Ravish Her

Tearing through the part in the trees, she stumbled forward and into the village. A few blonde-haired, blue-eyed children looked at her but promptly ran away to their small, rustic, and crude-looking homes.

“Help me. God, can’t you hear me? Help me!” she shouted louder, screamed it out, and ran past the huts to the center of the village. A few men came running out, weapons in hands. Agata held up her hands, showing them she had no weapons and wasn’t a threat. “Help me… please.”

The men started shouting at her in their language and holding up their axes and swords. She stopped, everyone coming closer to her. Their expressions and words were angry and directed right at her.

Adrenaline was pumping through her veins, hard and angry, and Agata felt lightheaded, frightened, and pissed. They came closer though, and she turned around, looking at the men who were no doubt about to mob her for reasons she assumed were because of Stian.

“What the hell is wrong with all of you?” She hadn’t meant it in the literal sense, because judging by the way they lived, the angry looks on their faces as they stared at her, Agata knew these people clearly lived by their own set of rules.

Hot, angry tears fell from her eyes, and she grew heated from her rage that these people were blinded by their hatred. She knew they hated him, that they hated her for associating with Stian. Didn’t they know she hadn’t willingly gone to him?

“You’re attacking me over what… Stian?”

They went crazier then, yelling and shouting, tossing their hands in the air. Even the women had come closer, spitting on the ground in front of her. Then they charged forward. One of the men grabbed her hair, yanked her head back, and she cried out. They kept screaming out the same word—Dýr.

Over and over, they shouted that word, and she knew it was so wrong to leave, to think she had any hope of finding help with these heathens.

They were worse than Stian, brutal and hated her when they knew nothing of her, when she was associating with a man they clearly hated. But why, why did they hate Stian? What had he done to them?

The sound of something loud, dangerous, and almost animal-like, resounded through the village. She spun around, out of the grasp of the man who held her, and turned back around to kick him in the cock.

He grunted and fell forward, dropping his sword in the process so he could grab himself.

She didn’t waste a moment to grab the sword and start swinging at the men who came forward again, their weapons poised at her. The sounds of a man shouting above the rest, yelling out “konna,” had her turning and seeing Stian charging forward. He had a mallet in one hand, one that almost looked like it was used to tenderize meat, and an ax in the other.

Stian was swinging at the men who came after him. He was outnumbered, but these men weren’t a match for Stian and his skills. She turned just as a woman picked up a rock and was about to hurl it at her.

Agata used the butt of the sword and slammed it in the woman’s forehead, making her stumble back and drop the rock. Good. The bitch wanted to come after her, then Agata would show her she wasn’t some weakling.

Looking at Stian again, she watched in awe as he took out each man who came forward. They were relentless as they shouted things at him, tried to take him out with their weapons, but Stian was batting them away as if they were flies. She noticed he didn’t outright kill them, which she wouldn’t have faulted him for if he had, since clearly these people were insane.

He knocked them out, stabbed them in the shoulder or leg, incapacitating them so they were no longer a threat.

“Hitta vi, konna.” He held his hand out, having dropped his ax a second ago. Someone charged at Stian, and he knocked them out, his hand still outstretched to her. “Agata, hitta vi.”

He wanted her to come to him, and that was clear as he gestured her forward. She didn’t waste a moment, because even if he kept her chained up, even if she’d ran from him, right now, he came after her, was protecting her, saving her, and she felt this connection with him as she stared at the warrior he was.

The plaits on the side of his head swung around his face as he blocked a sword with his ax he grabbed at the last moment. She didn’t wait another minute to go to him. She moved forward, swung the sword out to a man who crept up to her a little too closely, and when her hand was in Stian’s, he pulled her close.