The Adventures of a Roman Slave

by Lisa Cach

  The more I hit him, the more I felt his excitement growing, and the wetter I became. I wouldn’t have thought it possible to be slicker, but I felt it inside my thighs, too much moisture to be contained inside me.

  When my arm tired, I threw the belt aside and reached under him from both side and back. My fingers wrapped around his cock and squeezed, as my other hand cupped his balls. He jerked in my hold, thrusting his rod within the tube of my hand.

  “Bad Mordred! Did I say you could move?” I squeezed his balls—not enough to hurt, just enough to warn.

  He whimpered.

  My gaze skimmed the room, looking for inspiration, and landed on the dish of food Daella had brought. Without taking time to think, I released Mordred’s goods and wrenched a leg off the pheasant, then dipped the rounded end of it into the melted tallow of one of the lamps.

  “Close your eyes, dog,” I said, and when he made a noise of obedience, I parted his butt cheeks. “If you’re going to behave like an animal, you should have sex like one.”

  In his mind, I conjured one of his huge hounds, painted white with red ears. I dragged the end of the pheasant leg up his ass crack, creating in his mind the sniffing nose of the hound. His butt clenched, trying to close itself off.

  Reaching under him from the side, I grasped his rod. “You like being an animal,” I said, and began to stroke him. “You think it makes you strong.” I pressed the leg against his hole, and in his mind, the white hound mounted him, its red erection prodding at his ass. I slid my hand up and down his staff, sliding my palm over the head, using my mental invasion to sense exactly how he best liked to be touched.

  Confusion and horror roared inside him, thrashed on by the lust he could not control. The overwhelming sensations in his cock linked themselves with the dog and the delving pressure at his ass, and his whole body began to shudder with pleasure and self-disgust. I yanked the bone free and tossed it aside and ordered him onto his back.

  Tears seeped from between his tightly shut lids, and his lips were pressed together against sobs I could hear in his throat.

  “Have you learned to be a good boy?” I asked, my voice low, husky with threat. Or was it desire?

  He nodded.

  “Open your eyes.”

  I wasn’t sure why I did what I did next. Was it the echo of Maerlin’s words, saying to welcome Mordred’s seed? Maybe it was the voice of my mother from long ago, telling me that the strength of the Phanne was in women lying with men from far and wide. A force within me wanted his cock inside me, spending itself in my depths.

  I was far past reason, my mind still wrapped in Mordred’s, still feeling his helpless lust and humiliation. Maybe it was his yearning I could not resist.

  Whatever the reason, I mounted him, parting my folds with my fingers and easing his thickness inside with one long, slow lowering of my body. I flicked my fingertips over my stamen, and the release was instant. I came, the contractions washing over my body in deep, delicious waves.

  “Take me,” I said, and allowed him his freedom.

  His heavy hands dug into my hips, holding me for his thrusts. They were violent, hard, his neck straining as he ground me against him. I took mental hold of his body, letting him thrust with all his unbound strength but throttling off his release. In growing desperation, he rammed himself into me, moving me back and forth as if to eke out that one needed bit of sensation to push him over the edge. His heart raced, and his breath heaved in gasps of need; he’d closed his eyes again.

  “Whom do you worship?” I demanded, and squeezed my inner muscles for the torture it gave him.

  “You. I worship you!”

  “You worship Cunnus. Open your eyes.”

  He did, and screamed. The scream gurgled into a groan of horrified ecstasy as I let go my hold on his seed. He jerked spasmodically, his hands holding me tight to his loins even as his soul revolted.

  What he saw was a woman from the depths of his nightmares. The black feathered wings of a crow spread from my back; my legs belonged to a great cat; my arms ended in the talons of eagles. On my chest hung rows of breasts with crimson nipples, dragged downward by their weight.

  But it was my face his gaze was locked to. I’d used the image of a woman I’d found in his mind, a woman he loathed and whose authority he still feared, though she was long dead. It was a face that he longed for even while he ran from it, and it was a face impossible for him to please.

