Kerana - Slave of Atlantis
by
Lindsey Brooks
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2009 Lindsey Brooks
Published by Strict
Publishing International
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Chapter 1
How much further?” Kerana hissed impatiently, still half-convinced they were wasting their time.
“Soon now,” Durkan promised.
As her horse picked its way down the rocky defile, Kerana glanced eastward where the rim of the sun just showed on the horizon. She weighed the risks of being on the High Road in daylight against the possible gains, and let the horse continue. “This informant of yours better be right,” she said, looking back at the man on the horse behind. “We’ve been riding all night.”
“He’s right,” Durkan assured her. “Trust me.” The defile widened where it met the road and Durkan drew alongside. “To the left.”
Kerana turned her horse. Men with coiled whips and long switches hanging from their belts suddenly confronted her.
“What the hell…? Slavers!” She jerked on the reins but sudden pain stabbed the side of her head and she toppled, all the breath forced out of her as she hit the ground hard. Head spinning, she fought the pain and rose to all fours. “Treacherous scum!”
She snatched for her sword to answer the challenge to her leadership with cold steel. The slavers were on her before the blade cleared its sheath. It took three of them to force her into the dust, Kerana fighting with feet and fists, teeth and nails until they pinned her wrists behind her and thonged them tight. Breathless, she was hauled ignominiously upright. A furious toss of her head cleared her thick, copper-streaked hair from her eyes and she stared hatred at Durkan. Her traitorous lieutenant sat smugly astride his horse, rubbing the fist that had sent her sprawling, his hawk-face split by a cruel smile of triumph.
“You’ll never find it!” she snarled.
“I already have,” he said. “Why else do you think you are here?”
Kerana swore. It had all been too convenient – Durkan bringing news of the caravan at just the time her most loyal men were away disposing of the plunder from her last raid. She could have said no. They were not even certain where it was, let alone its size and strength, but Kerana had been sure she would find it and make a plan to pluck its riches, even with only a dozen men at her back. And it had all been a trap. Her temper flared. “Whoreson, one night you’ll wake and find my dagger at your throat.”
Durkan’s eyes flickered from hers and Kerana knew he was remembering her reputation for cunning and her fearsome fighting skills. She had led King Barca’s army a merry dance for more than five years and remained free. Her stomach clenched - until now.
Her betrayer shrugged off the threat. “We’ll see.” He gestured at the slavers leader. “Our friend here is bound for Olnis. After a three hundred-mile walk, he’ll stand you on the auction block and sell you to the highest bidder, who will use you as he pleases. I doubt we’ll meet again, Kerana.” His triumphant grin returned. “But if we do, I will be a free man and you will be no more than an obedient slave.”
“Never!” Kerana lunged, only to be dragged back by her captors. “You filthy-.”
“Enough!” The slavers deep voice cut her off. “I have a long way to go and this is wasting daylight. Strip her.”
After more frantic struggling that gained her nothing, Kerana was forced into the dirt again. They yanked off her boots, found the knife hidden there and used it to cut off her sword-belt and leather jerkin, then tore the linen kilt from her waist. Only her breech-clout remained when she regained her feet, flushed and bristling with fury. Then she saw the leers on the faces of her men, the men she had enriched by her skilful leadership. All of them wanted her. Given the chance, they would fuck her like the lowest whore from the streets of Azdagul. She drew in a shuddering breath then stopped abruptly when it lifted her jutting breasts. Cringing inwardly, she fought to keep the humiliation from showing on her face. But she would not bow her head, even if all she could do was glare defiance at those who had plunged her into such awful degradation.
The slaver moved, blocking her from Durkan’s lustful gaze. She had been conscious of the man watching her, the only one there whose eyes had never left her face. Summoning her courage, she turned her defiance on him, hating him for the thin smile that hovered on his lips. His hand moved lightning fast, snapping the cord encircling Kerana’s hips, tearing her breech-clout away to expose the generous, copper-tinted bush that crowned her sex. Her fighter’s instincts responded and she lashed out with a foot to mash his balls into his crotch, only to be amazed when he swiftly side-stepped and caught her by the ankle, lifting her leg high so she had to lean into the men holding her to keep her balance.
His grin was as maddening as Durkan’s and her humiliation far greater when she saw his eyes fix on the exposed lips of her sex. She hissed in rage as his free hand smoothed over her calf and up her thigh, his grip on her ankle never relaxing enough for her to break free. He stood close, watching her face as he explored her, tugging her pubic curls until she grunted in protest, then sliding his middle finger down to the fleshy lips below. She fought the pressure, knowing it would be hopeless, felt the yielding of her most intimate place and two long fingers slide deep over the velvety ridges within. Gasping in shock and embarrassment, she turned her face from the slaver’s assessing gaze. His fingers moved swiftly, rubbing, probing and teasing the tender flesh until her sex also betrayed her and her juices began to flow. Jaw clamped tight, she endured, silently cursing the outraged squeak that escaped her when his fingers slid from within and delved under her hood to pinch her clitoris. She squirmed, vainly trying to escape the unwanted feelings his touch was provoking, but he only pinched harder and painfully until she ceased her struggles. Only then did he release her.
