hunter?” He said the words with a touch of disparaging joviality, as though it pleased him greatly to deem her at fault.

  Indignation lifted her chin. “I sit here in chains at your hand, yet you attempt to blame me? I had absolutely nothing to do with it, and well you know it!”

  “Oh, but I beg to differ, Miss Hunter.” He folded his hands and tapped his first two fingers against his lips, studying her with that stomach-sickening humor in his eyes. “Not long ago, did you not confess to some of the village females that your grandmother hailed from this tribe?” He tilted a nod to the burning village.

  RyAnne’s stomach pitched.

  But Khalifa didn’t give her time to sort through the muddle of emotions swirling through her and to come up with a reply.

  He nodded. “Oh yes. I can see the truth dawning in your horrified eyes, Miss Hunter.” He leaned closer, as though about to impart the most important of secrets. “You see…a man named Wankulu came to me. Apparently you did something to get him banned from the village, hmmm? But”—he waved a hand through the air—“that is not important. What is important is that he somehow became privy to your secret, Miss Hunter. And he came to me with it. And of course, knowing the kind of price I would get for a woman of your beauty, I had to come see for myself. So you see…the fault is undeniably yours, Miss Hunter. If your blood wasn’t so tainted…if you weren’t so beautiful…” He gave a little shrug, and his gaze slipped over her form.

  Revulsion riled in the pit of her stomach and whispered a chill along the back of her neck.

  A lecherous smirk twisted his lips. He reached out and fingered one of her curls.

  RyAnne jerked back and slapped his hand away, her ch
ains clanking loudly with the motion. “Don’t touch me! This is no more my fault than was the broken flowerpot I smashed over your head back in the Harcourts’ garden!”

  Before she could blink, she was knocked to her back with his hand wrapped around her throat. He squeezed hard enough to cut off her air.

  RyAnne clutched at his hand. Tried to kick at him with her feet. But her chains hampered her effectiveness. And his brute strength prevailed. The edges of her vision blurred, and everything inside her ached for just one sweet breath of oxygen.

  This was it then? Perhaps she would be reunited with Trent sooner than she’d realized.

  And then just as suddenly as he’d attacked her, he released her.

  RyAnne’s body convulsed, and she gasped for air.

  Khalifa straightened his sleeves as he stood to his feet.

  She turned on her side, feeling like she might retch, but all she could do was cough and wheeze. Pain seared through her. Weakness tremored in every muscle of her body. For a long moment she lay there, her cheek pressed against her bound hands, then slowly she climbed to her feet, dusted off her skirts, tugged broken bits of grass and twigs from her hair, and lifted a scowl to Khalifa. He might have control of her body. But he would never be able to take her mind from her.

  Khalifa took in her defiance with another smirk. He lifted one hand and snapped his fingers. “Asha, come.” Khalifa pierced RyAnne with a look and tipped his head to where a man stepped out from behind a baobab with Moyo, wide-eyed and tearful at his side.

  “Moyo!” RyAnne stretched out her hands to the child, who barreled toward her and buried her face against RyAnne’s stomach.

  Khalifa’s eyes narrowed. “The girl will also travel with you. And if I have any trouble from you, she will be the one to suffer for it, do you understand?”

  Moyo sobbed, her face pressed into the material of RyAnne’s skirt.

  RyAnne’s chains clanked garishly as she attempted to wrap her arms around the little one. Her gaze drilled into the man as she rasped, “She’s your own daughter!”

  Khalifa’s gaze flickered to the girl, and for just the fraction of a moment RyAnne thought she saw something human reflected there.

  But then he threw back his shoulders and lifted his chin. “And with her light-colored skin and those tawny eyes, she ought to fetch me a good price at the market now that she’s older!”

  “You are a snake of the lowest form!” The words were not harsh enough to convey the depth of her feelings about the man. The child was barely four if she was a day! RyAnne tightened her arms about the little one as best she could.

  Khalifa’s expression mocked her. “You wound me most grievously, Miss Hunter!” With a guffaw of laughter, he turned his back on her. “Be ready to travel in five minutes.” He snapped his fingers at the guard he had called Asha, and the man stepped forward and clapped two tiny manacles to Moyo’s wrists, unlocked RyAnne’s leg chains from the acacia, and then nudged them both to start walking.

  RyAnne took Moyo’s hand in her own. And tempted as she was to hurl the violin toward the flames that now engulfed the brush behind the last row of huts, something made her wrap her palm around the case’s handle and hang on tight instead.

  A loud outcry suddenly arose from Khalifa’s men. “Moto!” someone yelled. And RyAnne realized the breeze off the lake was pushing the flames. The fire was hungrily racing through the brush and devouring everything in its path.

  The guard behind RyAnne and Moyo jabbed RyAnne with the blunt end of his spear. “Kimbia!”

  RyAnne recognized the Swahili command to run and knew that Moyo wouldn’t stand a chance at outracing a fire. She squatted down and instructed the child to quickly climb onto her back. Moyo complied, clinging to her for dear life. Her chains gouged into RyAnne’s spine. Tiny manacles grated against shoulder blades, iron conquering bone. Despite the pain, RyAnne shuffled forward, clutching her violin to her chest as she followed the guard before her. The chains around her ankles made anything more than a cantering gait impossible.

