Chapter 6: Beaten
The door to Caius’s chambers was heavier than hers, polished oak banded with iron. Astrid didn’t knock. She hit it with her shoulder, the impact jarring up her bruised side, and stumbled inside.
He was standing by a low-burning hearth, shrugging out of his formal jacket. He turned, startled, one arm still in a sleeve. His face shifted from surprise to sharp concern in a heartbeat. She was breathing like she’d run across the whole kingdom, her wedding gown torn at the hem, her hands smeared with dark, wet filth.
“What—?”
“Leif is dead on my balcony,” she said, the words tumbling out flat and fast. “He came from the Blackwood. He said ‘they’re coming.’ Men. Not beasts. Armored in shadows. They’ve hollowed out the Pass. They’re moving now.”
Caius froze, the jacket hanging from his one arm. All the casual grace left him. He looked younger, sharper. “Your father knew.”
“Yes.” The word was a crack in her voice.
He moved then, swift and decisive, crossing to a cabinet and pulling out a long, lean sword in a practical scabbard. He tossed a second, shorter blade to her. She caught it on instinct, the leather-wrapped hilt familiar and right in her palm. It was a fighting knife, not a jeweled dagger. He’d been prepared.
“The warning came too late for a full muster,” he said, buckling the sword belt over his shirt. “But the outer gate holds. The watch is posted.”
As if summoned by his words, the first scream tore through the night.
It wasn’t a battle cry. It was a shriek of pure, animal terror, cut abruptly short. It came from within the walls.
Caius’s eyes met hers, a mirror of her own dawning horror. “They’re not at the gate. They’re inside.”
Chaosis a soft word for what followed. It was a breakdown of reality.
The screams multiplied, converging into a dissonant choir from the lower courtyards and the barracks side. Alarm bells began a ragged, clanging pulse. Running feet pounded the corridors, some heading toward the fight, some fleeing.
Astrid ripped away the heavy, embroidered over-skirt of her gown, leaving herself in the tougher linen underskirt and bodice. She kept the knife low.
“Your mother,” she snapped.
“Guarded. Protocol.” Caius’s voice was tight. “We need to get to the armory. Rally a counter-push.”
They burst into the corridor. A servant sprinted past, eyes wide with blind panic. Smoke, acrid and strange—smelling of wet rot and burnt hair—began to curl along the ceiling.
They ran toward the central stair, the route to the main yard. The sounds of combat were clearer now: not the organized clash of shield-walls, but the chaotic, ugly sounds of butchery—thuds, wet tears, gurgles, and a low, buzzing war chant that vibrated in the teeth.
At the top of the grand staircase, they saw it.
The main hall below was a slaughterhouse. Figures moved through the smoke. They were men, shaped like men, but the armor was wrong. It seemed to drink the torchlight, not reflect it, all matte black and strange, organic curves. Their faces were hidden behind smooth, expressionless helms. They moved with a terrible, synchronized precision, cutting down guards who stumbled half-dressed from their quarters.
One looked up.
The helm had no eye-slits. Just a smooth, dark surface.
It pointed a blade, dripping and black, toward them. A guttural command echoed. Three broke from the fray and began moving up the stairs, not running, but climbing with a relentless, steady pace.
“Back,” Caius hissed, pulling her away from the railing.
They retreated down a servant’s passage, narrow and dark. The sounds of pursuit were a steady, rhythmic thump of boots on stone behind them. The passage ended in a junction. Left toward the family wing. Right toward the kitchens and postern gates.
“Split up,” Astrid said, her mind icily clear. “Draw them apart. Meet at the old grain-store by the east wall. You know it?”
“From your maps,” he said, a grim affirmation. He glanced at her, his face pale but set. “Don’t be a hero.”
“Don’t be a fool,” she threw back, and went left.
She heard the steps follow her. All of them. They’d chosen the greater threat.
She ran, her breath burning. The family wing was eerily quiet, a tomb of silk and portraits. Her side screamed in protest. A door loomed—her old guest chamber. She ducked inside, slamming the door and throwing the bar.
It wouldn’t hold.
She turned, scanning for anything. A fireplace poker. A chair. The window was a sheer drop to a lower roof. Maybe.
The door exploded inward, splinters flying. Not broken. It was as if the wood had simply… decomposed. The three figures filled the doorway.
Astrid raised her knife. They didn’t rush. They fanned out, trapping her against the window.
She attacked the one nearest the window, feinting high, going low to hamstring. Her blade skidded off the black greave with a shrill shriek, barely scratching it. A backhanded swing from another caught her across the temple. Lights burst behind her eyes. She staggered.
