Bridled Lust

by Faith Eden

  ‘So you sit here, getting drunk and thinking about your Corinna,’ Alanna said. Savatch looked pained.

  ‘I am not getting drunk,’ he retorted defensively. ‘This stuff is medicinal. I still have some pain, as you know.’

  ‘And not all of it physical, I think.’

  ‘No.’ He considered the bottle again and then held it out to Alanna, but she shook her head.

  ‘Not tonight,’ she said. ‘Not tonight, nor tomorrow night, but if there is another tomorrow for us after that, then I’ll drink with you then. For the moment, I need to keep my head clear.’

  ‘Except it isn’t just drink that can clutter a head, eh?’ Savatch said.

  ‘Indeed not,’ Alanna agreed. ‘But there are some things I must quiet before we do battle. It is the way of the Valkyr to balance the ledgers of her life as best she can and while she can.’

  ‘Yes, I know that.’ Savatch eased his position and winced as he did so. ‘What entries are giving you trouble tonight?’ he asked, letting out a deep breath as the stabbing pain in his side subsided again.

  ‘Yours,’ Alanna replied, simply. ‘There are others, too, but yours are what concern me just now.’

  ‘Ah.’ Savatch pulled a curiously comic face. ‘Are we talking about the same entries I think we’re talking about?’

  Alanna smiled thinly. ‘Most probably,’ she said. She paused and lowered her gaze. ‘Savatch,’ she said eventually, ‘you are a rogue, a vagabond, a womaniser and a drunk at times, but you are also a brave man and an honourable man, and you have been a valued friend these many years now.’

  ‘As you have been to me,’ Savatch replied, suddenly sounding very sober. ‘And more besides,’ he added quietly. ‘Much more.’

  ‘Two days from now,’ Alanna continued, without giving any indication that she had understood his implication, ‘we could all be dead.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that will be it, at least in this world.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘As for the next world, none of us knows by what rules we must play.’

  ‘Also true.’

  ‘We may have no choice at all.’

  ‘None, no.’

  ‘A person should value their freedom of choice above almost anything else.’

  ‘Yes, I value mine.’

  ‘I know.’ Alanna was chewing on her bottom lip now. ‘There is only one choice I have ever refused you, my good lord and friend.’

  ‘There is?’ Savatch paused and then a light came into his eyes. ‘Ah, yes. Yes indeed. No matter, though. It has always been your choice and not mine, after all.’

  ‘A person is free to change their choice, I think?’

  ‘Perfectly free,’ Savatch agreed. ‘Otherwise it would not be a true choice in the first place, I think.’

  ‘No.’ There was a long pause, before Alanna finally spoke again. ‘Mine is a true choice,’ she said, ‘and now I choose to change it.’ She breathed in deeply, her breasts rising beneath her simple black tunic top. ‘There is a deep gully, just fifty or sixty paces to the south of this wagon,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I saw it,’ Savatch replied. ‘In fact, I nearly drove this damned wagon into it earlier. There is a lot of long rough grass that masks its position.’

  ‘It is a very well hidden gully,’ Alanna agreed. ‘But I think you could find it in the dark, especially if you were to spend, say, half an hour trying to remember the way first?’

  ‘Yes, I think I could find it,’ Savatch nodded. ‘Especially if I think about it for that long. You think I should try to find it, then?’

  Alanna looked up again and pursed her lips. ‘I think you ought,’ she said.

  Pecon glared across the flickering fire at the redheaded intruder, angry that a single female, Valkyr or not, had managed to capture his entire encampment single-handed, but then that, he fumed, was what came of trusting the blonde warrior girl. Her word she had given, but her word obviously counted for nothing when it came to one of her own kind. Opal seemed to read his mind.

  ‘I did nothing to betray your trust, Master Pecon,’ she said firmly. ‘She would have killed me had I tried to warn you and probably shot you even before you were out of your blanket.’

  ‘She may have killed me,’ Pecon muttered, ‘but never one of her own.’

