Crow Reaver by Shanlynn Walker (ebooks children's books free txt) 📖

would not be able to spot her, she began to run as fast as her feet could carry her.  She had come a long way, further than she had thought while in her foggy state, and it took her over an hour to reach the village.  She burst from the woods, screaming, “Raiders!!” as loudly as she could.  Without stopping, she made a beeline for her home, racing past other villagers and dodging the ones that tried to slow her.

Just as she reached her hut she heard battle cries erupting from the forest.  She spun around just in time to see the raiders charging at the villagers.  As she watched, one of the men on horseback ran down a man fleeing with his wife and child.  The horseman trampled the child, who looked to be no older than five, and cleaved the wife’s head in with a mace, her teeth flying out of her mouth in a wad of brains and blood.  The villager turned and tried to grab the man off of the horse, but he, too, was left dead amidst a growing puddle of his own blood, his head split in two.

Lena ducked into her hut, looking around quickly for her mother and father.  They weren’t home.  She sprinted back outside and almost ran directly into one of the mounted horsemen.  Without thinking, she grabbed the dagger he had strapped to his leg and pulled it free from its sheath and plunged it into his groin.  The rider screamed out in pain and leaned over in the saddle, trying to grab Lena’s hair.  She dodged to the side and thrust the dagger into the man’s neck.

The man made a strangled gurgling noise before falling sideways out of the saddle.  Lena grabbed the reins before the horse could run away and jumped onto its back.  She had to find her mother and father, and Von.  As hurt as she was she couldn’t leave him here to die without knowing she had tried to help him.  She rode the horse behind the huts back towards the center of the village, careful to stay hidden from the raiders.

Just as she approached the square located in the center of the village she spotted Von.  He was shouting at the huddled women and children, trying to get them to flee into the forest, but it looked like most were resisting, looking around with large, frightened eyes and screaming for their husbands.  Lena rode right up to one woman with two small toddlers in her arms and smacked her sharply across the face.

The woman’s eyes cleared and she stared up at Lena on horseback.  “Run and hide in the forest while you still can!  Save your children!” Lena yelled at her.  The woman looked at the two toddlers in her arms and seemed to just remember they were there.  With a brief nod, she turned and ran the short distance to the tree line.  She paused briefly and looked back one last time before disappearing into the forest.

Lena galloped the horse around the square, yelling at the frantic women and sometimes striking them to get their attention and urge them to flee.  She knew they only had minutes before the raiders were upon them.  Most women heeded her message and fled into the forest, but some were past saving, so hysterical they actually ran back towards the raiders, and these Lena had to let go with a heavy heart, knowing she would probably never see them alive again. 

She saw Von carrying two children in his arms and another on his back, leading a woman by the hand into the forest.  She gazed around the square again, swiftly, but didn’t see anyone.  She let out a small sigh, hoping they had saved most of the women and children of the village, and then turned her horse towards Von to follow him.  His eyes met hers across the square and she saw his eyes widen and he frantically started shouting and waving his arms at her, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying at this distance.  She kicked her horse into a gallop, but before it could gain speed a strong arm grabbed her around her neck and jerked her from the saddle.  She was pulled atop another horse and slung across the saddle, knocking the wind out of her.

Lena looked up and saw Von running towards her, but before he made it more than a few yards another raider ran at him, an axe held high above his head.  Von dodged away, drawing his hunting dagger from its sheath.  Lena struggled to get off the horse, but the rider put a firm hand on her back and held her in place.  She twisted her head around and bit him viciously in the leg which earned her a swift kick to the side of her head.  She saw stars and felt like she would vomit.  Every time the horse’s feet came down she was jarred head to toe and the saddle pommel would dig into her stomach.  She looked up one last time to see Von drive his dagger up under the raider’s ribcage into his heart before the world went black and she knew no more.

 

 

 

Chapter Three

 

Lena woke slowly, her head aching and with a painful throbbing in her back and midsection.  She groaned and tried to roll over, but something prevented her.  She peeked open one eye and saw she was on a bed, her hands tied to the posts above her head. Her feet were lashed as well.  She could only open the one eye, the other having swollen shut from the fierce kick she had received.

