Chapter 9: The Fall of Thornhold
The silence that followed the fall of Thornhold was the most terrifying sound of all.
For three days, the clamor of siege had been a constant: the meaty thud of stones against mortar, the shriek of iron on iron, the wet collapse of bodies from the walls. Then, with a final groan that seemed to come from the earth’s core, the inner keep’s gate had splintered. The roar that replaced it was not human. It was the throaty howl of the wolf-women, their matted fur streaked with gore, as they poured through the breach on all fours.
Now, in the central courtyard, there was only the ragged sobbing of the captured, the jangle of chains, and the low, conversational laughter of the victors.
The Amazons moved through the ruin with a chilling, proprietary ease. They were giants, most of them, their muscles sheened with sweat and other people’s blood under leather and bronze. Their platinum hair, identical as forged silver, was braided tightly back from faces of cold, symmetrical beauty. The black runes tattooed across their skin seemed to drink the flat grey light.
The survivors—perhaps two hundred women—had been stripped naked. Farmers with dirt still under their broken nails. Merchants with soft hands now shredded on the rubble. A handful of garrison warriors, their defiance extinguished, kneeling bare-skinned in the mud churned to pink slurry. The air reeked of smoke, shit, and raw iron.
Queen Valka walked the line. Her breath plumed in the chill. Battle-sweat had dried in salty tracks down her neck. She stopped before a young woman, barely more than a girl, whose red hair was a violent shock against her pale, freckled skin. She was trembling so hard her teeth chattered.
Valka smiled. It didn’t reach her ice-blue eyes.
She tangled her fist in the girl’s hair and yanked. A sharp cry was cut short as the girl was dragged forward, sprawling onto her hands and knees in the cold mud. Valka planted a boot between her shoulder blades, pressing her down.
“Open your mouth,” Valka said, her voice conversational.
The girl whimpered, tears cutting clean lines through the grime on her cheeks. She shook her head, a tiny, frantic motion.
Valka’s backhand cracked across her face. The sound was like a wet branch snapping. The girl’s head whipped to the side, a fine spray of blood and saliva arcing into the mud. A gash opened on her lip.
“I said open it.”
This time, the girl’s jaw went slack, her body going limp with a terror that bypassed thought. Valka unbuckled her leather trousers with her free hand. She wore a harness beneath. The phallus was polished obsidian, slick with oil, grotesquely thick and glistening. She gave herself two slow, lazy strokes.
Then she guided the tip to the girl’s bloody lips.
“Suck.”
She didn’t wait for compliance. She shoved forward, burying the length in one brutal, deep thrust. The girl gagged violently, her throat convulsing around the intrusion. Valka gripped her hair like a rein and began to fuck her mouth in earnest, short, punishing strokes that punched the air from the girl’s lungs with wet, choked gurgles.
“See?” Valka called out, not breaking rhythm, her voice carrying over the courtyard. “This is what we take. Your breath. Your voice. Your will. It becomes ours.”
Nearby, an Amazon with iron-grey braids knelt over a dark-haired woman. The captive had the sturdy build of a blacksmith. She was fighting, thrashing silently, her eyes wide with a fury that had not yet been beaten into fear.
The Amazon sighed, as if dealing with a stubborn child. She jammed her thumb into the corner of the woman’s mouth, prying her jaw open. With her other hand, she produced a pair of rusted, iron pliers.
“No! No, please—” the woman managed, the words garbled around the invading thumb.
“Hush now, wife,” the Amazon crooned. “You won’t be needing these where you’re going.”
She clamped the pincers onto a front tooth. There was a terrible, grating crunch, a sound that was more vibration than noise. The woman’s scream was a high, airless shriek, instantly muffled by the blood that flooded her mouth. The Amazon tossed the tooth into the mud like a piece of gristle.
“One,” she counted.
She reached in again. The woman convulsed, gagging on her own blood. The pliers crunched. Another scream, weaker this time.
“Two.”
Laughter rippled through the watching Amazons. It was casual, domestic almost. The sound of shared chores.
In the shadow of a collapsed battlement, another scene unfolded. A wiry warrior woman, a sergeant by the tattered remnants of her tabard, was pinned face-down. An Amazon knelt over her thighs, using her weight to keep her still. The warrior’s back was a lattice of fresh lash marks.
“Please,” the warrior hissed, her voice raw. “Just kill me.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” The Amazon behind her spat onto her fingers, then rubbed the saliva roughly over the warrior’s exposed cunt. “Gotta break you in first. Make you useful.”
She wasn’t wearing a harness. In her hand was a stone-carved phallus, crude and unyielding. She positioned the blunt tip and drove it home.
The warrior arched off the ground, a broken scream tearing from her throat. It was a dry, brutal violation. The Amazon set a relentless pace, each thrust a hollow, wet slap of stone against flesh. The warrior scrabbled in the mud, trying to crawl away, her fingers digging useless trenches.
The Amazon grabbed her hips, nails breaking skin, and dragged her back onto the stone. “Take it, bitch,” she hissed, her breath hot in the warrior’s ear. “Take it, or I’ll take your eyes next.”
Sobs racked the warrior’s body. She went limp, her face pressed into the filth, a sign of submission.
The Amazon laughed, a sound of pure delight. She leaned down, her voice a whisper. “I said or.”
In one swift, terrible motion, she hooked her thumb and forefinger and pressed them deep into the corner of the warrior’s right eye. There was a soft, wet pop. The warrior’s body seized, her scream this time silent, utterly breathless. The Amazon stood up, shaking the viscous fluid from her fingers. The warrior curled into a fetal position, a hand clamped over the ruined socket, a low, continuous animal whine escaping her.
By nightfall, the “breaking in” was complete. The courtyard was a tapestry of quiet suffering. The redheaded girl lay vomiting bile, her throat ravaged. The blacksmith stared vacantly, her mouth a cavern of bloody gaps. The one-eyed warrior had been tied upright to a post, a lesson in plain view.
The survivors who could still walk were collared and chained in a long coffle, their naked skin goosefleshed in the cold. Their breaths formed a collective fog above them. The Amazons moved down the line, checking manacles, shoving a waterskin into trembling hands here, kicking a stumbling woman there.
Queen Veyra emerged from the keep’s gloom to stand beside her sister. She surveyed the human chain with the detached interest of a farmer assessing livestock.
“A good yield,” Veyra said, her voice lower, smoother than Valka’s.
“They’ll soften further on the march east,” Valka replied, wiping her obsidian phallus clean with a rag. “By the time they reach the camps, they’ll beg for the routine.”
Veyra’s gaze swept over the shattered fortress, the broken gates, the scorch marks on the stone. “Thornhold was the linchpin. The news will spread faster than a plague. The kingdoms to the north will shit themselves wondering if they’re next.”
“Let them wonder.” Valka slipped her arm around her twin’s waist, pulling her close. Their matching nipple rings caught the torchlight. “Let them spend their nights listening for our howls. It makes the taking easier.”
A horn sounded, sharp and commanding. The coffle lurched forward, a single, groaning entity. The line of naked women began to move, shuffling through the corpse-littered courtyard toward the breached outer wall and the dark plains beyond. The metallic rhythm of their chains became the new heartbeat of Thornhold, fading slowly into the night as the last of the torches were doused, leaving the fortress to the carrion birds and the echoing shock of its fall.