The setting sun striated the sky with bands of fierce gold to fiery red in the west and mellow lavender to deep rich blue above and eastward. Two young girls ran across the beach, their bare feet all but immune to the cold, wet sand. They raced back and forth with each wave squealing in delight and mock anguish as the water rushed against the paltry, uneven walls of their hand-patted sand castle. At first the verge of the surf explored the barrier, then the press began in earnest until at last the water breached the buttress and began grinding down the imagined magnificence of the seaside palace, blurring it into a mere ripple of sand in the surf.
One of the young girls shaded her eyes and espied a strangely misty ship coming from the Windwatcher’s Passage black in silhouette against the resplendent sun. She tilted her head uncertainly; few ships came to Ingrane to visit or trade, and certainly none were expected. Still, she’d occasionally heard her parents speak quietly of “reavers” and “Satyxis,” and although she’d never met any such things, she knew her parents would want to be informed.
She turned toward the small village and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Mumma!” she yelled. “There’s a ship coming!” Her duty done, at least in her own mind, she and her sister began running through the waves as they dissipated against the strand. She did not realize that the sound of the rising tide had drowned her words, and her warning had gone unnoted.
“Come ’ong, Sassy,” said one in the abbreviated language shared by the twins. “We’d better.”
“Oh, Sissy,” said the other twin exasperatedly, “Poppa’s not.”
Vicky—she refused to answer to the name Sissy for anyone but her sister—turned back toward the village of Ingrane. Even though Sassy wasn’t afraid of anything and Poppa sailed and fished in the dead of night, Vicky was dreadfully afraid of the dark, always had been, and she didn’t want to tarry any longer on the beach. In the village, the warm glow of whale-oil lanterns shone through the windows and promised her safety and security. She began to walk briskly toward home, breaking occasionally into a trot.
Sassy—called Gloria by everyone but her twin—ignored the fearfulness of her sister and continued to play in the surf as the sun slowly departed the sky. Soon she looked up and saw the mist-shrouded ship riding the surf into shallow waters. Having spent all her life on Frog’s Bight, her otherwise inexperienced mind knew much of the waves and the sea, and she knew the ship had moved far faster than the wind and waves had allowed. It was wrong for it to be so close. In the waning light, she saw the ship was pitch black, not just in silhouette but even where its hull was illumined by the last glow in the sky.
With one last nervous glance at the ship’s black sails, Gloria sprinted toward her village.
* * * * *
Aboard the ship, Skarre’s lip curled in cruel satisfaction. As befit a Satyxis pirate captain, she wore only minimal armor. She had a black studded leather hauberk strapped tightly across her breasts. It provided protection for her vitals and left her midriff tantalizingly exposed both for ease of maneuver and for the reaction her taut, curvaceous waist evoked in her foes. A similar skirt cut short with a slight slit along the outside of one thigh provided negligible protection but conveyed an undertone of vulnerability and accessibility to throw opponents off their guard. Black boots with a steel shim secreted along the front protected her long legs from easy yet potentially crippling strikes. She wore no helmet; her two thick, curving horns provided more than adequate protection for her skull. In any event she wanted nothing to conceal her finely featured face and her long, flowing tresses of blue-hued black.
She stared at the lights of the village of Ingrane drawing rapidly closer as the ship sailed toward shore. “Deathrippers fired?” she asked without turning her head.
“Necrotite furnaces full tilt, milady,” answered her first mate, a Satyxis of rather smaller stature.
“Bane Thralls adeck?”
“Yes’m.”
“Roust the shore party. Now.”
“They’re already assembled, ma’am.”
She spared her aide a brief smile as she turned to face the gathered reavers: four speedy Deathrippers to corral anyone fleeing, six expendable bane thralls for heavy fighting, and two dozen Satyxis raiders musky with the smell of their excitement. “Right, dregs. Now hearken,” Skarre began, unlimbering her lacerator whip from its position at her hip. “This is a fishmongers’ village. There aren’t no hobnailed Cygnaran troopers within a hundred leagues I’m reckoning, so don’t worry yourselves overmuch on discipline. Do what you want with the lubbers. Have your fun. Toruk may gainsay, but you’ve earned it.”
