Princess (12 page)

‘How would he have known the outcome?' Aeisla queried.

‘He would not,' Assanach replied, ‘but all in Staive Cintes had heard the tale of how you fought for Kaissia on the docks in your homeland. If you were prepared to challenge your own people, how would you react in a strange city under similar conditions? Thus the details of your punishment, Iriel.'

‘How did the Justice know so much?' Kaissia demanded.

Again Assanach shrugged.

‘Doubtless he consulted with Captain Baltrank, whose niece is the wife of his third son, and whose aunt was first wife to Eriedes Voilus.'

‘Why then did not Voilus hail us as champions?' Cianna queried.

‘As champions?' Assanach demanded.

‘For slaying his rival,' Kaissia pointed out.

‘Absurd!' Assanach scoffed.

‘Plain sense,' Kaissia answered him, ‘ and also the only honourable choice.'

‘Not so, not for a moment. All know how the gambit was achieved, but you would hardly expect them to speak of it!'

‘In Aegmund he would have a saga sung for his victory,' Kaissia went on, ‘but he would also have challenged Twleveman Cound face to face, like a man, or, given his age, appointed a champion. There is no honour in your ways.'

‘To us, yours seem barbaric,' Assanach answered. ‘Simple also. Secondary to this, but doubtless important, is the matter of finance. As five desiccated corpses you bring not so much as a copper to Staive Cintes, as five exotic slavegirls in Oretes you bring perhaps as much as two-thousand gold Marks, an optimistic assessment, but then the Palades is known for his exotic tastes and a marked disregard for thrift. Staive Cintes is a rich city, the House Eriedes a wealthy House, yet not so wealthy that they would cast good money into the sea.'

Aeisla gave a tired nod.

‘Always this is the way in Apraya, greed, dishonour, and yet you call us barbarians!'

‘You speak as if you had been here before?' Assanach queried.

‘In Vendjome,' she answered wearily, ‘from where I escaped. I will do the same here, if I am able. Never will I submit to slavery.'

‘You may surprise yourself,' Assanach answered. ‘And with Vendjome comes another reason for selling you. For a generation now we and the Vendjomois have been at war, and recently the tide has turned against us. Taxes, already high, have risen to alarming levels. You were a slave then, in Vendjome?'

Aeisla made a wry face.

‘What did you sell for? Tell me, or I will have you whipped, this is important information!'

‘Whip me then,' Aeisla answered him, ‘but no, it makes no difference. Slavery is a state of the mind, not of the body. Eleven hundred gold Imperials.'

‘Eleven hundred Imperials! And it is a heavy coin, the Imperial, worth three Marks by Dwarven weight of gold. If I achieve a third part of that the five of you would make over five thousand gold. The Eriedes will grant me a House, marry me to their line even! Fortunate day!'

‘If we are so valuable,' Kaissia put in, ‘perhaps you would spare us our fuckings from your men?'

Assanach frowned, then spoke again.

‘Why so? Regular fucking keeps a girl in trim, this is common knowledge. It is not as if you were virgin.'

Kaissia winced. Assanach went on, as much to himself as to them, and pulling gently at his beard where it sprouted from his fat chin as he spoke.

‘The Palades is said to join bursting girls' hymens, and cruel tricks in general. I wonder how I might present you to best advantage? As barbarian Princesses perhaps, yes…'

Feeling as foolish as ashamed, Iriel, stared at her reflection in the mirror. If Madame Hivies' idea of what she should wear as an Aeg had been five hundred years out of date, then Assanach's was simply ludicrous, not only indecent, but wholly impractical.

Her costume was composed mainly of feathers, large, fluffy ones from some huge bird, dyed in brilliant pink and a vivid pale green. These were fixed to a belt of crudely beaten copper, to form what might have been considered a skirt had it not failed to cover all of her tuppenny mound and a good half of her bottom cheeks. The top was as bad, her breasts quite bare, but supported in puffs of smaller and yet fluffier feather, like two melons on a bed of sorrel. She also had fanciful sandals, with criss-crossed laces reaching from just above her ankles to the tops of her thighs, a feather head-dress, and a copper collar studded with rough cut tiger's-eye and bluejohn. Her nipples and tuppenny had been painted green.