“She’s no virgin,” he told Durkan coolly and Kerana knew he was laughing at her.
“Bastard,” she swore and tried to head-butt him.
He avoided the attack as deftly as he had her first, and regarded her with one eyebrow raised. “Well you’ve proved you’re a fighter. A real naughty girl, eh? But are you ready to take the consequences?” Kerana’s chin lifted. She never refused a challenge. Then the slaver pulled the switch from his belt. “Up with her, boys.”
Once more her struggles were in vain. With a brief glimpse of her guards grinning broadly, Kerana found herself in the dirt again, knees beneath her, strong hands on both ankles, one on her neck forcing her cheek into the dust, another lifting her bound hands clear of her bare buttocks. She heard the soft hiss as the switch came down but was unprepared for the fiery sting that scorched a line across her upturned bottom.
“Ow!” Kerana clamped her lips tight and ground her teeth, cursing herself for showing weakness. She had known greater pain, though as each smack added more fire to her tender bottom she could not quite remember when. But the shame burned far worse; to be punished like a mere child - a naughty girl, the slaver called her - in front of men she could easily out-think and out-fight if only her hands were free to wield a sword.
The final stroke was the worst, slashing down with such force that it seared not only the soft skin where thighs and buttocks met but scorched the fragile, fleshy lips of Kerana’s sex where it peeped from between her tightly closed thighs. She wanted to leap up to dance on her toes and rub and rub between her legs until the pain went away. But she would not move or cry out, and even when the guards released her she remained in her undignified position, swearing she would kill every one of them. But not now. If she fought now she would only end up dead.
Slowly, she rose to her feet, ignoring the laughter and mockery of her erstwhile followers. Her power over them and the respect she had once commanded as her right were gone. Whatever she did, she could never regain them. Even as she killed the traitors they would only remember her as a helpless slave, kneeling with her bottom turned up for the switch. The smarting of her backside was nothing compared to the hurt that caused.
“Are you going to behave?” the slaver demanded. “Or do I need to show you what this can do?”
He unhooked a whip from his belt and flexed it in his big hands. Kerana eyed the tapering length of leather warily. She did not have to see the thin, whippy, steel rod beneath the plaited strands to know that it was there and that it would cause a lot more pain than any switching. She met his eye and gave the shortest of nods.
“Keep still,” he ordered and she smothered the urge to wriggle as his hands roved over her nudity, gauging the smoothness of her skin, the tautness of her belly and firmness of her thighs. He laughed almost inaudibly at her hissing breath when he tested the weight of her breasts and thumbed their conical nipples, laughed again when she winced and wiggled at the firm grip he used to explore her stinging buttocks. Last, he forced her jaws apart to check her teeth, and only the threat of the evil-looking whip kept Kerana still while the same finger that had penetrated her sex pushed into her mouth. She closed her eyes as her own woman-scent filled her nostrils and she could taste her own juices on her tongue. When he had finished, she spat.
The catcalls and laughter died away as the slaver turned to Durkan. “Not bad. She’s a bit muscular for most tastes.” He glanced at her, seeking a reaction Kerana supposed and kept her face expressionless. “And she’ll need a lot of training. There are some who like their slaves unbroken, preferring to do it themselves. She might sell to someone like that but I wouldn’t call her ideal stock. I couldn’t offer more than ten crowns.”
“Done,” Durkan said. Kerana’s indignation rose again. He had not even bothered to haggle! He took the coins, tossed one in the air and caught it, cruel triumph creasing his face as his eyes sought Kerana’s. “I’ll take her weapons too. They’re of no use to a slave girl.”
He turned his horse with a whoop and rode away with the men Kerana had imagined were her loyal followers. She could only stare malevolently as they disappeared in their own dust. It was no comfort knowing Durkan had sold her far too cheaply.
The chill early morning breeze raised gooseflesh on her bare skin and stiffened her nipples, and she shivered as she looked eastwards. The sun had not yet cleared the horizon. In so short a time, she had been betrayed, humiliated, beaten and abused, transformed from free woman to slave. Why in five years of raiding caravans on the High Road had she never found anyone she could really trust? It was a man’s game and she had been only a clever woman, better at it than they were. They had only followed her because of her success. They had never made her feel she belonged. When they sat drinking around their campfires she was an outsider, as much an outcast as she had been when she was an orphan child begging in the streets of Azdagul and later as a thief in the same city, struggling to avoid a life in its brothels. Kerana shook herself. No time for self-pity. She would have her revenge, and then gather a new band and start again. Or she might recover the hidden plunder that Durkan claimed he had found and live a life of comfort in some distant city. But first she must regain her freedom. She eyed the guards and gauged the distance to the nearest horse.
“No chance.” The voice was right behind her. Kerana turned, her erect nipples brushing the slavers mail shirt. She scowled up at him. “Instead of trying to run away you should be thanking me,” he said.
“For making me a slave?” she asked bitterly.
“For saving your life. You saw the look in their eyes when you were stripped.”
“It was you who stripped me,” she said indignantly.
“Of course. No one buys a slave unseen.”
“You beat me!”
