Fiction | Short Story | Monday Mashup Challenge Response

Trapped

A fantasy/dystopian short story

This is a response to MMU 34. More details below and at the end of this story. Also, CW: gore.

Katerina had been many things — soldier, renegade, thief. She’d never been a beggar before, but her current dirty ripped smock and small tin for alms were an ideal cover with so many patrols around.

Too many…

She stood in the mud and nodded respectfully as a dozen soldiers filed past for the second time in an hour. It was unusual, this far from the capital. The military hadn’t suddenly begun to care about the locals, Katerina felt sure. More likely they’d been alerted to wrongdoing in the area. Her wrongdoing?

One of the soldiers paused, looking at her as he drank some water. “You should move on, beggar.”

She stood up, keeping her head low. “Which way to the city?”

The soldier snorted, starting to move on. “I’ve no time for cheek — or idiocy. Get moving, wretch. There’s bandits about.”

As they company trooped away, Katerina’s eyes drifted forward to the small dwelling ahead, one of many spread around in the wooded safe zone between the two main Imperial highways. The years may have stolen some of Katerina’s speed and agility, but she still possessed a brain that made thievery child’s play. From a hundred yards, she could already see the best way in — a side window, which she could reach by standing on a pair of barrels.

And then, out via the back door. By that time, the inhabitants would be tied up and gagged. Easy.

With the soldiers disappearing into the distance, heading back to their main garrison or perhaps all the way to the capital, Katerina concealed her begging bowl among the roots of an oak tree, then ran across the paved highway, and continued swiftly towards the homestead. As was typical, it had an elaborate ring of permaculture, though more unusually, everything had been picked bare. But she wasn’t concerned.

The loot would lie within.

Katerina passed through a pair of stone gateposts that marked the inner garden, and heard a slight click near her boot. By the time she had processed her mistake, it was too late. An agonising pain shot through her, running from her foot up to her brain. She dropped to the ground groaning and trying her very best not to scream. Time slowed and distorted as she struggled not to pass out.

Katerina had been wounded in battle before, but this pain was something else. As she lay on the ground, twitching, she wondered if the bone had somehow been ripped out of her leg. Or had her entire ankle been inflated, and filled with poison?

“Get up, fool,” she urged herself through gritted teeth, digging her fingernails into her palms in a vain attempt to distract from the injury. “If those soldiers see you lying here, you’re done for.”

She knew that the homesteaders would shoot thieves without hesitation, too. With this in mind, her vision still flickering from the mind-bending agony, Katerina forced herself to sit up and inspect the damage.

Her left leg was in a pool of blood, a metal device still clamped around it. A bear trap. It had ripped right through her leather boot, spikes buried deep and no doubt contacting the bone. She didn’t have long, she knew. Not just because of her pursuers, but once she opened the trap, she was at risk of bleeding to death — if she didn’t lose consciousness, and…

The closest source of help was the house itself. Strangers weren’t popular in these parts. Could she claim innocence, and try to fast-talk them into helping? It was a long shot, but the only shot she had.

Grimacing, she pulled out a small flask of brandy, and drank the lot. Then she unlaced her smock and tied the cord just below her knee. Far from perfect as a tourniquet, but it was something.

“Here goes,” she muttered.

Soon, her hands were coated with blood up to the wrists as she pulled the jaws of the trap apart, grinding her teeth, tears streaming from her eyes. At last, raising her leg, she fell backwards again, stars appearing before her eyes and a roaring in her ears.

After a minute of deep breaths, Katerina somehow forced herself up using the gatepost. Immediately she doubled over, almost vomiting as the pain washed through her again. But she stayed on her feet. Soon she was limping towards the main door of the house, a thin trail of blood behind her.

Katerina had only knocked once when she realized that something was very wrong at the dwelling. It had a front porch with a couple of rustic chairs, but off to one side, two body-sized shapes lay draped under woollen blankets. Frowning, trying to move her leg as little as possible, she edged closer, pulled out her rapier, and lifted the edge of one blanket.

Then she recoiled towards the front wall of the house, gagging as a rotten stench rose up. The body beneath the blanket was partially decomposed, its ribs and heart visible. There was no need to look at the other. The owners of this house had been dead for some weeks.

But who had covered their bodies?

Katerina edged back over to the door, and turned the handle. It opened. Whimpering in pain again, she moved into a large kitchen area, dominated by a table, and with marble work-surfaces around. A corridor led to the back of the house, and the back door could be seen along a corridor. In the kitchen area itself, food jars had been emptied, but things were orderly. A single bluebottle was flying in a large circle near the ceiling with a low whine.

Katerina at first leaned on the table inside, then gingerly sat down, elevating her foot onto another chair, and using her knife to cut the boot free. Her leg was was bleeding badly. She just hoped it wasn’t broken.

She peered at her surroundings, trusting her instincts to figure out where to find medical supplies without the need to look through every cupboard. Just then, she spotted a small, pale face in the hallway. In an instant, it was gone again. A child.

“Hey, kid!” Katerina called out, leaning back effortfully. “I don’t mean you any harm. I’m hurt.”

The child reappeared, still at a distance down the hall. A boy of perhaps eight. Gaunt, shadows under his cheekbones. He stared at Katerina, then looked down at her foot, which was gently dripping blood onto the wooden floor.

“I’ll give you a couple of coins, kid, if you can help me dress this wound. It’s pretty hard for me to reach.”

