Blood's Daughter: Part II (A Work In Progress)00:58 Aug 10 2007
Times Read: 568
Part Two
Dull pain ebbed slowly into existence, dancing about like an ephemeral fae creature that hovered on the edge of perception without ever being fully perceived. Suddenly, violently it was savagely torn aside and replaced by a searing, shocking agony. She cried out, inhaling after the scream and choked on a gag that filled her mouth with the taste of blood, bile and damp mouldy cloth.
She heard laughter and struggled to see. She was blindfolded, Cimmerian red shadows played across the fabric that was bound about her face, obscuring her vision and cutting off all sight of what was happening. A scream rang out, not near, but near enough that she could recognise one of her schoolmates.
Then she smelt something foul, warm, moist and disgusting. Someone was breathing near her face and the halitosis was enough to make her gag again. She strained to get away from the miasma but found she was bound too tightly.
“Wot’sa madda lassie, yew nae loik da loiks o’ me?” growled a gruff voice in her ear before something slimy and wet slathered her ear with spittle. ‘Oh gods,’ she thought, ‘he just licked me.’ Once again her gorge rose in her throat. “Wot luvy? Does ald Bertus mak ye cringe?” He chortled. “Wahl luv, yew corst me sev’ral gud men t’day, an’ a fine bit o’ wark yew did tew, I dae ni know wuther tae induct yew er fuck yew. Maybe I’ll dae bayth.” And he leaned close and started licking her ears and neck and face.
She struggled, retching at the smell of him and fighting her bonds to attack him. That seemed only to excite him more. A part of her mind realised this and fought with her panic to gain control of the situation. As he continued to slather her cheeks with spittle, lapping at her face like some over-enthusiastic dog, her training slowly won out over her revulsion and panic. Instead of fighting her bonds, she began to writhe against him. She changed from trying to bite him through her gag to speaking around it, moaning and mumbling until he began to get curious as to what she was trying to say.
“Wot’s dat luv? Is yer wontin’ tae say sumtin’?” He muttered gutturally, pausing in his efforts to look down at her, his eyes feasting upon her restrained form. She continued to writhe and moan, her body language inviting him. Sitting astride her, his left hand pulled off the blindfold while the right swept a knife from its sheath and cut the gag from her mouth with one rough and jerky movement. The point had nicked her skin which started to ooze and she used the momentary pain to mask her revulsion at his visage.
A broken, bulbous nose sat misshapen between scarred and gnarled lips and a pair of eyes that weren’t. One was bright blue and actually quite beautiful, the other was an empty hole like a pit leading to hell. A scruffy, scraggily beard failed to cover the scarred chin and cheeks and only added to the impression of a mangy mongrel dog. She parted her lips and writhing invitingly breathed at him “I want to hold you!”
He looked at her dumbfounded, exhaling deeply, the reek of strong spirits and narcotics heavy upon his breath. She wriggled in her bonds again, suggestively. He looked about and she followed his eye’s peripatetic panning of the people about them. Then she gasped as he grabbed at her bonds and heaved her up and over his shoulder. Settling her there like a sack of grain, his efforts cracking a rib and nearly knocking the air from her lungs.
He staggered and weaved his way out of the fire light and into the shadows of a darkened tent, letting her roll of his shoulder onto the mouldering furs that were strewn about the floor haphazardly. He fell to his knees beside her and started fumbling both with his britches and her bonds, cursing at the knot in his breech cloth and cutting carelessly at her restraints with his knife.
As he freed her limbs she began stroking his thigh, reaching for his groin. When the last of her bonds was severed she rolled up onto her knees and began undressing him, moving his jerkin down over his shoulders until his arms were constrained while covering his mouth with hers, caressing his feverish lips with kisses. As his arms became pinned she struck. Her knee came up into his groin while her teeth bit down with commensurate force. She felt him pitch and reel under her as her hands came up and closed on his throat.
He did not squeal, he didn’t even flop around that much. The force of her knee had caused him to tip forward into her and her mouth dripped with blood as she spat his tongue out. Her fingers on his throat kept his moans quiet as she slowly wrestled the air from his lungs and the life from his body. Only when he stopped trembling did she relax her grip long enough to grab up his knife and slide it deftly between his ribs and with several quick jabs, puncture each lung and his heart. He lay there like a gutted fish as she started to strip his corpse for weapons.
He had worn no armour and his clothing was so foul she’d never have donned it. Instead she cast about and found cleaner garments strewn about. Pulling on breaches and a tunic, she then added a padded gambeson over which she donned a mail shirt that came to her knees. She knew better than to encumber it with a belt about the waist so instead she slung the broad weapons belts about her shoulders like baldrics, leaving the mail free to shift and move across her body.
She strapped greaves upon her legs, stuffing her feet into boots first to fill out the bulk of the legs and not have the armour pieces sag so much. She lined the vambraces with fur before she buckled them on. She found pauldrons and pierced new holes in the leather straps to fit them snugly about her shoulders, and leaving the plates that covered her upper chest and back to hang lower over her breasts and spine.
Each belt held a sheathed sword and several daggers across her chest plus another pair of short swords over her shoulders. Remembering how she had been captured, she found a helm to cover her head, adjusting the fitting by first wrapping a cloth turban like about her head and then holding the helmet in place by enfolding it in more wrappings of the cloth until it sat snug and well padded upon her head.
