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Ida's Story

Nettleham is - I must say, has been - a beautiful village on a hill above the Argolid shore facing southwest. My family has lived there in peace and prosperity for generations. You could see across the gulf. On the other side in the far distance the golden roof of the temple of Lerna was shining. I must admit that I myself never saw it; it was really quite far away, but everyone knew it was there, and so it had a powerful presence and gave us shelter.

My parents had a nice house and three grown-up children: My older brother, Rijo, was strong, brave and shrewd; I was so proud of him. Gelanor, the younger, was the funniest person. I was fifteen and had just been promised to a handsome young man in the neighborhood when rumors reached us that Larissa, our capital in the northwest, had been sacked. I have never been to Larissa, and I don't think anyone from the village ever has, but the news changed our lifes completely. The wedding was postponed of course, and everyone started to build fences and gather weapons. Nobody dared to venture outside. Still, the herds had to be taken care of, and Gelanor was so lighthearted, he never thought anything could happen to him.

One cursed morning in fall they came. They must have been hundreds. Horrible armed horsemen from all sides. Heinously shouting. Most people were just paralyzed by fear. Rijo immediately took up his spear and was one of the few who faced them. He was 19 years old, and in a flash he was stabbed to death, with our parents and me watching.

We were in the house, crying and lamenting, when their leader came in, a small strawberry blond brute with several of his hairy-faced myrmidons. He grinned at us, pointed at mother and father, and with a wink of his hand condemned them to death. He blew me a kiss and with an evil laugh he left the house. My parents were immediately executed and I, together with five other virgins from the village, was dragged away, after they had layed fire to every house.

I haven't seen Gelanor in all of this, so I hope and pray that he was able to hide and still is alive, even if I will never know.

Our hands were bound to their horses and we had to run for our life. One of the girls - a cousin of mine - stumbled and was dragged along by the horse. First she screamed from pain, but the horsemen didn't slow down and she couldn't get back on her feet. After a while her screams subsided and when finally, finally the rider stopped, she must have been half-crazy from pain. He looked at her, with all those wounds and open flesh, considered her worthless and cut her throat. I pitied her then and envied her later. For the rest of us the race continued.

We were half dead and our feet were full of blisters when we arrived at their camp. We thought the worst was over, but how wrong have we been! We were five women in the middle of a hundred brutal men. They all seeked their morbid pleasure in hurting, raping and harassing us. In the first few days I must have had them all. The pain was unbearable and my flayed feet I didn't even feel any more. All of us wanted nothing but to die.

But we lived. The men never stayed in one place. The bands were constantly regrouped, and so I lost touch with the other women from Nettleham. Instead, from time to time new female flesh showed up. Their fate was no better than mine. I was assigned to a fat little guy with red hair and a bushy snotty mustache. Everyone called him the butcher. He abused me whenever it passed his sick mind, but he also had fun handing me around among his cronies.

As weird as it sounds: After a while through all the pain you get used to any kind of half life. I used the hours of the night, when my torturers were snoring in their tents and we were hobbled together with the horses out in the open, to pray for my brother. Worrying for him somehow saved my sanity. And I began to make some observations. Apparently there were no women among them. Kurgan women I mean. And they never stayed on anywhere. The routes they took made no sense and seemed to be totally chaotic. There was no daily routine, no rules to hold onto. Only from time to time a village came close which they sacked and burnt down. These were the only moments when we had a rest.

I got pregnant. I tried to hide it as long as I could, but in the end I gave the butcher just another opportunity to torment and abuse my body. The morning my baby boy was born was another day of decampment on their course of madnes and destruction. On this day after my delivery I carried my sweetheart from dusk to dawn without rest. In the evening he was hot from fever and hours later he was dead. The butcher threw him away like durt and laughed. But his name was Gelanor, like his uncle's. He still lives in my heart. Now my heart has to be strong enough for both of us.

There was one of them, only one - he also wanted his pleasure at my cost - who had just a whiff of kindness. He returned a few times, and I made him teach me a few snatches of his language. It is hard to believe, but when I spoke to them in their language and told them: My name is Ida, what's your name? - this made it a tiny little bit more difficult for them to trample on me. And so I started to talk to the men and over the years I learned their language.

Of course, I wasn't only abused sexually. I had to work for the butcher: cleaning, washing, knitting, sewing. I was beat up whenever the butcher was not pleased with my work, which was the case most of the time. He was disgusted by me learning his language and whenever I said something to him, he pounded me on my mouth.

But things got worse. It seems some of the other brutes complained to their new chief about the butcher allowing me to speak to them, so I was taken away from my owner and assigned to this chief. Everyone who spoke about him described him as the most sadist blackguard who had boasted among his men to make an example of me. This was the end.

He summoned me, pressed me to the wall, stood menacingly in front of me and said: 'You understand me, don't you? Then listen closely.' - He took a long rusty knife from his belt and put it to my throat. - 'You broads of booty shan't put Kurgan words into your mouths, but Kurgan pricks.' - He denuded himself, pushed me down and with his knife at my throat tore my mouth open and squeezed his limb in.

I knew deep in my heart that this was my last day. And if not, I wanted it to be. I wanted it all to end, right now and here. Suppressing my impulse to vomit, I worked his thing with my tongue, which seemed to please him, because he let the knife down, and then with all my strength and desperation I bit him. I was out of my mind and I bit him so hard that I bit through.

I spit out what I had in my mouth. Then man bellowed and howled, dropped the knife, rolled on the floor, the blood dashed out of his trunk, bespattering me, the walls and the floor. I was petrified.

Within moments the room was filled with the cronies of the guy wriggling on the floor. They beat me in the face - you see my eye? - and pounded me half unconscious. They promised me a thousand slow deaths and dragged me into a stable wooden hut, locked from the outside. I can't remember how often I puked, then I holed up in the remotest corner and waited for my fate.

This is the place you set on fire.