Sophie ran in carrying long strips of cloth. Together, she and Beth wrapped them tightly around Natasha’s torso. Blood seeped through every layer, but its spread eventually slowed. Beth sighed, glad that the mad scramble was finally over. Maybe Natasha would still have a fighting chance.
Suddenly, there were strange voices outside. Beth and Sophie froze. They looked at each other, and Beth could see that Sophie was terrified. Boots crunched towards the door then paused. Quietly, Beth grabbed a spear that was propped against the wall and pointed it at the door. At sixteen, the two years of warrior training she’d had were about to be put to the test.
The door burst open and a tall man with a short, dark beard barged in. He saw Beth with the spear and grinned. Without hesitation he marched straight at her.
Beth lunged forward, aiming for his chest. He easily beat away the weak thrust with his shield. With a look of contempt, he flicked his sword downwards across her chest.
Time slowed for Beth as she fell to her knees. The spear fell from her hands and clattered on the floor. A solidly-built blonde woman, her hair in pigtails, entered behind the man. Beth was dimly aware that Sophie was screaming.
Beth looked down at her body. An angrily pulsating red line was drawn from her right collar to the middle of her upper belly. Her bra had been cut, exposing her budding breasts. Her left one was split like a piece of fruit, fatty flesh visible behind a river of blood. Below that, white bone was visible beneath sliced flesh. The bottom two ribs were clearly broken, the skin around the two irregular lumps already swelling and turning purple.
Beth keeled over and lay twitching on her undamaged side facing her two friends. There was no pain, only a sort of numbness. She watched as the blonde invader grabbed terrified Sophie by the hair and began to drag her out. The man said something to her and she stopped, barking back at him with anger. After a few seconds more going back-and-forth, the woman spat and yanked Sophie outside.
The man began to untie his pants and knelt straddling Natasha. Before pulling down his pants, he grabbed a long knife, which he used to cut free Natasha’s bandages. Natasha stirred lightly but remained unconscious. Still kneeling, he hauled her body close to his.
Then, he violently jammed two fingers into Natasha’s wound. Instantly, she was wide awake, screaming and thrashing in utter agony. The man laughed maniacally and began to dig around inside the wound. As Natasha inhaled and screamed anew, he thrust his erect cock into her vagina.
When he was done, Natasha was once again unconscious. The man had enlarged the hole in her belly to nearly double its size. The flow of blood had slowed, but Beth knew that was probably due to the fact that Natasha didn’t have any more blood to lose. Her theory was confirmed when Natasha’s body gave one last heave and her bowels voided noisily before she lay still.
The pain began to creep up on Beth as Natasha’s killer stood. By the time he finished tying up his pants, the pain had consumed most of her thought processes. Still, as the man walked over and gazed down at her, Beth was coherent enough to wonder if she would suffer the same fate as Natasha.
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Working in teams, Vikings barged into every house. Screams echoed from some houses as terrified townspeople were subdued by any means necessary. Other houses were silent and empty, their occupants bleeding out in the square or the street. Some contained only children and young ones, who had run home because they didn’t know what else to do. Sometimes, the screams of the townspeople were cut horribly short as another cornered rat was stamped out.
Elsa and Hjalmar threw a whole family out of their home. They held knives to the throats of the father and the oldest daughter as the mother drew the smaller children close, crying hysterically. Hakon shouldered down a door and was greeted by a desperate father with a woodcutter’s axe. He dodged the man’s wild chop and responded by chopping his own axe into the father’s neck. Eydis stepped into a bedroom and yelped in pain and surprise as a young man sunk a knife into her left side. She lashed out with her axe, striking him in the shoulder. Erik was close behind and finished him off as Eydis dropped her axe and sank to her knees clutching her bleeding flank. Arvid braced behind his shield and rammed open a door, yelping in surprise as an arrow impacted his shield with a solid thunk. Arvid quickly recovered from his surprise and slammed his shield into the young archer, sending her flying. Herleif punched a young mother in the face and dragged her unconscious body into the street. Her four-year-old child, fingers in his mouth, dutifully followed them out.
My soldiers were well-trained and efficient. When they were finished clearing one house, they would mark the door (or nearest intact wall) with a charcoal marker. A circle indicated the house was empty, while vertical lines marked the number of wounded. “X”s marked the number of corpses to be found inside. In addition to signaling that a house had been cleared, it would also help when it came time to clean out the dead and wounded. All told, the majority of the houses were cleared after only an hour and a half.
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