Looking out tentatively from the shelter of the tent, she observed the activity of the camp. There was a central bonfire around which much of the activity was focused but she could see several smaller fires here and there, scattered about among the shadowy shapes of tents and lean-tos. She wondered if they had posted guards and stepping out and covering her perusal of the environs with a stretch saw that there were several camps like this one scattered about the subdued conflagration that had been a town of several thousand.
Any thought of wreaking revenge upon this band of brigands was annulled by the realisation that it was not a task for a lone warrior. There were thousands of them, nearly as many as there had been citizens in the town they had just sacked. She could inflict some damage, but avenging the town was beyond her power. She would need hundreds of fellow warriors to exact retribution upon these ravening mongrels and that was not something that was about to happen.
She pondered trying to rescue some of the girls from convent but decided against that plan. While she could kill many of the reavers in this camp, most likely without raising an alarm in the neighbouring camps, those girls would not know what to do in the event that she did free them. They would only end up getting captured again and those that did capture them would likely visit greater indignities and tribulations upon them for her acts of revenge. No, realistically she could not help them and her efforts would more likely earn them more pain and suffering than they were currently experiencing.
She knew why her aunt had sent her to that convent, but she still didn’t see how she thought that their ‘genteel’ ways would mollify the warrior training her father had instilled in her. Her reverie was interrupted by the sound of an approaching reaver. She looked up into his face at the same time that he realised that she was not one of them.
He called out a warning shout as one dagger found his right eye and buried itself to the hilt and tickling his brain to spasmodic death. Others from nearby camp fires looked up and the alarm began to spread. She turned and ran, knowing that to stand and fight was futile. Survival meant only one thing, flight from this vulgar horde.
A hundred paces passed beneath her feet before she heard the first of them gaining on her, ahead she could see another, probably some sentry turning to see what the commotion was about. She drew and threw a dagger in a swift sure underhand throw that sent him reeling, his hand letting go of the spear that he was holding with its base against the ground. She leapt and caught it as it wavered, used it as a pivot point to spin herself about with and as her feet hit the ground again she used the force of her momentum to send the shaft into the foremost of her pursuers.
She had turned before it sank its head into his chest, splicing his heart like a kitchen drudge cutting vegetables. She heard him scream as he went down. She sensed his fellows dodging about his sprawling convulsing carcass which gave her a bit more distance between them.
Ahead she could see the forest looming, not more than a hundred or so strides from her. She put on as much speed as her armour laden form would allow. She didn’t dare start stripping off the armour to gain extra speed, for one the action would slow her down, for another it would leave her prone to attack and she definitely didn’t want to be clubbed from behind again.
She was almost at the tree line when something did hit her from behind. An arrow caught her shoulder and spun her off balance. She cried out as something tore into her left eye sending flames of pain radiating through her whole nervous system. She struck out at this unexpected assailant and felt the tree branch snap above the sound of closing reavers. She staggered as she spun to face them, the mangled orb swinging by a gory thread as blood washed down her cheek and causing the less drunken among them to pause for a moment.
Blades danced and sang in the chaotic night as she fought to win clear of them. Several fell dead or dying with daggers blossoming like poison flowers from integral portions of their anatomies. Others drew back, bleeding profusely from myriads cuts and slashes while their brethren pressed forward and provided more targets for her to vent her fury upon.
The pain from her savaged left eye she was able to subdue with her training but the blood loss began to tell as the strain of fighting compounded upon an empty stomach did not permit her to defeat them all. They seemed innumerable, wave after wave of them coming at her to feel the kiss and bite of her blades. These too began to fail her. One pulled from her hand as a brigand fell spinning. She snatched up a short sword from her right shoulder to replace that one. Another wrenched away as it became stuck in the rim of a buckler.
She plucked the remaining short sword and fought on until someone had the sense to start firing arrows and pitching stones at her. While she was able to block most, some still got through and the barrage beat her down until she was rushed finally by several of the dark and loathsome brutes.
They were not gentle with her, not that she had been gentle with them. Her swords were pulled from her hands and flung aside. Many strong hands gripped her limbs, pulling them taut and wrenching them back against the rough, scraggy bark of a great oak tree. Knives and daggers made short work of her efforts to cloth and protect her body. Carelessly they cut straps and ripped cloth from her struggling form. Lewd comments and lascivious expostulations assaulted her ears and chapped and calloused hands profaned her person.
They took their pleasure from her, spreading her legs wide and holding her up against the tree, ramming at her until she bled not only from the bruising her back took from the bark but from the remorseless abuse they heaped upon her pudenda. They laughed at her tears and cries of pain. They heaped scorn upon the curses she uttered against them. They hit her with their fists as well as their organs, bruising flesh and cracking bone with equal abandon.
When she stirred no more and only breath came from between her contused and battered lips, they stopped. One of them asked what they should do with her. Another responded by pulling several of her daggers from their fallen foes and with the help of another, began to pin her to the tree with them. With three of the bloodied blades they crucified her to the oak, an example to all who would defy the might and fury of their ravening horde.
COMMENTS
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ladygoddessaries
06:25 Feb 10 2008
Your story reads well dear Sir.. One wonders is it finished?
Dubael
22:44 Feb 11 2008
No, this work in progress has been caught in the temporal budget cutbacks, however, it will one of the first resumed when some time is available to seriously work at it. Thank you for your support, it is appreciated *bows*