Berea's Tale

[nonee]

She came to painfully. One eye had been bled into and was watering profusely, mingling tears with blood, rendering her vision somewhat less keen than usual. She winced as she made the attempt to sit upright, finding her arms bound behind her and her head aching in an almighty fashion. She went limp, slumping to the floor once more as a bout of dizziness overtook her.

Eyes clamping shut to stave off the lack of equilibrium, her mind raced over the collection of blurred images she caught in the brief seconds she'd managed to open them.

Torchlight. Unsteady. She thought, jaw clenched in an effort to control the painful swirling sensation in her head. Or perhaps lanterns. Planking. Mist? Blood beneath me. Dark shapes nearby.

Blood beneath her. She took a deep breath, and focused on the sensations slowly returning to her body. Where else was she wounded? Surprised, she flexed each of her limbs without much of a response. Just her head, then. Whose blood was it?

A minute or two of deep breathing helped steady her enough to venture another peek. A lantern was swinging overhead. Cold mist hung in the air of the tiny, cramped space which, given the wet feel of the air and the sounds of surrounding water, must be in the bowels of a sea ship. The dark shapes appeared to be crates and barrels.

A storage cabin, then. What am I doing here?

Berea slumped limply back into repose, flopping first to her stomach and then to her opposite side in an effort to alleviate the discomfort of being unconscious and in one position for gods-know-how-long. She was met with the pasty visage of a beaten, red-haired man.

“Hells!” she gasped, somewhat taken aback. Still in a fog, she squinted her tender eyeballs to focus her sights on the fellow. He looked worse than she felt and was clearly the source of the blood Berea was currently resting in, for his exposed torso sported a nasty, albeit not life-threatening, gash across the ribcage. It has since clotted over, and aside from the blossoming of black bruises he certainly looked as if he would survive. She shifted her leg closer to him, heavily, and gave him a necessarily rude nudge with her foot.

His eyes flew open and he bared his teeth in a feral growl, as though continuing a fight he had long since lost. He was missing a tooth.

“Be still!” Berea hissed, still bleary. “Look at me—I mean you no harm.”

She must have been a sight. Hair tangled and hanging in her face, grimed with blood, she attempted to show him that she was bound just as he was. Apparently, he did look at her…and subsequently stifled his protests.

“You are wounded. It will not do to have you thrashing about,” she said, hoping to sound level-headed and confident despite the absolute befuddlement and anxiety beginning to grip her.

The red-haired man struggled to prop himself up on one elbow. “I know,” he gasped at last, managing to get more or less upright. “And so are you,” he noted.

Berea nodded, slowly, and closed her eyes in relief. She rested her cheek on the cold planking. “I know,” she echoed. “My head is hurting.”

“Then keep it down.” the man shifted against the wall. “I will…watch.” The last word of his sentence went down slightly in tone, as though acknowledging that standing guard would yield nothing useful in their present situation.

“Believe me, I plan on it,” Berea mumbled, suddenly sleepy.

The man shifted once more. “I’m…Eben,” he ventured quietly.

“I am called Berea.” She answered, huddling into a ball against the chill.

“Berea.” He repeated.

“Eben?” she asked, after a minute or two of silence had passed. He responded with a gruff, inquisitive noise.

Berea took a little breath. “How did we get here?”

He swung his gaze to meet hers. He looked at her for the space of a few seconds, blank-faced. Then, finally, he shook his head and answered.

“I…don’t know.”

[nonee]

A persistent dripping of cold water brought her out of unconsciousness. Along with the still-reeling sensation of her cracked skull, which prompted painful tingles all the way up to the tips of her pointed ears, the pit of her stomach now seemed in a state of revolt.

“I hadn’t broke my fast yet,” Berea murmured.

Her new companion made no reply.

“I think I’m beginning to remember some things,” she ventured again, quietly.

“And I,” Eben said, dull-voiced.