The kid stepped forward. “Are you a raider?”

“No. Well — not like that,” she replied, thinking of the corpses out front. “I am a traveller.”

“If I help you, will you take me with you?” he asked.

“Well, I mean…” Katerina blew out her cheeks.

The child scowled. “You’ll leave me here to die, won’t you?”

Katerina cursed silently. It was true that she avoided encumbrances. But wouldn’t leaving this kid here make her no better than raiders who would kill him outright, or sell him to slavers?

On the other hand, what in the world could she do to protect him? Everything that she stole ended up spent on lodgings and supplies. The wilderness was unforgiving.

“I saw the bodies out front,” Katerina said at last, electing not to ask what happened. “Don’t you have any other family?”

The kid shook his head.

“What’s your name?”

“Ebba.”

“How did you survive when, you know…” She gestured towards the front doorway.

“When they came, I hid beneath the stairs.”

Katerina gazed at the kid for a moment. What had Ebba seen, or heard? And how long had he been surviving, feeding himself on what remained of his family’s crops and stores?

“You did the right thing, Ebba,” she said softly, “But you can’t stay here.”

The child moved forward into the kitchen, and without further prompting, removed some bandages from a cupboard. “There,” said Katerina pointing, then winced in pain again as the child pulled back the bloodied cloth. “Pack some cloth into the wounds before strapping it up.”

“Like this?”

“Hmmgh.” She nodded sharply, experiencing another wave of nausea from the pain. “Yeah.”

Ebba was silent for a moment as he strapped the wound, then looked up at Katerina. “You’ll take me to the city?”

She shook her head. “I can leave you outside the nearest garrison, kid. From there, the soldiers can take you to Wabakantis.”

The kid stood up, eyes wide, wiping his bloodied hands on his smock. “I don’t trust soldiers.”

“Me neither, kid. I keep my distance.”

“Why?”

Katerina scowled, wriggled in her chair, then winced again. “Complicated,” she said a moment later, regaining her composure. “I just gotta keep a low profile.”

“You’re a criminal?”

“I am, what you might say, a follower of a certain way of life that is not popular among the powers that be.”

“What does that mean?”

Katerina chuckled. “A sort of criminal, at least in their eyes,” she said. “But consider this — the rulers of the city profit from slaves. They may see me as a criminal, but aren’t they just as wrong?”

Ebba frowned, looking towards the broken window in silence for a moment. “It wasn’t raiders that killed my parents,” he said at last. “It was soldiers.”

“Well… shit.”

Katerina fell silent, then pulled herself up using the table. The bandages were already showing spots of blood. She replaced the damaged boot, using the cord from her smock to tie it in place, then took a moment to test putting her weight on her injured leg. Bearable, she decided.

Forcing herself to breathe slowly, she stood up to her full height. It would hold until she could get to Golan’s inn. “Listen, kid — I gotta get moving. Need to get out of here before patrols or bandits stop by. If you don’t want me to leave you outside a garrison, I get it. But, well…”

“Please! You won’t leave me here, will you?”

She had taken a step away from the chair, but now she stopped and sighed, then looked back at Ebba. His thin face looked up at hers, and she was reminded of the bones of the corpses outside.

“Well, I really can’t…”

“I’m not a burden.” He was already pushing spare bandages into his pockets. “I can make myself useful. Promise!”

Katerina sighed again. “How did I get myself into this mess?” she muttered. Then she frowned, looking towards the front of the property with her finger to her lips. “Wait — did you hear someone speaking?”

Ebba hurried over to the front window and peeked out. “Bandits,” he said simply. “Six. Almost at the gates.”

“Get moving.”

Ebba’s eyes lit up. “You’re taking me?”

“Seems that way,” Katerina grunted.

“You won’t abandon me?”

“Come on.”

“You gotta promise.”

Grunting in pain again, Katerina leant forward and dipped one finger into the pool of blood that had flown from her leg. She then wrote out the words I swear on the tabletop. “There. A contract in blood can’t be broken — that’s part of the Old Law. Your folks taught you that, right?”

“Like Bart the Outlaw?”

Katerina nodded. “Now let’s hurry.”

Ebba smiled for the first time since they had met. “I love those stories.”

Katerina was leading the way down the corridor. “We leave through the back door.”

“But it’s locked.”

She stopped dead, halfway down the corridor. “But… where’s the key?”

“My parents had it.”

Katerina glanced back to the front of the house, where the footsteps of raiders could now be heard.

What now? Perhaps you’d like to read on. Let me know if so.

Anyway, it’s time for my MMU #34 scorecard:

Main prompt:
Cause severe pain or trauma to your Hero! (2 pts)

Constraints:
A character dressed like someone else (Katerina as a beggar – 1 pt)
A contract signed in blood (1 pt)
A (human) heart? Gross! (1 pt)
Stop and ask for directions! (Katerina asks the soldiers – 1 pt)
This box (1pt)

Hardcore Constraint:
A child won't stop asking questions (2 pts)

Literary Device:
Utilize circumlocution (the bit following "You're a criminal?" – 5 pts)

TOTAL: 14 pts

Thanks once again for the challenge, Jonathon Sawyer, and thanks to all the Kraken team and other writers who participate every fortnight and make these such a lot of fun.

I hereby challenge a couple of our regular TFWD authors, Philip Charter ✍️ and Aaron Michael Thomas, to have a try at the Mashup.

And if you enjoy prompts, check out our seasonal spooky prompts here: