Rune and Ruin

Seeds of the Gods - 7 - Tend and Cover

395 B.C.E. - The Warmarch through the Acerian Valley, Late Winter, Month of Martius

From Her Memory

Thania sat up with agonizing slowness. She hardly dared to take a breath, not wanting to awaken the man sleeping next to her. In the weak morning light, she studied him. On his stomach, one muscular arm thrown up over his head, the other outstretched towards her, he sprawled over the sleeping mat, leaving little room for her to escape his touch. Over the long winter, he had become impatient, his couplings with her harsher, less careful. Yet, in contrast to his brutal lust, he slept entwined with her now, wrapping himself around her body in a different, no less intimate claiming.

Untangling her limbs from his and drawing her knees into her chest, she tucked her feet under her. Carefully she shifted, pushing up from the ground with her hands and standing on wobbly feet. She could not help but let a whimper of pain escape as her aching body protested the movement. At the cry she froze, watching his face for any sign of waking. Satisfied that he remained asleep, she took a hobbling step towards the tent opening, gasping as a warm hand closed around her ankle in a strong grip.

"Where are you going, female?" The warlord opened one eye blearily to glare at her.

"Outside, to wash," her voice was barely a whisper.

He groaned, closing his eyes again, but he did not release her ankle. Suddenly, he bellowed, "Marcus!"

The slave must have been waiting for his master's summons, he was inside the tent not a moment later. "Master?"

"She needs to wash." His hand fell away from her ankle and she backed up reflexively.

"Master." The slave, trusted by his master implicitly, led her out of the tent to an area set up for washing.

She was dirty, she knew, even though she had been given a cursory bath by Marcus yesterday. It did little good, she thought, grimacing as she pulled on rags that could not be cleaned properly anymore lest they fall apart. The winter camp was not a place to be clean and tidy. Her only sandals had broken yesterday, leaving her feet with no protection against the cold ground and sharp rocks hidden in thick red mud churned up by so many people trampling the drought-stricken dirt, turning the icy ground into a swamp. The mud could not be kept from everything, no matter how often she tried to clean herself, and tracks of red stuck in the creases of her skin, bringing the gritty feeling of filth with it. To keep her hair clean it had been braided close to her head, but the Warlord had taken it down last night after coming into the tent and it now lay in tangles down her back, smelling faintly of him.

Angrily she swallowed back the tears at the thought. She was lucky, she kept reminding herself, lucky to be alive, to be here, in the tent of the Tasuri warlord. The other women taken from Falerii were gone to Rune already, sent ahead to the slave markets to face their uncertain futures. The pens were filled with new slaves, more souls sold to or taken by the Warlord. She could only hope that he had not grown tired of her and was not planning on casting her to his loyal soldiers.

She kept her head bowed, refusing to look at any of the belators they passed. With a quick word, Marcus cleared a space for her so that she could attend to her needs. Thania winced as her urine ran past the soreness she suffered between her legs. Again she stiffened her spine. He didn't hurt her too terribly, it was nothing that she couldn't survive. She had to keep going, to push away the malaise that came with the dreary, dark winter. Her life wasn't forfeit, not yet at least.

Splashing water on herself, she cleaned up as best she could, Marcus waiting patiently for her to finish.

"Little one," a deep voice startled her. She looked up into the stoic countenance of one of the demon Captains, Quintus, a close friend to the Warlord who had been scarce these last few weeks.