INDENTURED

 

 

 

 

 

        Though he’d heard of Teletus, even met more than a few citizens of the Awakened Territories’ largest city, Vam Rexen was seeing its walls now for the first time as the rivership he’d chartered out of the small port hamlet of Jort’s Ferry creaked through a lazy westward bend in the Thassa river. Even from this distance, the city’s massive walls dwarfed the small combined Port Authority and trading post which lay just outside them, continuing upland from the river for kilometers at least before distance and morning haze obscured them.

        Late autumn had already begun to turn the tree-lined drives and surrounding hills from deep emerald to shades of gold, rust and blood. Vam cinched his fur cloak a little more tightly around himself as he watched the water and woodland through his window; it had also put a firm nip into the breezes off the river, and his stateroom was no less drafty than anywhere else on this antiquated old boat. He briefly considered returning to his pallet, piled thick with furs, until his stomach complained again, bitterly, that it wanted filling.

        A mercenary never traveled without dry rations, but he was holding out -- he wanted a hot breakfast. And the slip of paper resting in the thick vellum envelope in the cargo pocket on the right thigh of his charcoal-grey trousers -- if the position being offered was legitimate, he’d have coin enough to eat like a king whenever he pleased.

        At the very least, the letter from the Head of his company’s training house, attached to another from the Captain of the Guard at House White, should give him leverage enough to put the cost of a morning meal at the foot of the Treasurer of his prospective new employer. If the job fell through, he’d at least have a free meal and a city full of new opportunity to his benefit.

        Adjusting his thick leather double-wrapped belt to more comfortably seat his short sword on his hip, he stepped out of his stateroom and down a short flight of stairs to the aft main deck. As he feared, the morning air off the river was biting indeed. The Captain of the Flying Bat met him with a perpetual scowl, his nose and cheeks reddened raw by decades of such weather, his hair a wild white mop beneath his trifoil hat. It billowed in a rhythm to match his ankle-length, midnight blue captain’s coat. “Morning!” he bellowed over the creak and lash of the sails, the rush of water against the boat’s lacquered and sealed hull.

        “Captain Rutherford.” Vam nodded. “I see we’re nearing port.”

        “Ye see well, boy! Aye, that we are!” Rutherford produced a thick wooden pipe from the pocket of his coat, a small, rough cotton pouch from the other. From the pouch, he pinched a sizeable amount of leafy brown tobacco, which he tamped into the pipe and lit -- all of this in the space of a breath.

        “Never been here before!” Vam still had to raise his voice to the border of shouting to be heard over the noise of the boat. “What can you tell me about Teletus?”

        Rutherford drew deep on the fragrant smoke from the pipe, stared out at the city for a moment, then fixed ancient blue eyes on Vam. “Just watch your step in there, boy! Things ain’t hardly ever what they appear to be! Good bet you’ll need that --” he pointed to the sword at Vam’s hip, “--more than once. And the once I guarantee ye!”

        That didn’t please the young mercenary. Killing for money was one thing, having to do it without getting paid rankled him. “Why’s that?” he asked.

        “The Awakened walk and talk like us, boy!” Rutherford answered. “They build up fortresses and palaces like us! But don’t let that fool ye into believin’ they think like us! The only law ye’ll find in those walls be the same law of any animals, talkin’ or not!”

        Vam stared at him, clearly not taking his meaning.

        “Dominance!” Rutherford explained. “Rule by strength! Or cunning, but usually both! Ye keep your eye sharp and your hand swift, boy!”

        “Port callin’, Cap’n!” the First Mate, a wire of a man named Gallerty, called back from the foredeck. Sure enough, they were now within archer’s distance of the moorings.

        “Stations then, all ye reekin’ bastards! Ye’ll earn your portions or I’ll beat yester-eve’s outta ye!” Rutherford shouted affectionately to his small crew, and lumbered off for the foredeck to oversee landing operations without preamble.

        “Thank you, Captain!” Vam called after him, then turned back to his stateroom to secure his gear for leave-taking.

 

        Stepping off the boat with his meager bedroll strapped over one shoulder and the huge, shapeless gray mass of a duffel strapped over the other, he made his way to the Dockmaster’s Office where he was greeted by a dwarfish, pudgy man whose porcine features were near the midpoint of human and Awakened pig.

        “You the Dockmaster?” Vam asked, looking the man over.

        “I’m that.” the man’s voice was no clearer than his face as to his lineage, lying somewhere between a growl and a squeal. “And since ye know my callin’, what be yours?”

        “I’m Vam Rexen,” the mercenary answered, looking over the small, comfortably untidy office. “I was told to expect a letter when I got here.”

        “No letter.” the man replied instantly.

        Vam’s eyes narrowed. “You didn’t even look.”

        “No need,” the Dockmaster pointed into a small anteroom without looking. “Ye got no letter. Ye do got a livin’ courier waitin’ on ye. In there.”

        At that moment, possibly the largest woman Vam had ever laid eyes on ducked beneath the doorframe separating the Dockmaster’s Office from the anteroom in which she’d been sitting. A vixen, her ruby fur matched by a wild mane of crimson ringlets, her thickly muscled limbs were bare, thin strips of black iron and leather strategically covering the only soft places on her otherwise huge, hard body.

        “You’re Vam Rexen of the Black Talon mercenaries?” her voice was soft and low, but powerful enough to wash over, around and through him like a warm wave. He could see that even under the room’s seven foot vaulted ceiling, she still stood slightly hunched.

        “I am.” he replied evenly, determined not to show that he was even slightly fazed by her size or her proportions.