She stepped forward, uncoiled her chain whip, and gave it a single lash. The barbed links of the scourge rasped a bright furrow across the weathered wooden deck of the pirate ship. “There’s only one forewarning,” she said. “We’re looked out for a child of five years. I want that house monkey alive and unharmed.”
The crew shifted uncertainly; the strangeness of the order put them on edge.
“Belay that!” she bellowed. “My augury shows that the whelp of midsummer’s eve five years past is a powerful soul. That little lubber is our sole purpose in landing, so pluck me that brat and bring it back alive and unharmed. You will do nothing to that child!”
“But—” dissented one Satyxis crewer.
Skarre’s whip shot out like a serpent of lightning; the serrated blades speckling its length whistled through the air like a hundred poisoned arrows. The curling lash ripped open the crew woman’s belly vertically, starting just below the umbilicus and opening the way for the speeding tip to whiplash inside. The heavy tip of the lacerator snapped within the abdomen with a liquid crack, shredding the diaphragm, aorta, and trachea.
Skarre yanked her whip back.
The insubordinate Satyxis managed to cough out a spray of blood before she fell face-first to the deck into an expanding pool of her own blood. She was already dead before her fair head bounced on the heavy wooden planking.
“There are no ‘buts’,” said Skarre. “Anyone and anything else is plunder as you please. But that child. To me. Alive. Unharmed. Fail, and you answer to the keel, then to Toruk. Am I clear?”
The crew nodded silently.
Even the Deathrippers.
“Shipshape,” said Skarre. The ship beached itself on the wet sand with a hissing sound. Skarre smiled. “Shore leave!” she hollered with a wild grin, and she vaulted herself over the railing.
* * * * *
Gloria ran as hard as she could, but the village seemed farther away than it had ever been before. She saw movement to either side of her: dark shadowy things that bore a baleful green fire moved swiftly to bracket the village. Behind her she heard hoots and cackles, loud cracks, and the heavy clank of steel.
She looked over her shoulder and saw a horde of horned demons chasing her, closing fast on their long legs. Suddenly Gloria understood why Sissy’s nightmares haunted her so. If they were anything like this…
Gloria redoubled her efforts. Her little legs flew across the ground; her own pain and exhaustion had become immaterial. She screamed as she reached the outermost houses of the village, raising the alarm. She was certain she could not run all the way home before the demons grabbed her. Instead she sought to hide, elude them, and sneak home another way. She knew a great way to get around without being seen from the village; she had used it many times when her father had come looking for her when she stayed out too late.
She ran headlong for a few houses, and then she ducked around a corner to regroup. In that brief pause, her strength failed her. All of her exhaustion rose up at once to seize her nerves. She started panting uncontrollably, her knees and hands began to tremble, and she broke out in a cold sweat.
She heard screams.
Terrified yet needing to know how close the demons were, she peered around the corner of the house. She saw the demons—female, horned, all but naked—charging into the town. Nearby one knocked down a young man, straddled him, and started wriggling while choking the life from him. Across the way another lashed out with some sort of whip and flayed the face off a young woman. Others ran into the village, urging themselves forward with language far viler than Poppa ever used even when out of Mumma’s hearing.
The raiders charged into the town; some even ran past the spot where Gloria hid. The smell of blood and viscera trailed in their wake, and as it came, Gloria had to flee. Panting in fear and exhaustion, she turned away to run around the village and back home.
* * * * *
Vicky was heading home from her aunt’s house looking nervously at the dark starry sky when the first yell carried through the night. Against the noise of the ever-present surf, it was hard to tell what the cry was: fear, joy, exasperation, or worse.
