Hadrius did not return throughout the evening.

River remains in the room, pacing back and forth, unable to still the lengthy juddering of her heart. She pauses at one end of the room and gnaws on her fingernail, unconsciously biting too hard and drawing blood.

The pain is sharp and instant, briefly drawing her from her mind in a web of stinging thoughts. "Fuck," she curses lowly and makes for his bathroom carefully washing it in the bowl of water before tearing a thin strip from the hem of her skirt and wrapping it around her thumb.

The pacing continues.

It does not stop until the familiar discordant sounds of voices echo from the outside as the beasts began their return, howls of their wolves drifts from the mountains and hills, resonant laughter.

Nothing that gives evidence of tension.

River's shoulders sag. That could only mean that they did not know what Odin had done to her. Hadrius must have left the camp altogether.

A knock from the door draws her attention towards it and she grows still beneath the noise, skin bloating with and anticipation of who it might be.

"River," Anita's sickly voice whispers, "will you not be serving dinner tonight?"

River expels a pained breath then steels her spine, gathering whatever remnants of dignity and courage she had scattered within. Approaching the door, she carefully cracks it open; "Sorry about that," she mutters, and Anita shakes her head.

A moment of tensed silence crackles between the two individuals, broken by her friend's soft, solemn sigh. "What did you do?" It takes River a moment to truly understand the intonation in her voice -- it was not a question, neither did it hold concern but rather accusation.

River blinks, evidently taken aback. "What do you mean?"

Anita adjusts her scarf, trembling like a windflower on its slender stem, so fragile it couldn't possibly survive the blasts that shake it, though it survives them all. "River, you -- You harmed Odin."

The statement is not what floors her, it is the manner in which Anita regards her, and River gapes, incredulous unblinking stare rooting her to the earth. "Anita," she begins slowly, as though her words would be processed more efficiently at an unhurried pace, "Odin almost raped me-"

"And?" Anita interrupts harshly, her own shawl coming undone from the rapid movements of her lips revealing a blue-black bruised along her neck, "It is not something unheard of. These men are not humans, they are our masters, and we are nothing but toys to them... disposable."

"But-"

"You forget where we are River you forget who we are to them. A slave isn't a person who's being treated as a thing, a slave is a thing, as much in her own estimation as in anybody's else's." Anita's eyes shone with sparks of accusing ferocity, "what you did was foolish! Do you know the consequences of wounding a beast?"

"But he-"

"He will have you killed," Anita finishes and a surly silence settles.

She inhales, a soft wheezing sound rattling through her chest. "He will have you killed then he will take out his anger on me tonight. You are not the first girl to be taken against her will - he does that to me every night," her hand reaches up and roughly tugs at the corner of her mouth revealing two gaping holes where her lower premolars should have been, "he took out two of my teeth for not stripping on time... he fucks my anus every night until I bleed... he spits in my mouth whenever he's done and forces me to sleep by his feet... but do I complain?"

River remains still and thunderstruck beneath the revealing accusations, unable to reply as she watches her friend slowly come undone at the seams before her. A piteous expression of pain taints her eyes.

"I submit to survive. We all do. Except you... You had one job, but you couldn't even do that-"

"Girls!" Both heads snap towards the right where another servant stands holding a tray of upturned goblets. Her eyes flicker between them impatiently, before jerking her chin towards the hall, "rather than idling about, gossiping, find your way to the hall."

Anita's eyes lower in deference, "Yes, of course, I was fetching her."

The lady's skeptical gaze darts between the two. She grunts and turns away.

"Anita-" River begins to speak when her friend sharply shakes her head, and turns away.

Hovering by the entrance of her only secure place, River watches after their retreating figures with a sense of claws desperation. Her pulse begins to beat in her brain with an intensity that causes her insides to roll.

Servants are things.

Anita's words rang true in her mind, lashing across her face like a hunting-crop. She clenches her fists and draws in a shuddering inhale whilst schooling her features to form a placid mask of servility.