        “Then show me the letters.” Her tone was firm, authoritative -- decidedly not what one would expect of a lowly courier, no matter how impressive her size and physique. Nevertheless, he wasn’t about to argue. He pulled the envelope from his thigh pocket again, handing it over. Her long, thick fingers capped with dagger-like black nails folded around his as she took it from him, then read it over.

        After a moment she returned the envelope, apparently satisfied that he was, in fact, who he claimed to be. “I’m Talis Vorran, Captain of the Guard of the House of White. Come with me.” She brushed past him gently, leading him out into the bright morning light where she finally straightened to her full height of 7’2”. She wore no weapons, he noted briefly, then reflected that at such immense size, she likely needed none.

        They approached a two-story building whose exterior proclaimed its age and whose hanging, crudely painted wooden placard proclaimed it The Keh’ra Lina Inn. Inside, the Innkeeper, an elderly wolf who introduced himself as Gage, accepted a promissory note from Captain Vorran drawn on the House of White’s Treasury and handed Vam the key to a room on the Inn’s second story.

        Vorran handed him a larger, thickly stuffed envelope produced by the Innkeeper. “This is a brief dossier of the notables of the House. You’ll also find inside maps of Teletus and its outposts, trade posts and brief overviews of our allies and enemies within and without the city. Spend the next three days learning it all. Travel the streets, get to know the street vendors and market merchants.” She reached into a small satchel slung from her hip, digging out three rather large oblong gold coins. “One gold tarsk per day should make you a friend to the merchants, but use sense in your spending. Say nothing of your job.” She smiled faintly. “After all, until I approve you, you have no job to speak of yet.”

        He nodded, turning the thick, heavy envelope over in his hands to examine the Royal Seal stamped in wax upon its back.

        “Be well, boy.” she said as she stepped back. “I’ll be back for you in three days. Be well, Gage, old friend.” With that, she was gone.

        Vam and the Innkeeper watched her depart. “Wouldn’t you like to take that to the furs, boy.” the wolf mused.

        “She’d flatten either or both of us to paste.” Vam observed amiably.

        “More than likely,” the wolf agreed. “Still...” his unspoken thought, it’d be worth it. was met with a nod.

 

        Vam didn’t accomplish quite as much studying as he’d intended, thanks to the Keh’ra Lina’s maid and cook, a delicious, long-legged kitten whose name was Toria but whom the innkeeper gruffly but affectionately addressed as, “slut.” Vam looked up at her one evening as she rode him and asked, “Toria, do vixens normally grow to over seven feet tall?”

        Unperturbed by the mention of another woman, she slowed her pace atop him, blinking down with her luminous amber eyes. “Sometimes, but not often. The Awakening changed many things in our bloodlines. You don’t know this?”

        Vam shook his head, enjoying the relaxed pace in their lovemaking for a change. Normally, he would return to his room, find her there nude and ready for him, then simply bend her over the bed or be tackled to the floor by her. Their activity would on average be better described as mindless, lust-fueled rutting rather than anything as gentle or even affectionate as lovemaking.

        “Speaking, High Thought, our bodies coming to be likened to those of your kind,” she explained, increasing the force and pace of her movements on him again, “all of the Awakened bloodlines have these things. But some of us --” abruptly, her inner walls closed on his cock like a clamp, squeezing so hard he gritted his teeth, “--have gifts beyond these things.” She grinned down at him with a dangerous but not-entirely-threatening look.

        He tilted his head, never having guessed at her strength.

        “I’ve been very gentle with you, my beautiful monkey.” she winked, and began to move again, her short but sharpened nails gripping his shoulders as she leaned forward, her golden brown hair falling around them as she placed her mouth to his neck, a needful, growling moan escaping her lips as she placed her sharp teeth to his skin, gave him the lightest of love bites.

 

        As promised, Captain Vorran stepped through the front door of the Keh’ra Lina at precisely 11:27 AM, three days after she had stepped out. She was dressed more formally, though no less revealingly. But the strips of white leather and golden armor that barely covered her this time were the High Dress armor of the House of White, or so he would learn much later.

        “Good morning,” she found him at the breakfast table with the innkeeper and his maid; they had made a first-name basis between them and shared fresh eggs, sausage and some sort of, to her sensitive nose, foul smelling cheese.

        Vam smiled up at her, then winced. She sighed down at the small feline woman; she supposed there was no point in mentioning that she had no interest in the small human herself, though it was painfully obvious that the kitten did. “Finish your breakfast, boy. It’s time for your evaluation. Gage, thank you for keeping him out of trouble.”

        “Toria’s work, that.” the wolf continued to assault his breakfast.

        “Well, then.”

        Vam had his gear and his goodbyes gathered a short while later. He and the formidable Captain Vorran rode in easy silence in a large rickshaw drawn by a pair of nude horsewomen whose chestnut bodies and long brown hair only accentuated the massive, powerful muscles of their hindquarters and legs.

        After perhaps twenty minutes ride which lead them out of the bustle of the city proper and up a long, winding causeway that snaked into the foothills north of the city, they reached high granite walls topped with sharp, curved iron barbs behind which sat a thick curtain of stringed razorwire.

        Vorran stepped from the rickshaw, which rose noticeably as her tremendous weight was lifted from its suspension. “Thank you, Eris.” She handed the nearer horsewoman a golden tarsk coin. “Thank you, Shala.” she handed out another to the other woman. “Your service is exemplary, as always.”

        “Thank you, Mistress.” both women bowed their heads in deference.

        As they walked a path of smooth pavestones toward the three-meter high, four-meter wide doors to the palatial estate sprawling before them, Vam asked, “Those women...?”

