Cardia is Gone

The heathens burned the temples. They attacked the farms. They destroyed everything from tiny peasant homes to historical monuments more than hundreds of years old. People who resisted died. People who surrendered died. The snow-clad village of Cardia was stained red. 

Blood of men. Blood of women. Blood of children.

The enemy's arrival was silent; their attack sudden. The sleepy spell brought by winter on the border village was broken by animalistic screams of pain. Cries of people burning were everywhere. There were shrieks of villagers dying. By midnight, half of Cardian population was slain mercilessly by the bronze-skinned men covered in wolf pelts.

The invaders relished the sight of the pale people bleeding, enjoying every slash of sword and arrow released as the village burned. They meant to annihilate every Northerner. They were humans on bloodlust — hungry predators on the hunt.

They proudly called themselves the sons of Summer. The Cardians called them heathens from the South. 

"The captain has spoken. Don't let a single person escape!"

Amidst the chaos, a girl no older than twenty winters nimbly dodged an arrow.

She ran and hid and ran. Away from them, away from the pandemonium that was bound to give her nightmares every waking night.

She did not know these people. She did not know this village. She was merely searching refuge from the snowstorm that blinded her path. A kind elderly woman offered her shelter in exchange for kitchen labor. She was grateful for the warm food and the roof.

Maybe, in the future, she would have returned to pay the favor. But there would be no favor to pay. There was no future to look forward to.

One of the dark men had stabbed the kind woman along with her young grandson. It was a quick death. Savage but quick. Despite her urge to hurl, she made her shivering self small enough to fit behind the crates, only crawling out on fours when the intruders lit the cottage on fire.

The situation was helpless.

There were few men left to protect the village. She heard that almost all the white knights — protectors of the village — were called to join the army in the Larchen mountains.

She did the only reasonable thing she could — run. As much as she wanted to avenge the woman and her grandson, she was not under any illusion that she could actually deliver damage to seasoned fighters.

What could a girl like her do? Nothing.

The night sky had an unnatural stillness in it, as if it was held captive by the sight of blood spilled and flesh burning, transfixed by the slaughter that lay below. The moon was a mere silver lining and the shadows aplenty.

It was a cursed night.

"Nobody escapes! Get her!"

She moved without thought, relying on raw instincts to escape. The horses neighed angrily as she slid under them. The heathens roared in frustration when they missed catching her with their grimy hands.

As she approached the frozen river just outside the village, a burning sensation crippled her. Blinding pain engulfed her being. Her eyes bulged in an effort to stifle a cry. Her right arm would not move, and black lines swirled around her white skin like a viper. Invisible chains of steel held her on a leash. She fell on her knees. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't blink.

She let out a silent scream at the white-hot pain of the runes on her skin.

Run! Her mind shouted as she heard the sounds of the hooves easily gaining on her. Move!

"Grab the lass!"

NO!

She felt rather than heard the cry that escaped her lips as one of the heathens caught her hair and yanked her back. Her lower lip bled where her teeth caught it. She shuddered in terror as she realized what the hide-covered arm around her waist meant.

Captured.

Caught.

Death.

She let out an ear piercing scream just before an armored hand hit her nape, and she became limp and pliant in the soldier's arms.

*

She woke up to a strangled sound akin to an injured animal.

Crying.

Someone was crying.

As the sound grew louder, she stirred, slowly, groaning due to the escalating pain at the base of her skull. Opening her eyes, she saw bloody bodies around her. 

Bile rose, and she emptied the contents of her stomach into the scarlet snow. After a few fuzzy seconds, she realized with relief that most of the bodies around her appeared to be moving. Bloody, but alive. She profusely thanked the good Spirits that there were people who still lived, despite the nagging thought that most of them would have preferred to have died along with their dignity and families.

Her arms and feet were bound. Bound with thick ropes. She tried to stretch her legs, grasping too late that she was merely a stride away from the big fire that her captors made.

She flinched from the pain.

It was the same kind of burning pain that paralyzed her before she blacked out.

It was also her first memory. Awakened by a burning pain in the middle of a frozen wasteland. Voiceless under the wails of the snow storm, a strange emptiness gnawing inside her.

She checked her right arm, only to see it covered with grime and blood. There was no black ink. There were no swirling lines. As usual, the Runes appeared at the most unexpected time, and until now, moons later from her first memory, she was yet to know the trigger.

"I beg you! The Spirits spare you, let me go!" There was a blond girl screaming beside her. The girl's dirty tear-stained face was crumpled in absolute terror. "I do not want to die! I beg you! Let me go!"

The men around them laughed at the blond girl. They were black-haired men who wore thick pelts of hardened leather over their muscular bodies, weapons of every kind strapped across their hips. Their skins were dark with spending too much time under the sun.

"Where are those noble Spirits you worship so much?" taunt one of them. "Are they afraid of us, children of the Great Sun? Are your ancestors too weak to save your pathetic souls?"

Heathens.

The blond girl beside her continued to cry, her voice approaching hysteria. "I do not want to die!"

"Lakas, make the bitch shut up!" ordered another from across the fire.

The warrior nearest them squatted in front of the crying girl. He was dark-skinned like the rest of the heathens, but he was young and lean, barely into manhood, with a pale white scar across his cheek. Unlike the others, he did not seem to be enjoying the fear in the blonde's face.

He ripped a piece of cloth from his undershirt and tied it around the blond girl's mouth. Roughly. The blond girl tried to kick him away, but he caught her leg with a tight grip around her ankle.

"You will be sold," he said in a low voice meant to be anything but reassuring. "We will not kill you. Do not fret. Unless you refuse to shut up." He raised a brow. "We may find ourselves getting creative in that aspect."

The blond girl stopped thrashing, but she let out a weak sob of protest at his words. Lakas smiled and patted her head, like she was his pet.

"Good lass."

The blond girl shrunk away in repulsion, earning another round of laughter from the heathens. With the blonde beside her taking in all attention, she finally got the chance to release the breath she did not realize she was holding.

She took that chance to really see her surroundings. She was taken as a spoil from the war, along with other villagers — a group of around thirty people. They were scattered around the open space on one side of the fire. On the other side were heathens merrymaking for the successful siege.

Cardia was gone.

Every structure and tower had been burned to the ground, leaving nothing but ashes and unidentifiable ruins in their wake. The stench of blood and death was heavy on the air even though she was in a camp on the other side of the frozen river where she was captured. Nothing was recognizable, and she felt the familiar slither of emptiness in her.

A man wearing a spotted fur cloak, obviously someone of rank, came running towards the guards watching over the prisoners. "How many women?"

It was the young heathen called Lakas who answered. "Twelve."

"Gather the young, pretty ones. His Majesty wants them to line up in front of his tent."

Lakas moved without missing a beat, scouring each of the soot-faced, dirty villagers that they have taken from their latest plunder. She tried her best to hide, but his rough hand had quickly pulled her up and tossed her away from the other prisoners. The blond girl beside her was picked as well and a total of six girls and three women were escorted towards the center of the camp.

She studied the guards around her, trying to see whether there was a chance for her to escape. If she moved fast enough, perhaps . . . perhaps she could snatch a curved knife from the straps around their hips and cut the knots around her feet. She could get away. No one could catch her without a horse; of that, she was sure. She was light on her feet. If she had enough head start, no one could outrun her.