The others had fared no better, each in her own version of the ridiculous outfit. Kaissia in particular had suffered, making the mistake of complaining that her rank should entitle her to special treatment. Assanach had left her breasts on the grounds that they were colourful enough, but had her tuppenny painted blue rather than green, stating that it went well with her hair. He had also painted her bottom, drawing jokes about her resemblance to a baboon from the caravan men. The girls still wore their yokes, never once removed, also their hobbles.

‘Thus and so, we are done,' Assanach stated, rubbing his hands together happily. ‘Haul down the covers, boys, and we shall enter Oretes in high style!'

He jumped down from the wagon, taking the mirror with him and still chuckling at his own wit for allowing the girls to see their reflections and at the thought of their faces. Iriel drew a heavy sigh, less confident in the idiotic guise than she had been naked and anything but happy at the idea of being paraded through the streets of a city.

Yet she was helpless, as ever, their hobbles fixed to the floor of the wagon, chains leading up to the supporting hoops from the end yokes, preventing them from squatting down. They had been chained that way to be dressed, on what was the morning of the twenty-second day out of Staive Cintes.

Over the course of the journey she had been endlessly molested, fondled, fucked, buggered and more. Her bottom crease and cleavage had been used as slides for men's cocks, often greased, often slimy with jism. She had been spanked repeatedly, the first time for loosing control of her bladder and peeing on the floor because she had been unable to hold out until the potmen arrived, thereafter because the men had discovered how wet a spanking made her tuppenny. She had had her face pushed in the food trough, a pimento inserted in her anus for an entire night, a cup of urine offered to her as wine, and worse, yet there was no question that the costume represented as deep a humiliation as any.

As the awning was pulled away she was biting her lips in a futile effort to hold back the tears already trickling down both cheeks, yet what showed through her blurred vision still had her gaping in awe. They were on a wide, busy road, outside the gates of a city, gates beneath which the keep in Aegerion would have fitted with ease.

‘Oretes,' Assanach remarked with a flourish of his hand.

Iriel let herself stare. To either side of the colossal gates ran a wall of smooth blue-white stone, perhaps thirty man heights high, stretching out to a tower perhaps three times taller at one end, and ending at a broad, palm fringed river at the other. Beyond the wall other towers rose, some to heights that seemed impossible without the aid of magic, all in the same blue white stone, flat topped and hung with banners of black, crimson and gold. Here and there other rooftops shown, suggesting massive buildings, larger by far than anything in Aegerion, in Staive Cintes, even in the other Oretean cities they had passed on the trail.

‘Do you perhaps feel a touch less pride now?' Assanach enquired.

None of the girls answered, not even Aeisla troubling to spit. The wagon jerked forward at Assanach's signal and Iriel was briefly forced to steady herself, but she went back to watching as they moved slowly towards the city. The gates were open, with a knot of watchmen in what were presumably the royal colours checking traffic as it passed through. Assanach stopped the girls' wagon directly under the gigantic arch, with the peak stones seeming to hang in air an impossible distance over Iriel's head as she craned back to look.

Within the gates the city proved more astonishing still. A street led arrow straight to a great palace that towered above a screen of palms. It was wide and paved with blue-white stone, yet barely visible for the bustling crowds, the street alone holding more people than she had seen gathered in one place before. Curious scents assailed her nose, the spices so beloved of Oreteans, but in a richer, more varied mix than those of Staive Cintes. Noise smote her from every side, the calls of vendors, animal noises, an underlying hum created by a multitude of voices.

Yet for all her astonishment, it was no greater than that of the Oreteans. In Staive Cintes, the populace knew how her people looked at least by repute. In Oretea this was evidently not true. Every single citizen, each yellow-brown of skin and if anything smaller than their northern cousins, turned to stare at the five girls. Iriel caught comments, on their pale skin, on their outlandish garb, but most of all on their hair. Again and again citizens pushed close to ask questions, even to make offers of money, but the caravan guards posted at the corners of the wagons gave the same answer every time, that the five were barbarian Princesses and would be auctioned in the market in three days.