        “Slaves.” Vorran answered matter-of-factly.

        Vam blinked, taken slightly aback. The giantess looked down at him, studying his reaction. “You don’t approve?”

        He shrugged. In point of fact, he didn’t -- like all humans of the 22nd century, he had grown up believing that slavery in any form was an affront to the dignity of living things. But he’d be damned if he’d be a black sheep his first day on the job. It had no bearing on his profession, anyway. “Yours?” he asked, curiosity getting the better of him.

        “No.” she answered, apparently satisfied with his professionalism. “Eris and Shala are property of the House of White. They’re unrestricted, by the way,” she cast another look down at him; testing him again. “Of course, slaves or not, you’d do well to be sure they take a liking to you before you try anything with them. I weigh a little over 150 kilos, and you must be a hundred or so yourself. Either one of them could have brought us here alone. Imagine what those legs could do to a little human like you if angered.”

        “I’ll be careful.” he assured her, though the thought did send a faint shudder through him.

        “You studied the dossier as I instructed?”

        “Yes.”

        “Good.” she reached out and swung one of the wide, heavy doors open for him, ushered him inside. “Your evaluation will be conducted by the Lady of the House herself. She insisted. I have other matters to attend to, but I’m sure I’ll be with you again soon.” She walked him through a cavernous Greeting Hall, its marble floor and walls echoing their footsteps back to them through draperies of thick, soft purple satin.

        He could scarcely refrain from goggling about him like a dumb tourist at the opulence of his surroundings. Panels of deeply polished blood-red wood backed statuary of women of immense height and musculature, nude and glaringly anatomically correct.

        “This is the Hall of the Huntresses.” she provided as they continued. “You no doubt recall from the dossier that the House of White is a matriarchy, yes?” She gazed at him askance; clearly, his surprise betrayed the fact that he had only skimmed the dossier and missed this particularly notable fact.

        “Uh... yes.” he bluffed.

        “Mhm.” the sound was disapproving; had he not been busy trying to hide the deep crimson blush of embarrassment, he might have noted a peculiar smirk cross her face. After a moment or two more, they reached a slightly more mortally-proportioned door inlaid with ivory and gold, a brass knocker beside it.

        Vorran  took the knocker between thumb and index finger, rapping gently a few times. The door opened, and Vam’s eyes widened. Perhaps the most beautiful Awakened woman he had ever set eyes on stood before them.

        She was, compared to the Captain of the Guard, a tiny woman. 5’6” to Vam’s 6’ -- hard to tell her weight, but he imagined perhaps 130 pounds of very healthy curves, her long legs, wide hips and slim waist shrouded in layers of sheer purple silk, a bodice of the same material encasing her C-cup breasts but leaving her midriff and arms bare.

        Her eyes were a vibrant, deep jade set in a delicate face. Her coat of fine snow-white fur shone in the sunlight that filtered in through a crystal-glass window near them, the sunlight gleaming in the long coils of honey-blonde hair which she had carefully arranged “up”, a few strands left loose to tickle her cheeks, the back of her neck, his imagination.

        “Is this him?” she asked Vorran, who nodded. “Yes, my Lady. The human you sent for.”

        “Good.” she turned her eyes fully on Vam. “I am Esmerelle White, and this House is mine. Tell me, do you know of the war between my House and that of the Surnan Echelon?” And so the test had already begun.

        He nodded. The Echelon of the House of Surna, essentially a rogue band of deposed nobles and their loyal guardsmen, in addition to several batteries of mercenary companies, all that the Echelon’s dwindling wealth could purchase them, had set their sights on the House of White, to whose existence they objected on a number of levels, not least among which were the fact that the House of White had underbid them for construction and security contracts with the municipal government, and another reason not disclosed in the dossier. Very likely its matriarchal structure was that other reason.

        He recited as much to Esmerelle, who watched him imperiously throughout, laughing delightedly at his deduction. “He’s intelligent enough,” she noted to Vorran, who nodded. “Good retention, too. He’s at least adequate, mentally.”

        Vam looked from woman to giantess and back, and suddenly had the very distinct and very uncomfortable sensation of being weighed not as a prospective retainer but rather as something else. It was only compounded when Esmerelle stepped forward, ordering, “Stand still, boy.”

        She reached out, brushing slim, long-fingered hands over his cheek, around the back of his head, running her fingers through his hair, over his scalp, then around to touch the soft pads of her fingers to his lips, nodding. “Open your mouth.” she ordered.

        Confused, he complied. She leaned forward, peering into his mouth, examining his teeth. She nodded and reached down to unfasten his sword belt. “You won’t need this.” she slipped the belt from the very confused and increasingly apprehensive man’s waist, silently handing it over to Captain of the Guard.

        “I don’t understand,” he looked first at his sword belt, which the tall, heavily-muscled woman next to him slung easily over her shoulder where it looked more like a dagger.

        “You arrived late,” Esmerelle waved a hand breezily. “The war is settled. The Echelon’s women now serve in my Guards, the men now serve their women as comfort slaves. Those who refused now feed my gardens.”

        A very definite sinking feeling settled in the pit of Vam’s stomach. “I don’t understand.” he frowned. “Do you use men as guards or soldiers at all?”

        “Oh, we use men.” she assured him. “I use men. But I do not arm my men. That would be foolish.” To the struck look in Vam’s blue eyes, she only laughed. “All the property in my house belongs to me, boy. And in my house, men are property.” she stepped forward, resting her hand flat on his chest. “Kneel, boy, and submit to me.”

