Chapter 3 Captured
1463 Words
Gwen
Pain.
Suffering.
Humiliation……..Capture.
What crime should a person commit that these should be granted to them?
Surely, just your mere existence can’t be enough to justify these things occuring to you now can it?
It can, as we know it all too well. Amidst the dark, I reached out for Anna.
“Are you okay?”
“Hmm” she replied sniffing and continued sobbing again. Tears were rolling down my cheeks as well. But I tried to hide them, not to let them show through my voice.
The carriage jerked upon the rough earth.
“Everything will be alright” I assured her.
Even though I myself wasn’t convinced of it.
“Hmm” she replied, sobbing.
Lost in thought, I kept asking myself.
“How did it ever happen?”
Although I knew it, the moments leading up to us being here from the last day of our normal lives, are branded in our minds as if seared into it.
Thinking about it again though, memories flood before my eyes, about the events that occurred two days ago.
It was late in the morning and we were doing our chores. I was out, chopping firewood while father was out hunting. Our village was nestled in the mountains and our house was a little far off from the village, almost next to the forest. The forest surrounding us weren’t exactly teeming with prey, especially in these winter months. Father and I would go far and deep into the mountains sometimes.
But today I did not accompany him. Even though I tried my best.
“No Gwen, your mother is Ill. It’s best if you stay here and take care of her.”
Father said solemnly, trying not to sound angry, even though I had refused to stay twice before.
“But Anna is here, also, if the two of us go together, then we would have a better chance of actually hunting something.”
I said stubbornly.
“Gwen, enough! Do as you are told.” He said in a raised deep voice.
I shook my head, anger burning within me.
But I knew it wasn’t going any further when father was like this. Anna came to stand beside me, as if to comfort me. But she herself looked terrified than me. I would have bet if father had only grunted at ther, she would have started crying.
Father looked at the two of us and came up to us, bent in his knees and hugged us. Anna gave a soft squeal and hugged him back. I stayed firm.
“My stubborn and sweet girls” he sighed
I was the stubborn one for sure, something I didn’t inherit from my mother.
“Now, you two take care of her till I come back with an elk upon my back or at least some hares on my belt. If not, gods know she will eat me instead!”
Even I cracked and laughed at this, hugging him back.
Then he got up and went out and Anna and I went out to check up on mother.
Mother was always kind of laid back. Grey eyes and dark brown hair, she always looked cold. Always ordering us three around. Especially me and father. She was always a little soft on Anna though.
“She is such a lady!” She would say. I would never understand what she meant.
Sure, Anna was pale and delicate, and concerned of her appearance, even though she was naturally a beauty. She also had grey eyes, but they looked cute and inviting, rather than mother’s cold and unyielding. Anna was also remarkably polite, compared to a rough girl like me. So I guess she was different, at the very least.
Though laid back and sometimes cold, mother was not all bad. She was fiecely protective of us, as father would remind us time after time, how she killed a wolf and drove off the pack which had come in hopes of snatching me and little Anna back when we were little kids.
We were playing in the snow and suddenly, a pack of wolves cane out if nowhere. As father would put it, she “was like the very fury of the gods themselves” as she speared a wolf through and through and chased the others away till father came to help.
It was kinda hard to believe but the wolfskin on the floor pleaded the veracity of the tale.
I helped Anna fill the bowl and take it to mother’s bed. Anna was wetting her forehead, trying to cool her down. Mother didn’t look so good. But even in the fever, she ordered me to chop off some firewood to cook anything father brought back.
Fever be damned, right mother. Though I had no other expectations, mother was tough as the very mountains.
So I went to the back of the house, to the chopping block, picked up the axe and started chopping bigger pieces into two.
It was in the fifth or sixth piece I cut that I heard a loud shrill scream of Anna.
It was shocking and chilled me to the core.
I ran to the front of the house, axe in hand.
The door was open and as I looked inside, Anna was held by her neck and pulled up until her head touched the roof by a stocky man, clad in dark furs.
“Arrghh” I swung my axe at his back, but he was agile, letting go of Anna, he grabbed the wood of the axe before it struck. He smacked my face with the back if his hand, knocking me to the floor.
It was a devastating blow and I felt blood dripping out from the corner of my mouth, the inside filled with metallic taste.
I knew he was going to kick me next but he never did and as I looked up, expecting it, I saw his eyes were open in a state of shock as my mother stood beside him, her first upon his neck, thumb touching his skin. As she pulled back her hand and he gurgled blood, a knife drenched in blood came out in her hand. He fell in the floor with a loud thud, drenching the wolfskin.
Mother stood over the corpse, face red with fever and an expression of such anger that even the wolves would run on sight.
Fury of the gods indeed.
“Grab your sister” she growled as she picked up the axe. I went towards Anna, she was coughing.
As I looked, another man entered with a crude sword in hand, slashing wildly.
Mother dodged nimbly and buried the axe deep in his neck. He fell to the side, blood spewing from his neck.
After that she went to the doorway and then…….There was a huge spray of blood and she fell back, he neck almost ripped apart. Even the spine was visible, blood spewing forth everywhere from the torn vessels and her eyes in shock. It looked like she was mauled by a bear.
But what came in was no bear, but a tall, thin, pale man with dark robes. He stood before mother. He had no weapon in hand, if such an attack was possible out of a weapon but maybe he left it outside.
“Hardened by the mountains I see.” He said in a smooth, calm voice which seemed surreal and in sharp contrast to the c*****e in front of him.
“Wilbur was quite the man, but it seems his wife was not far behind either.”
Killed. Mother
My mind went blank. Her cold grey eyes became lifeless, her body pale. I hoped against hope that she would move.
Why why why why?
Why did it happen?
These questions echoed in my mind as my body felt cold and legs frozen.
More men came, carrying me and Anna away, just as they were going to put the sack over my head, I saw my father, lying on the snow, blood had splattered around him in an arc. Beside him lay another man with his head at an odd angle. At distance, two men lay dead, an arrow sticking out if one of them in the chest.
Father!
The sack finally darkened my vision but my mind was still alight.
Images of these events came flashing before my eyes.
How did it ever happen?
Had I actually done something different, would the outcome would have been different too. Had I actually been a good fighter, would we still had a chance?
These questions gnawed at my mind, over and over again.
The carriage jerked again.
What will happen to us now?
Where are they taking us?
Where?
- Writer
