Bridled Lust Page 3

  ‘Witch,’ he said softly, but there was a smile on his lips now.

  ‘I wish that I were,’ Alanna said, shaking her head, her white-blonde mane of hair shimmering in the lamplight. ‘My powers of healing are limited mainly to the relief of pain itself, not the curing of its cause.’ And there are some pains that even these fingers cannot help, she thought to herself.

  ‘Promise me,’ Savatch said, closing his eyes once more, ‘promise me that if I cannot do it, if my strength or will fails me, promise me that you will kill that evil bastard for me.’

  ‘I promise,’ Alanna said gravely. ‘For you, for myself, for Corinna and for all humanity’s sake, I shall kill him.’ She let out a low breath that was not quite a sigh. ‘And if I don’t,’ she added, ‘then I know Jekka surely will.’

  Jekka.

  She had a much longer and more formal name, but few knew it and fewer still ever used it. Like Alanna, she was very tall, taller than many men and slender in an athletic way that was a tribute to her years of training and the hard life style that was the chosen lot of the Yslandic warrior woman. Also like Alanna she was a pale-skinned blonde, an albino but for the ice blue of her eyes, although her long tresses presently glowed a flame red, courtesy of the bottle of dye she now carried in her saddlebag.

  ‘Time for us to make our move,’ she said. The young Illean soldier, Ceth, who had aided her in the abortive attempt to free Corinna, looked up at her from beyond the small campfire.

  ‘I am yours to command, lady,’ he said, dutifully. Jekka peered down at him and could not prevent herself from smiling at the earnestness and devotion she saw in his face. She nodded, drawing the long black robe about her.

  ‘Yes,’ she said simply. ‘Yes, I know you are.’ She turned and took a few steps into the darkness beyond the circle illuminated by the flames. ‘Sadly,’ she said, continuing almost under her breath, ‘the sort of service you would really like to give me I can happily live without.’

  Towards the centre of the encampment, among the smaller tents of the traders and officers, a much larger canvas lodge had been erected and it was to this that Dorothea found herself being led. Evidently, she thought miserably, as she tottered along behind the uniformed orderly who led her by her bridle rein, Fulgrim was intending to continue her misery again tonight and, to judge from the shadows being thrown against the tent wall by the lanterns within, had gathered something of an audience to witness her further abasement.

  Inside the marquee a dozen Vorsan soldiers lined the far sidewall, while four more stood in a knot at one end, behind a heavy post that had clearly just been set into the ground. It was to this that Dorothea’s attention was immediately drawn and her educated eye quickly discerned its terrible purpose.

  The stout timber was square in section, perhaps six inches by six inches and stood a little higher than a tall man. In front of it had been placed a square board, an inch or so thick, presumably chosen as a method of adjusting for the height of the intended victim. Towards the top, at approximately the height of a tallish man’s head, two sections of a hinged metal collar stood open and waiting; through the wood of the post at the same height, running from front to back, a hole of some two inches had been bored and, as Dorothea watched, one of the four troopers from behind placed a long, blunted metal spike into this, inserting it so that its tip did not quite project out at the front. On the ground, resting against the back of the post, stood a heavy, short-handled club hammer.

  ‘Ah, I see pony Cunt has joined us!’ From a small group of officers at the other end of the tented space Fulgrim himself now came forward. He leered at Dorothea and gestured for the orderly to pass him her rein.

  ‘I imagine you are familiar with our Vorsan execution methods?’ he smirked, nodding towards the waiting post and its attendants. ‘Of course, we use the rope too, especially for common civilian criminals, but the garossette offers so many more possibilities for entertainment. I expect you know it got its name from the fact that it was a former warden of Garassotta who actually designed it? Yes, of course you do, an educated lady such as you are, Gol!

  ‘The state of Illeum outlawed it, of course, but then Illeum has always considered itself to be so much more civilised than the rest of the world, hasn’t it?’ He said the word with so much hatred that Dorothea automatically recoiled from him, but a tug of her rein quickly brought her face back close to his. Dumbly, she ground her teeth into the hard leather covering of her bit and waited for him to continue.