“You deserved it. And it distracted them. If I hadn’t, they would have changed their minds about selling you and raped you to death.” She had to concede she had feared it when she saw their lusting faces. “Girl, do you really think I am a slaver?” her captor asked. “I guard the sorry wenches. I don’t usually buy and sell them.”
He did not look like any slaver Kerana had seen. His height and broad shoulders, and the thickness of his well-muscled arms and legs suggested he was a warrior. A faint hope rose inside. “Then you only bought me to free me?”
He laughed. “Girl, first you take me for a slaver. Now you take me for a fool!”
They thonged her ankles, and Kerana had only a brief moment to marvel at her captor’s strength as he slung her effortlessly over a horse’s neck in front of one of the guards. Then she was bumping uncomfortably on the saddle bow, a hand pressing hard onto the small of her back, another exploring the intimacies of her defenceless sex as the horse broke into a canter. The thudding hooves drowned her furious protests and she fell silent as her mouth began to fill with dust. That she did not suffer the assault for long made it no less demeaning. They rounded the bend in the road and drew to a halt, and Kerana was upended into the waiting arms of two more slave guards.
They made her kneel in the road and she looked around. Durkan had told the truth about the caravan, if nothing else. It stretched up the road before her, and despite her dire situation she could not help but weigh it with a professional eye – size, value, protection and speed of travel. All were about average. It might make ten miles in a day, or more likely eight at this time of year. So she had about twelve days before it reached Azdagul. Kerana knew the land west of the city better than the back of her hand but beyond was the territory of rival bands where she had never dared encroach. Twelve days then, before she lost her advantage.
Two hundred paces ahead was a half-hidden gully beside the road. If she could reach it, she could lose her captors among its twists and turns, maybe even take one by surprise. Just let her get a sword! She eyed the slave-train – ten coffles of six slaves each, maybe thirty guards, four big wagons with their drivers and helpers but they did not count. And there was the one who had bought her. He was talking to one of the drivers, looked up and saw her watching him. “Put her in one of the coffles,” he ordered.
Kerana felt her ankles freed and allowed herself to be steered to one of the lines of slave girls sitting chained neck to neck in the road. “Lord Macro,” she heard as another driver joined her captor, “it’s not that we can’t...” She ignored the rest. So his name was Macro and he was lord of somewhere. Definitely a warrior then, and by far her greatest threat. One of her guards was unwrapping a length of chain from an iron collar. The other was eyeing the naked slave girls on the road, who watched Kerana with undisguised curiosity. She looked at Macro and saw his back was turned.
Then she bolted.
Chapter 2
It was harder to run with her wrists tied behind her than Kerana expected., but she plunged on among the wagons and pack animals, shouldering startled people aside, weaving to confuse any pursuit as she sprinted for her goal. With a surge of elation, she saw her escape route just ahead, glanced back to look for her pursuers and slammed into the flank of a horse with enough force to knock her off her feet.
Macro had dismounted, lifted her with frightening ease, thrown her over his saddle and mounted again before Kerana even had her breath back.
“Not only a naughty girl but a silly one too.”
A hard hand smacked down on her upturned bottom, and she growled with fury as Macro’s horny palm dealt stinging blows to her already smarting buttocks. He rode slowly past the caravan, spanking her rhythmically while the travellers jeered and laughed at her embarrassment. Burning with humiliation, Kerana kept her head down on the horse’s shoulder, biting back the cries she was determined would not escape her as the fiery pain worsened with each loud slap of hand on flesh. One of his muscular thighs was pressing against her own and her left breast rubbed against the other as her body jolted back and forth under the sharp blows to her bottom. To her horrified amazement, her nipples began to harden, and Kerana tensed in sudden alarm as a tingling glow started spreading through her lower belly. The severity of Macro’s smacks did not diminish, yet somehow the nature of her pain seemed to change. Her head spun in disbelief. It was almost… pleasant… stimulating! The onlooker’s laughter receded as all her senses centred only on the sound of Macro’s rhythmically slapping hand, its sting on her bouncing buttocks and the growing heat in her pulsing sex.
Then she was back where she had started and Macro dumped her into the hands of her waiting guards. Stunned and shamed, and still not believing what had just happened, she raised her eyes to his to prove she had shed no tears. His grin as he met her eye stung her almost as much as his palm had. Her arousal vanished in a wave of humiliation and anger. Suddenly Kerana felt only her pain and badly wanted to rub her poor, sore bottom. She was glad her bound wrists prevented her. She would show no weakness to the bastard, or any mercy either when she wiped the infuriating smile off his face with her sword.
“Should we whip her, Lord Macro?” one of the guards asked.
“The caravan’s moving,” another called.
“Then get her chained and let’s away.”
Two guards held Kerana while a third closed the hinged collar around her neck. The faint click as he turned the key in the lock was like the knell of doom to Kerana’s ears. “Up slaves,” the same man ordered, and the six slave girls rose to their feet. He fixed the chain hanging from Kerana’s collar to a ring at the back of the collar of the girl ahead of her, stepped away and uncoiled the plaited leather whip from his belt. “Onward, wenches,” he called cheerfully, cracking the whip above the heads of his charges. “Your new masters await you.”