She drew in a few bracing breaths and sat up as rapidly as she could, lest she lose momentum halfway up. It was a mistake. She gasped, leaning against the bulkhead, and promptly threw up to one side.

“Sorry,” she managed weakly.

Eben, blessedly, ignored the baseness of her nausea. “You…were saying you remembered some things.”

Berea nodded, gingerly. “I remember I was keeping vigil on the forest edge. I was unaccompanied. I remember…Northmen.” Her voice caught. Several other memories of a more uncomfortable nature—groping hands, rough words, being held down—seemed to bubble to the surface and she pushed them down. Quietly.

It seemed the brief lapse of nonchalance in her tone caught Eben’s ear. He regarded her without much reaction, though she could have sworn a trace of sympathetic horror showed in his gaze.

Awkward silence passed.

“I remember Northmen as well,” he ventured carefully. “I have heard that they comb the coasts, taking slaves—easy pickings.” He spat the last sentiment out bitterly.

Berea jerked her chin at him, indicating his wounds, and winced. “Not so. It appears you put up quite a fight.”

“I remember I was outnumbered,” he confessed. “I was fishing at the shoreline when they came upon me.”

Another long silence passed. Berea’s stomach heaved periodically, but she managed to keep her bile down. She was concentrating on breathing steadily when the door banged open. She flinched and squinted against the brighter light outside the cabin. One of their captors was bringing in a third unfortunate new slave, bound and limp. He tossed what appeared to be a slight, ragged young man down on the planks at Berea and Eben’s feet, each respectively helpless and stoic.

The Northman was large, as was characteristic for his kind. His eyes were icy blue, his hair bound in two tails and glinting a stark white-blond. His teeth showed briefly in his beard, sighting Berea.

“The captain wants a moment o’ your time, lassie,” the Northman smirked. “Heard some good things from the rest o’ us.”

Eben made a dangerous, if somewhat impotent noise next to her.

Her eyes narrowed, a braver front than she felt making itself apparent in her response. “Please tell the captain that I’m quite unavailable at the moment. And to kindly walk his own plank.” She braced herself against the wall, unwilling to depart the cabin easily.

The Northman, in no mood for flippant bravado, simply took three strides toward her and hauled her up by the arms. His grip was steely and his breath somewhat the worse for drink. Face to face with the man, her nose barely reached the height of his sternum.

“It wasn’t a request, ye mouthy wee bint,” he said, in an apathetically amiable tone. “So ye’ll come along without a fuss, aye?”

She put a knee in his groin with all the force she could muster, which was nowhere near enough. The impact made her head and stomach lurch in tandem. Somewhere in her reeling awareness, she thought Eben made a move of his own to her defense, being met with a swift kick from their captor.

The Northman laughed and carted her out, slamming the door again on the lifeless youth and Berea’s defender. Her world went black.

[nonee]

She roused gently. There was warmth and light, and the smells of food. She was aware that her arms were free, and that she reclined upon a feather mattress. Her hands and feet were clean. Her hair was damp, as if freshly washed. Her head only throbbed a little. She had been dispossessed of her torn and muddy leathers, and was clothed instead in a simple garment of pale yellow. It was laced up the front and was full-skirted, but it was in fact very comfortable. She couldn’t help reveling in the new sensations, and thought perhaps…perhaps the storage cabin and the bloodied Eben and the cold and the injury…perhaps it was all a terribly bad dream.

“You’ve been all but fed,” a thin voice said, yanking Berea out of her soporific half-consciousness. She sat up. She looked around. A young woman was seated in the corner. She was clearly of Northman descent, but no more than a seemingly downtrodden servant.

“I was to clean you up, see?” She held up a brush. “And dress you presentably.”

Berea regarded the woman, unsettled. The woman did not meet her eye. “And—err—to cleanse my wound as well?” She indicated her head briefly with the touch of a finger in illustration.

“Eat, so I can leave you be,” the woman said. She bunched up her ragged apron in her hands.