  It was only in the shuddering moments of Mordred’s release that I realized whose face it was.

  His mother’s.

  No monster of black wings and harpy talons could have had more power to horrify him than a vision of her impaled on his staff.

  There was no greater Fury for wreaking vengeance.

  Wrapped in the fur, I slouched, sitting against the wall, a goblet in my hand. I’d downed half the wine already, though the pheasant sat uneaten. I couldn’t bear to put any of it in my mouth, knowing what use the leg had been put to. I steadily sipped the wine, hoping it would distance me from what I’d done to Mordred.

  Mordred had passed out after his climax, and when he came to, he had slunk away from me, hunched over, one hand covering his flaccid mentula. He’d gathered his clothes and stumbled out of my prison naked. I’d heard the guards making lewd, joking comments, but Mordred had only grunted in response.

  I was still too stunned by my own actions to think clearly about any of it. I didn’t know if I’d had any permanent effect on Mordred or if my reward for such perversity would be execution or adoration. And I was unnerved by how quickly I had learned from what Maerlin had done to me and used the same powers against another man. More unsettling still was the arousal I’d felt as I took control of Mordred. I’d thought it was his excitement I felt, and it was. But it was also my own.

  For one perverse moment, it made me miss Sygarius. He would have understood, and he could have explained to me what I was feeling.

  You think it’s wrong because it shocks you? I could hear him saying, almost as clear as if he were in the room with me. Nimia, haven’t you learned by now that you needn’t approve of sexual play to enjoy it?

  Apparently, I didn’t even need to like the man I did it with. I had been so eager to climb onto his cock. Why? And I’d come three times; I couldn’t forget that, either.

  I gulped down my goblet of wine and refilled it.

  If nothing else, I’d surely kept Mordred busy long enough for Terix and Daella to get away.

  I was feeling cocooned in a wine haze when my vision and hearing started to go. I heard a rough, slow grinding sound, and the dirt in the opposite corner of the room shifted. A weed wobbled on its stem, then fell over as its soil was tumbled over by the rising of the cement floor. My mind could make no sense of it, but my feet pushed on the floor as I tried to scramble through the wall at my back, and the goblet fell to the floor with a clank, maroon wine spreading in a puddle.

  A small, ragged section of the floor rose and then dragged itself to the right. As it came to rest, I saw the pale hands on its edge, and a moment later, a most unexpected person popped her eyes over the edge of the hole.

  “Wynnetha!” I said.

  “Shh!” She peered around the small room. “Is anyone else in here?” she whispered.

  I shook my head.

  She rose, seemingly lifted from beneath. Head, shoulders, chest, and waist all emerged in one graceful motion, without help from her hands. I couldn’t figure out what was happening until she stilled, and then I realized that all she had done was stand up.

  I’d had too much wine, by far.

  “Come on, I have a horse for you outside the north gate.”

  “You’re helping me escape?”

  “Not if you sit there staring at me all night.”

  “But why?” I asked, as I scrambled toward her. I was already dressed and only had to g
rab my cloak to be ready to go.

  “Because I don’t want a whore like you living in my fort with my husband and me.” She ducked back down into the small hole, barely wide enough for a small woman to scrape through, and I followed.

  As soon as we were under the floor, I understood: we were in the hypocaust. It was the open space the Romans put beneath rooms they wanted to heat. A roaring fire would be built at the entrance, and the hot air would flow beneath the floor and up channels inside the walls, heating the bricks and cement.

  Wynnetha dragged the cement chunk back into place above us. She saw the question on my face and answered it. “As a child, I explored everywhere. When I wanted to get away from everyone, I could come here, and no one would find me.”

  She had a tallow lamp to light our way, which we had to make by crawling through the forest of posts of stacked tiles that made the support for the floor above. She blew out the lamp as we got close to the furnace where the long-ago fires had been built; the arched brick mouth that had once admitted the stoker’s wood now served as our exit. We crawled through soft dirt and ash and emerged into a cold, misty night. I put on my cloak.

