The men scattered to do Marcellus’ will. Whatever challenge had just been mounted, it was passed, thanks to the cool confidence of the pirate king.
‘Where are they taking me?’ asked Tesra, who had no desire to be separated from the one and only man she knew in this or any other part of the outside world.
‘To a place of education,’ he smiled wryly. ‘Where perhaps you will learn that your position as captive is not so terrible as you think.’
Tesra cared not for the tone of the man’s voice, and still less the dark-edged laughter that followed from the assembled pirates. ‘Marcellus, wait!’ she cried.
The one called Montrego, though he was barely her own height and looked ancient as a sea turtle, clapped her wrist and tugged her forward with a strength that nearly pulled her off her feet.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked, attempting to continue her conversation with this minion of the king.
‘To the hole,’ said Montrego, kicking open the hatchway with his blackened foot. ‘Where sluts like you belong.’
It was pitch-black below deck. Tesra was forced to follow him, keeping her balance as best she could on the slimy steps. Twice she fell forward, colliding into the knotted back of her new jailer.
‘Clumsy bitch,’ he snarled finally, tossing her straight down into the seemingly bottomless abyss.
Tesra cried out, thinking she would fall to her death, but almost at once she was met with a soft though stinking layer of hay.
‘Ow!’ cried a female close at hand. ‘Watch where you’re falling, you stupid cunt!’
‘Who said that?’ demanded Montrego, reaching down into the hay.
The woman cried out again. ‘Mercy, master. Forgive me, master; I thought it was only some new slave thrown in our midst.’
‘Well she’s not,’ he pulled savagely at her hair. ‘Vorra,’ he bellowed, looking for another. ‘Where in the Dragon’s Inferno are you?’
Tesra felt a rustling in the hay, a body crawling, a head lowering itself to the filthy pirate’s feet.
‘I am here, master. Forgive me for the outburst of the slave Drusia. I will see to it she is punished.’
The pirate shook her off. ‘Don’t give me that.’ He pressed his foot down on Vorra’s back, the surface of which Tesra could now make out dimly in the shadowed light. ‘You’re a lazy slut. You don’t deserve to be slave warder.’
‘I will try harder, please master, give me another chance.’
‘You!’ He pulled up on the girl whose hair he was still holding. ‘Drusia, you are warder now. Fetch fire from above, light me the lamps.’
‘Yes, master!’ exclaimed the very relieved Drusia. ‘Right away, master.’
Tiny feet scampered up the moldy steps. Tesra waited in blind terror for her to return, the only sound that of the labored breathing of the former warder, the now humbled Vorra, her back under the grinding foot of Montrego.
Drusia came bearing a clay pot in which sat a large burning candle. The pot hung from the end of a long stick which allowed her, one by one, to light lamps along the wall of the ship’s hold. With each new lamp Tesra was able to see a little more, till at last her surroundings were made crystal clear. Sitting up she tucked her legs beneath her, wrapping herself as best she could in the captain’s blanket.
To her horror she saw that she was in a damp, rounded chamber, like the belly of some great whale, the entire bottom matted with straw and occupied with the reclining bodies of naked females, their limbs variously attached with chains of steel.
‘Listen up, you stupid sluts,’ announced Montrego, showing what to Tesra seemed to be a complete lack of respect and dignity due an assemblage of his fellow human beings. ‘This new one here is private property. Special stock belonging to the captain himself. Untouchable. Is that clear?’
‘Yes, master,’ chimed the voices, almost in chorus.
‘You, Drusia!’
The candle-bearer ran to him, kneeling at his feet. In the light, Tesra could see the girl was short and brown-haired, with flaring hips and a pair of full breasts. She was olive-skinned and seemed to have been in some accident, owing to the network of scars, long thin lines crisscrossed over her buttocks. Was it some farm machine, perhaps, or an accident in the mountains? And what was that tiny circle on her left buttock - like a birthmark, only more regular?
‘Listen closely, Drusia,’ he lifted her chin cruelly, forcing her to look him in the eye. ‘Anything happens to this slut and you answer for it, personally. Is that clear?’
