Blood And Stone

Chapter 35: Lobelia and Potatoes

A blonde woman stooped, bending at the waist to carefully empty the pockets of the body in front of her. Her hand slipped into each one, pulling free with various items including a few coins, a trinket that was likely cast out of the smallest amount of gold someone could procure, and a small, wooden doll. She tossed the items in the burlap sack she carried on her shoulder, slinging it back onto her back before she lifted the man's feet and removed his boots. They were worn but not completely ruined, though a hole would appear in the sole of the left shoe soon enough. She sighed audibly, a mistake she had made several times in the past few days. She braced herself as the Viking man's hand drew itself across her face and sent her colliding into the body she was currently emptying. She didn't dare cry, knowing that would only make the situation worse. Instead, she began to remove any jewelry the corpse had on him and drew the stone blade of a makeshift knife across his throat. With no help from the strong man beside her, she flipped the corpse over and watched as the blood spilled from the gap in his skin. She attempted to wipe the sweat from her brow as she stepped to the next body but she only succeeded in covering her face in mud.

Following behind her, picking up the trail of bodies she emptied and cut, her husband pulled them onto his back and tossed them into a cart. He then hefted the cart up onto his shoulders and began to pull, moving forward slowly as the wheels sank into the mud. All around Volker, women and children were set to emptying the pockets of the dead, carrying bags of personal trinkets and belongings, removing the shoes that still had lie in them, and making sure the corpses were indeed, corpses. The once neutral city was cast in shadow, the eyes of The Bloodless gazing down upon them from her tower in the castle. The Ulfheðnar was turning the city into their new homes. The men selected women they found fit for what they desired. The stronger children were being handed an ax or a sword and trained to kill. Any man that wished to spare his family this sort of destruction, joined the forces of the Ulfheðnar or took a spot as a servant to the new Queen, if that was what she could be called.  

The dungeons had been emptied of their former occupants, whether it was by offering their services to The Bloodless or by failing to aid her companion. The empty spaces had become filled with anyone that proclaimed themselves a healer or sorcerer of any sort. Every day, another of the braided men would march down and select one, pulling them free from their bonds and hauling them up the twisting stairs, never to be seen again. Each one gave promises that they knew they could not keep, hoping they could at least improve the health of the animal but, ultimately failing every time. Many of them did so simply to breathe fresh air again before they died. Only one never let her eyes rise from the floor.

Lyric hung limply from her shackles, her arms held tightly above her head, far enough from the ground that only the tips of her toes could scratch the cold stone below. Her bare legs shivered against the cold dungeon air, her trousers had been removed and cast aside to allow her captors to strike freely at her legs. The wounds that crisscrossed her pale skin glared across the damp room, sparkling in the light only when they had opened and began to seep once again. She got a slight relief from the cold temperatures only when her warm blood ran down her useless, dangling limbs. Though it never took long for the bitter cold to work its way back to her once they decided to let her heal. Days had passed this way, wounds opening and closing, people disappearing from the prison with false promises. She found that it was nearly impossible to believe things would improve, even when the guards came to taunt her with warm bread and then filled her mouth with the mold they scraped off of the food they fed the more useful servants. Occasionally, she was allowed to regurgitate that mold which gave her a much more warm expanse of time, in which she would allow the exhaustion to take over and lull her to sleep. 

The door of the dungeon slammed open, the sound echoing down the stairs and bursting through the open area as a gust of wind tickled her skin. Lyric kept her eyes down, staring at the small puddles of water that stood around the entire room. The sound of boots coming down reached her ears, growing louder with each second before the voices that belonged to them, danced across the void to her ears. "The last one barely stopped the bleeding." The man's voice was gruff, filled with annoyance and a hint of exhaustion.