Sunlight hurt her eyes when she suddenly blinked them open. She had fallen asleep, somehow. At first she was too disoriented to know what was happening, or even where she was. Strong hands grasped her, shook her and shoved her against the thwart painfully. Then they ripped her shirt off.
”Out of the boat”, Ernil commanded, but it was not meant for her.
Two tomb-robbers stepped out of the boat and into another parked next to it. Hellrien got the first good glimpse of the situation she was in. They were floating in the middle of Lake Evendim – she counted ten rowboats, most of them loaded with crates and barrels and manned by at least two tomb-robbers each. In the boat with Hellrien stood Ernil and Rycroft, towering over her. Ernil wasn’t as pretty anymore – Hellrien’s fist had knocked out all of his front teeth from upper and lower jaw both and he talked with a spluttering lisp.
Rycroft and Ernil examined Hellrien’s strong, fair-skinned body. She was exceptionally big and strong for a Bree woman, but maybe not that much for a Dúnadan. Ernil noted her broad shoulders and well-developed biceps. He stared at her big, heavy breasts with admiration. Her physique was the kind that had she been living a more sedentary lifestyle, she would have probably been inclined to gain weight; but a harsh life and rigorous military training had sculpted her to look like an athlete.
Ernil raised a whip in his hand and tickled Hellrien’s left breast with it’s wired ends.
”Your fellow Ranger, Hellrien”, he said, nodding towards the miserable human wreck in the bottom of the boat. ”But perhaps he didn’t introduce himself?”
Rycroft laughed when he heard the gales of grunts from the bottom.
Ernil stared at Hellrien’s steel blue eyes.
”It took three days”, he said colorlessly. ”Seventy-two hours. You can see the results. We will reach Men Erain by tomorrow. It’s up to you whether you get tossed in the lake looking like that – or like you are now. You will die regardless, Hellrien, but you may choose how: throat cut or tortured out of your mind… sunk in the lake tied to a stone. But we will all take turns to have some fun with you before we destroy your body. You’re a whole lot of woman, Hellrien – it would be a shame to see it go waste without using first. He can watch”, Ernil nodded at the tortured man, ”as he no longer has the parts to participate.”
Hellrien came up with an imaginative way she thought appropriate for Ernil to die, and told it to him.
Ernil lashed with his whip. Nasty, red, quickly swelling welts appeared on her body. Sweat was dripping from her forehead.
”Think about it”, Ernil urged. ”One last time.”
Hellrien repeated her earlier words.
Ernil nodded at Rycroft, who flashed a grin with his filthy teeth and took a step forward as Ernil backed away.
”Let me just loosen the ropes here a little…”
An outraged screech from a nearby boat. It was Avice.
”What are you doing? No! Don’t do that! Stop it, it’s disgusting! I won’t…”
Ernil struggled to keep Avice out of the boat. ”Shut up, Avice! It’s none of your business! Turn away! Don’t look!”
Avice howled with outrage. ”You animals! You filthy animals!”
Hellrien never made a sound.
When they had left her be, Hellrien lied still, gasping for air. She kept repeating in her head, over and over again: ”You’re all right. You’re all right…”
It wasn’t quite true. There were long, crimson welts on her chest, and blood was dripping from the wound on her left cheek – a wound she had acquired from the fight with Ernil last night, when his fist had ripped her whole cheek open. It had opened again. It would leave a nasty scar, but it wouldn’t kill her unless it got infected. Infection was the least of her problems now. She felt filthy and defiled inside – so filthy she would never be clean again, not in a thousand years if she lived that long. It seemed unlikely.
But she lived still. They hadn’t burned her yet, they hadn’t broken her bones or carved off pieces of her flesh.
She knew they weren’t done with her yet. How much more could she take? The Ranger had lasted for seventy-two hours, they had said. He had lost his mind.
Hellrien tried to shift her position.
She knew she was in a hopeless situation. But something inside her refused to acknowledge it… a part of her still grasped in lingering hope – and waited. She still had one more weapon – a concealed weapon, almost like a part of herself. They still hadn’t taken off her boots. Nobody had spotted the knife.
But her hands were tied behind her back, so she had no way of tapping into it.
Perhaps they would tie her hands in front of her later, when they had abused and tortured her enough. Abused so much it would do her no good anymore, she thought – and cursed.
Maybe she could use it on herself.
The broken man grunted somewhere near. Hellrien leaned against the edge of the boat. The waves cradled her gently, like her mother used to do when she was little. Her mother… if there was any justice in the world, she would never know what had happened to her little girl. It was her own doing… why couldn’t she have settled for a life as a simple housemaid?
A moment later she fell asleep.