‘Yes,’ replied Drusia, her eyes wide and eager to please. ‘Master.’
He snatched the clay pot from her. ‘Consider this insurance,’ the pirate tilted the earthenware bowl over her gently peaked breasts, the nipples softly pink and prominent. ‘Hands behind your back,’ he ordered.
Drusia obeyed, arching her back and offering no resistance as the man poured the accumulation of hot liquid wax over her chest. Confining herself to whimpers, the well-disciplined slave did not move a muscle.
‘You may thank me,’ Montrego extended his bony hand. ‘For your promotion.’
The freshly tortured woman lowered her lips, covering his knuckles with eager, reverent kisses.
‘Farewell, ladies,’ the pirate chuckled, when he had sufficiently enjoyed her humiliation.
Tesra did not dare speak till the man had climbed back up the stairs and slammed shut the door to their freedom. ‘Why?’ she asked Drusia in all innocence. ‘Why did he wish to hurt you like that?’
Drusia, who wore a band of steel round her throat like the others, looked at her in utter disbelief.
‘Are you some sort of idiot?’ hissed tall, dark-haired Vorra, who had been warder until Tesra’s untimely arrival. ‘You must be to ask such a question.’
Vorra was standing above her, legs akimbo, hands on hips, her well-toned arms suggesting that it was not only men who were capable of exercising force.
‘I am not an idiot,’ said Tesra, more than a little frightened of the girl. ‘I come from the Isle of Dreams.’
‘Isle of what?’ scoffed the ruby-lipped slave.
‘The Isle of Dreams,’ completed Drusia, knowingly. ‘I once heard the captain mention it in his sleep. Vorra,’ she stood authoritatively, ‘sit your arse down before we tan it for you.’
‘Try it, you fat cow!’
‘I am warder,’ said Drusia, reminding her of the new order. ‘Or have you forgotten?’
Vorra’s eyes narrowed fiercely. Like Rodrigo she seemed ready to fight, but before she could make a move Drusia struck her hard in the stomach with a fist. The big girl went down with a yelp to her knees.
‘Montrego hurts me,’ answered Drusia, dealing at last with Tesra’s question, ‘because he can. Because I am below and he is above, with the others. They are the masters and we are the slaves.’
Tesra looked at the girl’s red breasts, the nipples and swollen globes encased in a coating of hard white wax.
‘I do not know these words,’ she said, though she had heard them just before, from the lips of Marcellus on the boat. How long ago that little trip seemed now. How innocent had seemed her existence before learning of the world of men.
Drusia sat down beside her. ‘A slave is one who is the property of another - a master,’ she explained. ‘The slave is at the master’s mercy and must endure whatever abuse the master wishes to heap upon her.’
Tesra reached for the ring of steel around Drusia’s neck, strangely fascinated. ‘How terribly you must suffer.’
Drusia arched her neck, allowing the blonde to touch. ‘Masters give pleasure as well,’ she said softly. ‘I would not seek to trade my collar.’
Tesra shuddered at the feel of the metal on the other woman. A master, a male, had put this on her; a seamless circle of iron, with an eye-ring through
which could be run a length of chain to secure her like an animal.
‘You’d like one too, wouldn’t you?’ teased Vorra. ‘Nice and tight around that neck of yours.’ Vorra was crouching behind Tesra now, nibbling her neck. It was making her feel uncomfortable, crowded, like she was choking - only the tension in her body wasn’t painful, just a tingling warmth, like a spreading itch needing to be scratched.
‘Back off, Vorra,’ warned the new warder. ‘You heard what Master Montrego said.’
Vorra slipped her hands under the blanket, snaking her way to Tesra’s breasts, cupping them. ‘I don’t see Montrego here or any other masters either, and since I don’t have a cock, I hardly see how I can spoil the slut’s orifices for his highness’ gold-plated organ.’
‘Vorra,’ appealed another of the girls, a thin redhead with perky breasts who was chained by the neck to the wall of the ship. ‘You will bring punishment on us all.’
‘Who asked you, Kasandra? Why don’t you lap up your water like a good little doggie and stop bothering the rest of us? Or better yet, why don’t you bark for Bothar to come and prong you again like the little bitch you are?’
