Dishonor [Nanowrimo 2013]

Chapter 7: Ruined

Chapter 7: Ruined

 

Bryan walked up and grabbed my arm pulling me along behind him. He dragged me back outside to the well. “Wash up girl, and wash that sack a little. I don’t want anyone that dirty in my room.”

I striped off the sack and quickly dumped a bucket on myself to get the bits of manure off. It was cold and I started shivering from the night chill and the cold water on my skin. I pulled up a second bucket and scrubbed the sack in it. When I finished I put back on the dripping wet sack. I hoped that Bryan had some plan for me to dry off.

The second my sack was back on Bryan grabbed my arm and dragged me back along through unknown corridors till we reached his room. He opened the door and shoved me in in front of him. As soon as the door was closed he let me go and bolted the door.

“Wait there, I’ll grab you a towel to dry of with. And you can wear it so your sack can have time to dry. He walked off leaving me standing there by the door, and then he came back with a soft gray towel. He held it out to me, and for a second my hands hovered over it, afraid to touch its soft material, but then I grabbed it, feeling the soft texture caress my hands. I stripped off the sack and quickly dried of with the towel and then wrapped it around my body.

When I finished I realized that Bryan was staring at me. “What are you looking at?”

He flashed a devious looking grin my direction, “A woman with a beautiful body.”

I wished I hadn’t asked. I could feel my cheeks heat up instantly and I looked down at the ground wishing I could hide my blush. I had to change the topic, “Why did sc-Kyle shoot that girl two days ago if he is such a good guy?”

Bryan’s smile disappeared in a second. “He, He told me about that. He did it out of mercy and pity. She’d been being whipped a lot because she wasn’t completing her tasks. She was getting weaker and weaker, and her body wasn’t able to handle the strain on what little food they were feeding her. He was requesting her almost every night and taking care of her and feeding her extra, but she was asking him every night to put her out of her misery. Finally when she collapsed and couldn’t get up he finally got the nerve to do it and end it quickly for her so that she didn’t have a long drawn out death. He was pretty upset about her death.”

He was silent afterward, staring at the ground. “I had to kill a young man the other day. He was only about fifteen. He tried to kill me with a shard of glass he found, and I slashed his throat with my sword. He had no chance against my training, but my training took over, and I even if I hadn’t killed him then he would have been executed.”

I didn’t know what to day. How do you comfort someone who has killed in close quarters? My mother always comforted with hugs now, but she hadn’t when I was a child. When I was growing up she hardly ever looked kindly at my sister or I. It was always lectures on being a proper lady. When bad things happened she would simply say we had to hold it together and we couldn’t be upset or cry. I didn’t know how to comfort.

Now she would awkwardly hug her children with Jordan, and she would even try and hug my sister or I when things were tough for us, but neither of us were good at accepting hugs. But I didn’t know what else to do other than stand there awkwardly.

And the moment passed because Bryan went to take off his armor, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I carefully hung my sack up on a hook near the door so that it would dry. I walked over toward the bed and stood there in his towel waiting for permission to sit down on the bed.

He quickly took off the armor and then the uniform underneath. I turned away so I wouldn’t have to look at his naked body and see his muscular abs. I could see his strong arms and shoulders well enough with his armor on. He did have a nice body, and even that thought made me uncomfortable. I didn’t want to be thinking of him as having nice anything.