The chain between Kerana and the next girl tightened, jerking the collar around her neck and she had no choice but to follow. In utter confusion over her body’s unbelievable response to the spanking, with buttocks still burning from her humiliating punishments and the uncomfortable weight of the collar an awful reminder of her new status, Kerana took her first steps as a chained slave.
It was not as easy as she thought. First, she walked too fast, treading on the heels of the girl ahead; then she went too slowly, tightening the chains linking the slaves and jerking their neck collars. The big-breasted blonde in front half turned her head and Kerana waited for her curses. She was surprised when the girl spoke mildly. “You have to keep a steady pace. Try to keep in step and watch the chain as well as where you’re going. That helps keep some slack in it. We all have to work together.”
Kerana did not reply. She wanted no advice from a slave, and co-operation was not her way. She gave orders. Others obeyed. But, as the morning wore on, she had to admit it was good advice and she began to get the knack of walking in coffle. It gave her time to assess her opponents. The slave-train was near the back of the caravan, with the chained slaves ahead and the wagons following. One guard marched behind each coffle, more to keep up the pace than to prevent escape. The rest rode ahead, behind and at either side to protect against attack. The coffle guards swapped roles every hour – it had just happened. Macro alternately rode in front and circulated among his mounted men, keeping them alert and occasionally sending one to scout ahead. He was efficient, Kerana grudgingly conceded. He was no fool. She would have to be careful.
She stumbled, upsetting the rhythm and provoking a chorus of protests from the other girls as collars tugged hard at necks because of her clumsiness. She cursed them silently as weak, spineless fools who had let themselves be enslaved, and she regained her balance only to lose it again as something pressed hard into the cleft of her buttocks.
“Watch where you’re going, slave,” a harsh voice rasped from behind. “If you bring the others down you’ll get more than the switch across this round backside.”
She flinched from the touch of the coiled whip, somehow miraculously regaining the rhythm without mishap to the rest. From the sudden heat in her cheeks she knew she was blushing, embarrassed that for all her skills she had not yet mastered something as simple as walking in chains. A sudden blaze of pain across her right buttock made her yelp and clutch at where the tip of the guard’s whip had bitten her tender skin. Temper flaring, she risked a look over her shoulder and saw him grinning malevolently as he re-coiled the whip and stuck it in his belt. He had been there when she was captured and bore her nail-marks on his face as proof. With his hawk-nose and cruel eyes, he looked unsettlingly like Durkan, and she looked away just in time to avoid disrupting the coffle again.
The sun rose higher, intensifying the heat-shimmer that already obscured the horizon. Without any slowing of the pace, the slave girls were given water. Kerana drank deeply when her turn came, careful not to disturb the dust coating her naked body that was sparing her the added pain of sunburn. Her buzzing bottom was more than enough to deal with.
Three times more she quenched her thirst, and five times the guards changed before Kerana judged they would soon stop. In that time, she learned from observing the other coffles and from painful experience what it meant to be last in line. She had thought the red stripes and bruises on the buttocks of the girl ahead indicated some infringement on her part. Now she knew that when any guard felt the desire to ply his whip it was the last girl in the line whose bottom made the easiest target. Thrice more the guard she had scratched laid the whip’s end to her helpless rear before at last she saw what she had been expecting appear above the shimmering desert floor.
The lead girl in the coffle pointed. “Look!”
“Trees!” the second girl cried excitedly.
Kerana sneered. What was there to get excited about? Except that trees meant water and shade, and rest for weary legs. She felt the heat beating down, and the maddening smarting of her backside, and decided that was enough.
“What is it?” the girl in front asked no one in particular.
“Portia’s Wells,” Kerana answered. “We’ll stop here until the worst heat is over.”
No one who was sane travelled at midday in the desert summer. Pain blazed across her buttocks, and she clapped her hands to the hurt and only just managed to stifle a cry as the hawk-nosed guard’s whip scorched her again. “Quiet, slaves!” he barked. “Get on there.”
Kerana’s anger flared. She could kick him in the balls and have his own dagger in his throat before he blinked. And what then? Chained by the neck all she could do was wait for retribution. She knew the penalty she would suffer. With a long breath, she quelled her anger and tramped on towards the wells.
The land turned suddenly green, welcome after the greys and browns of the desert. Irrigated fields surrounded three broad pools with stands of trees around them and a village alongside. Kerana watched with narrowed eyes as the caravan made camp. They were staying for the night she saw, and felt a glow of satisfaction. Barely seven miles covered in a day. The odds were well in her favour.
The coffled slaves eyed the water restlessly, feeling the dust in their parched throats while the tents were raised and the animals unharnessed. Macro rode up. “Animals and slaves to the lowest pool.”
Kerana’s resentment rose at once. “Bastard,” she muttered.
The blonde next to her watched him ride away. “But handsome too, don’t you think?”
He might have been if circumstances had been different, Kerana found herself thinking. “Balls!” she said.