A number of villagers quickly ran from their homes bearing lanterns and torches and headed toward the shore just in case someone had been caught by a freak undertow or lost something valuable in the surf. In a hard place like Ingrane, it was always better to be safe.
Vicky timidly trotted alongside the others fearful to go far in the dark but equally concerned it might have been Gloria’s small voice crying out in the night. The villagers easily outpaced her, their longer legs unburdened by fear.
Vicky watched their varied lights bob down toward the surf; she watched them fade into the growing darkness.
Vicky drew up short and raised a trembling hand to her mouth.
The setting sun had been completely erased, and no stars shone in the night sky to the west.
Confused and fearful calls started carrying through the night, then yells and screams. One, a gasping repetitive wail, ended far too abruptly for Vicky’s courage. She ran for home. She pumped her little arms and legs wildly and desperately threw a piping scream of her own into the night.
She ran up the beaten-earth path through the disorganized village. Breathing hard with adrenaline surging through her preadolescent muscles, she ran straight for her family’s tiny villa at the far end. She screamed with every exhalation and panted with exertion.
She ran through the gate—nothing more than a gap in the rickety picket fence surrounding the house and a pair of outbuildings—calling for her father. “Poppa! Poppa! Sommat’s wrong! Sassy’s in trouble!”
The front door to their house flew open, and Vicky saw her father’s burly form outlined against the firelight, a wooden mug forgotten in one hand. “What’s that?” he bellowed. His forcible voice was filled with concern yet demanded immediate compliance.
“I told Sassy to come home, but she din’t,” Vicky babbled, “and now there’s no stars at the water and I’m scared! Make her come home, Poppa, ’cause she needs a whupping!”
Poppa strode across the small yard to the gate where Vicky grabbed his trews and tried to sink out of sight, burying her face in the safe, familiar smell of her father. She heard him exhale through his teeth—half whistle, half hiss. “That ain’t right,” he said. For the first time in her life, she heard uncertainty in his voice.
He pushed her off and used his mug to bang the tin gong hanging next to his shingle to raise the alarm. “Raiders!” he bellowed. His commanding voice boomed through the night. “Raiders! Everyone out!” Then he dropped the mug and ran back inside, reappearing a mere moment later with a huge blacksmith’s hammer in one callused hand, a bright firebrand in the other, and a weathered iron helmet atop his head.
He ran out of the house, and rather than try to push past Vicky, he turned and leapt the fence easily, barking orders to his fellow villagers as soon as he hit the street.
“Vicky!” called a female voice. “Are you all right?”
“Where’s Sassy, Mumma?” she wailed. “I’m scared!”
“Are you all right?” demanded her mother, bordering on the hysterical. The lantern in her hand swung crazily back and forth with the force of her question.
“Yes!” yelled Vicky, stamping her foot. “Where’s! Sassy!”
“Get inside!” snapped her mother, roughly shoving her in the direction of the door.
Gloria stumbled around the outside of the village using an old deer trail she and Sissy had often used to evade scrutiny when trying to get into or out of the house surreptitiously.
She was tired, scared, and on the verge of being sick with the horrific scenes now forever burned into her young brain. She panted heavily, and each exhalation carried with it a whine of fear and agony. One hand clutched her side while the other limply batted at branches and other obstacles crossing her path.
Inside the village more wails and shrieks pierced the night making her blood run cold.
As she staggered along the path, her little feet flopped one after the other heedless of the noise she made. Surely she was as quiet as a mouse in comparison to the chaos that reigned within the lamplight of the town.
Just then a rancid smell insinuated its way into her nostrils: a cloying brew of ash and decay. She drew up wondering what could cause such a soiled odor.
Then she heard a branch snap nearby.
She gasped and raised a hand to her mouth. On any other night, she would have dismissed the sound as coming from a deer or woodchuck. Not this night. This night she knew it was something else.
