Beyond the Hell Cliffs (39 page)

Chapter 35

It was early in the morning, just as the sky was lightening, when the six from the Citadel made their way through Shimada Village.  Kimura had stayed behind, still in bed with Goji after seducing him the night before.  He would not have liked the plan Raegith was enacting.

Two guards lounged inside a shack by the stockades.
  The building was little more than an enclosed courtyard with shacks at the corners.  The walls were solid and the ports along the side had been covered with tarps, as had the front entrance.  Whatever was going on inside the prison, the guards did not want anyone peeking in on it.  At the front entrance sat a guard shack, where one sat slumped against the outside wall and the other snored loudly behind a desk.

Hitomi
and Helkree made quick work of the two guards, subduing them silently and hiding them under the table.  Raegith, Fenra, Beretta and Indie went through the building and out into the yard to check on the prisoners.

Raegith stood in the opening of the yard, staring out on the scene
inside the prison.  Females of all races were strapped to poles or suspended from them.  The smell of blood and filth was overwhelming and carrion birds picked at the corpses and those who were too weak to fight them off.  There were at least fifty that he could see just in the yard, but to the sides were cells with more bodies in them.

“I don’t think we’re going to find our army here, Raegith,” Beretta said.

“Ancients, what have you allowed to happen to my sisters?” Indie whispered.

There was movement in the back of the yard.  A few bodies moved inside a cell and Raegith realized that some were still alive among this grisly massacre.  He waved his girls forward and they went about searching the cells and torture racks to see who could still be saved.

Nine of them were still able to walk on their own, but only three were willing to fight.  The two Rathgar women and one Lokai had arrived the night before Raegith had, in hopes to join the Female Brigade.  The most eager one, a one-eyed Rathgar named Magda, was no stranger to pain.  The scars and burns on her body were much older than anything she could have received in Shimada. 

“They try to break me,”
Magda said in a thickly-accented voice.  “I laugh at them the entire time.  They take it out on others.  Others not tough like Magda is.”

“
The ones who did this to you will not stop until you’re bleeding out on a spike.” Raegith approached the disfigured Rathgar woman and locked eyes with her.  “The Lokai in this village will not help you; no one will, except for me.”

“You funny-looking Lokai,”
Magda replied, looking him over with curiosity.  Then she glanced at the Helcats.  “You commander of female brigade?”

“
No, I’m just the reason this idea was ever brought up,” Raegith sighed, disgusted.  “I didn’t know that this was what would happen when I convinced the Empress of it.  I’m going to make it right, though, and you’re going to help me.  You look vicious enough.”

“I am unbreakable.  I get these dolls up
and marching for you.” 

Magda
turned and started barking orders at the injured females.  In a few minutes and after some rough motivation, Magda had all but three seriously wounded girls standing in line before Raegith and the Helcats.  Helkree and the others kept watch as Raegith addressed them.

“The Citadel has fallen.  Every village and Outpost is now on its own and you can bet they are all being put under the boot of the local guard, just like what happened here.  You all came to Shimada for the same purpose: to fight, but without the backing of the Empress, no Rathgar Guard will allow this.”

Raegith walked up and down the line, assessing each woman.

“
Stand.  Fight back, with me, and we will make each one of them pay for what they’ve done here.”

“Can’t you just release us?” a Lokai girl asked.  “We’re no match for the guards and if we rise against them, then they will make it that much worse for us.”

“Worse, you say?” Raegith replied.  “They might kill you for it.  Can you tell me that death is worse than what they will do to you once we leave?  Can you look out upon this sick display and abandon what you’ve seen here?  Can you flee from all of these souls crying out for vengeance?”

“Trouble, boss!”
Hitomi yelled.

Several guards were approaching fast
from the rear of the prison, their weapons drawn.  Raegith kicked himself for not searching the entire place before giving his speech.  His eagerness to have an army got the better of him and now he needed an excuse for why his group of strangers were inside a prison they obviously wanted to keep secret.

“Hey!  Hey, what are you doing?” one of the
m yelled.  “You can’t let them out!”

“Good, you’ve arrived!  Come quick, I need some help with these bitches!”  Raegith waved the confused guards over to him.

The three armored Rathgar looked at each other, each one shrugging and whispering.  Raegith shouted at them impatiently, shocking them into following his orders.  They passed by Helkree and Indie and walked right up to Raegith.

“
Can one of you tell me why these females have not been prepped for transport?  Who the fuck is in charge here?” Raegith demanded.

“Wha… these females are…” one of the guards stammered, looking at his companions.  “Who… who are you?  Do you know where you are?”

“Holy shit, are you dumb or what?  I guess you’ll do.  The other two I don’t need!”

Hitomi
, Helkree, Indy and Fenra pounced on the two other guards on Raegith’s command.  They were so perplexed by Raegith that they could not even lift their weapons before the girls had them on the ground, spilling their blood into the dirt.

Raegith reached out and snatched the first guard’s weapon arm, gripping him by the wrist.  Pulling it forward, he kicked out into the guard’s stomach and yanked the wrist sideways, stripping the hand axe with his other hand.
  Helkree grabbed him from behind, lunging up from a crouch as the guard stumbled backwards.  With a quick, practiced motion, she popped the strap at his chin and ripped the helmet off of him.  Another kick to the back of the knee dropped him to the dirt before Raegith.