  ‘The irony of it is, Gol, my dear,’ he said, ‘that the garossette is really quite a humane method of execution. The neck is shattered in an instant and death is immediate, unlike so many hangings, where the condemned is left to dance at the rope’s end, sometimes for several minutes. However, the garossette also permits a beautiful degree of anticipation, especially when used in creative ways.’ He chuckled and the sound reminded Dorothea of the rusting winch above the well at Varragol.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ Fulgrim went on, smirking again as he studied her eyes, ‘the garossette is not for you. Oh no, that would be too quick, Cunt, far too quick indeed. No, you shall suffer as I suffered and for as long as you intended that I should have suffered, had I not bested you, bitch. Before your body finally dies, I shall have destroyed your mind completely, on my oath I shall.

  ‘However, I have a very special part for you to play in this evening’s proceedings, a very special part indeed. You shall have the honour of assisting a Vorsan soldier to die a true man’s death, Cunt pony, and you will act as a true woman should.’ He laughed and turned back to face his officers, who had all been listening attentively to his tirade.

  ‘This once fine lady does not appreciate a good cocking, gentlemen, did you know that?’ he roared. ‘No, she prefers a soft girlish tongue in her twat and a full teat in her mouth. Unfortunately, her big-titted bed girl escaped us at Varragol, or you could have seen her tastes for yourselves, but no matter. She’s going to get used to a proper fucking from now on - and lots of proper fucking, for that matter!’

  Fulgrim threw back his head and roared with laughter, and his officers and even the troopers dutifully emulated him.

  ‘Yes, Cunt,’ he grated, suddenly serious once more, ‘you’ll wriggle on the end of more rods than you ever thought it possible for one cunt to take in a lifetime, starting with a very special one in just a few minutes from now.’ he turned again and addressed one of the younger officers.

  ‘You, Massin,’ he cried, ‘go and tell them to bring the prisoner across. And don’t forget the two little maid girls I selected, either. We want to make sure that Gol’s cunt is nice and wet for the condemned man’s last fuck, don’t we?’

  Moxie picked her way carefully back down the reverse side of the ridge, to where Pester stood miserably, his wrists still cuffed to the slave belt she insisted he wear all the time, the fingers of his right hand clutched about the reins of her horse. His thin, feminine tunic offered little protection against the chilling night air and all he now wanted was to huddle up inside a blanket, or even to squat next to a campfire, but the would-be warrior girl apparently had other things on her mind than his creature comforts.

  ‘Shut up,’ she said tersely, when he began to complain. ‘Just shut up and listen. We can’t stop now, not here. That village down there, I knew I was right to have a bad feeling about it. There are slavers there, I’m sure of it, so we’ll have to go right around it and our best chance is to do it in the dark.’

  Pester looked at her bleakly, the moonlight glinting off the swelling of her magnificent breasts making him ache with desire for her. The removal of his testicles had ensured he would never father a child, but it had done nothing to diminish his desires, nor to curb his ability to fulfil them. Why hadn’t she been content just to wait in the safety and comfort of Castle Garassotta, instead of dragging him on this fool quest?

  ‘What’s the point in taking the risk?’
he pouted sullenly. ‘Why don’t we just go back and wait? We don’t even have any idea where Lord Savatch and the others are, do we?’

  ‘Not precisely, no,’ Moxie conceded, ‘but we know they were headed towards Erisroth, and I have the map I borrowed from the castle library.’

  ‘Oh yes, the map,’ Pester groaned. ‘I’d completely forgotten about the map. I mean, it’s probably only a hundred years old by now, so why am I worrying that we’ll not find our way? All we have to do is keep going south and we’re bound to find them, aren’t we?’

  ‘I’m starting to get angry again,’ Moxie hissed, in the near darkness. ‘And, if you keep on, I’ll dress you nice and girly and leave you tied to that tree across by the road, where those slavers are bound to find you in the morning. I expect they’ll be more than happy to take you along to their next market and I expect there’s bound to be one nice hairy-arsed one who’ll enjoy shagging your cute little bum until they sell you on again, don’t you?’