She held her breath and heard a steady sibilance somewhere between a serpent’s hiss and the sound Poppa’s furnace made when he was forging. She heard a whirr like a hummingbird that came and went. Then she saw a poisonous green glow cast upon a nearby tree trunk; the unholy aura grew in strength. She gasped realizing she had crossed the path of one of the unknown shadows she saw earlier. She wanted to run, but her legs hesitated.
Then it surged out of the darkness of the night. The hellish glow flared brightly to outline a huge, ravenous maw filled with long, curving fangs each as long as her arm. It moved with the metallic sounds of grinding and clashing. The hideous jaw opened wide to devour her.
She ran at last, if too late. She got all of five or six steps before the monstrous beast snatched her up in its yawning mouth. Pain flared through her as the powerful fangs crashed into her young, lean body. It tossed her up in the air to adjust its grip on her and began stomping back toward the center of the village.
Held sideways in the creature’s maw, Gloria’s head and knees flopped painfully with every jolt. She struggled against the creature, but it held its jaws tight.
“Ow!” she grunted as she fought against her captor. “Stop it! You’re hurting me!”
At once the creature halted and tossed her out of its jaws. She tumbled across the ground, and every injured joint and bone in her body burned in pain.
She looked up at the creature, and her five-year-old brain demanded justice. “You hurt me!” she screamed again.
The creature took a step forward and hesitated. It clashed its maw uncertainly.
Gloria pulled herself to her feet as best she could. Limping badly and bleeding in several places, she started to make her way home.
* * * * *
Standing in the center of the nominal street that bisected the village, Baus Haley knew he had to rally his people for them to have any hope of surviving the night. Several huts nearer the shore were already ablaze, and the suddenness and ferocity of the attack left his people panicked. Everyone would look to him; he was the de facto lord of the town (such as it was) as well as its largest and most outspoken citizen.
Baus held his heaviest blacksmith’s hammer high in the air and bellowed out a call to rally his fellow villagers. Just as he finished, his wife came at him and clawed at his shirt. “Where’s Glory? I don’t know where Glory is!”
“Find her!” he barked.
“You have to help! She’s our child!”
Baus shoved her away. “You worry about our children! Let me tend to everyone else’s! GO!”
After a few chaotic moments, Baus managed to rally a half dozen or more stout and stalwart men about him armed with fishing spears, woodsman’s axes, and good, solid boat hooks. He led the small formation to the heart of the village walking shoulder to shoulder in a tight pack down the center of the vague area that served as the main street. The lanterns and torches held by the village’s defenders cast little light around them and seemingly none ahead of them Though no light gave clue as to what lay ahead, the screams of terror and cries of pain gave more than enough warning.
The raiders appeared in front of the group, seeming to materialize right out of the darkness that had been gradually enshrouding the village. The men gasped and hissed in surprise, and some took an involuntary step back as their foes came before them.
Although they had all heard of the Satyxis, it was for many the first time they had seen one. Two of the demonic females glided forward with catlike grace. One trailed a bloody scourge of barbed chain behind her; the other wielded a long, wicked sword. The one with the sword brandished it, slowly turning it so lantern light flickered across its blade like lightning.
Baus’ heart failed him as he saw the unearthly beauty of the woman’s face. Her long, flowing hair cascaded down her bare shoulder, and one curl nestled tantalizingly in her cleavage. He was struck by the way her hips rocked back and forth as she closed.
In a flash he felt the warmth of his wife’s smile, smelled her scent as they snuggled in bed, heard the laughter of his children, and regained his fortitude. Savagely beautiful as the Satyxis might be, he had sworn a vow to only his wife, and he held the vow to be more precious than his own life. This vile creation threatened to undo his honor, and he would not allow it. He rose to his full ponderous height, and he watched the lead Satyxis recoil as she realized her allure had failed her.