Helkree gripped his hair and yanked his head back as the other Helcats flanked him with captured weapons.  The guard’s eyes bulged with fear and shock.

“Magda, could you come here, please?” Raegith said, staring the Rathgar down.  “This is Magda and she is very unhappy with her accommodations here.  I bet if I stripped you down and gave her an axe handle, she could give you a pretty accurate reenactment of what she’s found displeasing about your treatment of her and her friends.”

Indie popped the head off of her hand axe and passed the wooden handle to
Magda.  The prisoner’s scarred lips curled into a wicked smile.  In front of the guard, she spit on the end of the handle several times, rubbing the saliva all over it.  The guard emptied his bladder.

“That’s an appropriate response,” Raegith laughed.  “Good, I was worried you might not be smart enough to understand what’s about to happen to you.”

“I didn’t do anything!” the guard pleaded.  “I never touched that ugly cunt!”

“He touched me!”  The Lokai girl that wanted released stepped forward, snatching the handle from
Magda.

Raegith blocked her with his arm before she could reach the guard and Indie restrained her.

“Look, I’m not an unreasonable guy,” Raegith said, crouching down in front of the guard.  “I get it.  The Empress dies, your boss tells you to go crazy and you’ve got all these women just helpless against you.”

“Yes… yes, you understand!” the guard yelped.

Raegith slapped him hard across the face.  “Shut the fuck up.”

“Yes, I understand that this is what has become of a great race of warriors.  I understand
that this is what is normal for you anymore.  I’m going to change that.”

Raegith got to his feet and
looked over to where a dead Rathgar woman hung by her wrists on a pole.  “Switch him out with that one.”

The guard protested as he was being led away, but Indie let go of the Lokai girl and in a few quick steps she was on top of the man, shoving the axe handle into his mouth and down his throat.

“Gag on it, you mother fucker!”

Helkree pulled her away and yanked the handle out of the guard’s mouth.  He coughed blood, but was more compliant in being brought to the pole.

Raegith nodded at him.  Helkree pulled his belt off and the Helcats quickly stripped the armor from him, cuffing him into the shackles that they freed the dead girl from.

“Comfortable?” Raegith asked.

“Higerth kill you for this!  We have a hundred men in this village.  They kill all of you now.”

“A hundred?
  All out on patrol?” Raegith asked.  “Where are they?”

The guard looked around.  The lack of fear on their faces must have made him hesitate long enough to realize he was giving away an advantage, because he stopped talking.

“You,” Raegith said, pointing at the Lokai girl.  “You got anywhere else you want to put that handle?”

“No!  Keep her away from me!” the guard squealed.

“Come on, Raegith,” Helkree said, leaning in close enough to lick the guard’s face.  “I want to see this one get rammed.  We can find another one more willing to talk.  Give the girl a go at him.  Then give me a go!”

Helkree grabbed him by the shoulders and kneed him hard in the ass.  He yelped and Helkree cackled with delight.  “Oh, this is going to be so fucking
fun!  Listen to how he screams!”

“They’re on patrol!  They’re out in the fields, chasing farm girls!” he yelled.  “Others will be at the Fire House.  Please, man, get them away from me!”

“What’s the Fire House?” Indie asked.

“A house that serves
alcohol,” the Lokai girl answered.  “We had one in my village.  We boil rice into alcohol and store it in bottles.  The guards probably go and drink on the house all day.  I can smell it on their breath when they’re on top of me.”

“What’s your name, girl?” Raegith asked.

“Naoko, from Haruka Village far to the south of here.”

“Well, Naoko, now that you’ve been violated and tortured here in Shimada; now that the same thing is probably happening to your friends and family in Haruka… I release you.  You can leave, try to escape the village on your own and find some place to hide until hunger or the darkness takes you.  Or you can help me find this Fire House, with all of those booze-breathed rapists crammed inside, and burn that fucker to the ground.”

Naoko looked around at the other Helcats.  Hitomi gave her a wicked grin and nodded her head.

“Okay,” she said, swallowing hard.  “Let’s kill them.  Let’s kill all of them.”

“You’re all ready for this?” Raegith asked, turning to Magda and the other girls.  “You’ve had no training.  You may not have any experience on the other side of the discipline stick and we go up against men who are used to violence.  You’re probably thinking that you don’t know what to do when it comes time to fight; but when you see those men coming to finish what they started with you and you think about what they did to your sisters here in this prison… you’ll know exactly what to do.”

“Broosh!”
Helkree yelled, followed by the other Helcats, in unison.

“
They’ll be out for blood once they see we’re gone,” Naoko said.  “We need to get out of here, fast.”

“Let them come!”
Magda yelled.  “I must break them!”

“I like this one!” Indie laughed, nodding at
Magda.

“We’ve got five sets of armor
, once we kill the ones tied up in the front.  Use what you can.” Raegith pulled the Helcats into a huddle.  “Find pitch, oil, alcohol… anything that will burn quickly.”