A fist drove into her wounded side. White-hot agony sheeted through her, dropping her to her knees. The air left her lungs in a choked gasp. She swung blindly. A hand caught her wrist, the grip like stone, and twisted. Bones grated. The knife clattered to the floor.
A blow to the back of her head. The world tunneled into blurry shapes and muffled sound. She was hauled upright.
The smooth, eyeless face of the leader leaned close. He didn’t speak. He just… observed. She smelled cold metal and damp earth.
He drove his fist into her gut again. She folded, vomiting onto the rushes. They dragged her out.
She drifted in and out, a sack of pain being bounced down stairs. She heard more fighting, but distant. She saw Caius once, across the main courtyard. He was on the ground, struggling with two attackers, his sword gone. Their eyes met for a fractured second—his wide with a fury and horror she’d never seen—before a helm blocked her view, and a cloth reeking of sickly-sweet herbs was pressed over her nose and mouth.
The world dissolved into black, liquid silence.
Consciousness returned in aching, disjointed pieces. The smell came first: stagnant water, mold, the pungent odor of unwashed bodies and old blood. Cold stone beneath her cheek. Her head pounded, a steady, vicious drumbeat. Every breath sent a sharp complaint from her ribs.
She was in a cell. Rough-hewn rock. A single, sputtering torch cast long, leaping shadows from a sconce outside the iron bars. She tried to move. Her wrists were bound behind her with coarse rope, the fibers biting into her skin. Ankles, too.
A shape shifted in the corner.
“Awake, are you?” The voice was coarse, heavily accented, but intelligible. A man unfolded himself from the shadows. He wasn’t one of the black-armored ones. This man wore patched leathers and furs, his face a roadmap of scars and dirt. He looked… normal. Human. Bored. “Was starting to think they’d hit you too hard.”
“Where?” The word was a croak from her dry throat.
“Where do you think?” He shrugged, walking closer. He kicked her foot, not hard, but a casual assessment. “The Point. Deep Wood’s belly. Home.”
The Blackwood. They’d taken her through the Pass.
Another man appeared at the bars, younger, with a nervous tic in his jaw. “He wants her cleaned up. Presentable.”
The scarred man sighed, as if this was a tedious chore. He hauled her up by her arm. Her vision swam. He dragged her out of the cell, down a short tunnel to another room. It held a wooden tub of icy water.
“In,” he said.
She stood, swaying. “My hands.”
“You think I’m stupid?” He shoved her. She stumbled, falling to her knees beside the tub. The younger one came in, averting his eyes as the first man produced a knife. He didn’t cut her bonds. He grabbed the neck of her linen undershift and sliced down the front, the fabric parting easily. The cool air hit her skin. She flinched, but didn’t make a sound. The remains of the dress were pulled off her, the hidden seam with its empty sheath a mockery.
Naked, bound, she was manhandled into the tub. The water was a shock, freezing, wrenching a gasp from her. They used harsh lye soap and rough cloths, scrubbing at her skin like she was a piece of dirty equipment. There was no leering, no vulgar commentary. It was chillingly impersonal. They were preparing an object.
When they hauled her out, shivering violently, they didn’t give her clothes. They threw a thin, scratchy blanket around her shoulders and dragged her, dripping, back to a different cell. This one had a pallet of moldy straw and a bucket.
The scarred man prodded her onto the straw. “He’ll come for you soon. Don’t fight. It’s worse if you fight.”
The door clanged shut. The blanket fell away. She pulled it around herself with bound hands, her teeth chattering. Presentable for what?
She didn’t have to wait long.
Two of the black-armored guards entered. Their silent presence was more terrifying than the scarred man’s brutality. They lifted her by her arms and marched her out, through winding tunnels cut from living rock. The air grew slightly warmer, drier. They stopped before a heavy hide curtain.
One guard pulled it aside.
The chamber beyond was large, lit by fitful firelight. Furs covered the floor. Rough-hewn benches held a score of men—the ones in leather and fur, the "normal" ones. They were eating, drinking from horns, talking in low tones. They fell silent as she was brought in.
At the room's head, on a chair made of lashed-together antlers, sat a man.
He was tall, wearing a hybrid of the black, organic armor over his chest and furs on his limbs. His helm was off, held loosely in one hand. His face was long, pale, hair white and shorn close to his scalp. His eyes were the color of a winter sky, devoid of warmth. He looked at her with the detached interest of a scholar examining a rare insect.
