cords held him helpless. She smiled at his efforts, chided him.
Her fingers ran through his straggly beard and the gray hair matted with sweat
on his chest. Lower and lower she touched him, bringing her face nearer to his.
The little eyes, buried in fat like a suckling pig’s, came nearer. Her lips
opened and she kissed him, the stubble on her cheeks and chin scraping against
his flesh.
For a second, he tried again to resist her foulness, but she gripped his
shrunken penis, whispering, “Kiss me sweet, brother, else I’ll tug this off your
belly easy as wringing a chick’s neck. Real sweet kiss, like you and your good
wife relish.”
Her lips pressed to his, and he fought to respond, closing his eyes against the
vileness. Her hand caressed him, rousing him. Her mouth tasted of the stolen
food that once belonged to the good people of Ozhbarchik.
She reclined, releasing him, fumbling with her leather breeches, dropping them
over her pallid, wrinkled thighs. Bizabraznia belched, putting a hand to her
mouth in mock politeness.
“Schchi da kasha pishchna nasha,” she laughed.
“The only food is cabbage soup and gruel.” Somehow the child’s verse was a foul
obscenity on her chapped lips, and he nearly threw up. Again he restrained
himself, knowing that this monstrous harridan would kill him if he didn’t please
her.
The woman heaved herself up and squatted over his thighs, grinning, trying to
bring him to erection. “Not much for you, is there? Not in the way of a man, eh?
There’s a good… Something’s stirring, I swear. Not much of a fucking worm, but
better than… ah.”
The ultimate nightmare was that she succeeded. Despite everything that had
passed, Ivan Ivanovich became more roused than he had for many impotent years.
He thrust up against her, grinding his hips against her muscular buttocks. She
reached a gasping climax, accompanied by the cheers of the dozen or so bandits
that had come in from the bitterly cold night to watch the show.
Bizabraznia heaved herself off him, depriving him of the small pleasure of his
own orgasm, sitting down again with a disgusting sucking sound. .
“Please…” he said.
Her eyes narrowed and she slapped him brutally across the face, nearly knocking
him unconscious. He could taste his own blood from a cut lip.
“‘Please,'” she mocked. “I use you. That’s all, you little shit. Honor, for him,
isn’t it, brothers?” Her appeal brought a chorus of agreement from the men. “If
there’s time after Uchitel’s done with you, grandfather, I might come again and
use you some more.”
When the leader returned to the hut, the others crept out like beaten curs. Ivan
Ivanovich looked up from eyes made puffy with weeping, seeing the great fire
from the ruby on Uchitel’s silver headband seeming to fill the room. Now that
the others were gone, the fear was greater.
“Is there silver in this dung heap, old man?” His voice was courteous, not rough
like the rest of the raiders’. “I see you’ve been hurt.” He touched the cuts
across Ivan’s chest and thighs where the blood had dried. “Tell me about any
gold or silver. Or guns. Or more food. Tell me, old man. Come, sing me a song
that will make me smile, and you can go free and live.”
Ivan’s mouth opened and a single word crept out. “Nothing. Nothing, nothing,
nothing.”
“I am not a common bandit. I have the art of reading and writing, old man. I
have books. Books from before the great winter. I have books that show where the
towns stood, with pictures of the clothes that men and women wore. Do you hear
me? Open your eyes.”
The voice snapped at Ivan Ivanovich. It touched the dark places of his mind with
a shudder.
Past and present ebbed and flowed.
It was a dream and soon he’d wake. He’d be warm against the rutting body of the
little Yevgenia. Despite the cleft palate and the skin ailment that made her
face like the scaly back of a fish, she could come closest to stirring him. The
memory of the pain was only a shade of the blackness. He’d wake and it would all