It was not until Lady Hehrah’s strength and immense weight had borne Mairee back, pinned her under that mountain of musk-scented flesh, that the girl realized, remembered the half-comprehended remarks made by her captors on that terrible ride from village to hall, recalled the sly whispers of women of the village when word was passed to be on the lookout for the girl Ehlaina, who was missing from the hall.
Then the mists cleared and she heard again the words of the man whose horse had carried her, the words he had spoken while his hands squeezed and groped at her: “Enjoy me while you can, you little slut, for once you’re old Hehrah’s glohsah-athehlfee, you’ll never again be allowed near a man!”
Glohsah-athehlfee! Tongue-sister! That whispered-about vice of Komeesa Hehrah. The thought alone was enough to sicken Mairee. But when she opened her mouth to protest, the older woman’s thick, blubbery lips pasted themselves over hers while the hot, winy tongue forced between her teeth in search of her own.
Mairee struggled to wrench free, to sit up, but Lady Hehrah’s layers of fat concealed other layers of muscle, and she held the slender girl easily enough to free one bejeweled hand.
And when Mairee felt that hot, damp hand slip betwixt her slim thighs, she reacted frantically, sinking her sharp white teeth into that alien tongue thrusting between them, while punching at the head and face above her, tearing at the coiffed black hair. And when at last she had felt some of the weight shift, had made to get to her feet, the lady’s buffet had set her almost to swooning. And she had thus understood only snatches of the things the lady said to the women who had come to her screams.
“Ahtheena, Khohee, Ntohrees … skoola … ahkahreestosha … Ktoopeemaptehrnas! … eeahkoopohgnohmohsoonee…”
Though the language was archaic Old Ehleenohkos, it was sufficiently similar to Confederation Ehleenohkos for Mairee to understand that she was being called an “ungrateful bitch” along with something about “stubborness”; the term Ktoopeemaptehmas she did not know… not then.
Mairee had never imagined the existence of such pain as that which brought her fully, screamingly conscious. She shrieked her throat raw, she pled, begged a stop to the torment, her fine-boned body arching and writhing in the grasps of the serving women who held her down and immobilized her tiny feet under the brutal bite of the bastinado. But it went on… and on. Finally she fainted again.
The bright rays of that distant star twinkled, till her tears blurred the sight of it. She shifted her still-aching feet, trying not to rattle the long chain which secured her slender ankle to the massive bedstead. But rattle it did, sounding like the clanging thunder of a smithy to the girl’s ears.
Beside her, Lady Hehrah snorted, groaned and threw a fat arm across the quaking Mairee’s small breasts. She lay so for a moment, then, muttering something incomprehensible, rolled onto her side and recommenced her resounding snores.
And then Mairee could again draw breath. “It cannot last,” she wordlessly told that friendly, unreachable star. “No woman can long live with this torture, not without going mad. And she even denies me means of honorably ending my life. Oh, what am I to do?”
The guardsman, Ruhmos, also watched that flashing star, as he lifted his leathern kilt to piss down the outer face of the wall. He heard the chorus of snores from the barrack below with envy. He knew that there was no damned excuse for robbing him and so many others of sleep, when a single man or at most two could have kept adequate watch. For did not the rolling leas stretch away on every side, treeless for most of their extent? And who was there to keep watch against anyway? That unarmed, spineless scum of villagers? A few homicidal horses?
Nonetheless, he had his orders from that arrogant, posturing ape his old roistering companion Danos was become since the stallions killed that bastard Gaios and Danos the archer was proclaimed Danos the captain. He let his eyes sweep carelessly over the expanses of moon-silvered pasture to the north and west, before he shook his yard, dropped his kilt and made to turn about
Then a hard, rough hand clamped down over his mouth, jerking back his head and preventing him from voicing his agony at the sharp bite of steel which bit in under the angle of his jaw and traced fire across the front of his straining throat And the hand was taken away, being no longer needed, for Ruhmos’ windpipe was filled now with a thick, hot liquid which he realized, as the crushing blackness engulfed him, must be his own blood.
For many long years, Komees Hari had utilized the barrack space above the hall stables for the practical purpose of storing grain and hay. Only since he rode out to his supposed death had the Lady Hehrah restored it to its original function, feeling that with the men so far from the hall, there would be less likelihood of them attempting to seduce the female servants into the filthy sin of fornication … and, of course, her scheme worked no better than equally puritanical plans ever do.
This night, at least a quarter of the sleeping guardsmen shared their straw-filled pallets with companions. But like the now deceased Ruhmos, the soot-smeared apparitions who invaded the long, darkened room had their orders. They obeyed those orders to the very letter. Working south from the tower through which they had entered, they made brief stops at each sleeping couch, and when they passed on to the next, no one—man or woman or painted love boy—remained alive behind them.
Their sanguinous task silently completed, most of the dark men descended to the courtyard, and, rumbling and stumbling in the inky entrance passage, they began to unbar the main gate. Two sought the hall stable, where they quietly strangled the man found there. One retraced his steps to the tower, took an arrow from dead Ruhmos’ case and wound its shaft with strips of oil-impregnated cloth.
In deference both to his new rank and to her high regard for him, Lady Hehrah had granted Captain Danes quarters in the hall itself. Which, he often thought to himself, was a fair step upward in the world for a young man whose father had been beaten to death by old Komees Djeen Morguhn’s herdsmen when caught stealing sheep.
Thanks to several extra measures of wine, Danos had slept well and deeply earlier in the night, but a full bladder had wakened him soon after midnight. He had piddled in his chamberpot, then returned to his bed, only to find that sleep evaded him. He turned over and over on the sweat-damp bedclothes, vainly seeking a position which would once more vouchsafe him sleep. At length, he surrendered to wakefulness and, with a groan of anger, lowered his feet to the tiles and sat up on the edge of the bed.
Without conscious volition, his hand dropped into his crotch and, before he knew he had done so, he had stroked his sex several times. Frantically, he snatched the hand away before he could do anything really sinful, breathing a short prayer for protection against temptation.
Clasping his hands firmly behind his head, he lay back across the width of the bed, and his thoughts strayed back to his triumphs of that first week of his captaincy. Nearly every time he and his troop had gone down to the village for another child, they had been able to catch women and girls in the fields, ride the shrieking sows down and rope them and strip them and swive them properly. That had indeed been fun. And no need to worry about the wrath of the old heathern komees, as on Danos’ necessarily rare previous forays.
Sex, such as he knew the guardsmen were presently enjoying in their barrack, had been denied Danous for much of his life, his rare attempts always having the same tiring, Inconclusive, infinitely frustrating end. Then one early autumn day, the chief huntsman had been ill and Danos had been sent out to bag small game for the table. Deep in the forest, he had chanced upon a village girl gathering nuts, and on a never-understood impulse, he had savagely beaten her with his dog-whip, then shredded her homespun smock and brutally raped her.