Page 4

A loud bang, like an open door slamming against the wall during a terrible thunderstorm, shocked the entire house.

With a sharp gasp, Lindi sat up, her eyes flying open. Darkness greeted her, the night late and the moon hidden behind the wooden slats covering her windows. The silence that should have shrouded the heaviness of night was replaced with scuffling and loud, thumping boots.

Rather than Lindi thinking of the sudden bang as nothing but an accident and peacefully going back to sleep, her heart stuttered and then squeezed.

Someone is in the house.

She twisted, reached onto her bedside table, and fumbled for her tinder box so she could light her candle.

She bit back her squeal at another bang, this time deeper within her family home, just as she struck her flint against her fire steel.

A gust of wind coming from underneath the crack of her door made the spark against the tinder roll away.

She immediately gave up at the masculine yell bursting down the hallway and hopped out of bed to open the wooden blinds.

Squinting her eyes against the oppressive shadows, Lindi used what little residual light managed to glow from the moon beyond her window.

At the bitter-cold nip of autumn’s air through her thin white nightgown, the frills around her neck offering no warmth, she hurried to retrieve her winter jacket and donned it with haste.

Her toes knocked against her slippers, and just as she sightlessly put them on, her simple bedroom was illuminated by orange light coming through the cracks around her door.

The light should have been welcoming, but it was too bright to be a lit candle or lantern.

A scream pierced the momentary quiet – her mother’s – just as Lindi’s door was thrown open.

This time, Lindi screamed when a man she’d never seen before shoved his way into her room, bearing a crude torch, the rag on it reeking of flammable resin.

It made his shaven, lightly tanned features gleam with determination.

The metal buckles strapping his leather armour to his torso, and the hilt of his short sword sheathed at his waist, glinted in that orange light.

His bushy, pale-blonde brows narrowed on her the moment he saw her.

She took in no other details of him when he dived forward to capture her with his large right hand.

Instead, another scream locked in her throat as she spun around, hiked up her floor-length nightgown, and crawled across her frameless bed.

Her sheets twisted around her left ankle when she stood on solid ground, but her stumbling managed to save her from the strange, aggressive man when he dived for her a second time.

“Leave me alone!” she shouted, ducking under his meaty arms to get behind him and closer to the door. “Take what you want!”

It’s not like they had anything truly of value!

Sure, her father may have a few coins, but they were simple farmers.

The nicest things they owned were perhaps one evening outfit each, and some worthless but sentimental trinkets.

The only things of value they owned were their food and their farming tools, which this man didn’t need to pillage the inside of their home to steal.

Managing to get away from him, her body slammed against the opposing wall when she ran from her room.

She headed down the hallway, fleeing towards her parents’ room and the exit beyond – since both were in the same direction.

She didn’t know where all the light was coming from, but she hoped it was her mother and father with their brass candle stands.

When she turned the corner, one of her brown slippers almost came off her feet as she ran face-first into a living wall of muscle. She grunted in surprise, just as a set of hands grabbed her biceps and stopped her from falling onto her arse.

She barely had the chance to take in his tanned, beard-covered face before a grin filled his hard features and he crouched. Shrieking and kicking her legs, Lindi bashed on his firm back when he threw her over his shoulder and carted her down the hallway.

Her heart sprinted so hard she could feel it in her gut pressing against his hard shoulder, which shoved into her painfully, making her legs tingle with oncoming numbness. Her lungs were so seized with fear she was close to choking on her laboured breaths.

“Let me go!” she shouted, reaching back to yank on his long black ponytail. No amount of pulling, punching, or kicking stopped the ugly brute.

“Papa!” she yelled, her voice twisting into a high pitch when she was carried past the threshold of their bedroom door. Her eyes widened with horror when saw her parents held at knife point by a third man wielding another torch.

“Lindiwe!” he called, reaching for her as he bolted forward, only to trip back when the armoured man stabbed his blade towards him.

“Stay back!” He cut his dagger sideways through the air. “I’m fuckin’ warnin’ ya.”