Roaring like a bear, Baus swung his hammer in a fierce two-handed swing. His bellow clashed with the Satyxis’ cry—every bit as shrill as his was booming. The raider was faster than he’d expected and more daring as well. She thrust her sword through Baus’ side and tried to draw back before his hammer fell. She misjudged, and her cry of victory abruptly ended with the terrible crunch of cracking bone as Baus’ blow broke her skull at the base of one of her horns and drove the shards of her rack into her brain.
“Ain’t so pretty now, are ya wench?” bellowed Vicky’s father ignoring the wound in his side.
Rallied by this display of courage and prowess, the other villagers surged forward to tangle with the other raiders emerging from the nightmarish blackness.
* * * * *
Cringing, Vicky covered her ears against the horrid noises resounding in the night: grunts, cries of pain, the noise of blades cleaving flesh, or worst of all, the broken sounds of people who knew they were dying and were helpless to stop it. She tried to avert her eyes as well, but she could not help peeking around the corner of the doorjamb.
For many long, terrifying minutes, she could see nothing. Then her father and a few other villagers came into view slowly giving ground to the raiders as whip chains cracked overhead.
She had to watch her father. She had watched him the previous winter when a pack of starving wolves had risked attacking the village, but that had been more exciting than terrifying. Somehow she’d known he’d win the day. He had to win because he was only facing a pack of dogs.
This dark night was utterly different. She could feel it in her bones.
She had to watch as he worked his mortal trade upon the raiders. It seemed like a lifetime to her; every passing second was an aching, agonized day of fear. Every so often her eye involuntarily darted to one side or the other as one of his companions fell, but she tore her eyes away as if doing so would prevent the same fate from befalling her father. It seemed like ages that she watched and heard all the while trying to do neither. She prayed fervently that Morrow might be watching this drama with divine concern and fervently begged the god that everything would be all right. Let her father drive back the sea wolves, and let Sassy be alive.
She snapped herself out of her reverie of fear unsure how long her mind had been frozen in panic. A pool of oil that spilled and ignited when one of her father’s cohorts had died burned brightly outside the yard. It cast wavering shadows all about, and the flickering flames smeared the details of the fight like bright rainwater running down a windowpane. Her father was almost the last of the defenders left on his feet. He staggered and panted, and a long dark patch stained the side of his shirt and one side of his trousers. He defiantly held a torch and used it to keep the danger at bay while he swung his hammer in ever more wild blows to smite the enemy. She remembered once, at his anvil he had spoken of hammering iron into obedience, and for a moment she thought of him chastising the evil raiders. With her utter faith in his paternal prowess, hope rose in her soul that this dark night would turn out all right, the evil would be driven back, and tomorrow would dawn just like any other day.
Then it stepped forward.
At first Vicky thought her eyes were playing tricks on her, for she saw a nightmare in the tenebrous darkness shrouding the shore. However, when she saw her father react as well, she knew it was all too real.
At almost seven feet tall, it was a huge creature easily larger than anything Vicky had seen in her short life. It was clad head to toe in chain- and platemail, and every move it made resounded with the iron linkages holding the armor together. Every step sounded like a ship’s load of heavy iron chain dropping to the ground. With every heavy iron move it made, darkness sloughed from the creature as if it were filled with ash and pitch. It carried a great double-bitted axe in its hands trailed low to the ground. It had a blade as heavy as a hammer curved like a crescent moon, and it glistened with the blood of innocents. A gobbet of flesh, perhaps a section of entrails, hung from the blade near the twisted haft of the weapon and dragged in the sand. Worst of all was the creature’s face, or the lack thereof, for it was a skeletal creature emotionless in appearance. Its mouth was forever drawn back into a fixed snarl devoid of love or hate.
It stepped forward neither hunkering tensely as did her father nor swaggering cockily as might a legendary champion in the stories told of the war against the Orgoth. It simply stepped forward as if it were walking to work. Its gait was nothing less and nothing more than businesslike.
