Martin Hengst - The Last Swordmage

Tiadaria’s staring eyes reached the door to the long house, across the common square from the wagon and from where she lay shivering on the ground. Her mother stood in the doorway, her face expressionless, and her eyes blank pools of darkness. She turned and disappeared from view. No sign that she had witnessed what had just happened to her daughter, or cared.

Cerrin lifted her up. He was surprisingly strong for such a tiny man. He swung open the metal-braced door at the back of the wagon and shoved her through, into darkness. The door slammed behind her and Tia heard a clink of metal, the creaking of wood, and then the crack of a whip. The wagon lurched forward, bumping over the uneven ground.

Pushing herself upright, Tiadaria saw that she wasn’t alone. A single candle burned in a lantern at the front of the wagon. Its pale, wavering light shone on two rough benches, separated by a much worn table. Four other girls were seated on the benches, two to a side.

Each of them were collared and shackled as she was. Tia, stood, wanting to sit on the bench rather than stay sprawled on the floor. As she got to her feet, the wagon hit a particularly deep rut and she was thrown forward. She careened off the edge of the table and into the girls on the opposite bench. A girl with long dark hair and oval eyes pushed her hard, slamming her back into the wall of the wagon. Tia slid down to the floor, her eyes watering from the unexpected assault.

“What’s your name?” A petite blond on the end of the nearest bench asked quietly.

The girl with the dark hair kicked her under the table, slamming the toe of her thin boot into the other girl’s shin.

“Shut your whore mouth, Darcy.”

Darcy bowed her head and the dark-haired girl glared at Tiadaria.

“I’m in charge here, new girl. You’ll do what I say, when I say. Got it?”

Tiadaria remained silent. She had had enough experience with her father’s volatile temper and her brothers’ harsh treatment to know that sometimes no answer was the best answer. She rapidly discovered that ignoring the problem wouldn’t make her go away, as the dark-haired girl stood up, grinding her heel into Tiadaria’s boot.

“Come on, girls,” the leader said with quiet malice. “Let’s welcome the fresh meat.”

The others fell on her, pinning Tia to the floor of the wagon. They punched her, slapped her, and pulled her hair. She tried to fight back, but the three of them held her down. They stripped off her boots and over tunic, tearing ragged holes in her breeches and blouse. They crowed with delight as purplish marks began to mar her fair skin where they struck her over and over again with clenched fists and the broad side of the shackles they wore.

Every girl in the wagon had a shot at her, all except Darcy, who huddled on the end of the bench and wept. When they were done with her, she was a bleeding, bruised mass huddled near the door to the wagon. The pain and shock had driven everything else out of her mind. Everything seemed gray and lifeless.

The passage of time meant nothing to her. They could have traveled an hour or a day and it wouldn’t have mattered. Even when the wagon ground to a stop and Cerrin dragged her out by her hair, she hardly felt it. She was pushed roughly into a small room, the other girls thrown in behind her. The only sound that seemed to penetrate the fog surrounding her was the thud of a bar being dropped into place on the other side of the door. Never before had Tia felt so trapped and so utterly alone.

Darcy skittered to the corner of the room like a surprised insect and curled into a ball, hugging her knees to her chest. She looked as haunted as Tia felt. Tia wanted to go to the girl, the only one who had shown her any kindness. Darcy seemed safe. Tia wanted that limited comfort and to find out what she knew. She wanted to know what would happen to them, but the dark-haired girl stood in the middle of the room, swinging the chain between her shackled wrists in a menacing circle.

Without any warning or provocation, she darted to Tiadaria and kicked her hard in the ribs. From some distance, Tiadaria heard herself scream. The pain in her side was like nothing she had ever experienced. The girl kicked her again and again, and finally Tiadaria could bear it no longer. She retched, vomiting a thin froth onto the straw-covered floor. At least she was lucky enough that she had had nothing other than a bit of gruel that morning. The act of throwing up made her chest burn twice as badly.

Her tormentor laughed loudly, encouraging the other girls to come and see what she had done and join in. Darcy wasn’t the only one to abstain this time. The fight seemed to have gone out of them. While they weren’t curled up like Darcy, they looked away from the girl who was trying to egg them on. When she realized that her former co-conspirators were unwilling to rise to the occasion, she spit at them, and instead bent to grab Tiadaria by the hair.

“Filthy little whore, aren’t you?” Steering her with a handful of hair, the girl forced Tia’s face into her own vomit. “Lick it up. All of it.”

Tiadaria managed to turn her head, which earned her a punch in the back of the skull. Lights flashed and her vision swam. She was suddenly very sure she was going to die. Please just let it end quickly, she begged no one in particular. Let me sleep and never wake up.

The dark-haired girl raised her hands to strike again and Darcy shot off of the wall as if she had been fired from a canon. Her legs propelled her forward with such speed that for a moment, Tiadaria thought she was in two places at once. Darcy lowered her head and shoulders like a bull and slammed into the tormentor’s stomach. Her momentum carried the two of them to the far wall. They crashed into it together and then Darcy was atop the other girl, her eyes burning with murderous rage.

Darcy brought her hands together and slammed her wrists into the other girl’s face. There was a sickening crunch, and blood sprayed across Darcy’s face. There was a thin wail from the dark-haired girl that abruptly turned into a choking gurgle as Darcy brought the shackles down again and again. By the fifth blow, even the gurgle had stopped, but still the little blond girl continued her savage, animalistic attack. To Tiadaria, the entire thing happened skewed to one side. She couldn’t move, or even raise her head to gain the proper perspective.

Finally, the girl seemed to come to her senses. She sat astride her victim, blood and bits of hair and flesh clinging to the chain between her shackles. The other girls had cowered in the far corner of the room, clinging to each other in shock and terror. All the color had gone out of them and deep inside her, Tiadaria sympathized. The part of her that was nearer to the surface, however, rejoiced in Darcy’s savage revenge. Tiadaria’s only regret was that she hadn’t been able to be a part of it.

On the periphery of her senses, Tiadaria was aware of shouting from outside the door. Her eyes were fixed on the blood that was slowly soaking the straw under the dark-haired girl’s head. She heard the bar being lifted from the door and tried to lift her head and found she couldn’t. Tia wondered, without much real concern, if the girl had left her paralyzed, unable to move for the rest of her life. She found that she could wiggle her toes in her thin boots and was reassured, just a little.

Hysteria and her sense of the absurd suddenly clashed together. Here she was, laying in a pool of her own vomit, a dead girl bleeding onto the floor not ten feet away, and she was thrilled that she could wiggle her toes. A thin rail of laughter burst out of her and the girls huddled together in the corner started to scream.

The door burst open and Cerrin dashed in, two other men on his heels.