        He shook his head. “Interesting offer, but no. Sorry for your trouble, but --”

        “That was not an offer, boy.” she stepped back, her features clouding with anger. “And it was not a request!”

        He’d had enough of this -- he hadn’t come here expecting to see slaves. He sure as hell hadn’t come here to be one! He knew there was no way in hell he was getting his weapon back from the towering guardswoman. Screw it, he thought bitterly, I’ll get another.

        He turned to bolt for the front doors, but found his way blocked. Five women, each as tall as he was, each as barely-dressed as their Captain, ringed them in a loose half circle. Each loosened her sword belt, their sidearms hitting the floor at their feet with soft thumps. Behind him, Esmerelle spoke, and he could hear the smile in her voice.

        “Take him.”

 

        They closed on him slowly, steadily. He put up his hands. For human women, they would have been tall, athletic. But as his fighting instincts turned over and awoke in the primitive part of his brain, they ceased to register to him as women, only as hostiles.

        Mercenary fighting was not the stuff of wild, wide swings and flying tackles. And as good as these women might be, the analytical side of his combat training deduced that half of their effectiveness was reputation and most if not all of the other half distraction.

        Each of them was beautiful. Long, toned limbs. Slim waists. Magnificent bodies. Gorgeous faces. Long hair. These women won through charisma and possibly, where that failed, intimidation.

        The nearest, a feline who looked like she might have been the inn maiden’s bigger sister, feinted at him with a deadly swipe of her taloned paw. Had it connected, he realized with clinical alarm that a caved skull would be a possibility; at the very least, a concussion would be a certainty.

        Rather than lunging backward, however, he dropped and rolled forward, snaking both his legs around one of hers, the momentum slamming her forward leg into the rearward, the leverage of his legs slamming to the floor forcing her to follow.

        He had felt rather than seen or heard the rabbit closing from behind as the feline had occupied his line of sight. He disengaged his legs from the feline, who struggled to sit up cradling the back of her head. Before the rabbit behind him could lift a powerful leg into the ready to kick at him, he rolled backward, thrusting hard with his hands to drive both legs over his head, backward, his heels slamming together into her knees, toppling her to the floor in agony.

        He was on his feet again, scrambled for a moment to regain his footing on the polished floor, and a savage kick glanced off his chest, spinning him. Rather than flailing, he followed the momentum to his side, rolled away centimeters out of reach of a tigress’s brutal stomp where his head would have been crushed to blood, brain and bone-dust had he been a millisecond slower.

        He rose quickly, but not to his feet, sensing her close pursuit by the sound and vibration of her footsteps. His arms reached out as she came in hard and fast -- bracing his knees, he wrapped his arms around her legs, then pulled his torso back as hard as he could, sending her sprawling across the floor. She sat up snarling and holding her aching jaw.

        The two women left uninjured circled him warily now; another, more mortally proportioned vixen and a woman whose ink black fur, delicately pointed ears and luminous yellow eyes marked her as a panther.

        They closed on him again, slowly, circling -- he couldn’t track both hostiles at once. The vixen slipped behind him -- but he didn’t need to see her. Circling with the panther still, he stepped back suddenly, his elbow jetting backward to ram the woman in the stomach as his knees flexed low. Straightening them and pressing backward harder still, his fist flew up and back, connecting with her nose in a solid, painful sound. Just as suddenly, he stepped forward, on the attack. The panther girl, to her credit, was considerably faster, her forearm slipping around his throat as she sidestepped, her long black hair a storm around her glaring amber eyes as she roared, wrapping her other arm around his middle, her razor-sharp teeth at his neck, her arms crushing the life out of him --

        A sword tapped her forearm, and a voice spoke up, silencing everything. “Cheya, you can let him go.” With a reluctant growl, she did. “Take your sisters and go get cleaned up.”

        The panther girl, Cheya, leaned close to him again, her breasts flattening against his back as her hard muscled thigh slid over his for a moment, “I hope they leave you unrestricted, man-boy,” she hissed in his ear.

        He looked up the blade that now sat at his collar-bone. It was his blade. It was Captain Vorran who held it, and in her hand it looked more like a dagger now than ever. “You’re going to do as you’re told, boy.” she informed him. “Or you’re going to die here. Slowly and, I promise you, more horribly than you can imagine. If I decide I can’t trust you with our Lady, perhaps I’ll let Cheya have you.” She took the blade away, then tossed it idly aside, licking her lips. “Or maybe I’ll have you myself.” she stepped close to him, then into him, her massive body towering over his. Either of her huge thighs alone was wider than he was, solid as stone, his face even with her navel. She glared down at him over the twin orbs of her breasts, her red hair gleaming in the morning sunlight.

        Without another word, she reached around, seized him by the back of his head and turned, flinging him through the air to land in a heap at Esmerelle’s feet. She Lady of the house smirked down at him as he groaned and pulled himself back to a sitting position.

        “You will submit to me, boy.” she assured him as though it meant nothing to her either way. “The only question is: how far must I break your body before I break your will?” She looked up at Vorran. “I have... business... with one of the ‘nobles’ of the Echelon. I want this boy nude and bound in my chambers when I return.”

        “Yes, my Lady.”

        “Captain?”

        “Yes, my Lady?”

        “The girls may look, but they may not touch... yet.” Esmerelle fixed the trembling mercenary with a gold glare. “If it’s too much aggravation to break him symbolically, you may all enjoy doing it literally.”

 

        He hung there for what seemed like an eternity. The morning sun slipped up and across the arch of the late autumn sky. The lustrous curtains, tapestries and statuary of the wide, deep bedchamber had long ago lost any sense of brief fascination that had flared in him. Women had come to gawk at him -- chamber-girls, guardswomen, Huntresses.