Vicky realized that although it was supposed to be dead, it was here to kill the villagers, and it would do so as carelessly and easily as she ate her morning oatmeal. It was at that moment Vicky at last understood her father’s lectures. Although in her idealist innocence she had once denied it, there was indeed evil. She realized every tiny compromise she made against what was honorable and good would be another tiny little step down a path that would lead, ultimately, to the abomination now standing before her father.
In that moment her terror also drove her to a deep and desperate faith in Morrow. Please, she prayed, send it away.
One of the other men of the village charged forward with a battle cry that sounded more like a woman’s hysterical scream. Vicky saw the undead thing turn with startling speed, twist the axe around, and whip the blade upward. A dark spray flew into the night air, and the man’s cry ended with a gurgling squeak.
Terrified, Vicky could not avert her eyes as the two halves of the villager flopped to the ground. The muscles twitched spasmodically as if unaware they had just been killed.
Then, miracle of miracles, Vicky saw her mother burst forth from the darkness enshrouding the shore limping badly but carrying Gloria in her arms. Vicky gasped in shock and relief. She ran into the yard and cupped her hands around her mouth to yell to tell her father that they were all right, and they could all just run away when it closed upon him.
Her father swept his blacksmith’s hammer up feinting an overhand blow, and then he pulled his elbow to the side to sling the heavy hammerhead around in a lateral backhand strike. His body twisted with the force of his swing, but the creature was faster. It raised the axe up in time, angled the crooked haft to catch the shaft of her father’s hammer, and guided it harmlessly over the thing’s skull. Vicky saw the hammer grate along the axe’s handle until it struck the heavy blade; at that instant the skeletal foe arced the axe around in a tight circle.
She saw her father stagger back. His arm was raised to the sky, and blood spurted forth from the place where his powerful blacksmith’s hand had been just a moment before.
Shock and anger started to sweep over her, but just then she heard her mother shout, “Vicky! Run!” She staggered for a second torn between wanting to run to her father and flee for cover with her mother and twin sister.
In that moment she saw her father killed as he stood, cleft in twain from his shoulder to his hip. She looked to her mother to yell at her, and saw her stumble and fall, spilling Sassy on the ground. The huge armored nightmare began to stride over to them, and Vicky saw her mother look up through her disheveled hair and yell once more, “RUN!”
Vicky turned and ran for their house—the only place of security and safety she knew. Their house with the familiar scent of salt and straw was where her bed was. Their house where she would wake in the mornings to the sound of her mother singing softly to herself as she baked bread was where she and Gloria would sit in their father’s lap snuggled on each side beneath his powerful warm arms and press their ears to his chest to listen to his great heart beating out his abiding love for them.
She desperately hoped their house would somehow save them from that thing stalking the village.
The front door hung open, and light from the unattended fire spilled out into the fenced-off yard. Vicky ran through, pivoted, and slammed it shut with all her might, then she turned and started running to her bed. As she dived onto her bed and grabbed her covers, she saw the door swing open again still shuddering with the force of her action. She jumped up and closed it once more, then reached her small hands up to throw the bolt and seal it shut. She grabbed the bolt—a simple piece of iron that pivoted on a pin—and started to swing it around so that it would fall in the latch. She had to stand on her tiptoes to try to urge it over the top, and her frantic haste to be done with it made her efforts even less effective.
Just as she thought she got it locked, something smashed into the door and threw it open, sending her tumbling backwards across the wooden floorboards of their house. She screamed in terror certain her life was about to end.
“Vicky!”
She looked up and saw her mother once again lying on the floor.
The woman gestured fiercely with one bloodied hand. “Get in the fruit cellar!” she hissed. “Now!”
Panicked, Vicky scrambled over to the trapdoor set in the wooden floor and flipped it open. She dropped down into the darkness of the small, cool area carved out of the hard clay upon which their house rested. She scrambled to the corner furthest from the opening and pressed herself against the wall holding her knees tightly and nervously chewing on the collar of her dress.