  ‘I did not know she was a Valkyr until after I could have killed her many times over,’ Jekka snapped, deliberately waving her bow towards Pecon. ‘And as she said, Opal did not betray your parole and you live now only because to have killed you while you slept would have been both the act of a coward and a compromise to her honour.’

  ‘So now what?’ Pecon drawled. His eyes remained fixed on the tip of the bolt that was aimed at him. ‘You intend to kill me anyway?’

  ‘Only if I must,’ Jekka said. ‘It depends, however.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On you. I have business in these woods the day after tomorrow and your presence here is merely inconvenient. It may also be inconvenient to all of you, if you remain.’

  ‘Ah,’ Pecon said, nodding. ‘Something to do with that column that comes north, perhaps. It moves slowly, but by my reckoning it should reach this pass around that time. Will there be a battle, perhaps?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Jekka replied. ‘Tell me, what do you know of the column?’

  Pecon spread his hands. ‘Just what I’ve told you already; it moves slowly, for we’ve outdistanced it since first we saw its dust. I have no idea who or what they are and I have no wish to find out. But for several of our horses going lame we should have been well away to the north by now. Instead, we are forced to wait here, at what I thought was a safe distance from the road. The idea was to allow them to pass, let the horses recover and then move on, once they were well clear.

  ‘I suspect they may be headed towards Garassotta, so we shall take a different road to the frontiers of Sorabund.’

  ‘And what makes you think they are headed to Garassotta?’

  ‘Only that there would be nothing much else up that way to attract the attentions of what must be quite a large force of men. Maybe they’re just a relief garrison, but I don’t think so, not on this road and I saw many Vorsan uniforms in Erisroth.’

  ‘No, they’re most certainly not that,’ Jekka agreed, with a wry grin. ‘Tell me, does the name Fulgrim mean anything to you?’

  ‘I have heard stories,’ Pecon said. ‘I heard his name mentioned at Erisroth, a few days ago. He commands that force, perhaps?’

  ‘He does.’

  ‘Then let us go on our way and we shall simply retreat further into these woods. I have no love for those Vorsan bastards, believe me. One once cheated me of several telts’ worth of silk cloth. Tried to cheat me, anyway,’ he added with a sour grin. ‘That’s at least one of them who won’t cheat on anybody again.

  ‘Listen, lady,’ he urged Jekka, ‘I am just a plain and honest trader. Do you not recognise me? I most certainly remember you - at the trading station, many days ago now, but I remember you and your companion and especially the colour of your hair. We did business together.’

  ‘Yes, I remember you,’ Jekka said. ‘We sold you the snow bandit lad. You had a good bargain.’

  ‘I gave a fair price and made a fair profit, lady, that’s all,’ Pecon replied steadily. ‘I ply an honest trade.’

  ‘How do I know I could trust you to keep your word?’

  ‘Well, you don’t,’ Pecon admitted. He nodded towards Opal. ‘But I think she does. I accepted her word and she knows I intended to honour my pledge to set her free in Sorabund.’

  ‘You must be a fool as well as a scoundrel to hold a Valkyr as a slave, even for a short time,’ Jekka said. ‘I should kill you now just for that.’

  ‘Except that it was not I who captured her, nor I that first enslaved her,’ Pecon pointed out, refer
ring to Opal. ‘I was actually helping her, or else she would still be in chains somewhere back there.’ He pointed airily in a generally southerly direction.

  ‘It’s true, lady,’ Opal interrupted. ‘He persuaded the slavers that it was not a healthy idea to keep me and my honour has not been despoiled beyond that which I have already avenged.’

  ‘I’ll say,’ Pecon grinned. ‘Look,’ he said amiably, ‘why don’t you two just go off together and I’ll take my little band deeper into the trees, well away from trouble. You can have your parole back, Opal, and help your countrywoman here. She’s a good swordswoman, believe me.’

  ‘She’s a Valkyr,’ Jekka replied bluntly. She turned to Opal. ‘You are still very young,’ she observed. ‘Have you yet killed?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Opal admitted, ‘although I could have, as Master Pecon will testify. One of the original bandits who first attacked our travelling party on the road through Sorabund into Illeum.’