“Lady of Eldoria,” he said. His voice was soft, mellifluous, utterly at odds with his appearance and the room. “Welcome. I am Varigon.”
She said nothing. She stood, knees trembling from cold and exhaustion, and held his gaze.
“My vanguard tells me you have spirit. That you fought.” He took a sip from a cup. “Spirit is a resource. It can be broken down and remade. It can fuel other things.”
One of the men at a bench grunted, a low, hungry sound. Varigon’s pale eyes flickered to him, then back to Astrid.
“You represent the union he feared,” Varigon continued. “The alliance he tried to forge to box us in. It is… poetic, that you are our first prize.” He set his cup down. “Your spirit will be a lesson. To your new husband. To the icy bitch who rules Eldoria. To your bone-breaking kin in the north. You will be the proof that their walls are dust, and their power is a child’s fantasy.”
He nodded to the guards. “Begin.”
The first man off the bench was the one who had grunted. He had a boar’s face—small, mean eyes, a broad, flat nose. He stank of cheap alcohol and sweat. He grabbed her by the hair, pulling her away from the guards.
The blanket was ripped away.
Time stopped being linear. It became a series of snapshots, etched in pain and humiliation and the copper taste of blood in her mouth.
The coarse scrape of the furs against her back. The overwhelming weight pinning her. Bruising hands. Jagged pain that tore through her, a violation so profound it felt like her soul was being cracked open. His hot, grunting breath in her ear.
She didn’t scream. She locked her jaw until her teeth ached. She stared at the rock ceiling, at the shadows dancing from the fire. She went somewhere else. She was on a wind-whipped cliff in Nordane, the salt spray on her face. She was driving a practice sword into a post, the impact shivering up her arms.
He finished, shoved off her with a muttered curse, and went back to his drink.
Another took his place.
And another.
They were not all rough. Some were almost methodical. Some whispered cruel, pointless things. Some said nothing at all. It was the indifference that was the coldest knife. She was terrain to be crossed. A message to be delivered. A resource to be spent.
The pain localized, then diffused into a deep, constant throbbing ache. A raw, internal burning. The cold returned, seeping into her bones from the floor.
At some point, they were done. Varigon, who had watched it all with that same detached interest, finally spoke. “Take it back to its cell.”
The guards lifted her. She couldn’t stand. Her legs wouldn’t hold. They dragged her, her feet trailing through the rushes. The cold of the tunnel was a blessing. The darkness of the cell was a sanctuary.
They dumped her on the straw. The door shut. The lock engaged.
She lay where she fell, curled on her side. Shivers wracked her, violent and uncontrollable. The ache was everywhere, inside and out. Her mind was a silent, white blank. There were no words. No tears. Just shock, vast and hollow.
Later—hours, maybe minutes—she heard a soft scrape. A small, wooden bowl of lukewarm gruel was pushed through a slot at the bottom of the door, along with a clay cup of water.
She stared at it. The smell of the gruel made her stomach twist. But a deeper instinct, the one that had kept her ancestors alive in the frozen wastes, stirred. Slowly, every movement agony, she pushed herself up. She crawled to the bowl. She couldn’t hold it with her bound hands. She lowered her face to it and ate like an animal, lapping at the bland paste. She drank the water the same way, some spilling down her chin.
She needed the strength. She didn’t know what for. But to die here, like this, was not an option. It was the one thing they would not get from her.
Thus began the rhythm of hell.
There were no days. Only the intervals between visits to Varigon’s hall. Sometimes once, sometimes twice. The cast of men varied. Some repeated. The boar-faced man was a regular. He liked to hurt her in other ways first, small cruelties—pinching, twisting, bites that broke the skin.
She never cried out. She always fought, a silent, desperate writhing that never worked but never stopped. It was a point of insane, stubborn pride. You will not have my voice.
They washed her occasionally. Fed her gruel. Left her in the dark.
She began to map her cell by touch in the blackness. The texture of the stones. The draft from a crack near the floor. She recited every trail in Nordane, every name of every horse she’d ever ridden, every line of the sagas her father had taught her. The words were crumbling stones in her mind, but she stacked them, one by one, a wall against the nothingness.
Her body became a foreign land. A landscape of bruises in varying stages of decay—purple, yellow, green. Stiff joints. A ragged cough from a lingering chill in her lungs. The raw, internal wound that never healed. She felt herself retreating, a small, cold spark deep inside a shell of meat and pain.