The light of the fire shone weakly down into the fruit cellar and was cut into ribbons by the slats of the wooden floor. Dark shadows marked where her mother lay. Her mother’s shadow shifted marked by the grating sound of wool on rough wood. She leaned toward the door and flopped back in, then kicked the door closed with her leg. Vicky saw her mother’s shadow wriggle closer to the hatch, gasping in pain.
Footsteps approached from outside.
Please, prayed Vicky, let me live. Let them not notice that Mumma put me here.
With a cry of exertion, Vicky’s mother dropped a second bundle through the trap into the fruit cellar: Gloria. The small girl landed with a heavy thump and a grunt of pain. The trapdoor flopped closed just as someone kicked the front door open.
“In here, you say?” The voice was female, but the tone was far from feminine. Boots clacked across the wooden slats. Vicky chanced a look up and caught a glimpse of horns rising high above a voluptuous mane of hair.
The boots trod directly overhead and sent small showers of salt-smelling sand onto Vicky’s head. A metal chain scraped along the floor behind clinking and rasping.
“There ain’t nought in this pisshole but a lubbin’ whore!” shouted the voice.
“Like bleedin’ dragon dung there ain’t,” said a second voice entering the small hut. “I saw the wench stow a young’un in here.”
Vicky heard her mother whimper as the two intruders began to squabble.
* * * * *
Captain Skarre was getting nervous. The raid had been going on too long and had been even less organized than she’d expected. Already several huts near the surf were engulfed in flame, and she came to find they hadn’t been adequately searched. If there had been any children hiding somewhere in those huts…
Still, she had some desperate hope all would turn out for the best. She heard that one of the locals had been seen carrying a child of perhaps the right age into the villa standing on the largest hillock of the village overlooking the entire area. Already several Satyxis had entered the villa, and others were surrounding it to prevent escapes.
She intended to ensure nothing else went wrong.
As she approached the front door to the house, she heard two of her people squabbling inside. She snapped her scourge into the center of the main room as she entered, and the argument immediately ended. “Cap’n,” said her people in unison.
The reaver captain walked slowly to the center of the room and stopped. She sniffed loudly and spat. “Well?”
“We ain’t found nought, cap’n,” said one.
She gave them a wearied look. “Rip the place down to the keel,” she said.
Her crew began their work with abandon. They tore up the bedding, smashed the cabinets, and destroyed anything they liked. Meanwhile the captain moved over to the woman lying on the floor. She was terrified, injured, and exhausted—just the way Skarre liked her victims.
“Where’s the little suckling toad?” she snarled.
“I’ll never tell you, you bitch!” replied the woman. She spat in the pirate captain’s face.
Skarre licked the spittle off with her long tongue. “Aye, you will sing, little bird,” she said, and she set aside her whip and drew a long, crooked dagger from her boot. With the skill of long experience, she poked, gouged, and sliced with her dagger targeting the largest and most sensitive nerves in her victim’s body. The hapless woman screamed, cried, and begged her to stop, but when offered the option, she obstinately refused to reveal the location of her child.
“Cap’n?” interrupted one of the other Satyxis, “Cap’n!”
Skarre looked up with eyes of fire angry the pacing of her interrogation had been disrupted. It would make it that much harder to break the woman. “What?” she snapped.
“Ain’t nought here, cap’n. We done lashed the place from the rafters to the floorboards, and there ain’t no places left to stow a brat.”
Skarre looked all around the room, and indeed, everything had been torn apart. Even the thatched roof had been shot through with whip holes. Growling with exasperation (and no small amount of trepidation), she grabbed the woman by her collar and pulled her close. “Listen, you lubbin’ whore,” she started.