  ‘Yes, she could have killed him and a fine display she gave, too,’ Pecon grinned. ‘In the end she left him without his balls and that was enough for her. Actually,’ he added, chuckling, ‘she left him with them, but not in their original place, if you understand my meaning?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ Jekka said. She fell silent for several seconds, considering her alternatives. ‘Perhaps I should simply chain you with your slaves until our business here is finished?’ she suggested. ‘And then sell you to some nice cruel mistress?’

  Pecon shrugged. ‘Perhaps you should,’ he conceded. ‘But then again, perhaps you could make better use of my talents. I cannot move these slaves along this road until after that column has passed by and I get bored very easily. What say I help you? Maybe not to fight, for I only fight when really necessary and I see little point in risking my life in someone else’s battle.

  ‘However, I know these woods well and that could be useful to you. Tell me, how many are you in total?’ Jekka told him and could barely contain her laughter at the expression this brought to his face.

  ‘What? Are you mad?’

  ‘Quite possibly, Master Pecon,’ Jekka admitted, ‘but madness is akin to genius, some say, and I do have a plan.’

  ‘It’d better be a good one then,’ he retorted gruffly.

  Jekka smiled and lowered her crossbow. ‘Oh, I think it is,’ she said, ‘but we shan’t know that until we see whether or not it actually works. Now, give me your word and I’ll tell you what we have planned. After that, you can leave your slaves somewhere deeper in the woods, with enough food and water for two days. Shackle them to the wagon and leave them plenty of blankets. No fire, though.’

  ‘And where am I supposed to be going?’

  ‘Back with me,’ Jekka told him. ‘Back with me and with my new friend here. I want to keep you where I can be sure you aren’t tempted to forget you have just given me your word and besides, if you know these parts as well as you say, perhaps you can show us a better trail back than the one I came on. I have two horses, yet both are near exhaustion.’

  ‘Then bring them in, lady, and let us feed and water them,’ Pecon said, rising to his feet. ‘As for the way back, I do know of several seldom used trails, especially if we do not have a wagon to worry about, but it all depends upon where you want to go exactly.’

  Savatch found the gully easily enough and slid carefully down its grassy side. Even in the near total darkness he knew that Alanna was already there waiting for him and then the moon moved slowly from behind a cloud and she stood there before him, the silver light shimmering off her pale skin and glinting dully from the dark leather in which she had adorned herself.

  She must have had help, Savatch realised, for it would have been impossible for her to have laced the second arm mitt once the first was in place and her wrists were also cuffed to her girth, which would have been impossible to achieve unaided.

  ‘The girl Mahari helped me prepare,’ she said, as if reading his thoughts. ‘I hope you approve. I asked her to leave the bit for you.’

  ‘By the gods, Alanna,’ Savatch breathed, ‘but you look more beautiful than ever.’

  ‘Only because I am finally submitting to the bondage you always wanted to place me in,’ she smiled.

  Savatch shook his head. ‘It is not true bondage,’ he chuckled, ‘not with Jekka’s modifications. You can be free of it in an instant, if you choose, we both know that.’

  ‘Not true,’ she said softly. ‘Look closer, my lord.’ Savatch took another pace towards her and then stopped, mouth agape, for he saw now that leather thongs had been wound about each wrist cuff and then tied to either side of the girth, through the rings that held the other end of the short chains that were normally intended to restrain the arms.

  ‘You see,’ Alanna said, ‘I really am helpless now. The only difference between me and those poor creatures with Fulgrim’s army is that I have neither rings nor bells. I’m afraid there was no time for that.’ She looked purposefully down at her bare breasts and at the puckering nipples. ‘Perhaps another time, maybe even in that other world?’

  ‘Perhaps indeed,’ Savatch agreed. He took another pace and there was only the length of an arm between them. He pointed to the bit, which hung dangling from one ring at the left of her mouth. ‘You’re sure?’ he asked uncertainly.

  Alanna smiled again and nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘If a thing is worth doing, then surely it is worth doing properly. You have me now as you have always wanted me and I give myself to you freely. You will even find a small whip on the embankment behind me, though I suggest we follow the gully a good way along if you wish to make use of it. Even with this gag I cannot guarantee not to wake the others, but you will have to steady me for I am hardly able to walk in these ridiculous boots.’