        Ah, Huntresses. Had he only known. He felt a pang of self-incrimination for not having read the dossier more carefully, then realized how stupid that was. It would absolutely have been left out, this little detail that the House of White hunted and tricked men into enslavement as work thralls, domestic servants, sexual toys, and... and... he tried to remember what the panther girl Cheya had used as she had stood looking up at him, an evil smile on her delicate, beautiful face, eyes so lovely yet so full of complete indifference for whether he lived or died flickering as she’d used the phrase, “sparring meat.”

        Now he hung here manacled to this St. Andrew’s Cross alone in the vast bedchamber. In point of fact, the “bedchamber” was an entire suite of rooms. In another, farther off, he could hear the sobbing and pleading of men. He couldn’t tell at this range if they were human or Awakened, but it didn’t really matter. The panther girl was back there. A periodic  tortured groan or scream told him quite clearly that he didn’t want to know what she was doing to them.

        She dragged one out past him, a hapless blond-haired human who was only 5’7” to her 6’1”, his slim body probably at least 50 pounds lighter than her tightly muscled one.

        “What are you doing with him?!” Vam demanded, not expecting an answer.

        He was startled when she stopped and leered up at him briefly, “Practicing.” she purred, cinching her arm tighter around the already gagging man’s throat, and dragged him away. Vam never saw him again.

        When the bedchamber door next opened, it was dark but for candlelight maintained by a trio of giggling chambermaids who pointed at his toned body, his large cock, and whispered amongst each other as their Mistress swept quietly into the room.

        “Kennel, girls.” she commanded, and turned to examine him as they filed past with more hushed giggles. She stepped up to him. “I like what I see, boy.” She slipped her bodice slowly from her shoulders, gradually exposing her perfect breasts, the pink areolae and nipples contrasted against her ice white fur. “Do you?” She turned a slow, full circle before him, and even under the layers of sheer silk that made her full skirt a dazzling mixture of blues, he could see she had a round, shapely ass, sculpted long legs...

        “Yes.” he admitted.

        She stepped closer, pressing her breasts against him, her green eyes wide and searching for a moment. Then she smiled. “Well, that’s a bonus for you, my pet. You see...” she trailed a long-nailed finger down his cheek, along his jaw, “It doesn’t really matter what you like anymore, because --”

        She drew back her hand and punched him in the gut so fast and so hard it felt as if he’d been struck by lightning. “-- you belong to me, and I’ll do as I please with you.” her finger was at his jaw again, tracing down the side of his neck. “Whether you like it or not.”

        As he gasped hard to regain his breath, she leaned forward, raising both hands to bracket his cheeks and hold his face still, her lips sealing over his in a kiss that denied him the breath he fought for. Her eyes closed, though his were still wide with pain and shock. “Mmmmm...”

        She broke the kiss after a moment, still looking intently into his eyes as her hand resumed its leisurely course down his body. When it reached his nipple, her fingers closed over it with brutal pressure, forcing a scream out of him. “Ahhhhhh...” she breathed, releasing some of the pressure so that he could hear her. “You know, my pet, I think I’m falling in love with the sound of your screams.”

        He trembled in the inescapable manacles. “Please...” he heard the word fall from his lips but could not believe that he had uttered it.

        “No.” she responded instantly, harshly, tightening her fingers on his nipple again until he screamed. She held the pressure until he was out of breath and her head was thrown back, eyes closed in pure joy, her long, blonde hair swaying over her back. She lowered her head to fix him with a deadly serious stare, “You are the one who is to please. I’m going to teach you your oath now, boy.”

        She took a key from a pouch on the belt that held her skirt shut, releasing his right wrist from the manacle that had held it for so long. The skin was reddened and bruised from hours of struggle against the raw, rough metal. She likewise released his right ankle, then slammed her left fist into his right side, just under his arm. He threw his head back and howled voicelessly, his entire body quaking.

        While he was thus occupied, she released his left wrist and ankle, and he collapsed to the floor. She took his chin in her hand and hauled him to his feet. “Repeat after me, my pet: ‘She is Mistress, I am slave.’”

        When he hesitated, she reached down and wrapped her fingers around his cock and scrotum, and began to squeeze. He looked down at her arm, saw the hard cables of muscle there, and repeated hoarsely, “She is Mistress, I am slave!” Again he found himself awash in disbelief that he had uttered the words, but he felt the rapidly mounting pressure relax somewhat. A tear rolled down his cheek.

        “She is to command, I am to obey.”

        He had never obeyed anyone in his life who wasn’t paying him. And it was... another step... his mind reeled. He saw and sensed her right hand coming up fast, and then something exploded behind his eyes, and again as the world fell out from under him, tilted and his head cracked against the thickly carpeted floor.

        His vision clearly only barely before she sat straddling his chest. The skirt was gone. He could smell the fragrance of her arousal even as he felt the heat and moisture of it on his chest. He tried to lift his arms, to push her off of him, but they were trapped at his sides under her thighs. He felt the hard adductors press in on his arms, saw her hand rise again -- as it did, the bicep flexed into a rock hard peak.

        “She is to command!” he gasped out. “I am to obey!”

        “You’re learning, my pet.” she cooed, then slid down his body to straddle him again, her hot pussy pressed against his stomach. He could feel her hard, muscled ass so near his cock, felt tension there, felt himself begin to rise for her against his will.

        She continued, “She is to be pleased, and I am to please.”