She tried to pull herself up to get a better look around, but only managed a few inches. It was enough for her to see down the rest of her body, which was completely naked, and to see that she was in a small, one room hut that contained the bed she was in, a chamber pot, and a small table with a pitcher on it.  Seeing the pitcher made her realize how thirsty she was and seeing it so close, yet knowing she couldn’t reach it, made her throat begin to burn.

Ignoring the pain in her throat and wrists, Lena tested the bonds that held her hands.  After many minutes of struggling to loosen them, all she had managed to do was work up a sweat and make her wrists raw.  She stopped struggling and lay still, closing her one good eye, and tried to think of a way to escape.

Obviously her captors didn’t want to kill her or she would already be dead.  Raids didn’t happen all the time, but they were not unheard of and were usually for food or livestock.  These raiders, however, had seemed especially vicious.  She had never before seen raiders purposely kill women and children, and now that she thought about it, she didn’t see them go after any of the livestock in the village; it had instead seemed like a wonton killing spree.  Only once before had a raiding party kidnapped a woman.  It had been the cow herder’s daughter, a girl of fourteen years, and her father had traded his finest milk cow to get her back.  Lena had been but a child of five or six years at the time, but she remembered the girl had been pregnant when she returned, something they found out after a few months of her being back home.  The girl had taken hemlock and killed both herself and her unborn child.

Footsteps sounded outside the hut, interrupting Lena’s thoughts.  She quickly closed her eyes and slowed her breathing, pretending to be asleep.  She heard the door to the hut open and someone walk inside.  It took all of her willpower not to peek, but she kept her eyes firmly shut, hoping the intruder would just go away.  She tried not to think about the fact she was lying there naked, but she felt a small blush creeping up into her face and struggled silently to stop it.

She heard a deep, masculine chuckle before she felt a hand roughly grab her breast, pinching the sensitive nipple sharply and forcing her to gasp and open her eye.  The man towering over her was tall, well over six feet, and heavily muscled.  He had tattoos covering the right half of his face, trailing down his neck, arm, and leg on that side of his body.   His left ear, nostril, and nipple were pierced with small pieces of sharpened bone.  He was looking down at her body and grinning, his right hand still holding her breast while his left hand rubbed at his crotch.

Lena’s face burned with embarrassment and resentment.  She turned her face away from the man so she didn’t have to see him look at her, which only served to make him laugh.  He grabbed her chin and forced her to look at him, then crushed her lips to his in a savage kiss.  At first Lena tried to keep her mouth firmly shut, but when that didn’t work she settled for biting his lower lip.  He jerked back and smacked her across the left side of her face where it was swollen from being kicked.  The pain was tremendous and she thought she would pass out again, hoped for it, in fact.

When her vision cleared she saw the man holding a hand to his lip, blood staining his fingers when he brought it away.  He sneered at her and looked like he might hit her again, but instead he walked to the little table and picked up the pitcher sitting there and a small cup.  He poured water into the cup and drank it down, watching Lena as he did so.  “I came to give ye a drink, and maybe t’ have a little fun afore the others got a chance at ye. I’ve never liked sloppy seconds, ye see, but I daresay no man has ever touched ye proper, so maybe your seconds will still be tight enough to make me happy.”

He leered down at her, pouring another cup of water.  Instead of drinking it, he poured it out on her belly and breasts, then replaced the cup and pitcher on the table and left the hut, laughing.

Lena looked longingly at the water pooled on her belly, her throat burning more than she had ever thought possible.  She had never been this thirsty in all of her life.  She arched her back up as much as her bindings would allow and tried to get the water to flow up towards her mouth.  Most of it simply ran down her side, but she did manage to get a small mouthful, which did little to slake her thirst and seemed to only make it worse.  It did, however, relieve some of the burning in her throat and made it so that her mouth didn’t seem glued together.

With nothing to do but lay tied to the bed, Lena let herself think about her home.  She missed her mother and father and hoped they had escaped the raiders.  She doubted she would ever know for sure, the chances for her escaping did not seem good, so in her mind she