Three Kings, One prey

Freya

It was so dark outside, but I had to run beneath it in spite of this. Gasher Crane and his son Boris, with his fat neck were in hot pursuit, their cries slurred by cruelty and cheap whiskey.

"Come back here and have your beating like a good girl, you ungrateful wretch! Feyra!"

The cold mud of the fields was under my bare feet as I put distance between us. An hour of running had left my lungs on fire; sweat and the autumn chill had made my cotton dress cling to me. The hem was in tatters and I was without the cracked shoes they had made me put up with for three winters. Wild bramble had put blood on my shins but I hardly noticed. There was a terror in my gut, primal and raw, and an urge to put as much ground as I could between myself and the farms.

They meant to sell me.

I tripped over a root and let out a bitter little laugh at the thought of it. Sell me as one would a heifer or a bag of grain. All because the Baron Eder, that old ruin of a man with his greasy wrinkles who couldn't be bothered to turn into so much as a mouse, had set his eyes on me in the market a month past and wanted a bride of a certain age. And Gasher, the greedy swine, saw an opportunity to put some coin in his pocket.

A thousand of them.

Mertle had told me as much this afternoon when she put the iron skillet to my face. "Wash up real nice and put a smile on, you stupid girl," she'd bellowed, "the Baron and his lot will be here at first light to make the collection." The papers were signed. Gasher had already put away a fifty coin deposit and a bottle of brandy.

So I put my back to it and ran. And if they caught me I knew there would be no quarter shown. They would put chains on me like a hound and haul me back to the house where I have been in service since I was six.

Cresting a hill I took in a great breath of air, the wind raking through my hair, long and dark and lousey from Mertle's refusal to let me have clean water. Off in the distance was the smudge of the Whispering Woods against the horizon. Forbidden, everyone would tell you. Old and deep, with bandits and outlaws and things not entirely human making their home in there.

What was there to lose?

To the left was the main road and the chance of running into the Baron's men. To the right the farmlands of the next town over, where all of Gasher's "ward" was known to them and they would do their honourable duty and see me returned. The woods were the only option. The Cranes were too superstitious to venture in after dark and risk their souls.

As for monsters with fangs and claws I didn't give them the time of day. I had my whole life to know the likes of Gasher and Mertle and Boris. Those were the ones to be afraid of.

"I see her! Making for the damn woods! You fool, it is a dead end!"

Another shout from behind, nearer now. I did not deign to see who it was, just drove on, my body in revolt. I was wiry with endurance from years of hard work and not enough to eat, no muscle to speak of, but my spirit was not to be broken. I would not be sold. There has to be more to a girl than what they made of me.

I went straight into the treeline, letting the branches flay at my arms and face. The oaks and pines were thick enough to put an end to any light from the full moon that had served me in the open. I came down hard on my knees, stones biting my hands as I pushed on.

At the edge of the wood the Cranes were putting on the brakes. "Let her go and be eaten by the shades, you idiot, maybe that will teach her. I won't be going in that cursed place." Boris, the coward.

"Ten coins and you will see her crawling back before the sun is up," said Gasher, true to form.

They would wait then, for me to come back in tears and cold. They would think they had value for their money by lunch. They didn't know me at all.

I rose and went on. For hours on end I would walk, run, stumble and finally crawl. I was jumpy at every noise: a branch breaking in the distance, an owl hooting or some small creature skittering by. Still I put one foot in front of the other. In my head I could see I was likely making circles, only to end up in deeper dark, but it was preferable to return to that place of hell. Preferable to being put on sale.

When my body could no longer be made to go on I let it. Legs like jelly and a spinning head, I fell to my knees at the mossy foot of a great tree, gasping for air. Thirst and hunger were upon me as well as a weariness I could not put into words. The back of me throbbed from Mertle's skillet and there was blood on a score of nicks and scrapes. I drew my knees up and put in a prayer to whatever might be listening for some measure of help.

The ground then opened up under me.

A sharp cry left me as I tumbled into a hole where none should have been, the earth caving in with my weight. Some manner of trap, an old hunting pit perhaps. I came down hard, what seemed a full story's drop, on a floor of slick dirt and all the wind was driven from me. Landed wrong on my ankle and it was agony; there was the taste of blood in my mouth.

I lay still for a time, staring up at the pinprick of moon far above and waiting for the ability to draw breath. When I did, the odour of it reached me. A musky thing, serpentine, part smoked amber and old moss and something else, something you would call ancient and dangerous.

Then I heard the sound of scales on the dirt. There was no mistaking it.

Heart thudding against my ribs as if to break free, I wrenched myself into a sitting position to have a look around. I would have done better not to.

It was an underground chamber of sorts, some twenty feet in diameter and roughly round. The packed earth walls were smooth and shone with moisture, and from them ran off several tunnels. The floor was more than dirt. It was alive with snakes, a writhing mass of them. Dozens, if not hundreds. Tiny brown gardeners and pythons of a dark hue and length to match my own. I made out the diamond of a viper's head and the cold intelligence in its eyes, the hourglass of a copperhead, a black mamba coiled and deadly by the wall.

They were all over and they had me in their sights.

My blood went cold. I put a hand to my throat and tried to put some distance between us but the tunnel was too slick and my ankle would not allow it. I went down on my hands and a searing pain lanced through my left forearm.

There was a snake there, a young viper of an angry disposition, fangs sunk in deep. For a moment it stayed put to put its venom in my system and then it let go and was gone.

I screamed at the top of my lungs, loud enough to ring in my ears.