        “She is to be pleased,” he answered instantly, “And I am --”

        She lowered her breasts over his face, cutting him off. Deliberately keeping him from finishing the statement. Toying with him. He began to struggle as his lungs began to burn from the lack of fresh air. She took his wrists in her hands, pinning them over his head and luxuriating in the increasingly frantic struggles of her victim. But no... not yet. She would force his release, take from him what belonged to her, but he would be forced to feel, see, hear, smell and taste it all, and know that he had no choice.

        She released him and he finished the statement, “And I am to please...” tears flowed freely down his face. It was close, she could see it in his eyes, he was breaking for her, and so easily, so deliciously.

        “And why is this?” she asked, almost hoping he wouldn’t understand that this question, and his answer were part of his submission. She wrapped one hand around his throat.

        “Because...” he choked out. “Because...” he wasn’t quite grasping it yet. With a triumphant, cruel smile, she raised her other hand and rocked his face to one side with a teeth-rattling slap. He cried out, and it subsided only slightly into body-racking sobs. “Because...”

        Another slap bounced his skull off the thick carpet and his sobs only increased in volume. She raised her hand again, the look in her eyes warning, dangerous. “Because she is Mistress and I am slave!” he wailed, and she lowered her hand, nearly cumming then and there, instead choking him hard with both hands, not releasing her grip until she had finished climaxing.

        She was actually rather astonished and well pleased to discover that he had survived, as he twitched, coughed and sputtered back to consciousness. Rising from him, satisfied but not remotely satiated, she dragged his unresisting body to her wide, expansive bed. Lifting him over her shoulder, she threw him to the middle of the mattress, then jumped on after him.

        Taking his wrists in her strong hands, she pivoted his body so that his feet were in the middle of the bed, his head projecting off the side of the mattress. Swinging one leg over, she pulled his hair until his lips were buried in her mound, then grabbed each of his wrists in one hand again, closing her thighs around his skull.

        “Eat, my pet.” she commanded as his eyes flew open in arousal and fear. She emphasized, “Eat.” with a tremendous but mercifully brief burst of pressure that had him seeing stars. Nonetheless, he extended his tongue, exploring her lips, then finding its way in, as she moaned again, her hips beginning to rock forward and back in time with his ministrations.

        It took him a moment to find her clit, so tight she was, but when he did he instantly regretted it, as the jolt of adrenaline-fueled pleasure it brought her caused her to loose a gutteral scream of bliss and crush down on his skull with nightmare force. His vision blacked again as his tongue, devoid of contrary instructions from his suddenly blood starved brain, simply continued on mechanically, in and out, in and out, over and in, in and out, out and over, over and in, tasting the flavor of her, indescribable other than mostly sweet, slightly tart, very hot, very wet... detached from any higher thought processes, the motions of his tongue could only repeat this pattern, frantically, and she came again, harder, her cream filling his mouth, his nose, his sinuses, as her thighs crushed in harder and harder still...

 

        He awoke a short while later, mystified as to how he had not been drowned or decapitated. He lay on his back on the bed. His face was still mostly coated in her cream, and another wetness he couldn’t identify, a cold wetness. He could feel her moving over him, could feel something moving on his cheek, then his lips, his forehead, his chin, could feel her hair brushing over these places.

        Her hands still held his wrists -- he tried to struggle free, but it only elicited another moan from her. “You’re mine.” she reiterated, squeezing his wrists in her fingers until a long, steady cry of agony escaped him as he felt the bones of his forearm creaking in her grip. This only stoked her growing fire hotter still.

        She rocked back to stare into his eyes, her thighs clenching at his hips now as she teased the head of his cock with her still dripping lips. “What are you, boy?” her voice was low and threatening.

        “I’m...” he looked back with shocked eyes full of pain and terror and tears. “I’m a slave...”

        She lowered herself onto him further, the walls of her cunt pulling his cock into her slowly but inexorably. She leaned forward again, her lips brushing his, her eyes still wide open as she tightened her respective grips on his wrists and his cock until he could do nothing -- absolutely nothing -- but whimper and pain and... and... “Whose slave are you?”

        And final, irreversible submission. “I’m... your slave...”

        She began to move slowly, to ride him, to take him deeper and deeper inside. There was no escape. There would be no escape. Ever. “...Mistress...” he felt something inside him finally, irrevocably break at the utterance of that word. He spurred her onward, however.

        Her movements atop him became frenzied, triumphant, brutal. She leaned forward again, wrapping her arms around the back of his head and burying his moaning face in her tits, grinding his nose and mouth into her chest as her awesome cleavage swallowed his face. Her hips rocked up, slammed down, the walls of her cunt clenching his cock in a painful embrace -- up, harder, slam! Down, crushing harder, up, slam!

        He was the man, but it was undeniably she who was fucking him. She leaned up again, finally, mercifully allowing him air but forcing it out of him in a cry of despair and agony as her cunt crushed in on his trapped and abused cock in one last, prolonged burst of agonizing power as she came so hard her entire body seized and went rigid in a paroxysm of raw, electric sensation.

        At the gradual release of pressure, his balls seemed to coil into hard knots of pain and pleasure, and he, finally, released his seed into her -- but it was not the moment of bliss and triumph he had experienced with so many women before. His beaten manhood seemed almost to be surrendering to her, giving her hot, gripping cunt what it had been demanding.

        She lay atop him for a moment, one hand holding his face immobile as she licked his lips, her tongue invaded his mouth. He lay still; she plundered. After a moment, she rose, her voice breathless, her eyes gleaming with the light of victory. “Girls will be in soon to collect you and take you to be cleaned, my pet.” she informed him, and without another word or backward glance, left the room.

