Crystal Blood

The Raid

Braekden unlocks the door and pulls it open.

Outside stands one of his men, shirtless, breeches barely cinched, sword unsheathed in his hand.

"We are under attack by the Enidin."

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When Braekden's man had strung the words attack and Enidin together, I had a feeling that this was very bad but at the same time I couldn't quite believe it. Tagar's Crossing was deep in civilized lands, with citadels on three sides and a river so impassable they had to build a town to safe harbour the ferries used for crossing. Getting attacked by anything other than one of the three lords was so rare, I don't even remember such a thing happening in all my life of living here.

However, I had always been level headed and irrationally calm while everyone else lost their heads. I've always been able to see a clear path through the chaos, like that time when the stables caught fire, and the younglings were trapped inside. I got the fire line going and had the brains and enough courage to throw on a wet blanket before charging in there to save the four younglings, unlike the two men who went before me, barreling in there like enraged bulls, getting serious burns and then needing saving themselves. Somehow I managed to skip the debris, get the younglings and get out before the ceiling came down.

I think that's one of the foremost reasons Innkeeper has kept me around all these years, my clear head in a crisis and the singing of course. I was no tame damsel, I had a red temper, I had moods, I was stubborn, and fierce enough to fight back, even against a lordling. Earning me the most flogging and beating of all the girls to date.

To be honest, the lordling deserved getting his jewels kneed. He was trying to rape a youngling, when I caught him. The only reason the inn is still standing after that and my head not on a pike somewhere was because the Innkeeper paid the lordling lots of gold to save the inn, and gave me "the offender" to the pig to do whatever he liked to for a week. That week was one of the roughest of my life, and after the week, the pig then came back every few days for a month thinking to tame me when the week didn't break me.

Thank the gods he got killed after that month, I didn't think even the healers would be able to fix all the damage he did, even though they did come and try their best, paid with the pig's own coin. While he stood by rubbing his hands over the sword in his breeches, in anticipation to have me whole so he could hurt me again. He took special joy in sheathing his literally jewel bedecked sword hilt in me, ripping my insides to shreds before taking me with the one between his legs covering himself in my blood, while wielding first a riding crop, then later a barbed whip on my body.

Shelly and Cook took care of Ritchie through this, he was only three and would always cry when he heard me getting tortured. It took a lot of time after for the healers to cover all my scars with new skin. Lucky for me, the healer fancied me and took no more payment than my bed after healing sessions. If not for my luck, I would be on the street or dead having lost all value as a tavern wench. Even fully healed now, I still feel the sting like phantoms that won't go away.

Endurance, resilience and a calm head, so what did I know about the Enidin? The Enidin I've always believed were old wives tales or stories mothers made to scare children. Mind you I am not old and I've never really had a mother, but these kinds of stories still get around. They were the stuff of legends and nightmares. The stories are always set in the dark of night, they appear some say from the shadows, some over the hill, some instantly with magic. Then the raid begins. The stories of what happens during the raid is always gory, terrifying and varies from story to story.

But the true terror is after the raid. Some tell of men being dragged off into the night disappearing for months only to come back as the walking dead, some tell of the Enidin taking women during the raid and rescuers finding them naked, raped and torn limb from limb strewn all over the countryside the next morning. Then there are the ones that strike dread in me, the ones where the Enidin, take children and babies from their families, drink their blood and eat them. Worse are the ones where they take these children back to wherever they came from, and the children are never seen or heard of again. I always see Ritchie, I would rather he died instantly then be dragged off in terror, alone to face unknown horrors. All these tales end however with the town, or keep in ruins, with blood, death and destruction all the rescuers find.