2. Traveling West

Rebecca picked at the stale bread in the back of the caravan. She plucked a hair out of it, making a face at the prospect of some sweaty old-dudes chin hair making it into the dough, but then shrugging before taking a bite from the almost rock hard morsel. It wasn’t the worst thing she’d eaten in her life. Certainly not the worse thing she’d eaten in the last six months. She’d been hopping from city to city, making her way toward the West coast.

The caravan she was currently getting a ride from was one of the worst she’d had to take transport from. The man who was hauling supplies from city to city had rotting teeth, a receding hairline, a gut that peaked out from the bottom of his too small shirt, and a greasy smile that made Rebecca feel like she was being assaulted with his eyes.

There hadn’t been many choices though. She couldn’t stay in spot too long. Though she wasn’t the prettiest woman she was still a woman. A hole was a hole in the wasteland and she had no alliances in these cities she was traveling through. It would be only a matter of time before a band of people came together in the prospects of selling her to get some chump change. Anything to get by these days—even the “nicest” people would sell you in a heartbeat if it meant feeding their kids.

She forced the dry bread down. It was tough to swallow without any water. She didn’t want to think about what the man—George is what he said his name was—would ask in return for some water. Without being a resident to a city, water was like liquid gold in the wasteland. She’d have to sell a lot more than the measly crap she had in her satchel.

The caravan rocked back and forth. The shawl she wrapped around her head fell down. She quickly pulled it back up though there weren’t anyone else in the back of the caravan with her. There was something too revealing about her curly hair. It wasn’t that strange to see someone with curly hair, but it was a sought after trait. Any unique feature—red hair, freckles, green eyes to name a few—would fetch a higher bargain. People had certain tastes in their slaves and it trickled down to the “scouts” who hunted for these slave owners in search for a pet.

She tied the shawl more tightly around her face. Not only did it hide her hair, but it also saved her face from the wind that blew sand in every direction. The wasteland wasn’t just unsafe for the hoards of Crow soldiers, bandits, and slave traders passing through. The weather was just has deadly. The desert was more unruly than it had once been, as Rebecca had been told by her great-grandmother before she passed. Their world used to be covered in plains of grass and forests that were evergreen. There once was a thing called snow which was a hard concept for Rebecca to wrap her head around. It sometimes rained, but to witness snowflakes? And cold? It confused her to no end.

She was jostled once more by the caravan, pulling her from her wandering thoughts.

She got up from her spot on the floor and went up to the opening where George was sitting with the horse reigns in hand.

“Has something happened?”

George tsked. “Nothing to worry about. Go sit back down.”

He waved her off like she was little more than a flea biting at his neck. Rebecca narrowed her eyes, but she listened. She sat back down, listening more intently. There was nothing besides the howling of the wind and the trotting of the horses on the old roads.

The knife she’d craved from stone was nestled safely against her hip beneath her dress. It would take but a second for her to reach it and drive it into George’s neck if she found something was amiss.

However, when minutes went by and nothing happened, she chalked her suspicious up to being sleep deprived. It had been a couple days since she’d been able to get a good nights rest. She would be a fool to not take advantage of her time in the empty caravan.

She waited a few more minutes to make sure George wasn’t going to pull a fast one on her. Fifteen minutes passed and still nothing happened.

She sighed.

You worry too much.

She lounged against the side of the caravan’s tent and closed her eyes. This way, time would go by and when she woke she’d surely be one step closer to the Crows’ base.

***

“Hold her feet! And put something in her mouth so she doesn’t fucking bite me!”

Rebecca startled awake when she noticed that the caravan wasn’t moving again. She went immediately for her knife, but before she could reach it, something stomped on her arm. Pinned to the floor, she wrestled to get on her side and fight off her attacker.

She might have had a chance if more didn’t swarm her. They shoved her to the ground. The wind was knocked out of her. Something was shoved against her lips and she only had enough strength to clench her teeth.

“Plug her nose. That should make her open up.”

Rebecca would kill George first. The asshole was giving the orders so it could only mean that he was in charge of these bastards.

Someone with smelly fingers pinched her nostrils. She whipped her head from side to side though that did nothing to help. She held her breath as long as she could. Her lungs burned. She kept her eyes wide open, searching the faces of her attackers, memorizing them because she was going to add them to her list.

She counted in her head how long she had until she would pass out. She’d tested how long she could hold her breath when she formed this plot of revenge weeks after the attack on her city. As she counted, she looked at her attackers.

There were five of them including George. She glossed over him because she already knew what he looked like. He was hard to miss even in a crowd of a hundred people. The other four consisted of three men and one woman. The woman was wrapped up in a scar quite similar to Rebecca. Her hair was grey and her face was covered in scars and sunken from age. She had to be at least fifty. Two of the men were hidden by black masks however one had a jagged scar through his right eye. It looked like he couldn’t open it because of the scar. The other man had striking blue eyes that her outlined in dark coal—he was part of the Crows’ mercenaries, men and women who killed for the Crows’.