“
Should I kill this one?” Indie said, pointing to the guard shackled to the pole.

“
Leave him be,” Raegith replied.  “I still have plans for him.”

Chapter 36

Raegith and the girls did not stick around long after making sure the guards inside the Fire House were burning.  They had grabbed one of the Lokai that worked in the house and evacuated the other two before barring the doors and igniting the entire building.  The liquor inside caught fire and exploded minutes after they left, drawing guards from all around.

“The guards will be swarming this place in moments,” Hitomi said. 

“Good, we want them all right here,” Raegith said.  “Now, let’s see how many of them stay behind to guard the barracks.

The answer was three.  Only three guards stayed behind to guard the entire barracks as the others moved quickly to the scene of the fire.  Higerth may have been a competant commander before, but once he turned his troops loose on the village to do as they pleased, their discipline diminished.  They were like distracted children now, going wherever and doing whatever they pleased and just like children, they ran right for the most interesting thing they could see.

Wearing one of the helmets she took off of the prison guards,
Magda banged on the front door and called out to the guards inside in a husky voice.  As soon as the door cracked open, Indie and Helkree were through it.  The first guard was dead in an instant, but the second one was more prepared and swung his hand axe right for Indie.  She brought up her armored forearm, but the blade cut through the leather and into her flesh.

Even
compared to the males, Indie was unbelievably stout.  Broad-shouldered and square-jawed, she was not as attractive as her friend Enga.  What she lacked in physical beauty, she made up in mind-bending brute strength.  When Helkree was hesitant to even let her join the other Helcat hopefuls, chosing Enga instead, Indie flew into a rage and threw an eighty-pound sack of grain across the mess hall with one arm.  She was the only initiate that had forced Helkree to change her mind.  After being initiated into the Helcats and taking the tattoo on her shoulder, Indie’s confidence rose and with it her strength.  The guards took extra measures in detaining her after one incident when they left her unshackled in a cell and came back to find the cell door ripped off its hinges and lying warped in the hallway.  Indie just sat in her open cell, scowling at them; silently daring them to find her a new cell.  She was slow, unintelligent and socially awkward around even her Helcat sisters, but in terms of raw power, Indie was peerless.

Indie reached out and snatched the man by his throat,
ignoring the weapon imbedded in her arm.  She rammed him backwards into the wall and cracked his helmet with the force of it.  Snarling, she dropped her right arm and slammed her open palm under his chin so hard that his jaw broke off.  With one arm, she lifted the guard off of the ground and flung him backwards into the other wall, splattering blood along the brick.

The third guard dropped his axe and bolted across the open courtyard towards the back exit and out into the village.  In a flash of red, Fenra was through the others and sprinting after him.  The guard had a five second head start and a short distance to travel, but Fenra easily took three steps to his one.  In the Pit, there was none who could out run her, even among her own kind.  She ate up the
distance between them in the time it took the others to breathe once.

He was not even close enough to reach for the door handle when Fenra took to the air in
a leap so grand it was like she was flying.  She collided with the guard and sent him face first into the door.  Spinning off of him, she kicked his legs out from underneath him and pulled him face down to the ground.  Standing over him, she kicked down hard into the back of his skull.  The guard did not move afterwards.

“We won’t have a lot of time before they get tired of the smoldering husk we left them.  Find the weapons and armor and let’s
get this place rigged for ambush,” Raegith commanded.  “This is where we make our stand!”

“I am going to find the biggest fucking axe…” Indie giggled, running for one of the doors along the side walls.

“Grass-hair!”

Kimura came running up to him through the front door, followed slowly by Goji.  The
look of shock was unmistakable, but there was something else in his eyes.

“Grass-hair, what are you doing?” Goji yelled.  “You’re dooming our entire village!  Even if I slay you now, Higerth will not forgive this insurrection!  This is not what Kensei wants!”

“I don’t follow the orders of Kensei.  Flee or join us; you had better act quickly.”

“Did you know of this, Kimura?” he asked.

“Where are all of the women from the prison?” Kimura asked Raegith, ignoring Goji.

“This is all that is left.  The guards killed the rest of them, slowly… atrociously.”

“All of them?” she asked, horrified.  She turned back to Goji.  “You and Kensei let them kill all of them?”

Now Goji was on the defensive.  “There was nothing we could have done, Kimura.  You must believe
me, I would have helped them if I could.”

“Now you can,” Raegith said.  “Whether you and Kensei are ready or not, this is the only chance you’re getting to have your village back.  If we fall today, then your entire village is swiftly doomed.”

“You’ve barely a dozen women to fight against a hundred armed, pissed-off Rathgar.  What do you think will happen here, Grass-hair?” Goji asked, drawing closer.  “Is this because of the Empress?  You’re trying to die, is that it?”

“I’m not the one dying here today, Lokai.  The tooth cannot
pierce me.  The claw cannot slash me.  The axe cannot cut me… because I make no place for dying!”

“You’re insane.”

“Probably,” Raegith replied with a smile.  “Kensei says you have some training; that you’re the last vestige of the killers your kind used to be.  Come join the madness… see those skills put to some good use.”