Her mother’s cries and yells could be heard, but Lindi couldn’t decipher anything more than her name being called.

God, please save me! Lindi’s mind prayed as she pushed up on the man’s back to alleviate the ache her gut from being carted around like a sack.

Just as they reached the small living area of her home, the first man she encountered lit up the space further when he cut past them. He opened the front door, and her struggles grew fiercer.

She reached back to sink her nails into the neck of the man carrying her, wishing they were deep enough to kill.

“What do you want?” she asked, frantically peering into the night when the cool air of outside prickled her skin. It was crisp and harsh with the autumn season steadily approaching its midway point, and her jacket and thin nightgown offered little warmth. “Where are you taking me?”

Other than the dewy mud squelching beneath his big boots, her sharp breaths, and the crackle of fire, there were no other sounds.

She was given no answer as she was taken further away from her home.

Right before they reached the fence line that separated their yard from their crops, Lindi slipped down his body and was placed on her feet.

Without a second thought, she took a single step to the side to sprint away before her wrist was grabbed. Wide-eyed and gasping for air against the terror lining her bloodstream, she slapped at him and fought as he tied her wrists together.

Her sounds of protest went quiet when she knew that no one, other than her parents, would be able to hear her.

Their farm, although nestled up against another family’s farm, was too far for the sound to carry.

Other than the sounds of her scuffling to free herself, and the grind of his leather armour, all was quiet.

A bat squeaked above, and a horse that didn’t belong to them let out a loud white plume of hot breath when it snorted, but there was little else.

She was alone. She was helpless, and no one was going to save her.

It was then that tears filled her eyes and quickly spilled over.

She was too afraid to do little more than tremble in case they turned violent.

Currently they were just binding her wrists.

She hated that she could hardly see what the man doing it looked like with the waning moon barely peaking past the treetops.

The other man with the torch had stepped around the three waiting horses and appeared to be checking their gear.

Their packs were full of some of their crops, like they’d already gone through their farm.

“W-why are you doing this?” she whispered this time, her eyes searching for an escape, a weapon, just a way to avoid this.

He paused when she winced due to him yanking the rope in two different directions, the coarseness of it abrading her soft skin. His pink lips disappeared behind his full beard, as if he thinned them in thought, before they revealed themselves once more.

“Nothing personal, lass,” he grated. “We won’t harm you along the way, that’s all you need to know.”

That didn’t make her feel better whatsoever!

A sickening pool spread in her gut and her knees shook.

She didn’t think she’d ever been so frightened in all her life.

Not even finding her mother’s unconscious body halfway up the hill as she returned from the town’s well in the middle of summer could best this, and that had been a hard day for both her and her father.

Tied up with nothing else but her nightgown, jacket, and brown slippers on, she felt... defenceless. How was she supposed to fight against two armed men? The one holding the torch seemed to have crazed eyes, the colour of them a piercing, cruel blue.

Her gaze kept slipping to the front door of her home, and she desperately wished her father would come out to save her. Her heart nearly leapt with hope when it opened, only for it to clench tightly when the last man exited through the doorway.

Okay, so three armed men, two of which wore leather armour.

“Should we burn it?” he asked, lifting the flames of his light source towards the hay roofing above their porch.

“Don’t be a cunt, Mathews,” the one who bound her wrists spat out. “Leave them be. They’ve got enough problems to worry about.”

He eyed Lindi, meaning her , before he shook his head and turned away.

“Oh, shut your facehole, Gregory,” he tossed back as he sauntered down the pathway. “Ya don’t get ta play righteous when yer out ’ere stealing women.”

The heat in Lindi’s chest, neck, and face sapped away at their words.

They’ve done this before. Oh god, she was what they were after all along!

Her breaths turned rapid when they stopped paying her any notice, her eyes darting one way and then the other... before she bolted. Gregory must have thought she was completely surrendering since he turned his stupid back on her.

I refuse to be taken! She sprinted with her bound wrists pressed against her chest, pressing down on her ample breasts so she could run freely.