Magdeburg by Heather Richardson

Author:Heather Richardson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Heather Richardson
Published: 2015-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Twelve

WHEN CHRISTA WOKE IT WAS LIGHT outside. The day before seemed like a dream, but she knew it had been real, just as this tent was real, and the voices of the men talking in low voices outside it. It was tempting to lie a while longer. There was safety of a sort in here. The man with the scarred face had given her his promise that he would not come near her. She wasn’t sure if she could believe him, but her hiding in here would not change anything.

Her belly ached, and she felt pain between her legs where the man had hurt her. Was this what happened between a man and a woman? Were these the doings that had put Klaus’s child in Gertrude’s womb? She forced her thoughts away from her friends. From them it was only one remove to her family, and she knew she could not allow herself to think of them. If she weakened, even for a moment, she might be lost. The sights she had seen yesterday as the man dragged her through the city seemed like the worst of nightmares, but she knew they were all real. She had seen lives ended on a whim. The man himself must have killed near half a dozen, with as little concern as she would have swatting a fly. Those images were burned on her mind, and somehow seemed more real, more terrifying, than the thing the man had done to her. He could have killed her, had the notion taken him. Even now he might. If she annoyed him she could be cut down like all those others. She must be brave then. There was nothing to do but face it. Face him.

She crawled out of the tent and stood up. Her limbs were stiff, but she did not dare stretch to ease them. The scarred man was sitting on an empty brandy barrel, his bare feet splayed on the grass, his head drooping. He looked up at her, then away. She glanced around the tents. A small bonfire was burning, and a soldier was heating a pot on it. Others were standing, rubbing at their shoulders and staring at the place where the city had been. Christa didn’t dare turn her head towards it.

‘Here, I’ve saved some bread for you,’ the man said. He held out a crust to her.

Be brave, she thought, do not vex him. ‘Thank you.’ She took it, looking quickly at his face as she sat on the ground. The scar seemed different in daylight. She could see now that it ran deeper than she had thought, twisting the flesh beneath his eye. As she chewed the hard crust she realised he was staring at her, and felt a flutter of fear, but there was no anger in his face. He looked bleak. Exhausted.

‘You are very young,’ he said.

‘I am fifteen years old, sir.’

‘Fifteen. My God.’ He rubbed one hand over his face.

Another man walked towards the tent. It was the dark-haired one — only a boy, now that she saw him in daylight — who had taken Elsbeth.

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