Only after the animals had had their fill were the slave coffles taken to the pool. Once they had drunk, without a word spoken they all waded out together and sank under the water. At first it felt good to wash away the sweat and grime from her skin, but soon Kerana noticed a crowd had gathered, men and even boys from the caravan and the village watching the bathing slaves with bright eyes and lustful faces. The other girls noticed too, and hands dropped to cover sexes as arms lifted to conceal breasts.
“Out, slaves,” one of the guards called and faced the crowd. “Look, but don’t touch. This is valuable merchandise.”
Kerana had never expected to feel gratitude towards one of her captors. It was as much a surprise as the acute embarrassment that suddenly overwhelmed her. She was proud of her strong, lithe body, and many men had praised her beauty, but she wished she had neither as the coffles waded ashore and she had no choice but to follow, horribly conscious of the water streaming down her nudity and the provocative swaying of her breasts and hips that she could do nothing to prevent. Her anger flickered but did not ignite as she tried vainly to stare defiance at the ogling crowd. Then she saw a blue tunic among them, and then another and another, and stared at nothing but the ground. Road Guards! If one of them recognised her…! Throat tight, she waited for the outcry but heard only the lewd catcalls of the crowd, fading behind her as the coffles returned to camp. Thank the gods! Careful of her bruised backside, Kerana sat when she was told to in the shade of a cluster of palms and breathed again. Their guard was the cheerful one who had set them on their way that morning. He had them form a circle and chained the lead girl’s collar to Kerana’s, then leaned back against a tree and closed his eyes.
“I’ll never get used to that,” the big-breasted blonde said, looking downcast.
Kerana realised the other slave girls must have experienced it many times during their journey. “How long on the road?” she asked.
“About twenty days, I think.”
“Twenty-five,” the guard corrected.
Kerana eyed him warily.
“Don’t worry about Hordo.” The blonde smiled in his direction. “You don’t mind if we talk, do you?”
“Just so long as you mind your manners.” Hordo propped himself on an elbow and watched them, but Kerana noticed his attention was all for the blonde. He was young and he had clearly taken a fancy to her. That might be useful when the time came to escape.
“I’m Nita,” the girl said.
“Kerana.”
“This is Reina, Alsira, Suliki, Murina and Yulana.” She worked her way around the circle. They were all beauties. Every girl in every coffle was. They were sex slaves, destined for the pleasure of men - any men with the wealth to buy them when they were stood on the auction block. Kerana’s stomach knotted. She was facing the same fate.
“How were you taken?” Nita asked.
“Bad luck,” Kerana answered curtly. But if she had not been so sure Durkan would never dare to cross her or so eager to meet the challenge of finding and plundering the caravan, she would not have ended up in a position where luck mattered. “Hasn’t anyone tried to escape?”
The slave girl’s eyes lowered and Nita cast a nervous glance at Hordo. “Hush,” she whispered. “No one’s tried. How can we, when we are always chained?”
“There are ways,” Kerana assured her.
“Not for us,” the girl called Reina said. “We are weak. The men are strong.” The others nodded agreement and Kerana did not try to conceal her contempt for their weak acceptance of their fate.
“That’ll do!” Hordo stood above them. “Don’t you go talking these girls into trouble, missy, or yourself either. Just be glad it was me who heard that and not Kirkit, otherwise you’d all be bedding down with striped bottoms tonight.” He frowned down at Kerana then at the rest of the circle of slaves. “I thought you had more sense than to talk like this. If that’s all that’s in your heads maybe you better keep quiet.”
Nita’s eyes brimmed with tears as he turned away, and the other girls looked resentfully at Kerana. She had antagonised their easy-going guard to no purpose, for she was no closer to gaining her freedom. And Nita’s reaction suggested she was as enamoured of Hordo as he was of her. Kerana felt a pang of regret, and then dismissed it at once. Milksops! To hell with them! She had sold plenty like them in her time. She could even tell each of them their value on the black market. But they had enough misery to cope with.
They were fed soon afterwards, eating in sullen silence to begin with, but Nita was a talkative girl and it did not take much to draw her out.
“Barley gruel and cabbage,” Kerana said. “At least it’s filling.”
“Better than just barley gruel,” Nita said after a moment’s hesitation. “The cabbage will be Lord Macro’s doing. He always tries to get us something extra along the way.”
“He does?”
Nita glanced at Hordo and took his wink as permission. “He’s been kind to us, so far as he can.”
Kerana snorted. “He’s a bastard. He bought me and chained me, and he-.” She cut herself off and vainly tried to ease her sore bottom on the hard ground. She was not going to relive the humiliation of her beatings. Especially the spanking! Her belly flipped at the memory of how the pain had unbelievably sparked her pleasure.
“Kirkit’s the real bastard,” Nita said. “He was to have led the company but the slaver made some arrangement with Macro instead. I think that annoys him but he wasn’t a nice man anyway. Of course, Lord Macro has to follow the rules, but he keeps Kirkit in check when he can. We can thank him things aren’t a lot worse.”
“You thank him,” Kerana said. Given the chance, she would kill him and then settle with Durkan and the others for their treachery. A sudden sinking feeling hit the pit of her stomach. “Kirkit, he’s not…?” She ran her fingernails down her cheek in imitation of scratching.