        He lay there, stunned, exhausted and bruised. He lay there for a very long time, staring at the ceiling, trying to make sense of this. The things he had said, the things she had done. He lay there, alone, and felt body and mind alike ache with wounds of the flesh and of the spirit. At least the bites, the deep scratches in his shoulders -- how had he gotten those? -- would heal. But that spring somewhere within him... that lynchpin that secured his knowledge of who and what he was, of his place in the world... that was broken.

        It might never be fixed.

        He looked up. No one had come for him. It had been an hour -- he thought perhaps, in his reverie, he might even have dozed. No one had come.

        Maybe no one was coming. Maybe the girls had gotten distracted, or busy with something else, or...

        Or maybe, a familiar voice spoke within him, the voice of who he had been when he walked through those front doors, you should seize the god damn moment and get the fuck out of here!

        He didn’t think twice. Bending for a moment to examine a bundle of familiar colored cloth, he found his trousers, his shirt and his boots -- the socks were gone, but as he slipped the trousers on, he didn’t give that a moment’s consideration.

        Leaving the warmly lit bedchambers, he found the rest of the fortified palace darkened. He had no idea how long she’d been gone -- it might’ve been hours or only minutes. He had no time to lose. His training kicked in once more, the old instincts as comforting to him as a warm, dry blanket on a cold, wet night -- which this certainly appeared to be, if the hushed roar against the thick lead window-panes was any indication. He cursed the absence of his cloak from his retrieved clothing and vowed he’d find something -- anything -- to cover himself with on his way to the front doors.

        Retracing the path to those in the darkness wasn’t easy -- but he managed, and even found his own cloak on a peg near them. Things were looking up! He hadn’t been spotted, nor spotted anyone else. A twinge rose in the back of his mind, but he was not so stupid as to refuse to take yes for an answer.

        He turned the large latch of the door through which he and the giantess had entered earlier. It turned easily and quietly -- he pushed at the door.

        And pushed.

        Pushed harder.

        “Shit!” he swore under his breath. It wasn’t locked -- he could feel it swing a few centimeters when he shoved at it with all his strength, bracing his legs, leaning forward and shoving with his shoulder for all he was worth. It was unlocked...

        The problem was, it was plainly and simply too damn heavy for him to move it. The thing must have weighed between three and four hundred pounds, and he just didn’t have the muscle or leverage to force it open, much less ease it open as if it weighed no more than a feather, as the amazonian guard had.

        Find another way out. his mind observed after a moment, and he left the great main doors unhappily. Moving off into a dark side passage, he could only hope that there was a smaller side door -- for the chambermaids, perhaps. Christ, not every woman here could be a super-strong Amazon, right? He found a door, let his fingers trace the seam between it and the wall -- he couldn’t feel any air at all there, much less cold air. He moved on.

        A second door held some promise. Putting his ear to it, he heard water. It had been raining against the windows, this sounded right. He eased the door open --

        -- and looked into angry but amused jade eyes. The light of candles barely lit the room behind the door, where a broad, deep tub seemed to ripple and shake across its top surface. A perfectly coordinated drain within and unseen to him was matched to the pressure of a fountain which issued a textured spray of water droplets. The droplets dispersed across the surface of the water within the tub, creating the sight, sound and sensation of rain.

        “Aw... fuck.” he noted blandly. Plan B! his mind supplied.

        He stepped boldly into the room -- even if the amazon bitch spotted him, no matter how many spotted him, they’d have to let him go if he had their Lady hostage. He’d hate to have to break the woman’s neck, but his training was dominant over his body now; if forced to, he wouldn’t hesitate.

        He took a brief instant to survey her body. She stepped forward menacingly, and she shrank back a step, but the smile on her face seemed almost playful. The towel draped around her didn’t cover nearly what it might have before a stranger. He could see hard muscle beneath the soaked fur, shoulders and biceps well defined, her abdominal muscles highlighted by candlelight formed a small but hard six pack, an indent following the curve of her hip. Her glutes were round and hard as she closed the distance between them, the flex and flow of hard, defined muscle in each thigh boldly pronounced.

        He watched her come, half in wary suspicion and half in simple awe at the beauty and power displayed before him. He briefly considered abducting her, taking her with him, at least for a night. He thought that maybe, just maybe he’d show this woman her place.

        Her hand shot out in a blur of speed, catching him by the throat. The towel she had wrapped around herself fell away, exposing her body to him again, gloriously nude and still wet. In the candlelight, her fine fur matted to her body, his eyes discerned the true shape of the physique beneath the fur.

        She was soft, but only where a woman absolutely must be to be beautiful. The soft, round swell of her breast contrasted against the hard, superbly defined plain of her bicep, a plain that contracted to a hard, round ball as she hauled his face to within an inch of hers, the solid, ridged muscles in her forearm standing out as her fingers closed off his air flow.

        “Do you know what I like about big, strong slave boys?” she asked in a soft, sultry voice.

        He couldn’t answer -- couldn’t even gesture with his head or shrug his shoulders. The pain and panic were beyond reflex actions -- this was worse. His body was seized with paralysis. In a detached, curious thought, the only hope he held was that he wouldn’t wet himself. Somehow, the realization that she could and very well might crush his larynx did not occur to him; the potential embarrassment of soiling his pants did.

        “I like to break them.” she told him matter-of-factly, and her other hand moved too fast for the eye to see, crashing into his stomach with the force of a battle mace. He nearly blacked out on his feet, but she held him up by the throat, continuing to throttle him. His vision tunneled, his limbs losing sensation while his head felt like it might at any moment pop like an overfed tick.