  Wynnetha put her finger to her lips and took my hand. She led me along the edge of the ruin, and then suddenly, a shape rushed toward us, loping and panting. We both froze, our hands clenching, and then Bone was upon us, slobbering and wriggling and knocking me back several steps as he leaned his weight against me. There was no time for extended reunions, though, and he fortunately seemed to sense our need for quiet. He kept close to my side as Wynnetha took my hand again and led us through the sleeping town, dashing from shadow to shadow. We saw no one, and as we approached the gate, I whispered to her, “Do you know anything of Terix and Daella?”

  “What? No.”

  It was all I dared to ask; I didn’t want her to check on Terix, find him gone, and rouse her father. I would put my faith in Daella’s cleverness and try to catch up to my friends on the road to Corinium. With Bone to help me, I was sure I’d find them.

  The horse was where Wynnetha had said, cropping grass at the base of the wall. She untied its hobbles and boosted me onto its bare back. “I couldn’t get a saddle. Will you be able to ride without one?”

  “I’ll manage.”

  She handed me the reins. “Follow the road into the trees,” she said, pointing. “At the first crossroads, go left. You’re on your own after that.”

  “Thank you, Wynnetha. Thank you. I’ll repay the debt someday.”

  “Repay it by never letting me see you again.” She slapped the horse’s flank, and I clung to its mane and cantered for the woods, Bone a loping shadow beside me.

  I felt safer the moment I entered the shelter of the forest, where no eyes from the town wall could see me. I slowed the horse to a walk, cautious of invisible holes in the road in the deeper night under the thick, leafless branches.

  We’d gone a few miles when Bone stopped and sniffed the air, then ran up the road and plunged off into the underbrush. From somewhere amid the bushes, he gave a woof of greeting.

  “Terix! Daella!” I called, riding toward where Bone had disappeared, my heart lifting and the fears and horrors of the past day falling away. Everything really was going to come out right.

  A large, shadowed shape broke out of the underbrush and up onto the road: a man on a horse. “My lady,” Fenwig said. “Now you will come with me, back to Clovis. Where you belong.”

  I reined to a halt. “How—” But I didn’t need to finish the question, even in my own mind. Wynnetha must have arranged this with him. If I stayed in Britannia, Mordred might try to get me back, which Wynnetha did not want. Better by far to have me safely across the sea.

  “I can’t go back, Fenwig. Not yet.”

  “I would rather you came willingly, but come you must.” He moved toward me.

  “No. No! Bone, to me!” It was the command to protect. I jerked the horse’s reins to the right and dug in my heels. The horse leapt from the road into the brush, and together we crashed through the forest, as Bone growled and snapped behind me, and Fenwig’s horse whinnied. Then I heard Fenwig’s mount crashing after me. Bone was still on the attack, but it was a mount used to battle, and Fenwig was a soldier bred to the job. A dog would not stop him, no matter how massive and fierce.

  My horse found a clear way through the bushes: an animal track, no more than a blade of space cutting through the branches. I bent low over its neck and kicked it into a canter, praying to Diana that there would be no roots to trip him.

  Roots there were not, but a fallen tree barred the way. The horse gathered itself and leapt, and I went flying off its back into the bushes. Next thing I knew, I was belly-down on the ground with the wind knocked out of me and the sound of the horse’s hooves disappearing down the path. I heard Fenwig’s mount make the same leap and assumed he’d kept his seat.

  When he caught up to the riderless horse, he’d realize what had happened—if Bone didn’t lead him back to me first. I forced myself to my feet, and with my breath coming only in shallow, desperate gasps, I stumbled through the bushes. I had to get away; I had to find somewhere to hide.

  Up ahead was a lighter gray in the forest: a clearing. I ran to it, my breath returning in gulps of air.

  A dark, low rectangular building squatted in the center of the clearing. Posts in front of its doorway held up a wooden trough.

  What was this place?

  Hoofbeats and the sound of movement through the brush: Fenwig had doubled back.

  The building was too obvious a place to hide, but what choice had I? Perhaps I could bar the door against him. It might provide a moment’s safety, in which . . . in which . . .

