Serventa in the Taiga

Sample from Chapter 1 -

A warrior, Ratibor, with long hair and waving a battle axe, leapt onto the handrail above the bulwarks where Serventa was hiding. With mighty strength, she stabbed his foot with her knife, sending him screaming down into the river. Another hesitated with his sword, shy to kill a woman, as Serventa leapt forward and stabbed him in the chest. Next, she was overpowered and held down on the deck of the ship. One of her oarsmen, Ragnar, rushed over to rescue her but was smashed cruelly from behind with another battle axe to his head. Another Swede tried to help, but he was instantly brought down with a similar attack.

The battle was brutal, bloody, horrible. The crew were well outnumbered, and the surprise attack left them ill-prepared and defenceless. Serventa had seen Karras slip over the side of the boat into the river. Was he killed or escaping from the carnage? She wasn’t sure. He deserved to live, but it didn’t look good. A large brute pounced upon her and held her down as he tied her arms behind her back, knotting a rope around her neck. The rope was rough and clumsy as she was dragged away, the only survivor. She screamed and struggled, but these men were tough and strong. For a long time, she kicked and thrashed to stand her ground, but there was no chance against the strength and control of her captor. These were the Chud, Baltic Finnic peoples from the Karelia region, with a reputation for being beautifully weird, said to wear blood-dripping garments, believing the fruits of the chase and battle to be holy. Serventa was a little nervous about how ‘weird’ her captor might be. As she was being dragged away, smoke and flames lifted high into the sky where her ship had sailed so proudly, but now only stood a corpse-boat. In the distant sky, the Aurora Borealis shone brightly, declaring the spirits of the murdered, those souls killed in battle, as the flaming lights of the North predicted more bloodshed on the earth.