She heard things, sometimes. Arguments from the tunnels. The word “Eldoria” once, sharp with alarm. Scuffles. Were they under attack? She didn’t dare hope. Hope was a luxury that had been torn out of her.
One “session” was worse. Varigon was angry. Something had gone wrong on a raid. He made them watch as he took her himself. He was cold, precise, and his whispered words were worse than the grunts of the others. “You are the seed of their failure. You will rot in the dark, and they will know it.” When he finished, he backhanded her across the face, splitting her lip anew. “Nothing,” he hissed.
That night, back in her cell, she felt the spark gutter. For the first time, she pictured just… not eating the gruel. Letting the cold take her. The silence was so complete.
Then, she thought of Caius’s face in the courtyard. The fury. Not pity. Fury. She thought of the maps they’d studied. The location of this place. The Blackwood’s trails. He knew them now. As well as she did.
What if he was coming?
It was a stupid, fragile thought. But it was a stone. She added it to her wall.
She ate the gruel.
Time passed. The beatings became more routine. Her resistance grew more mechanical. She was a doll being broken, over and over.
Until the night the screaming started.
It wasn’t the usual sounds of the camp. This was close. Panicked shouts. The distinct, metallic clash of steel on steel—not the dull thud of their black weapons, but the bright ring of castle-forged steel. A roar that sounded like Ölaf. A war cry from home.
Her heart, a numb, sluggish thing, gave a single, hard thump.
She hauled herself to the cell door, pressing her face to the cold bars. Shadows and torchlight flickered wildly down the tunnel. Running feet. A man in furs sprinted past her cell, his eyes wild, an arrow protruding from his back. He fell, skidding, and didn’t move.
Chaos. Real chaos.
The hide curtain to
Real chaos.
The hide curtain to Varigon’s hall tore open, and a figure stumbled through, backpedaling. It was the boar-faced man. His expression was pure panic, not cruelty. An arrow shaft vibrated from his shoulder. He took two more steps and collapsed, choking.
Caius stepped through the curtain after him.
He looked like a ghost from a different world. His fine clothes were gone, replaced by practical, travel-stained leathers and a boiled-steel breastplate dyed matte black. His face was smeared with dirt and something darker, and a fresh cut bled freely above his eyebrow. In his hand was a notched sword, dripping. His eyes scanned the room, frenetic, predatory.
They found her.
For a heartbeat, his gaze held nothing. No charm, no amusement, no calculated diplomacy. It was a raw, primal recognition that shifted instantly into something like physical revulsion at what he saw.
Astrid tried to stand. Her legs folded. She clung to the bars.
Two more figures burst in behind Caius. Ölaf, his beard matted with blood, a giant axe in hand, and Gunnar, a Nordane bow drawn, an arrow nocked and searching for targets. Their faces, when they saw her, hardened into masks of murderous intent.
“Clear!” Gunnar barked, his arrow pointing at the tunnel they’d come from.
Caius was already moving toward her cell. He didn’t run. His movements were efficient, lethal. He reached the door, saw the simple iron lock, and raised his sword.
“Don’t!” Her voice was a rusted hinge, unused for weeks. He froze. “Noise.”
He nodded, sheathing the sword and pulling a set of narrow, metal tools from his belt. He set to work on the lock, his hands steady, his shoulders blocking her view of the room. “Ölaf, watch that tunnel. Gunnar, cover the hall.”
“They’re falling back to the choke-point,” Ölaf grunted. “But not for long.”
The lock clicked. Caius swung the door open. He knelt in front of her, his eyes finally meeting hers fully. Up close, she saw the fatigue, the strain, the fury held under a thin layer of control. He didn’t reach for her. “Can you walk?”
She shook her head, a tiny movement. Speaking was too hard.
“Okay.” He shrugged out of his thick, wool-lined cloak. He didn’t wrap it around her. He simply held it open, an offering. “Arms. If you can.”
She unfolded one arm from the bars, her movements stiff and pained. He draped the cloak around her shoulders. The weight of it was immense. The residual warmth from his body was a shock against her skin. He gently guided her arms through the sleeves. The fabric smelled of pine, horses, and cold air—the smell of the world outside this hole.
He moved then, sliding one arm under her knees, the other behind her shoulders. He lifted her as if she weighed nothing. She was a bundle of sticks and rags. She couldn’t stop a sharp gasp of pain as her bruises were compressed.
“I know,” he murmured, his voice stripped bare. “I’m sorry.”
He turned, cradling her against his chest. His heartbeat was a frantic drum against her ear. “Gunnar, lead. Ölaf, rear. We go back the way we came, fast and quiet. The main force is drawing their front.”