Tesra fell back against Vorra, no longer able to resist, no longer wanting to even if she could. Why had her teachers never told her of these feelings? Why had she never known her body capable of feeling them? It was driving her mad, this need to touch. To be touched.
‘You are no better than her,’ said Drusia to Vorra. ‘We have all seen you lick at water pans in heavy punishment chains, not to mention the puckered arse-hole of Rodrigo. And I guarantee, if red-haired Bothar wants you barking, you’ll howl just as loud as Kasandra.’
‘I am a slave,’ declared Vorra, the hay strands matted heavily in her uncombed hair. ‘I do not hide the fact. Unlike this little bitch who acts like some kind of queen.’
Tesra sucked in her stomach as Vorra’s fingers moved across her belly. Why were the woman’s hands on her body so disconcerting? Why were they provoking her so? And why did her senses feel so fully assaulted at every turn, from the odor of the hay and the smell of the confined females to the taste of the salt on her own perspiring lips?
‘What’s so special about her? Why is she allowed to cover herself, and why can’t she be touched?’ persisted Vorra. ‘That is what I want to know.’
‘If you do not let her go, Vorra, you will be beaten. First by us, then by the men when I call for them.’
‘Beat me, then,’ she challenged. ‘Warder.’
Drusia and Vorra were quickly locked into a tumbling, twisting, hair-pulling battle for supremacy. Tesra could only watch, trembling inside her blanket and strangely overheated in spite of the cool dampness of the place.
The two seemed little more than animals, nude and dirty, their necks collared, their bodies covered in the strange marks, which increasingly Tesra was thinking, were due to the men. There was no pride in their fighting, only a petty, churlishness resulting in a kind of impotent, powerless romp. In the end it was the newly elevated Drusia who prevailed, seating herself, chest heaving and slick with sweat on top of the facedown body of the vanquished Vorra.
‘Mercy,’ cried Vorra, her arm twisted high on her back, her legs thrashing. ‘Please, Mistress Drusia.’
Drusia extended her leg, curling her toes round Vorra’s face for her to kiss. ‘You may suck them,’ she declared imperiously, ‘slave.’
Vorra paid wet and sloppy attention to the warder for several minutes before being allowed off her belly. Unless Tesra missed her guess, the arrogant girl had given plenty of this treatment herself to the others before falling so suddenly out of favor.
‘Good girl,’ said Drusia as the raven-haired beauty presented herself on all fours for inspection. ‘Now you may stand and tell our guest what it is like to be a slave. Mistress,’ Drusia addressed Tesra, ‘may we ask your name?’
‘I am called Tesra,’ she whispered, dispensing with the lengthy surnames of her ancestors. ‘Of the sisterhood of seers.’
‘Mistress Tesra,’ Drusia knelt gracefully before her, legs apart, palms on her thighs. ‘We humbly present ourselves for your questions. May we suggest you use the body of Vorra as a beginning point for your enquiries?’
Tesra surveyed the magnificent naked body, the seeds of her first query already taking root. ‘The marks, Vorra, on your buttocks, your back and breasts - they are very odd.’
‘From the whip,’ she said harshly. ‘I have been whipped by my masters on many occasions.’
Tesra flushed as she remembered the belt, and Marcellus telling her that her punishment had been the result of her disobedience. ‘You are beaten when you do not obey?’
‘Sometimes. Other times they do it just for their own pleasure.’
Tesra felt faint. Up to this moment it had not dawned on her that these men-creatures might take their pleasure in the pain of females.
‘Mistress Tesra, you are not well?’ It was Drusia, scooting very close, concern in her eyes, and also a heat; a strange light she had never before seen in a woman. ‘Does our slavery so discomfit you?’
‘I just need to lie down a moment, I’m so tired,’ she murmured.
Tesra lay down in the damp straw, which for these women was both mattress and covering. Above her the dark underside of the deck-head swirled, the shadowed patterns of the dancing lanterns casting an eerie glow to the wood-slatted roof of their prison, or more appropriately, an animal pen. Tesra had never been so confined before. On the island there were always the stars to see, and though she was still but a few miles from it now it felt a million miles away.