        His stomach burned. For an instant, he believed he could not experience a pain more searing, more mind-blottingly, horrifically extreme, than that.

        Until she hit him again. She released her grip on his throat a fraction of a second before her fist impacted again, in the same precise location, and he screamed an animal scream cut short by a wave of bile that rushed up his throat and into his mouth. His hands barely sealed over his mouth in time to stop it from flooding out onto the floor which he now found caressing the left side of his body. Vertigo and nausea were all he knew until her feet appeared in his dimmed, tear-blurred vision.

        “I like to test my slaves.” her voice was as light and airy as if she were thinking of going to the market for a new dress. She reached down, seized a fistful of his hair and yanked him upright again. He felt a jolt of burning as some of his hairs were yanked out by the root in her savage motion.

        Oh, no, oh no oh no

        Her fingers released his bleeding scalp as her other fist rocked his head back in a violent whiplash, the punch lifting him clear of the floor and throwing him into the wall behind him. “I like to test their obedience.” She hauled him, half-conscious, to his feet once again. “And if they fail that --”

        The backhanded punch impacted his jaw -- he felt something crunch a split-second before he bounced off the wall and was slammed hard across the face by the floor again. “--I like to test their ability to survive.” His mouth was an electric rage of pain. He felt something roll across his tongue, and watched half of one of his molars fall from his lips to bounce once in a forming pool of his own blood.

        And that was when fear turned to anger. He rose to his feet, bracing against the wall and then shoving himself away from it to launch himself at her. He threw a short, sharp jab with his left that caught her in the stomach -- something flashed through his mind that it had felt wrong -- but his right hand dove in and nailed her cheek, staggering her backward toward the tub.

        He left no window of opportunity, his fists continuing to fly, hammering at her, driving her slowly back further and further still toward the tub. Then he realized something with a sinking, detached feeling.

        She was laughing at him.

        Her slender, delicate foot rose up hard to smash into his balls, lifting him off his feet with a breathless scream -- he would have fallen were it not for her strong hands catching him under his arms. Her foot rose again with the speed and power of a locomotive, lifting him clear of the floor again. And again. After another horrifying kick to his balls, he hung limp and moaning in her grip.

        He had never seen such a delicate looking creature -- one so dainty and feminine, so pretty. Never in his wildest imaginings could he conceived of such a beauty doing to any man what this girl-Queen was doing to him now.

        She dropped him unceremoniously back to the floor, planting a foot squarely in the center of his chest and applying pressure to pin him there, squirming and moaning in agony. Raising both arms, she flexed them hard. The cords of steel cable muscle in her forearms jumped to life, her perfectly-formed biceps rising to small, hard peaks as her abs moved in the rhythm of her deep, quick breaths. She stared down at him with a smug, almost contemptuous smirk.

        “The nice thing about obedient slaves,” she noted as she hauled him to his knees to stand before him with her legs spread, “is that they’ll clean all this and be grateful. Because it wasn’t any of them.” She scooted forward, bracing his face between her thighs once more. She leaned over, crossing her ankles as she picked up the piece of shattered tooth. She held it up for him to focus nearly lifeless eyes on. “Shall I see how many of these I can crush out of those jaws of yours, my pet?”

        A look of boredom crossed her face. “I’ve already taken from you what I take from most of my toys. I wanted more, and you were so expensive to acquire, but...” she shrugged. “I’ve never crushed a man’s skull before. But I believe I could...” her thighs tightened, the hamstrings bulging as she flexed them, compressing his jaw. She rolled her thighs forward on his skull; as they flexed around his head, they seemed to expand slightly, until his cheekbones and even temples were subjected to the hot pressure of her steel limbs.

        “Please!” he begged, “Please don’t!”

        “But I want to,” she pouted in feigned innocence, as if she were merely a little girl who wanted to play with a doll. “I want to hear your bones crunch and see your brains spill out of your flattened skull, silly human boy.”

        “Oh, god!” he sobbed, pleading for his life. “Please, please no!”

        Her thighs tightened further still, and he could hear his own pulse pounding in his ears. And then he heard something else -- a sort of creaking, grinding sound... his arms lay limp and useless at his sides. He couldn’t muster the strength to raise them, knew it would be futile even if he could... his sobbing intensified, punctuated with the screams of a dying animal whenever her thighs’ pressure on his skull increased another notch. “It’s not what I wanted at first, but you don’t want to be good...”

        “Oh, god, please, ANYTHING, PLEASE!” he screamed. “I’ll be good, i promise! I PROMISE! MISTRESS, PLEASE!”

        She released her grip on him, holding only tight enough now to keep him suspended there, his upturned face streaked with blood and tears, his eyes painted dark red by blood vessels that had burst within them, his mouth compressed into a grotesque rictus of agony and terror. Blood seeped from his wrecked insides to stain the crotch of his trousers -- he had indeed wet himself.

        “It took a great deal of money and influence to get you here.” she looked down at him with stern superiority. “But I have thrown away more expensive toys than you before. Someone will be in to clean you up and take you to the House Physician soon.” She released her grip on him entirely and he fell defenseless to the floor of the baths.

        She paused in the doorway, regarding him coldly -- as one might look on a badly behaved horse or an ill-fitted garment. “I’ll only discipline you that way once, my pet. Next time, you won’t leave my grasp alive...” with that warning, she was gone.

        He lay sobbing and broken on the floor. He understood now. He was never going home. He would never be free. He was nothing but a plaything to her, to be used, enjoyed, almost certainly one day simply disposed of like a used apple core.

        He was her property. She was Mistress, he was slave.