  ‘At least it’d only be a sore arse I had to worry about,’ Pester whined. ‘My feet are throbbing, my knees are killing me and my back is broken, I’m sure of it. Why couldn’t you have borrowed a horse for me, too?’

  ‘Because there aren’t that many horses at Garassotta right now,’ Moxie reminded him, ‘and the few they do have are better used for soldiers, not pathetic, snivelling, useless little wimperers like you, right?’ She glared at him, but secretly she now indeed wished that she had taken an extra horse from the stables. Either that, she thought, or she should have left the page behind in the first place, but then she would have been on the road alone and, useless as he undoubtedly was, even his company had to be better than none at all. She may have been dressed as a warrior, she may also have discovered a courage she never before realised she had, but underneath that she was still Moxie, former tavern serving wench and later maid and bed companion to Lady Dorothea.

  Her right hand closed over the hilt of her sword as she strove to draw some comfort from its presence, but she was only too well aware of her shortcomings if it ever came to using the weapon in a one to one confrontation. The crossbow that now hung from her saddle was the better insurance, but it was slow and cumbersome to reload and would afford her the chance for only one shot, if the time ever came when she needed to use it.

  ‘Look,’ she said, trying to adopt a more reasonable attitude and tone, ‘let’s be sensible about this, shall we?’ She breathed in and then exhaled, slowly.

  ‘Maybe I’m no warrior and maybe the map is no good, but it’s all we have and I’m all you have at this moment. If those are slavers in that village, they’ll be as interested in trying to take me as they will be in taking you, only more so and I’m hardly going to beat off several big men, even if I had your help, which I doubt I’d get anyway.

  ‘Somewhere down there,’ she continued, pointing in a generally southerly direction, ‘are our friends and Lady Dorothea.’

  ‘And that murdering bastard Fulgrim and a bloody great army, if Lord Savatch’s guess is anywhere near correct,’ Pester pointed out. Moxie nodded.

  ‘And, in a few days from now,’ she continued, ‘Fulgrim and his bloody great army are going to arrive at Garassotta and will probably take it, one way or another, at which point there’ll be no way to get to my lady. The best chance we have of saving her is while they’re on the road, at night, probably.’

  ‘You’ve got a plan, then?’ Pester challenged.

  ‘Only to stay alive and keep out of trouble until we see what’s what,’ Moxie retorted, ‘and that means giving that village over there a very wide berth indeed and putting as many miles between it and us before daylight.’

  ‘You mean you expect me to walk all night?’ Pester howled.

  Moxie sighed again. ‘No,’ she said, resignedly. ‘No, I don’t. Once we’re past the village you can ride for a while and I’ll walk, is that fair enough? And, if you behave yourself and keep your moaning to yourself, when we do find somewhere safe to camp for a while, you can share my blanket and see if we can’t put your worm to decent use.’

  ‘And can I suckle, please?’ Pester’s voice sounded very childlike suddenly and Moxie’s heart softened towards him.

  ‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘Yes, you can suckle on my titties, if you’re a good boy for me. Just keep those lips pressed firmly together until then.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard tales of the Yslander warrior women, Master Pecon,’ Farridan said, ‘but tales are wont to be built from shadows and I prefer to believe only what I see with my own eyes.’

  ‘If the Yslanders find out that you have one of theirs here,’ Pecon said darkly, ‘they’ll be the last thing those eyes of yours ever do see. Heed my words, you old fool, for I have seen and heard many things in the world and what I tell you is no idle fable.’

  ‘But they’re still only women,’ Farridan persisted, ‘and we are many here, despite what you may think you see to the contrary. I can muster thirty, maybe forty men within two days at most and we know how to fight, as you surely know.’

  ‘And the Yslander women know only too well how to kill,’ Pecon replied. ‘One of their warriors will happily stand against any two of yours, but that’s the least of your worries, friend. You cannot fight what you cannot see and they are mistresses of the art of subterfuge. Your gizzard will like as not end up slit from top to bottom before you even realise there is a danger.’ He turned to the still expressionless girl.