  Ahead she could hear cries of terror and clanking of chains. The other prisoners Khalifa had taken from the village were obviously terrified of the fires also. And RyAnne knew the wind off the lake would only pick up faster over the next hour. They could all be overtaken and burned alive!

  Her legs ached, yet she ran on. Time and again her one-handed grip on Moyo’s legs slipped as her loping run yanked her chains one way or another. But a wall of flames fed by the long savannah grasses rose like a hungry orange dragon behind them. She must not stop!

  The brief thought that in this chaos she might chance upon the perfect opportunity for Moyo and her to escape flitted through her mind. And then the guard ahead of them disappeared into an enveloping cloud of smoke.

  Trent came to with a moan. His eyes flew open. “RyAnne!” He lurched upward but didn’t quite make it to a sitting position before his body rebelled. He gasped at the shock of the pain.

  Someone pressed a hand to his chest and kept him from trying to rise once more. “Be still, mzee. Much hurt has come upon you.”

  Kako. Relief eased a breath through Trent’s lips. Maybe the situation was not as bad as he feared. He cracked open one eye and peered into Kako’s concerned face, leaning over him. Water droplets glistened in the man’s hair and cascaded in rivulets down his bare chest. Beside him, June was equally wet, but her horror-filled gaze was fixed on something in the distance.

  Trent lifted one hand to the persistent pain pulsing beneath his skull. But as he did so, shards of shattered bone ground against each other in his shoulder. A loud moan escaped him, and with a wince he gingerly lowered his arm to the ground.

  Kako snapped a few words at June in the Chewa Trent was yet endeavoring to learn, and she seemed to give herself a shake as she turned her focus from whatever horror lay in the distance to examining his wounds. And horror it must be, for there existed no other word to describe the expression on her face.

  Trent’s brow furrowed. “What happened?” His every thought felt muddied. But at the back of his mind lingered a strong concern for RyAnne.

  Kako shook his head as though still processing the events himself. He responded in the Swahili Trent spoke fluently. “The village was raided. June and I were both down by the shore. We hid in the lake. But the rest…” He let the words trail away.

  June flicked a glance of sheer anger Kako’s way. “You should have let me go to them!”

  Kako made a sound of disgust. “You would have been captured!”

  “Go to who?” Trent inserted.

  June returned to examining the wound in his shoulder, but tears now tracked down her dark cheeks. “The young ones Moyo and Nyimbo were both taken.”

  There was another flicker of pain in her gaze that indicated something deeper still. Trent’s gut rolled. “And Nyanja?”

  June blinked hard a few times, pressed her lips into a tight purse, and wrinkled her nose. The pain in the expression was unmistakable. She shook her head. “Anafa.”

  Trent’s eyes fell closed. Though it was Chewa, that was a word he knew. Nyanja had been killed. RyAnne would be so devastated.

  He couldn’t believe how quickly things had changed. One moment life had been full of hope and joy as he’d walked with the woman he loved along the beach. And now… His one hope fell to the fact that Khalifa would treat her somewhat carefully because she would be worth so much.

  “I couldn’t save her.” He rolled slightly to one side to remove the painful bulge of his pistol from his lower back. “I didn’t even have time to draw my gun.”

  Kako obliged him by tugging the weapon free and laying it on the ground next to him.

  Trent nodded his thanks. “How long have I been out?”

  June still studied and prodded his shoulder gently. “We just came upon you. But the raiders have been gone for at least an hour now. Be still a few moments more so I can clean and bandage your wounds.”

  Trent clenched his teeth and gave in to
her ministrations only because at his current levels of pain, he would be no good to RyAnne, or anyone else for that matter. Every breath sent waves of fire through his chest. Every movement produced the same affect in his abdomen and shoulder.

  June spoke a few words to Kako, and he helped lift Trent partially so she could see the back of his shoulder.

  Pain swept through Trent, causing waves of dizziness and nausea, but he gritted his teeth and bore the anguish, willing his stomach to cease its churning.

  She said a few more words.

  Kako eased Trent back to the sand, then touched his good shoulder gently. “You have broken ribs and a broken bone at the back of your shoulder. The spirit you speak to must have been watching out for you. June says we must cut out the bullet, but with a sling you should recover fully in time. The slice across your abdomen is deep, but Dr. Hunter showed her how to sew such a wound closed. You will live, mzee. Courage.”

  With that, Kako slipped quietly away.

  June offered a sympathetic look. “He goes to see if he can find a knife or any of Dr. Hunter’s supplies. I fear to make you better, I must first hurt you worse, mzee.”

  Trent nodded. “Yes. I understand.”

  He would take any level of pain if it meant he would sooner be able to head out to rescue RyAnne.

  Just as RyAnne’s hopes soared that she might indeed be able to make an escape with Moyo—and she’d turned to flee in another direction—a hand wrapped firmly around her upper arm and yanked her forward. “No one escapes Asha.”

  The guard had doubled back for them.

  Despair threatening to overwhelm her, she stumbled to keep up with the man.

  Relentlessly, Asha prodded her onward, and yet the flames never seemed more than half a furlong behind them. Hampered as she was by the heavy manacles, it seemed they could not put enough distance between themselves and the encroaching crackle of the devouring blaze.