  ‘I’m not altogether certain the whip will be necessary,’ Savatch replied uneasily. He could feel and hear his heart pounding against his ribs.

  ‘Not necessary, no,’ Alanna agreed. ‘But anticipated, my lord and master, and quite possibly desired.’ She stared unblinkingly at him, her eyes shining brightly in the moonlight. Savatch stood frozen for several seconds, only his eyes moving, taking in every inch of her nakedness, knowing that although she had not yet shaved her head, beneath the leather crotch piece she was now hairless.

  Slowly, he reached out, taking the bit between forefinger and thumb and Alanna, with just the smallest flicker of her eyelids, dutifully opened her mouth to accept it.

  Chapter 4

  ‘I had no idea the girl was anything but a slave!’ Pecon protested. Savatch eyed him angrily, his face flushed, eyes blazing. ‘I tell you, my lord, had I known I should have certainly left her with you. I merely took her in payment for my services and for what I gave the old physician to care for you. I could have left you for dead and taken her anyway, but I am an honourable man.’

  ‘That is true,’ Savatch conceded, ‘and the fact that I appreciate it is the only reason you still breathe now. I would have struck you down on the spot.’ He paced back and forth, pounding one fist into the opposite palm. ‘Do you realise what you have done, man?’ he demanded at last, rounding on Pecon again.

  ‘Lady Corinna Oleanna is the daughter of the Protector of Illeum and now she is in the hands of one of Illeum’s worst enemies. Fulgrim marches on Garassotta and if it falls to him he will have control of a quarter of Illeum and the road by which a fifth of its trade passes in and out of the country. He will also force Lundt to divide what army he has and weaken all his border defences.’

  ‘As I said, my lord, I had no way of knowing,’ Pecon repeated. He did not mention that Corinna had tried to tell him the truth and that he dismissed her story as a fabrication to persuade him to leave her with her master. What Savatch did not know of that exchange could not, he hoped, hurt either of them.

  ‘I said to the Valkyr woman before that I never let myself get drawn into another’s fight, but that I would
otherwise assist where and when I could,’ Pecon said. ‘I say to you now that I will fight and that my sword is yours to command, for whatever use that may be. It is the least I can do to make amends.’

  ‘Yes,’ Savatch grunted, ‘the very least. Has Jekka told you of her plan?’

  ‘Only a little,’ Pecon replied. ‘Only that she and her other friend intend to infiltrate Fulgrim’s camp under cover of darkness and locate the Lady Corinna to free her.’

  ‘She hasn’t told you how they intend to get in there?’

  ‘No, my lord, she hasn’t.’

  Savatch smiled grimly and turned to Jekka, who had remained standing since their arrival in the camp, but who had since somehow contrived to produce a crossbow, which she was keeping loosely trained on Pecon. ‘I think you can dispense with that, Jekka,’ he said. ‘I think our guest is no more than what he professes to be and that his error was a genuine one. Perhaps then you’d like to explain to him how you intend to fool Lord Fulgrim and his men? I will be interested to hear his thoughts on the matter, though I think I can imagine what they might be.’

  Corinna stared at her reflection in the piece of polished metal Halit held up for her. The image was severely distorted, but it showed her newly dyed hair, which had returned it to something approaching its natural colour.

  ‘A fair mane suits you much better, princess,’ he chuckled. Corinna noticed he had ceased calling her Flix since carrying her back to the wagon the previous night. Except, she realised, it was not the previous night, for they had travelled on and then slept again since, she was sure.

  ‘But then,’ Halit continued quietly, ‘you know that a blonde mane looks better, don’t you?’ Corinna looked at him, her eyes round and innocent. Halit smiled and pressed a finger to his lips. ‘The roots, princess,’ he said. ‘The roots of your hair showed me your true colour.’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, trying to ignore the fluttering in her stomach. ‘My last master thought he might prefer me with dark hair and he had a village woman dye it as it was when you first saw me.’