  ‘Lady,’ he said quietly, ‘tell us your name.’ The ice-blue eyes flickered, but there was absolutely no fear in them. And then the girl smiled and there was something about the smile that made even Demila’s blood turn cold in her veins.

  ‘My name, sir,’ the girl replied quietly, ‘is Hella Valkyr Mirisopaluna Hildisdottir. My friends call me Opal for short.’ She paused and her smile broadened. ‘You, of course, are not my friend, sir,’ she added, her tone as icy as her eyes. Pecon shook his head and turned back to the head man.

  ‘The house of Hella is second only to the house of Vala in Yslandia,’ he said. ‘The beautiful Opal here also bears the title of Valkyr, which means she has already been marked as a top warrior, probably already even begun her training, for they start them as quite small girls. The gods alone know how those fools managed to capture her in the first place!’

  ‘I was drugged, sir,’ Opal interjected. ‘I was travelling with a party of scholars in Sorabund, heading south to Illeum and we stopped overnight at a wayside inn. The innkeeper was clearly in league with the slavers, for when I recovered my wits, I found myself bound helplessly as you see me now.’

  ‘And did these men know from whence you came?’ Pecon asked, incredulously. Opal shook her head.

  ‘They never asked, sir,’ she replied simply, ‘and I never ventured to tell them.’

  ‘And did they...?’ Pecon hesitated and the girl laughed, a clear, sweet sound in the oppressive atmosphere of the small hall.

  ‘Did they assault my honour, you mean?’ she said. ‘Other than to confirm that I was still a maiden, no, they did not. When they discovered I was still virgin, they decided I would be of more value to them if things were left that way.’

  ‘That’s what the one we captured told me, too,’ Farridan confirmed. ‘And I checked it for myself, too. I’m no fool.’

  ‘Perhaps more so than you think,’ Pecon muttered. ‘You’ve laid your hands on this girl’s intimate parts and for that they would happily emasculate you with a blunt blade, believe me.’

  ‘I would do it myself, were my hands free,’ Opal said levelly.

  Farridan’s already flushed features turned a darker shade of red. ‘I’ll cut your pretty throat and feed you to the dogs first!’ he spluttered.

  Opal seemed totally unmoved by this threat. ‘Then do so, you fat moronic pig,’ she said. ‘It will make little difference to your fate. My people will come looking for me, as this fellow ha
s told you, and they will not grant you an easy death, you have my oath as a Valkyr on that.’

  This suddenly seemed to penetrate Farridan’s bluster and he slumped back against the wall of the hall, looking from left to right. What he saw was distinct unease in the faces of all his men and Demila knew that they were badly affected by what they had been witnessing.

  ‘Set her free, Farridan,’ one of them, a fair-haired younger fellow, urged. ‘Just give her some clothes and a horse and send her on her way.’

  Farridan seemed confused, however. ‘If I set her free, what if she comes back here to kill me?’ he demanded.

  Pecon reached over and laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘She would most certainly do that,’ he confirmed, ‘but maybe I have a better idea. Let me take her and give me clothes and a horse for her for later. I am headed north from here, passing through the outlands of Illeum and on into Sorabund, where I can see her safe onto a ship bound back to her homeland.’

  ‘And then she’ll come back with more of her albino harpies and I’ll be in even greater peril,’ Farridan protested. ‘It would be easier to cut her throat now.’

  ‘Not so,’ Pecon said. ‘Those “harpies” as you call them would come for you anyway, but if Opal gives you her word of absolution, you will be safe. After all, you took her in all ignorance and you have not harmed her.’ He turned to the girl again. ‘What say you, young lady? A safekeeping pledge for this old fool in return for your life and freedom and passage safe back to your home?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Opal seemed less than impressed by this offer of release and Demila found herself marvelling at the young girl’s composure. ‘There would be one other condition,’ she said, at length. Farridan looked at Pecon, who shrugged.