“The Scion? Varigon?” Gunnar asked, already moving to the curtain.
“Not here. A blessing. Move.”
They plunged into the tunnel. The sporadic torchlight made the shadows leap. Bodies littered the ground—men in furs, one of the black-armored guards face-down in a pool of something too dark to be blood. Caius navigated around them without looking down, his focus entirely on the path ahead and the weight in his arms.
Shouts echoed from intersecting passages. A man lurched out from a side arch, raising a cudgel. Before Caius could react, an arrow sprouted from the man’s throat. He gurgled and fell.
“Clear,” Gunnar called from ahead, already nocking another arrow.
They moved faster. Astrid listened to Caius’s ragged breathing, felt the bunch and release of his muscles as he ran. He never stumbled. His grip on her never loosened.
They burst out of the tunnel mouth into a scene of controlled bedlam. They were in a wider cavern, the ceiling lost in gloom. A dozen of Caius’s men—a mix of Eldorian guards in mismatched armor and hard-faced Nordane hunters—held a defensive line at the cavern’s far entrance. Beyond them, torchlight and the sounds of fierce fighting reverberated.
A young Eldorian lieutenant with a bloody bandage on his arm spotted them. “Sire! We cannot hold this convergence much longer. Their shadows shift… they’re flanking through the rock somehow.”
“Fall back by squads,” Caius ordered, his voice carrying a new, grating authority. “Staggered retreat to the stag-line. Now.”
He didn’t wait to see it done. He angled toward a narrower crack in the cavern wall, one that seemed to lead upward. “This way. It’s tighter, but it comes out behind their lines.”
Ölaf and Gunnar fell in behind him as the ordered chaos of the disengagement began. The crack was a cold, damp chimney. Caius had to turn sideways, holding Astrid tight to his chest as he shuffled upward. Stone scraped against his breastplate. Her blanket-cloak snagged on a protruding rock.
After an eternity of climbing, cold air whistled down to them. They emerged onto a rocky ledge overlooking the enemy camp. Below, in a hollow, were the hide tents and smoking firepits of Varigon’s people. Beyond, the dense, oppressive wall of the Blackwood loomed.
The sounds of battle were muffled here, coming from the cavern mouths below and to the left.
“Rope,” Caius said.
Gunnar produced a coiled line from his pack, securing it around a sturdy, ancient tree root. He went down first, bow ready. Ölaf followed. Caius shifted Astrid, securing her against him with one arm, and began to lower them down with the other, his boots braced against the rock face. The descent was a terrifying lurch, but his control was absolute.
They hit the forest floor. Two horses and several riderless mounts were tethered there, guarded by another Nordane man who nodded grimly.
Caius went straight to the largest horse, a sturdy black gelding. “Can you hold on?” he asked her.
She managed a nod. He mounted first, then, with Gunnar’s help, lifted her up to sit in front of him. He wrapped one arm firmly around her waist, pulling her back against him. The other hand took the reins.
“Ride hard and quiet,” he said to the others. “Don’t stop for anything. The rendezvous is the stone river fork.”
He kicked the horse into a gallop. The forest swallowed them.
The ride was a bone-jarning nightmare. Each hoofbeat sent shockwaves through her. She focused on the heat of his arm across her middle, the solid wall of his chest at her back. She didn’t look at the trees. She closed her eyes, but that was worse. The darkness there was too familiar.
After what felt like hours, the character of the forest changed. The gnarled, grasping trees began to thin. A pale, pre-dawn light filtered through, revealing a landscape of tumbled, grey boulders like a frozen river. The stone river.
Caius slowed the horse to a walk, then a stop by a large, split rock. He didn’t let go of her. He just sat, listening, his body tense. One by one, the other riders filtered in. Ölaf. Gunnar. The lieutenant. Four others. Of the twenty who had ridden in, eight had made it back to the horses.
No one spoke. The only sounds were the puffing of the lathered horses and the distant, fading cries of crows.
Caius finally shifted, looking down at the top of her head. His voice, when he spoke, was low, meant only for her. “We have to keep moving. We’re not safe until we’re through the Pass.”
She nodded again, her face pressed against the damp wool of his tunic.
He squeezed her gently, a gesture that held no ease, only a promise of steadiness. Then he clicked to the horse, and they began to pick their way through the stones, leaving the deep, breathing dark of the Blackwood behind. The light ahead was weak and grey, but it was light. For the first time in an eternity, it was light.