WARNING: Horrible, horrible violence in this chapter. Read at your own risk. You have been warned.
She was exhausted. A full night of walking was nothing terribly strenuous, but an entirely restless day spent on the ground full of nerves and fear of falling asleep and putting herself in a compromising position had left her completely wiped out. The old bearded man had assured her that no harm would come to her from within the company, but what reason had she to trust his words? She'd had enough experience fighting men who had tried to bait her by telling her that they could keep her safe and make her happy that she generally assumed they were lying, and this man, for all his sincerity, was no exception. So she had sat against a tree, nodding off occasionally only to jerk back awake in terror any time one of the company snorted or shifted, careful to avoid the gaze of each watch as they took turns throughout the day. It had been during the grimy man's watch that she had been pleasantly surprised to hear a quiet singing emanating from the tree with which he had managed to blend in so well she could barely make him out. She had not been able to make out the words, but some long-lost instinct told her that his was not a happy song, but one of love and of loss and of something grand just beyond her comprehension. It had intrigued her to no end.
She didn't have much opportunity to muse on love songs, however, as she stumbled along the next evening, forcing her eyes to remain open through sheer willpower. She had no idea how she would continue to avoid sleeping and its associated vulnerability, but she was resolute that she would not let herself be violated in any way.
The second day was, predictably, a thousand times worse than the first one. She was twice as exhausted as she had been the day before, and she felt as if every single muscle in her body was on fire. She had not gone for this long without stretching in over fifteen years, and she was sure that if she did not open up her muscles and joints soon, they would simply refuse to move at all. She hunched in the position that seemed least conducive to sleep, with a branch jabbing into the small of her back, and tried to focus on the stabbing in her stomach that had barely been alleviated by the scanty supper a few hours before. Simultaneously, it seemed, the day dragged by in an eternity of torture, and the night rushed in, bringing with it the pain of hauling her tired body upright, trying to relax her stiff back through a few toe touches and backbends, and trudging on through the new agonizing rhythm of her life.
Looking back, she would never be able to say for sure how she got though the first few days of her journey with the company. Her state could best be described as delirium, nights spent forcing herself to put one foot in front of the other, days spent awake, first in fear of her captors, then through force of mind as she slowly forgot everything but her determination. She felt as if she had been dragged into a waking nightmare, and nothing changed until her fourth night of captivity, though she had already lost count. She had gone for nearly a hundred hours without so much as an hour of continuous sleep, and she could barely see to attempt to walk. She could feel her body somewhere wobbling back and forth across the path, but she could no longer control it, and some part of her mind dimly began to register that this had been a terrible mistake and she was now more vulnerable than a few hours of sleep would have made her. After all, anyone coming near her would immediately wake her, right? She would have to sleep come morning…if she could get up…but she was still falling into deeper and deeper blackness.
The young girl clambered higher and higher in the branches of the enormous willow tree, giggling at the way the leaves tickled her bare feet. "Look Mama, look how high I can get!" she called down to the woman on the ground before once again launching her slender body upwards through the branches.
"Wow, Beinedhiel!" came the distant response. As the girl moved to higher and narrower limbs, she heard a cry of "Please be careful!" from the ground below. Of course she was being careful, she was thirteen years old now, she knew how to take care of herself. She was in heaven, up here in the sky. She swung her body lithely between the boughs, eventually coming to a halt in a rather wide fork between two branches. As she settled down, straddling one of the limbs, she heard her mother's voice again. "Come on down, sweetie, it's high time we got the move on."
"Just another minute, Mama!" Beinedhiel replied indignantly. She'd just gotten here! Didn't her mother understand how hard this was?
Her mother never replied. In a moment, Beinedhiel understood why when her sharp ears picked out the rustling in the underbrush nearby. Her mother's voice wafted up to her. "Who's there?" She heard the note of panic that usually only came out when her mother had just come back from getting supplies from a settlement and they were about to run for it. She had never been to a town. Maybe now that she was older, her mother might take her.
Beinedhiel was just wondering if they would have to run again when another voice spoke, male and distinctly unpleasant. "Well, what do we have here?" it said. "Could it be? Our little cheat?" Beinedhiel's blood boiled at anyone calling her mother a cheat, and she decided that maybe she ought to move a little lower to see what was happening on the ground. Her mother had always told her to stay out of sight of anyone besides her, but Beinedhiel was not about to leave her mother to deal with this liar on her own. She slowly and silently lowered her body down branch by branch until she had a view of the scene below.
There were, in fact, two men, one on either side of her mother, and both leering at her mother in ways that made Beinedhiel's blood run cold. But what could she do? The men were big; it would be out of the question for two small women to try to fight them off. Beinedhiel watched helplessly from behind her screen of willow leaves while the men advanced on her mother, eyeing her up and down. In a flash, they had her on the ground, and one of the men had shoved the other away, snarling, "She's mine first! You can have what's left when I'm through with her." What happened next shocked Beinedhiel so much she nearly fell out of the tree: the man snatched her mother's dress right off her! She watched, transfixed with horror and terrified of making a sound, as the man fumbled at something at his waist, then fell on her mother, shoving his body up against hers again and again with grunts and groans while her mother lay below him with nothing but a grimace. The man eventually gave what seemed to be a full body shudder and rolled away, looking utterly spent. Beinedhiel wondered what in the world he had been doing to exhaust him so, but the second man was now approaching her mother, who was lying on the ground with her eyes closed, looking tiny and absolutely pitiful. She had never seen her mother so completely defeated, and that scared her even more than the present threat of the two attackers.
The second man had fallen on her mother, shoving himself on her as the first man had, but he had not been at it for a minute before he shrieked, "No fun! She just lies there. Come, friend, let us make her squeal!" The first man, seemingly recovered, sat up with a look of childish glee, and, to Beinedhiel's horror, began to strike her mother.
Even from up in the tree, the sickening crack was unmistakable when one of the blows landed hard on her mother's elbow, bending it the wrong way, and the responding scream was heart-rending for Beinedhiel, who was sure the situation could not be worse. She was wrong, of course, as the man still on top of her mother pulled out a long and cruel-looking knife. "Would you rather have this inside, hm?" he snarled at her mother, who had frozen at the sight of the knife.
"No…please…" her mother sobbed, beginning to writhe and try to throw him off her, though it was hopeless. Beinedhiel could not see the man's face, but she imagined it held a nasty sneer as he pulled himself off the helpless woman and drew the tip of the blade down her body. Beinedhiel's breath was frozen in her throat; she couldn't move as the man suddenly shoved the knife between her mother's legs, then pulled it out briefly before thrusting it back in even harder. Blood spurted across the ground as her mother screamed louder than ever, and still Beinedhiel remained transfixed against the tree trunk, her mother's screams surrounding her, filling her, penetrating her to the bone.
The screams were coming from her, and her eyes flew open to see the ground as she found her body contorted into an unnatural resting position on top of something rocking horribly below her. Adrenaline shot through her body, bringing her back to reality with a jolt as she realized that her worst fears must be coming to pass. She would fight them over this. She would rather die than be violated in that worst of ways. She tried to flip off of whoever was rocking below her, but she could not seem to find his end before losing her balance and rolling right off it, landing on the surprisingly faraway ground with a thud. She staggered to her feet and looked around, trying to comprehend the pony right in front of her and nine astonished faces staring at her.
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