by Zoe Blake
“Good girl,” cooed the man called Odin in a darkly soothing voice. “You will learn quickly it is better to obey.”
“Please, please don’t torture me so,” I pleaded.
Their response was to force the finger in my bottom deeper. Sharp shocks of pain radiated through my body, causing my stomach to clench and spasm.
“I don’t know, Dagr. This ass is as tight as a drum. Don’t know if you’ll get that tree trunk you call a cock up this one.”
“I love a good challenge,” was his foreboding response.
Each ruthless touch was like a brand on my chilled skin. My frantic mind could no longer focus as a fresh new horror washed over me in waves. Humiliation, pain, fear.
“Cut her down. We need to finish this.”
I was held aloft in a pair of strong arms as the rope around my ankle was cut free.
“Dammit. Will you look at what she’s done to her feet?”
“We’ll mend her when we get to the cabin, Tore. Did you bring the boar?”
“Right here.”
Watching in detached numb silence, I was too overwhelmed to react when two of the men hauled a dead wild boar into the small clearing where we stood. Taking a vicious looking knife, they sliced through the animal’s tough hide. A gush of crimson red blood spilled onto the snow, the pure white blanket pristine no more. The forest was quiet with only the sickening sound of the knife cutting through bone and sinew.
“You have the box she gave us?”
“Yeah. That queen is a piece of work. Giving us the very box which contained the lass’s mother’s jewels, her stolen birthright, to carry the heart in.”
Their words cut through my stupor. Raising my neck to peer past the arms which held me tight, I spied the enameled box. Decorated with delicate bejeweled flowers and birds, it had been a prize possession of my mother’s. I watched as bloodied hands raised the lid and placed the still warm heart of the boar inside the box.
“Jerrik, take this to the queen. Tell her the deed is done. The rest of you get your horses. We need to secure our prize in case the queen becomes suspicious and wants to see the body.”
The humiliation of this eve’s events, coupled with the imagined horrors to come, were too much for me. I closed my eyes and surrendered to the darkness.