Only when they had travelled some two-thirds of the distance to the palace did Assanach order the caravan turned from the main street, to another only marginally less grand, then again, into a great yard behind a building of eight stories topped by fanciful turrets of twisted, multihued glass. Men in black and silver livery stepped forward to assist with the camels and wagons as Assanach looked up at the building.

‘Normally I stay at the terminus, but on this occasion only the best will do, and what better than the House Alwan. Thank you, yes, a suite of rooms, suitably appointed, a bath, suitably scented, then a meal, the best your kitchen affords.'

He had spoken to one of the servants, and they left together, into the magnificent building which to Iriel's astonishment seemed to be an inn. Their wagon had been taken along with those containing the baboons and brush pigs, all five being wheeled into covered stalls. Ortac appeared briefly, along with the potmen, to attend to their needs at either end and they were left, in warm gloom, the murmur of the city coming faint from outside.

‘And now?' Cianna queried.

‘We sleep,' Aeisla stated. ‘So long as we wear these yokes we are helpless. Until they are removed we play Assanach's game. Behave as he has instructed, with animal vitality and fear, with luck they will think us too dull to require close confinement.'

‘In three days we will be slaves,' Kaissia said miserably.

‘No,' Aeisla answered. ‘In three days money will change hands for control of our bodies. We become slaves only when we accept slavery, when we grovel at our owners feet, and not merely in fear, but in gratitude. Now let us lie down. As one, now.'

They sank together, now a practised motion, and lay back, resting their necks in the yokes, a position Iriel had come to accept as bearable if hardly comfortable. Closing her eyes, she began to pray, picturing her father as she sought for courage, seated as the table in her old house, grinning through his great red beard as he oiled his axe.

One day passed, and another, until the dim, stuffy warmth of the stall had become Iriel's world, bounded by the walls and roof. Ortac the cook and the potmen came regularly to perform their duties, while two of Assanach's men and one from the House Alwan were always on guard. Both servants and guards fucked the girls regularly and invariably from the rear, the sight of the line of flaunted bottoms having become a standing joke among the men.

They were told nothing, but picked details up from the men, learning that their arrival in Oretes had caused a stir, and that Assanach was spreading the “barbarian Princess” story in every quarter. For all the fuckings they were treated carefully, with no spanking or unnecessary humiliations, and twice Assanach appeared to show them off to senior men from the city.

On the morning of the third day Iriel was jerked awake by the bang of the stall door, urgent voices, the clatter of wooden soled sandals and the clang of pails. She pulled her head up, to see the caravan men already clambering onto the wagon and as her mouth came open in a yawn she received a bucket of cold water full in her face. Spitting and spluttering, she struggled to fight the water out of her eyes and mouth, even as her yoke was pulled up, then lifted, bringing her to her feet.

Immediately sponges were applied to her body, rubbing over her belly, breasts and bottom without the slightest concern for where they touched. She squeaked as a rag was pushed firmly up between her buttocks to wipe her anus, then up it as Ortac's voice rang out.

‘The pots first, idiots! What is the good of cleaning her arse when she is about to take a shit?'

The man who'd been cleaning her grunted in response, but jumped down from the wagon, leaving the cloth wedged between Iriel's buttocks, one soapy fold still in her bottom hole. A potman climbed up with three of the earthenware vessels held together by their handles.

‘Squat,' he ordered Iriel, ‘and be quick.'

‘What is happening?' she demanded, blushing despite herself but grateful enough to get down on the pot as the yokes were lowered, her bladder and rectum heavy from the night.

‘Some greatbeard is coming,' the man answered. ‘Stick it out, show me.'

‘No!' Iriel protested as her bottom settled onto the hard rim of the pot. ‘Do not watch, please.'

The man merely chuckled and stayed firmly where he was, behind her, leaving her blushing furiously as she evacuated, acutely conscious of her open body and the rude noises it was impossible to hold back. Still she did it, too urgent to stop.

The moment she had finished and lifted her bottom he took hold of her, spreading her cheeks to show off her anus. Expecting to be washed, Iriel swallowed her embarrassment and stuck it out, only for a stiff cock to be slid up between her cheeks. She squeaked in surprise, and again as he pushed his penis head to her still loose anus.