"Come round, you dumb bitch!" and punched her belly again trying to make her regain consciousness. The slave didn't move.

Nikto who sat on the bed yawned. His arms were fully unwrapped and smeared with healing ointment from wrist to elbow.

"Are you going to come round, bitch?" Orel slapped the girl's cheek with such force that her head jerked aside unnaturally. "Shit! She's got on my nerves, Nik!"

"What do you want?"

"I want to love her! And she doesn't come round!"

"Fuck her."

"It's boring like that!"

"Really?"

"Don't laugh at me! Or you'll join her!"

"I'm so scared." Nikto reached for his precious lacquered box.

"No," there was plea in Orel's voice, "don't leave me! You're just sleeping and taking drugs, nothing else! I'm all alone! I don't want to get used to being alone! Do you hear me? Do you understand me?"

Nikto raised his grey eyes, looked at Orel somewhat questioningly.

"You don't need to answer," Orel turned away.

He leaned to the slave again, didn't find any changes and yanked her by the hair abruptly, raising her like a big doll. He slammed her head against the back of the bed. The massive bed shook and Nikto froze with a needle in his hand.

"Arel, move away from the bed," he said very quietly.

"She'd dead," Orel said watching blood leaking from the slave's nose.

"She is the fourth this week, Arel."

Orel kept silent.

"You didn't fuck any of them, you just kill them. Do you hate women?"

"I love them."

"Leave them alone, they won't help you."

"Do you forbid me?"

"Forbid you? No."

"You're leaving me in it, too!"

"Do you want me to tell you what to do?"

"Yes!"

"No."

The slave gave out a long quiet moan.

"Fucking shit! She's alive! Oh you little whore." Orel took out his knife. Nikto who watched him shook his head and injected a needle into his vein.

"I don't know where to make a hole in her to love her," Orel said thoughtfully running the blade over the girl's body. A thin nettle of cuts was turning into a strange bleeding ornament according to the insane fantasy of its author. Orel watched it, mesmerized.

"Cut out her eyes," Nikto said, "you like doing it."

"I did it only once! Don't remind me about it! I don't want to recall that shitty time, I had to turn my head ten times more to stay alive. Shit! I wonder how Squint-Eye can stand it!"

"His eye is used to working for two, but yours was lazy."

"Lazy? Then what are your eyes that don't see shit at all?"

"I'm not whining about it."

"Am I whining?"

"All the time."

Orel threw his boot at him. Nikto barely could dodge.

"Arel, don't! My fucking leg shoots my head when I move suddenly."

"Ugh," Orel just sighed sticking in a triangular blade slightly above the girl's pubis. Her moans got louder – one could wonder where her strength still came from. Orel widened the opening a little. Now she was not moaning, she was screaming madly, there was nothing human in those sounds.

"This cunt isn't going to die at all!" Orel smiled. "She is strong." He shoved his hand into the bloody wound.

"Ooh," Nikto drawled.

"Stop me!"

"No."

"Why don't you stop me? Why?"

"Weren't there enough people who tried to stop you?"

"Yes." Orel tossed his head back in delight; he squeezed something inside the slave in the way that made the girl scream so loudly that Nikto couldn't stand it and covered his ears. The girl tried to get up: not to get up but to run, to escape, it was not conscious, just the last instinctive attempt to save herself. Orel hit her in her temple with he free hand.

"No one can stop me!" he said. "I will do whatever I want. I will do whatever I want – to spite you all!"

Nikto closed his eyes falling into drugged sleep slowly. He heard the slave's moans; he knew it would be going on for a long time: Orel would pause, drink, talk to himself, and the slave would be screaming and dying slowly. Blood would soak the furs with smiling beast heads. Orel would fall asleep by the morning. He would sleep hugging the slave, hugging her with all the tenderness and love he was capable of.

Chapter 3

Bert Dallen

"You found your son, now go away!" Squint-Eye said rudely looking at his brother askance. "And next time watch the brat better for him not to run to the city and especially not to come here, to Orel. He has nothing to do here."

"I wanted to talk to you."

"About what?" Squint-Eye interrupted him. "You also have nothing to do here, Berk, leave!"

"Is it so difficult? Just to talk? We haven't seen each other since you got free last time."

"Fine with me! Forget about me, I don’t have a brother!"

"Yes, you have," Berk said firmly and sat down in the armchair. He was not going to leave at all.

"Go to hell!" Squint-Eye almost screamed.

"Why are you driving me away? I said I won't leave until I talk to you."

"Shi-it!" Squint-Eye clasped his hands nervously, turned away from Berk and looked at the window.

"Stop pouting, Bert, I wish you no evil."

"Look," Squint-Eye didn't turn back. "I'm grateful to you that you gave me my part of inheritance despite father disowning me. I took the soldiers I needed. Thank you once again, nothing connects us any more."

Berk flinched somewhat strangely, closing his eyes as if in pain.

"Forgive me," he swallowed hard, "forgive me, Bert."

Squint-Eye started away from the window, he turned to his brother; there was surprise in his face but just for a moment. When Berk opened his eyes, Squint-Eye looked at him with cold indifference, like before, and there was just animosity in his eyes.

"You haven't been like that, Bert! You haven't! I remember you little, you were so happy and kind, always obeyed me and our parents."

Squint-Eye just smirked.

"Until," Bert paused for a moment, "until you noticed you were different. After that everything went to hell! Everything went to hell," he whispered letting his head drop on his hands.

Squint-Eye sat down on the bed in front of his brother, lit a cigarette. They were alike, very much so. One could easily say they were brothers: similar features, raven hair. Berk was just slightly taller and his eyes were light brown, not grey, like Squint-Eye's.

"I protected you," Berk seemed to be talking to himself, "and later I taught you to protect yourself. I taught you everything I knew and could. And still it didn't work!"

"You did your best, enough of it, you don't need to beg for forgiveness here," Squint-Eye said.

"No, I didn't do my best! And I have a reason to repent! I betrayed you, turned away from you, ditched you when you were imprisoned for the first time! You were just two years older than my son is now, just a child!"

"Your son is not a murderer."

"You wouldn't have been either, if not for your cursed eye."

"Bert, I'm not alone like that. Many people live with it and don't kill anyone, even if someone laughs at them."

"I understand you. Who knows what I would do in your place, maybe, I'd do the same. We are alike, I know you followed my example. I don't believe that you were jealous, I don't! You followed me but not out of jealously, you just loved me."