Nita nodded solemnly then her eyes widened. “He’s coming,” she said, as though fearful he somehow knew they had been discussing him, but it was only time for the guard change and Kerana relaxed again until she sensed the nervousness in all the others. Kirkit unchained their circle, formed them into line, and then led them a short way onto a dirt track and made them turn to face him. With the tip of his switch, he separated them until their neck chains went taut. The slaves bowed their heads and shuffled their feet. Kerana did not understand the reason for their blushes and fidgeting, but their disquiet communicated itself to her and her belly began to flutter.
Kirkit’s grin broadened. “Right, you know the drill, slaves, or most of you do.” He looked at Kerana. She saw his tongue flicker over his lips and the swelling in the front of his breeches, and looked away. “Stand straight!” he snapped, slapping the switch on his palm. “Now, we don’t want any accidents come bedtime, so hunker down, feet touching the slave’s beside you.”
Realisation was like a blow in the gut. Kerana knew it happened all the time but she had never imagined it would happen to her. She felt the flush of heat on her face, sure it was as crimson as those of the other girls, her shame burning just as fiercely when the collar tugged at her neck until she squatted alongside them.
“Back on your hands. Lift those arses.”
Kerana copied the others, leaning back on her hands and lifting her bottom until her hips were level with her knees. She stared ahead unseeing, but aware that Kirkit was walking the line, gauging each girls compliance. She hissed in pain as his switch bit the soft skin of her inner thigh.
“I said feet touching,” he barked, and she shuffled her foot to reach Nita’s, only the feel of the taut chain on her collar preventing her flying at him. The hot desert breeze caressed her sex and she blessed the generous bush of pubic hair that hid it, even as she cursed the pressure in her bladder that would force her to comply with the next order.
Kirkit stepped aside. “Piss, slaves.”
Kerana let go. A trickle of urine pattered into the dust beneath her then spurted high, arcing up into the sunlight before it splashed into the dry desert beyond her feet. Beside her, six more glittering streams gushed forth as her companions pissed, no doubt pushing as hard as they could, just as she was, to more quickly bring the ordeal to an end. Her eyes were closed but she could not shut out the sound of splattering piss. She felt wretched. It had made perfect sense to her when she had been transporting her own plundered slaves, and she had never given it a thought. It was impossible to unchain individual girls whenever they felt the call of nature and far more practical to make them all do it at the same time. Only now did she understand that it made a shaming public act of the most private bodily function. And Kirkit had deliberately heightened their degradation by making it a game for his own amusement. Kerana had heard tales of guards holding competitions between girls and betting on who would piss the furthest. Now she believed them. Her companions had suffered this same thing every day for weeks. And she had dismissed them as weaklings!
It seemed an age before every girl was done and they were allowed to step back into the shade. Slightly unsteady after her ordeal, Kerana was glad when Kirkit made them kneel, but the nervous glances the other girls were giving him made her heartbeat quicken again. He stepped with exaggerated care between the seven puddles on the track, glittering eyes roving over his naked captives as he slowly unthonged his breeches and exposed his erect penis. With a horrible certainty, Kerana knew his gaze would rest on her. She summoned her courage as he stopped in front of her, hand aiming his thick, dark-veined cock at her lips.
“Suck me off.”
Chapter 3
“I’ll die first.” Kerana pulled her head back, eyes fixed on Kirkit’s, heedless of the horrified gasps of the slave girls. The guard drew the whip from his belt and let its coils fall free. She tensed, ready to spring - to end his life and soon afterwards her own. Footsteps approached but Kerana did not turn to see who was coming.
“Lord Macro wants his slave.” It was Hordo.
Kirkit’s grin became a snarl as Kerana continued to meet his lustful stare. For a heartbeat, she thought he would ignore the words, then his hard eyes flickered from hers to the slave girls kneeling beside her. “Take her then.”
Hordo thonged Kerana’s wrists in front of her before releasing her from the coffle. His tug on her neck chain had her on her feet and following him as Kirkit pointed at the black-haired girl, Reina. “Open your mouth, slave.”
Kerana did not look back.
The tent’s interior was dim after the harsh daylight. Hordo stood patiently, Kerana’s chain in his fist while she fidgeted and tried not to look. She had never deliberately watched an act of sex and did not want to start now. But Macro’s eyes were fixed on her face, not the slave girl at his feet, and Kerana would not show weakness by looking away.
The slave’s head moved rhythmically above Macro’s groin, obscuring her actions. But the slobbering noises escaping her lips made plain the task she was performing was the same one Kirkit had just demanded from Kerana. The girl lifted her head, allowing the cock to slip from her mouth, her small hand curling about it to work the rigid flesh while her tongue flickered over its glistening head. Kerana felt her eyes grow wide. The cock was as long and thick as the slave girl’s forearm, its shiny head almost as big as her fist. She gulped at how wide the girls jaws stretched as her mouth took the shaft into it again, her soft, delicate hand moving faster, the wet, slurping noises intensifying. The slave moaned suddenly, throat rising and falling, and Macro gave a grunt that became a long sigh, bright eyes narrowing but never leaving Kerana’s. She did not hide her disgust as the slave let the cock slide wetly from her mouth, closed her lips about its tip to draw forth the last of her master’s spunk, then licked the shaft clean. While the rise and fall of his chest slowed, Macro stroked her raven-black hair and she turned her cheek into his palm, rubbing against it like a cat. A pet with its owner, Kerana sneered to herself, then tensed as the warrior rose and walked towards her, paying no heed to his nakedness.