The elf remembered all too well her bout of nausea and could not decide if she could—or wanted to—hold down the food of her captors.

“I do not need it.” Berea sat upright on the bed, tucking her legs up to her chest. “Please go.”

The woman obliged. Berea was left on her own. Nervously, she combed her fingers through her wheat-blond hair. Her first thought in the wake of her erstwhile companion’s exodus was ludicrous in light of what was surely about to befall her.

Eben must be worried.

She buried her face in her knees. It was easier to focus on the concern she had for the man taken slave alongside her that for her own well-being. She had perhaps been foolish to go so far away from her home in the Vale to accomplish her first Vigil. She has not taken a fellow initiate, nor yet requested a fully ascended Druid to accompany her. Perhaps she deserved this fate as penance for her folly.

The door swung open suddenly.

Berea jerked her head up. The Northman captain strode in, shedding his outer garment and helm. He appraised her with an appreciative smirk, but made no move toward her. He sat instead in a large chair covered in furs, one leg propped over the chair’s arm, boot swinging.

She kept her gaze as bold as she could manage. “Your hospitality is lacking,” she said, frosty.

The big Northman, bigger than the one that dragged her from the makeshift brig, laughed. Robustly.

“Och, the spunk o’ ye. It’s that wee bit misguided, I’ll have ye know.” He leisurely unbuttoned his shirt and kicked off his boots.

Berea turned her gaze away from him, finding the man irksome. Then, making up her mind that she was not, indeed, in the mood for dragging things out, turned back to him. “If you’re going to be about your business with me, be about it. I’ll not be willing, but I’d rather get it over and done with. Aye?” She mimicked his thick dialect.

He laughed again. “Och, lassie. Don’t be crass. I’ll not be taking ye for my own mischief. I’ll not debase myself in such a manner.” His tone was lofty as his gaze lingered over her pointed ears.

“Your kind don’t seem overly sensitive to the notion of taking a woman—any woman—against her will. How should I think you would be different than your men?” She asked severely.

“Keep a civil tongue, Elf-woman. I’ll no have you demeaning my race.” His air of levity melted away. “And you’ll maintain a civil tongue henceforward.”

“I will?” She countered, flattening her legs to sit more upright, her posture a challenge.

The captain crossed the space between them in an instant, pinning her down at full length upon the mattress and holding her there with a fist in her hair.

“Ye will,” he growled. “I may not have any interest in your scrawny arse, but there are a score of sailors on this vessel that would be more than willing, should I toss you into the crew quarters.”

Berea swallowed, and gave an almost imperceptible nod.

“And ye’ll do the things I ask of ye, upon pain of the same punishment,” he said further, his tone a demand.

“What other things can I possibly do for you?” She managed, eyes beginning to water.

“What other things can I do for ye captain?” He smirked.

“Captain,” she whispered.

He pulled something out of his shirt pocket and dangled it in front of her face. It was an oak leaf carved of polished horn, strung on a now-broken chain of ironwood links. Moreover, it was her oak leaf.

“My men took this from ye, aye? I know ye to be what you are…druid. So you’ll do as I tell ye. And ye’ll show proper gratitude for the food, and the clothes, and the mending of your inferior head.”

Berea made not move to speak, until he raised a hand to her. She spoke quickly, then, to stave off the threatened blow.

“Th-thank you. Captain,” she murmured.

He released Berea, rising and flinging her simple necklace back at her. “Ye’ll need your…magic talisman for what I need of you, nature-witch. Come morning ye’ll see what it is that’s required of you.”

In an instant, his sardonic smile returned. “Ye’ll stay in here tonight, unmolested until you prove to be worthless, aye? Rest yourself well. Ye’ll have need of the rest tomorrow.” He passed through the door of the cabin, and Berea heard a heavy plank thud down into place, barring any notion of exit. Numbly, she crawled beneath the covers and simply, and for many hours, shook.