There would be no escaping from the cage, at least, not while the caravan was in motion. Elvar’s cold blue eyes examined her surroundings with a hunter’s patience and attention to detail, taking note of how the guards were placed, the condition of their mounts and equipment, how the Inquisitor’s company set up their camp when they stopped for the night, who brought her food-- every last scrap of information the barbarian woman could gleam for when the moment came to make her escape. It immediately became clear that her captors were out of their depth in the Ironback Mountains, the winter cold alone causing them persistent misery and delay, and she longed for the day when they would finally receive their just reward. It would come soon, delivered on the edge of Hrothkin axes, on the point of Hrothkin spears, and beneath the leather muzzle gag, Elvar offered a cold, cruel smile. Gods willing, she would take her revenge, and do it soon.

For the forces of the Grand Inquisition had made a terrible mistake in taking her captive. They’d struck without warning or provocation, a host of their crusaders daring the passes through the Ironbacks in winter and laying siege to Elvar’s village. She was amongst the last of its huscarls to fall, a dozen of the foe lying rent and broken at her feet before a lucky blow from behind took her down. When she awoke, she was locked inside a great iron cage borne on one of the invader’s carts, iron manacles shacked her wrists and ankles in front of her, while an iron collar kept her chained to the bars and unable to rise from where she sat. In addition, she’d been stripped of her weapons, hauberk and furs, the last leaving her muscled form exposed to both the bitter cold and the gawking of the softlander soldiers. The former was nothing Elvar had not endured before in the harsh training required to make her a shieldmaiden.

The latter, well… One of the Inquisitor’s horsemen dared guide his steed next to the cage, peering in to leer at her full breasts and muscled thighs, and a growl of barely constrained violence emerged past the leather muzzle gag sealing her lips. That weaklings such as this had ever managed to get the better of her… The dishonour of it all was more than she could stand, eroding her patience and sending her into a rage, long blonde hair whirling about her in a furious halo as she thrashed about to the rattle of her chains. “Mmmmppgggh, mmmpppggghh! MMMPPPGGGHHH!” she howled, the heat of her anger stoked all the higher as the Inquisitor himself approached the cage. “MMMPPPPPGGGHHH!”

“Contain yourself, woman. I would expect even a heathen to show greater decorum than you,” the Inquisitor replied coldly. Clad in the black robes of his order, he was a rather imposing figure, the harsh planes of his face bereft of pity or mercy, pale grey eyes staring at her as one might some invasive pest. “You must know by now that there is no escape. You will be taken to the Iron Abbey and brought to heel, as we would any other sinner.”

Then Elvar noticed how he was armed, and she sprang forward as far as her chains would permit, battle-scarred hands wrapped around the bars of the cage as if to pull them apart. Wyrdcutter, her one-handed war axe, had been looped through his swordbelt, right next to the dagger Frostbite. Her weapons, forged for her hands and consecrated in the blood of her enemies, now the trophy of some craven scum who’d dared invade her homeland. Only the fact that she was shackled and caged kept her hands from around the Inquisitor’s throat, and he must have realized it, for he quickly darted back, the muzzle barely containing her scream of rage. “MMMMPPPPGGGHH!”

“Enough!” snapped the Inquisitor. “In three days, you will arrive at the Abbey, and there, you will submit, as well any others of your heathen kind that fall to our power. Never again will we suffer the Hrothkin to contaminate our world with their pagan ways!”

It would be a cold day in the Utterdark before she or any of her kin dared bend the knee to such demands, and Elvar forced herself to go calm and still inside. Her time would come, and when it did, getting locked in a cage would be a mercy compared to the horrors she’d unleash…