“Wait outside,” he told Hordo, taking the chain from him and pulling Kerana towards one of the tent poles. She felt again his awesome strength, far greater than her own, as he held her with one hand and fixed her thonged wrists over a hook high above her head, forcing her to stand on the balls of her feet. Eyeing him warily, she tested the pole’s strength with her body’s weight, knew at once it was too deeply embedded to break free, and saw the flicker of his smile at the tautening of her muscles.
“All right Loura,” he said.
The slave gave a little mew of disappointment as, sleek and slender, she rose gracefully to her feet and tilted her head back to look up at him, a pleading expression on her beautiful, perfect face. “Oh Master, please!”
“You are insatiable.” He laughed softly as her doe-eyes continued to beg. “Oh, very well.”
Smiling broadly, Loura gave a clap of her hands and slipped into Macro’s chair, spreading her legs wide by hooking one knee over each of its sturdy arms. Wondering, Kerana eyed the slave’s carefully arranged hair, the artful makeup that added to her allure, and her smooth skin untouched by the sun. Doubtless, she travelled in a wagon, not trudging through the dust and heat as the coffle girls must. She even had clothes of sorts – a collarless, short-sleeved jacket of pale blue silk held in place by a big silver button just below her small, pointed breasts, which it left uncovered. A silver chain encircled her hips and narrow strips of more pale blue silk hung from it before and behind, barely concealing her sex or the furrow in her bottom. Then Macro’s hand drew aside the silk in front and Kerana scoffed at herself for the twinge of envy she had felt. The girl’s mound and slit were hairless, bare and exposed even to the hood of her clitoris and the fleshy pink of her inner lips. And something was holding those lips apart.
Macro’s broad fingers slid a carved ivory phallus from between the wetly glistening petals then slowly eased it back in. Loura moaned softly, wriggling her narrow hips and lifting them to meet the dildo’s penetration as Macro worked it in her sex with one hand while a long finger of the other moved rapidly beneath her hood. Her hands went to her breasts, squeezing the hard, fleshy cones, slim fingers pinching her small, pointed nipples as she gasped and mewed in delight. Macro’s hand moved faster and Kerana looked away, wrinkling her nose as Loura’s woman-scent filled the tent and the girls panting and moaning grew louder. A joyous feminine cry that changed suddenly to a long, shuddering groan dragged Kerana’s eyes back in time to see Loura bucking under her master’s hand, in the throes of orgasm.
“Oh, thank you, Master”, the slave sighed, sinking into the chair, thighs still quivering with her final spasms. Macro waited until her eyelashes stopped fluttering before standing her on her feet, and with a gentle pinch of one still-erect nipple, he ushered her towards a curtained-off part of the tent. Cooing happily, the slave girl pushed through the curtain and with a final wiggle of her tight, little bottom, disappeared. Only then did Kerana notice the fading pink stripes on her buttocks.
Macro came towards her and her breath caught in her throat. His huge cock was erect again, skin drawn tight, the straining, dark head shining redly. Her belly flipped as his hand touched her hip but he only turned her to look at the marks on her backside. “Last girl?”
“You know I am. You arranged it!” she accused. He did not deny it. She flexed her upraised arms, trying to ease her aching shoulders, and then stilled her movements as his eyes went to her swaying breasts. She thought of what she had just seen. “I am not a slave!”
“Bought and paid for.” His teeth flashed white. “And any ordinary slave girl should know when she addresses her owner, she calls him “Master”. He waited, a half smile on his lips, but Kerana kept silent. The desert would turn to ice first. “But you aren’t an ordinary slave girl, are you?” Her heartbeat quickened. Did he know? “Your eyes are green,” he said. “I thought they were blue.”
“They change. It depends on the light.” The irrelevance confused her. She sucked in a breath and her breasts lifted. “I don’t belong here.”
“Master,” he said, and when she ignored it, “Where do you belong? The mountains perhaps?”
Nowhere, Kerana thought. She had never belonged, not with the outlaws or with the thieves in Azdagul or the child-beggars before that. She could rely on no one but herself, her strength, her skill, her wits. And she had better not let them desert her now.
“Do all the girls around here carry weapons?”
The nervous quiver in her belly increased. “Many do,” she lied. “Better than ending up like her.” She pointed her chin towards the curtain concealing Loura.
“Oh, how has she ended up?”
He was toying with her but it might distract him from his suspicions. “She’s a weak fool, all perfumes and silks and jewellery, and no other thought in her head. She gives away her freedom for soft living.”
“You don’t think she enjoys it?”
“Of course she does! She can’t think any further than her body’s desires. She’s even more a slave to them than she is to the men who use her.”
“And you will never be that,” Macro said sardonically.
“Never!” Kerana swore.
“We’ll see.”