Lastly, the man who was on top of Rebecca with his filthy fingers on her nose was white with brown eyes and shaggy brown hair. He was as normal looking except for his crooked nose that looked to have been broken multiple times.

Rebecca’s vision went cloudy. Her time was up.

She opened her mouth and inhaled, gasping. The woman shoved a cloth into Rebecca’s mouth, gagging her. The cloth tasted like gasoline.

The man’s hand moved from her nose and down to her throat.

“You will listen to me otherwise I will slit your throat. Okay?” The man grinned through his threat. It didn’t make it any less serious. The man meant it.

Rebecca clenched her fists that were being down at her sides. She didn’t attempt to escape because she knew she wasn’t going anywhere, not when all five of them had her trapped in such close quarters.

When the man seemed to be happy with her silence, he lifted his hand and got up from where he’d been straddling her chest.

“Tie her up,” the crooked nose man ordered.

The other two men did as he said, tying her hands and feet in a way that she was forced to kneel on the ground, hunched over in an awkward position.

“Did you search her?” The older woman asked.

The men looked at each other. “What for?”

The woman rolled her eyes. “Men.”

She crouched and patted down Rebecca’s body. Rebecca shook. It wasn’t with fear. It was with anger. She glared at the woman who didn’t care about what was about to happen to her. She was just as bad as the men, even more so because she knew the kinds of things these men did to others and just accepted it.

She was all business and didn’t linger on places the other men would have definitely found pleasure in touching. Her firm hands moved down Rebeccas’s waist.

George elbowed the Crow mercenary. “Search between her legs, Mary.”

George and the crooked nose men laughed. The Crow mercenary looked like he wanted to kill George himself for touching him.

Mary ignored the jokes and continued searching Rebecca. Her hands patted over Rebecca’s knife. Rebecca knew exactly when Mary found it. The tip of the blade just barely dug into her thigh as Mary pressed down on it.

Mary flipped the bottom of Rebecca’s dress up.

The crooked nose man whistled. “She’s got some nice thighs.”

Mary unsheathed the knife and threw it at the man. “Stop ogling. I’m surprised you were lucky enough to not get stabbed in the balls by her with this.”

The man dodged the knife. It landed in the wooden beam keeping the caravan tent up.

The Crow mercenary grabbed the handle and yanked the blade from the wood. He turned it over. The man with the scarred eye looked at it over the mercenary’s shoulder. “The quality is good. Did you make this girl?”

He looked over at Rebecca. If she wasn’t gagged, she would have spat in his face. Instead, she just glared at him, giving him the answer even though she didn’t speak it.

The scarred man snorted. He attempted to take the knife from the mercenary, but the mercenary snatched it away before he could. He pocketed it, no doubt adding it to his collection in the waistband of his pants.

“Stop pissing off. I want my payment.”

George jutted out his empty palm toward the mercenary. The mercenary’s eyes narrowed. Before George could say another word, the mercenary grabbed George’s hand and snapped his wrist.

“Ah! Fucking bitch!” George cried out as the mercenary dropped his broken hand like nothing had happened. George cradled his broken hand to his chest.

Rebecca watched with wide-eyes. So she’d been wrong about George being in charge. The Crow mercenary obviously wasn’t taking orders from any of these people.

“The King will pay you when he orders it,” the Crow mercenary answered. His voice was raspy like it pained him to speak.

Scar face and crooked nose came to George’s aid. They sat him down on one of the many crates. The wood creaked under his large weight. He sniffled.

“I can’t work like this! My fucking hand is broken! I have a shipment to deliver tomorrow!”

Mary nodded to the mercenary. “We understand. Are you taking her or do you want her delivered?”

The mercenary thought about this as he studied Rebecca. Her back straightened when she noticed he was looking at her. She put on the bravest face she could when she didn’t know what fate laid before her.

After a minute, the Crow mercenary answer.

“I’ll take her. If the King is satisfied, I’ll sent your payment.”

Mary nodded. “Thank you.”

The mercenary walked forward and grabbed the rope tying Rebecca’s hands behind her back. She yelled against the gag as she was dragged across the floor and to the edge of the caravan. The mercenary didn’t react to her muffled screams or the fact that he was dragging a person with one arm. He was strong enough to pull her along like she was nothing more than a doll.

Though every fiber in Rebecca’s being said that she should be fighting for escape, she did nothing of the sort.

The King they’d said. To her knowledge, there was only one King in this land.

She might not need to travel much further. She might just be taken straight to the one person she was dying to face.

The King of Crows.