The woman, broken and bleeding, still had some fight in her. She reared back her head and butted Skarre square on the nose. The Satyxis captain heard the unmistakable sound of cartilage crunching. Roaring in surprise, pain, and anger, she dropped the woman and fell back. She raised one hand to her nose only to discover it had been flattened. Her hand came away very bloody.
She snarled and reversed her grip on her dagger.
* * * * *
Vicky looked up as her mother’s shadow fell across her. What had happened? Had she managed somehow to defeat the raiders? She dared not raise her voice to ask.
She heard two heavy steps thick with menace. A throaty growl of unbridled animal rage was followed by one swift whisper of steel through the air.
Vicky barely refrained from vomiting when a wave of warm liquid poured over her like the surf.
Trembling in shock, Vicky heard the pirate captain yell, “Tear up the floorboards!” Overhead, chain whips cracked against the heavy timbers and sent shards of wood down upon the children.
In the slatted darkness, Vicky saw Gloria reach one trembling hand toward her and whimper, “Sissy…”
Vicky held her breath and pressed even tighter into the wall, if it were possible. She did not react to her sister’s plaintive cry. She did not reach, she did not whisper, she did not even shake her head. She only prayed. Please, let them get her, she begged, brutally and realistically. Let them get everyone, but please don’t let Sassy give me away!
Just then one of the horrid people cried out, “Trapdoor ho!” and the trapdoor flew open casting unwanted light on Gloria’s prone form. A bloody hand with long, lacquered fingernails shot down through the trapdoor, expertly grabbed Sassy’s hair, and hauled her bodily out of the cavity shrieking and kicking in terror.
Vicky cringed in shame and relief. Even a touch of vindication tortured her heart; if only Gloria had been afraid of the dark and come home sooner, the two of them might well have been able to hide safely in the cellar with their mother.
“Right!” said the captain. “She tromped out the door yelling, “Fire the whole village! All aweigh! Launch before the tide changes!”
Within seconds all was quiet within the house save for the growing crackle of fire and the steady drip-drip of warm blood slowly draining on the young girl. Outside Gloria’s defiant cries faded into the distance leaving in their wake only a few intermittent anguished moans from the few survivors that carried through the night.
It was an hour before Vicky dared move. By then all she was able to do was fall forward into a fetal position and cry until the pain and exhaustion coerced her into a troubled sleep.
Sassy…
* * * * *
Victoria started from her reverie and stared with panicked eyes at the old man who glowered at her from behind his desk. He drummed his fingers impatiently on the lacquered wood.
“I—I’m sorry,” she stammered. “Would you repeat the question?”
The man snorted disgustedly and leaned forward on one elbow. He set the other elbow on the desk and absently slapped his hand against the broad sergeant’s stripes that graced the other arm.
“I said, missy,” he said condescendingly, “that you mighten have a touch of what they done call ‘The Gift,’ but formin’ up with the Cygnar military is a damned far cry from stevedoring.” He stood up and leaned forward on his fists, and his shadow fell across Victoria’s face. “What puts you in mind that a clay-doll midge waif like yerself would be worth a cup o’ piss to us?”
Victoria crossed her arms and raised her head to stare at the blustering soldier. “Listen, Sergeant Nosehair,” she said levelly, “I survived the Scharde Invasions. My soul died when I was five, and my heart’s just been beatin’ time since. They killed my family, burned my village, and drove me further into darkness than any mortal should ever travel. I swore a vow back then, and now, thank Morrow, I have the chance to fulfill it and pay Cryx back for what they done to Ingrane.
“See, I’ve been half-dead for thirteen long, buggered years. I can’t even recollect what it was like to laugh. I’ll give Cygnar everything I have left, every last bit of my life, my body, and my energy if it means I have a shot to ruin those wankin’ bastards across the channel.
“I’m going to join the Cygnar military, damn you, so either you let me pass or tell me where I can send your widow some flowers.”
The sergeant stood there for a moment, then slowly nodded. “You might pass muster after all,” he said quietly. “Make your mark here.”