She tensed as a hand still wet with Loura’s juices stroked her breast. She yanked uselessly at the hook she hung from, twisting and turning, vainly trying to escape his touch. His hands explored her, their palms less rough than she expected, smoothing warmly over the skin of breasts, belly and thighs while he studied her face. Two broad thumbs grazed her nipples, teasing them until they stiffened, even as she willed them not to. She lowered her eyes, breathing hard through her nose with her jaw clamped tight. Her fear was swelling and she tried to focus on it and ignore the prickling warmth spreading over her skin, the blood quickening in her veins and the tingling low in her belly. He stroked the insides of her thighs, and her head jerked up and her sex twitched in response to the sting as his fingertips slid over the weal left by Kirkit’s switch. She saw Macro frowning at it, and then his eyes lifted to hers just as his fingers penetrated the moist warmth of her vulva and she looked away, gasping as he began a long, slow exploration that turned the smouldering heat within her to liquid fire. Fear turned to terror as Macro’s fingers probed and teased their way to exposing her awful weakness. Just as she had feared it would, her body was betraying her.
She squirmed and writhed, hating the treachery of body and mind as all control was swept away by the overwhelming waves of pleasure surging through her. Her aching shoulders, cramping feet and smarting buttocks meant nothing as her hips thrust down hard to meet those wicked, wonderful fingers that deprived her of all reason and drove her, unwilling though she was, to surrender. Moaning and thrashing wildly, Kerana felt her sex clamp down tight for an instant then relax in a gush of juices as sudden, ecstatic release overcame her. She heard a cry, half-joy, half-despair tear from her lips, and would have bitten through her tongue to stop it if she could. Breasts heaving, sweat running in rivers down her nudity and lights still flashing behind her eyes, she could scarcely believe what had happened.
Macro had given her more pleasure than she could herself! Then, incredibly, he did it again.
He turned her sideways, his rigid cock pressing hard into her flesh as he held her against the pole with his body to leave both his hands free. Heat still simmered within her treacherous sex as fingers ripe with the tang of her musk closed on one hard nipple. She watched Macro’s thumb and forefinger slowly tighten, pinching the engorged cone just hard enough to turn her initial tingle of pleasure to pain. Unbelievably, her sex gave a little flutter of renewed excitement. He pinched her other nipple, and another tremor thrilled within her. His finger found the bud of her clitoris, teasing it effortlessly to full, pulsating erection. Kerana squirmed, her mind demanding she pull away even as her faithless body thrust her wildly fluttering sex forward to seek Macro’s wonderful touch. Just as his fingers slid between the swollen petals at her entrance and probed within, he smacked her bottom.
“Oh!” A fiery thrill of intense delight quivered all the way up to her belly. His palm stung her again, and her buttocks recoiling from the pain sank his fingers deeper and sent pleasure rippling the whole length of her sheath. “Oh! Oooh!” She was lost. Pain and pleasure mingled indistinguishably as Macro’s hand continued smacking and his fingers continued their exquisite teasing. At every stinging slap her vulva tightened around them until Kerana trembled on the verge of climax. Then he sought the little ridge high up in front she thought was a secret known to no man and she orgasmed harder and longer than she had ever done before. Bucking and thrashing on the hook, she heard her own ecstatic cry as her head spun and her juices flowed to soak his hand and her inner thighs.
Devastated, she surfaced more slowly after the second time to find him holding her, taking the weight from her shoulders and sagging legs. Spasms still quivered within her sex as she opened her eyes, breathing raggedly. There was a strange look on Macro’s face, as though something utterly unexpected had happened to him as well as her, though she could not guess what. The hard length of his erection was hot against her bare skin, and fear clenching her stomach drove the befuddlement from her brain. He would take her now, rape her as a man did his slave girl. Kerana took her weight on her legs, turned her eyes from his handsome face and steeled herself for further humiliation. He let go of her and to her intense surprise fastened his breech-clout around his waist then held a cup to her lips. Wine! She gulped it down.
“Hordo.” The guard’s head appeared through the tent-flap. “Put this slave on a wagon-pole and give her tits a switching.”
Hordo might have been young but he was no fool. The pressure of his whip on her bare behind set Kerana in front of him where he could watch her as he steered her to the parked wagons. She cringed inwardly with embarrassment. He had a clear view of her bottom cheeks, which from their fiery glow must have been showing the evidence of her fresh spanking as well as all her past punishments. And he had been within earshot of the tent and must have heard her cries. But that was a minor thing compared to her astonished disbelief at the discovery her body had welcomed not just the pleasure Macro had given her but also the pain. Then that too was forced from her mind by her shock at his last cruel order.
Stunned by it all, Kerana almost stumbled as her neck chain pulled her up short ten paces from the wagons. All of the coffled slave girls were kneeling before them. The hinged shaft at the front of one wagon stood vertical, braced with ropes to its front wheels. A rope had been run through the iron ring at the shaft’s end and tied through the thongs binding a girl’s wrists. A pull on the rope hauled her flat against the wagon-pole and dragged her arms above her head until she was stretching her toes to reach the ground. A guard fastened a leather strap around her waist to hold her facing the pole during her punishment.