Icebound

It had been a month since the ship sank beneath the frozen sea, and the survivors had begun raising a fragile encampment against the endless Arctic wilderness.

She drove the cleaver deep into a slab of unidentifiable meat.

The dull crack of bone echoed through the room.

She burst from a military tent into utter chaos. The first line was disappearing beneath bombardment.
Earth erupted into the air as explosions tore trenches apart. Splinters of wood, steel fragments, and shrapnel rained from every direction.

Soldiers screamed. Sirens wailed. Officers shouted orders that vanished beneath the thunder of cannon fire.

A young soldier lay on a blood-soaked table, his body convulsing in unbearable agony. A doctor and a nurse struggled to hold him still while another forced a leather gag between his teeth. "If only we had more opium..." There wasn't any.

The man's leg hung by a strip of flesh and shattered bone. One swift blow severed what remained. Blood flooded the table as his scream became nothing more than a muffled cry behind the gag.

The cleaver slipped from her fingers, remaining buried upright in the slab of meat.

She stared at it for a long moment before whispering to herself,

She reached for clean bandages and slowly wiped the blood from her hands.

Her hands pressed desperately against an open abdomen. A Prussian cavalry saber had torn the man's belly apart. She gathered his intestines with trembling fingers, trying to return them where they belonged.

The surgery failed. Warm blood covered her wrists. She cleaned her hands in silence.

Her eyes drifted toward the careful stitches she had sewn across the wound—precise, delicate, almost beautiful.

Viktorie folded the stained bandages and walk toward the frozen world beyond her door.

A new beginning.

A chance to become something more than a servant obeying orders.