‘Let us help you,’ Drusia was saying, brown hair dangling down over her face, their lips inches apart. ‘You are not well.’
Tesra lacked the power to fight. She did not understand why Drusia was opening the blanket and baring her naked flesh, especially since she had so admonished Vorra not to touch her just minutes ago.
‘Drusia!’ exclaimed the defeated Vorra. ‘What do you think you’re doing? Have you lost your mind? It is one thing for me to have enjoyed a harmless grope, but this, this is too much!’
‘Be silent, Vorra,’ said the warder, parting the legs of the captive. ‘Or I will have you gagged.’
‘I shall call for the guards.’
‘No, you will not. Girls, deal with this slut. Now.’
Tesra turned her head to the side so as not to miss what was transpiring between Vorra and the other slaves. Six of them, those not chained in place like Kasandra were attacking, pinning the former warder down on her stomach. One by one they took turns smacking her buttocks, reddening them considerably under a hail of slaps, the crack of each sending chills down Tesra’s spine.
Meanwhile Drusia was astride her exposed middle, in readiness to stake her command over this guest of their dingy slave hole. ‘Mistress Tesra,’ she said with a stiff pinch of her nipples, causing Tesra to cry out, ‘if I may have your attention. Hands above your head.’ Drusia doubled the pressure, her voice and manner and even appearance wholly transformed into something dark and sinister. ‘Do not move them again.’
Tesra placed her arms as ordered, rendering herself helpless in the process. Drusia licked her lips, and then bent her head to bite. ‘You enjoy pain, I see,’ she observed clamping and releasing one of Tesra’s coral-pink nipples.
‘No, no,’ Tesra thrashed her head, the conflicting emotions raging in her head. ‘Please, let me go.’
‘But who will let me go?’ she asked, moving her savage lips to Tesra’s for a kiss. ‘I am chattel. Flesh for my masters to enjoy and abuse. All of us are exactly that, Mistress Tesra. All of us are property, born to crawl, to writhe at the feet of strong men, to please them with the appearance, touch and taste of our bodies. Somewhere between the value of a good hunting dog and a carving knife, that is the worth of a female.’
�
��That cannot be,’ she protested. ‘My sisters and I are the pride of the great blue sea, a shining gem. We touch the hands of the gods and goddesses, we see what they see, know what they know. You too are females, you too have a tribe, a goddess of your own, you must.’
Drusia hooked a finger in the open place between Tesra’s legs.
‘What are you... no please, stop.’
At first it did not feel good, but suddenly there was distinct pleasure and also a sensation of moistness, like when she swam only the liquid was not from outside.
‘Confess it,’ Drusia persisted. ‘All of this excites you. You long to be where we are; to face the paradox of womanhood, to yearn for subjugation, to gush between the legs knowing you belong to men strong enough to take from you everything - stripping you, whipping you, forcing you to live like a domestic animal, to the point of being branded.’
‘B-branded?’ The word poured out unbidden, like the liquid essence of her onto Drusia’s torturous fingers.
‘Oh, yes,’ Drusia used her free hand to guide Tesra’s down her back to the swell of her bottom. ‘Can’t you feel it?’
Yes. There it was. The raise of skin, like a scar, only far more substantial and round. The circle, inside of which was a capital ‘T’ in cursive. The circle she thought she’d seen earlier.
‘It’s permanent.’ Drusia read the seer’s eyes, wild and hot. ‘It was placed there by a red-hot branding iron. I was marked as one would a horse or verr-beast. The Talassians did it to me. Theirs is the most horrible slavery on earth. I served onboard a galley of the Talassian navy till the pirates took me. Now I am theirs. Just as Vorra and Tesla and all these others, and even you. How does that make you feel - knowing men have that much power over our bodies? Does that spark your fire? It does mine.’
Drusia slid down, placing her mouth on Tesra’s nexus. ‘Such a sweet thing. I’m going to get you off right now, just like you had a cock in you.’
Tesra cried out, first from the sensation of Drusia’s mouth and then from the sudden, unexpected sight of Montrego looming over them, his face filled with rage.
Dream Captive Page 2