Maybe what she had done had been wrong.

Maybe she should have lain there and let Odin have his way with her.

The dark sky had parted with a lamenting sigh, cold precipitation pattering against her head, cooling the heat that formed hectic spots of red on her cheeks as she made her way to the wooden hall.

It was loud and rowdy as always. River stands by the entrance, intent wild eyes flickering across the room searching for Odin but he was nowhere to be seen.

Neither was Hadrius.

Picking a goblet, she begins to move up and down the long trestle tables, pouring wine into men's cups-- and smiling, always smiling. Few eyes stray to her as much as they did to every other slave girl of enough beauty, and yet as she leans over their shoulders, there is no groping, no whispered obscene remarks.

For a moment, River wonders why, until she realizes it had been Odin who did most of the touching.

The rest stared with subtle crudeness.

The night passes on with a certain, intense slowness and a tremor palpitates in her chest throughout, unable to draw sanity and calmness. Beyond the hall, she sees flashes of white-hot lightning streaking across the darkened sky, the booming of thunder that fails to mask the whining of horses and pounding of hooves that approach from the East and soon -- the fastidious approaching footsteps.

River remains pressed by the wall beside a few other servants whose eyes never strayed from the plates and cups - making sure none were empty, or simply wondering when their turn to eat would arrive.

The hall's door slam open at that moment.

A gust of cold night air swept through the room ferociously, rainwater flooding the tables, soaking the people and pooling on the floors.

Hadrius stands by the entrance, clothes darkened with rain and sodden, inky black hair slicked back, those bottomless eyes lit with an exquisite, dangerous fire as they languidly slide over the hushed hall.

His chiselled lips curled in a faint, hollow smile.

"All men," Hadrius begins with deadly calmness, "step outside."

The quiet lingers on a drawn string that snaps as bemused expressions turn to each other. The beasts blinks in confusion, yet none dare to utter a word as the violent torrent continues to beat against the warlord's back.

"What is this, Hadrius?" One burly man speaks up, a sliver of irritation in his words at the thought of being disrupted from his hearty meal.

River's heart turns traitor as Hadrius tilts his head, his eyes meeting her from across the room.

"Outside." He repeated, then turns.

Sick.

River feels nauseous with trepidation as she makes her way out into the field, steps faltering at the sight of all soldiers that line up side by side.

They shift from one foot to another agitatedly as rain beats on their heads and broad shoulders, yet beneath that facade lies an indistinct unnerved feeling at the thoughts of why the warlord had summoned them out in the rain.

Men who had not arrived for dinner were ushered out of their tents, disgruntled and bleary-eyed from their disrupted naps and mid-fucks, they grumbled incoherently whilst walking to the line. Odin appears from his tent, a white gauze patched over his right eye.

His face darkens considerably at the sight of River, and she flinches as though he had stung her, stepping back reflexively.

Once all men had been rounded only then did Hadrius appear with his right hand man, Dante.

They juxtaposed whilst standing beside each other, though Hadrius had dark features, Dante's skin was that of burned sienna, the jagged edges of a cliff. He speaks softly to Hadrius, who watches the men blankly.

The dim roar of thunder, like the bourdon note of a distant organ, echos above their heads.

Hadrius finally steps away from Dante and moves towards the men. Each step is slow and drawn, like liquid, as if he holds enough power to drown everyone with a mere drop or eradicate entire landscape with a tsunami.

"Human," River's eyes snap upwards, noting the curl of his finger as he gestures her forward and towards him. Her feet move automatically, heart thundering with each squelch of mud beneath her feet.

River stops by his side, tensing up tight as he moves to stand behind her. The length of his front flush against her back, large hands lowering onto either of her shoulders as his calloused, slender fingers digs the flesh of her skin possessively.

The coldness of rain and heat from his presence sparks on her skin.

"Point him out."

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