  I didn’t know, but I ran to the doorway anyway and pushed the damp wooden door open. Its hinges stuck, then creaked slowly open under the weight of my body. I slipped inside and pushed it shut, then searched for a bar or a piece of wood to wedge against it.

  The roof was open to the sky. The floor was covered in unknown shapes, buried under rotting beams and boards: the fallen roof. I pulled at one of the smaller boards, tugging it loose from its pile. The whole jumble of wood slid away, revealing a moldering figure as tall as myself, its mouth gaping wide, its upward-turned eyes encrusted with lichen.

  I shrieked, stumbled backward, and tripped on a piece of wood. I fell to my butt, and as I sat there staring at the shadows, I realized that all the shapes arrayed through the building were like this one. Statues, carved of wood, being slowly eaten away by rain and insects. It was a temple of some sort, though of what religion I could not say.

  Outside, there were shouts. Male voices. A challenge issued.

  I found my feet and a piece of wood and went back to the door, trying both to wedge the door shut and to hear what was happening.

  I heard the unmistakable metallic rasp of swords being drawn.

  Clanging. Grunts of effort.

  They were the sounds of serious swordsmen, not wasting breath on talk. I knew one of them must be Fenwig. The other?

  Terix?

  He wouldn’t last three blows against Fenwig.

  Mordred?

  I’d rather go with Fenwig than be delivered back to Mordred. I felt my way along the wall, seeking a window, a loose board, or a second door, some other way I could slip out while the victor tried to open the door. There was nothing.

  A board lay propped against the top of a wall. I shoved at it, testing its stability, then started to climb. I had gotten halfway up when my feet slipped on the wet wood, my nails digging into the half-rotted timber only to be torn away as I fell with a short cry, landing on my side amid the wood.

  Outside, the fight ended with a guttural Latin “I yield!”

  Footsteps approached the door. My heart pounding in my head, my breath coming in gasps, I scrambled behind one of the statues, trying to hide. Gods and goddesses preserv
e me.

  “Open the door,” a deep male voice said in Latin.

  I sat motionless for long moments, listening to my panting and my runaway heart, but what could I do? All I would gain by disobeying was a postponement of the inevitable. I wasn’t going to escape from him, whoever he was.

  Swallowing my fear, I stumbled through the fallen boards to the front of the temple and removed the wedge. I opened the door.

  He stood silhouetted against the pale gray night, a tall shadow with the square shoulders of a warrior. He held out his hand to me. “Maerlin thought you might be here. I thank the gods he was right.”

  Arthur.

  The blood left my head, and stars filled my vision. I closed my eyes and laid my trembling hand in his.

  Again to Clark, though it shocks him, the things his wife writes

  “I’m worried about your friend,” a deep voice rumbled in my ear, startling me from my fantasy of hiking my skirts and having Arthur take me from behind as we rode double on his horse. I was mounted in front of him as I had been for the past three days of travel, his thighs and arms cradling me in place. It had been comforting at first to feel his strong, solid form behind me, keeping me safe and secure, and then that comfort had begun to change. I became aware of every point of contact between our bodies, of the scent of him, of the rhythm of his breathing and the beating of his heart. My muscles were loose, my body growing heavy with an incoming tide of desire.

  Arthur had done nothing to encourage my lust, had behaved with perfect correctness throughout the journey, and still my breasts were full and aching for his touch, my sex feeling the rocking caress of the saddle leather beneath it as a mocking taunt. We’d reach Corinium before nightfall, and none too soon. I was dangerously close to grabbing his hand and forcing it under my skirts to gain a moment’s relief.

  “Worried? About Daella or Terix?” I asked, and leaned sideways to peer around him, back to where Daella and Terix shared a horse. A stone-faced Fenwig rode beside them, while Maerlin had gone on ahead. Our donkeys, the packhorses, and two of Arthur’s men-at-arms followed up. My dog Bone loped alongside us and periodically disappeared into the woods to harass squirrels and rabbits.