Saved, Chapter 00

Saved
Prologue

He must have known, as one stern looking warrior nonchalantly waved in his direction and two others neared him that he was dead. That he was a walking corpse. The ones singled out was taken away to be brutally killed. In which way he didn’t know. They could not see what happened but they heard it, heard their screams of terror and how it suddenly quieted.

He was not surprised that he was singled out. Though he was young and healthy he was small and thin and one look at him revealed instantly that he could do no hard labor. They simply would have no use for him. So, surprised he was not, scared he was plenty. He was terrified, petrified. As they closed in on him he was not even able to react against it. They grabbed him by the arms and dragged him off; he hung like a rag doll in their grasp, his legs as unsteady as reeds of grass.

As they rounded the corner of the big tent in front which they had gathered the prisoners he realized what had been done to the ones taken away. He started to scream too as they pulled him closer to a small scaffold and a big axe leaning against it. It was drenched in blood and on either side of it was a pile of human remnants. To the right a big pile of bodies, on the left a smaller pile of heads. There was blood everywhere, the ground drinking it up greedily.

He tried to struggle and burrow his heels into the ground, trying to pull his arms from their hard grasps, to no avail. They were much stronger than he was and his struggles were easily overcome. Reaching the scaffold one of the men pulled his arms up along his back to be able to hold him steady while the other turned to reach for the axe.

By then he had turned limp and the man holding him up was the only thing that kept him standing. He felt a warm trickle along his legs and realized he had wet himself from pure fear. In any other case he would have been ashamed doing that but now he was all consumed by horror. There were no place left for such trifle feelings as shame or dignity.