Bridled Lust

by Faith Eden

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Ceth muttered. He considered the wine sack again and decided against it, for the moment at least. ‘She told me she had no desire towards men.’

  ‘Normally she doesn’t,’ Alanna confided in him, ‘but our Lord Savatch back there, well, he’s a fish of a different colour in her eyes.’

  ‘Even though he is supposed to love the Lady Corinna?’

  ‘Oh, he loves Corinna all right.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes; last night... I’m sorry, but I had a cramp and decided to walk it off. I couldn’t help hearing.’

  ‘And seeing?’

  ‘Only for a moment, lady; the moon went into the clouds again, but I had turned away in any case, I swear it.’

  ‘Ah, a young gentleman. And now you are not sure if I really am a lady? Because I certainly didn’t act like one last night, as we both know.’

  ‘Do you love Lord Savatch?’

  ‘Yes,’ Alanna said, ‘but in a way you would perhaps find hard to understand. We have been good friends for many years and have had many fine adventures together. And yes, we do sometimes fuck, as you soldiers would have it.’

  ‘I think that is none of my business, lady,’ Ceth retorted sullenly. He looked again at the wine sack and this time he did take another draught from it.

  ‘However,’ Alanna said carefully, ‘it has never happened with Jekka until this night and it may never happen again, not with either of us, nor even with Lady Corinna herself. Come a day or so from now we could all be dead - or worse.’

  ‘I know,’ Ceth said, ‘but I myself will kill Jekka before I let her fall into the hands of those filthy Vorsans.’

  ‘Perhaps you would save a bolt for me, too?’ Alanna suggested. ‘Save me from a fate worse than death?’

  ‘My word on it, lady, if that is your wish.’

  Alanna placed a hand on his knee. ‘You are a fine young man, Ceth,’ she said. ‘And you should not be spending this night alone and with such dark thoughts. War does strange things to people and the presence of death even stranger. That is what is happening back there now.’

  ‘Yes.’ Ceth took another drink, spilling some of the wine down the front of his tabard. Alanna moved her hand slightly and felt his thigh muscles stiffen under her touch.

  ‘Have you known a woman before, Ceth?’ she asked kindly.

  He lowered the sack and turned to meet her gaze. ‘Yes,’ he said defiantly. ‘Indeed I have. Back in our village there was a girl, but then there were also other boys and she seemed not to be too choosy.’

  ‘Ah, she was no lady, then.’ Alanna chuckled.

  ‘No, lady, she wasn’t.’

  ‘As I was not a lady last night, eh?’

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘Perhaps not. However, lady or not, I am still a princess of the blood royal of Yslandia, did you know that?’

  ‘Some of the men have said as much,’ Ceth replied. ‘So, it is true?’

  ‘Yes, very true, for my sins.’ Her hand moved further up his thigh. ‘So, if you’ve never fucked a lady,’ she said, her voice purring like silk, ‘how about a princess?’

  ‘No, I...’ he stopped, open-mouthed, his eyes round with astonishment. ‘Y-you mean...’ he stammered, ‘what, you and...?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, leaning forward to kiss his cheek, ‘and I don’t mind if you wish to close your eyes and imagine I am Jekka.’

  Ceth looked completely shocked. ‘With you?’ he said, his voice raising half an octave. ‘I could never imagine you to be anyone else, my lady, for you are so beautiful that surely any man would give everything he owned for your love.’

  ‘Well, I need few possessions, so I ask half of nothing,’ Alanna replied. Her lips brushed his ear. ‘So, my prince, are you going to make love to your princess, or do I have to leap on you and tear all your clothes from you first?’

  ‘I found an excellent place for our attack,’ Jekka said, squatting down and drawing her knife. The rest of the expedition crowded around her in a tight circle and she looked up at them, her eyes bright and alert, no sign in her face that her night had been all but sleepless. She drew a curved shape in the mud with the point of the weapon.

  ‘There is a very sharp bend in the trail here,’ she said, indicating where she had drawn an acute kink in the line. ‘The forest is very dense there, too, so once anything passes beyond the bend it is invisible to anything following it and the same is true in reverse.

  ‘Back here, about two hundred paces or so, there is a path leading into the trees, wide enough just for a wagon to pass, so we can hide the wagon there and move everything we need down the road and conceal it in the undergrowth until we need it. Weapons can be concealed in the back of any pony carts we capture and use in our deception and if we mark the carts, we can retrieve them under cover of darkness that night.’

  ‘And what if there are no carts?’ Savatch asked. ‘You are assuming that the timing will be right for us to attack while they are changing girls, but what if there are no stragglers at that point?’

  ‘Then we shall have to do without the weapons,’ Jekka said. ‘I’m certain we can find what we need in the camp itself, but I would much prefer to have a couple of my fire bottles to hand, just in case, so we can conceal those on the main wagon if necessary and just watch where it is left overnight.’

  ‘But if there are no stragglers the rear guard party will not stop at all,’ Alanna pointed out, ‘so they may be too close to the rest of the column and we may be seen, or at least heard.’

  ‘They’ll stop for a stray pony girl,’ Jekka said with certainty. ‘Especially if they think she’s trying to escape.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ Alanna said. ‘And I am to be the stray girl, I assume.’

  Jekka smiled back at her across the circle. ‘As stray as you wish, my lady,’ she chuckled. ‘Just hold them up long enough for the tail of the column to be well out of sight and we’ll do the rest. There should be no more than four guards and perhaps a pair of handlers, in addition to the reserve girls, so an accurate volley and it should be done. You can even conceal a knife inside the arm mitt, if you do not lace it too tightly,’ she added. ‘Just in case, that is.’

  ‘There are three of us,’ Opal said, ‘and you say there are usually about six girls in the reserve. What if anyone notices there are suddenly fewer in the party?’

  ‘We’ll keep three of the real pony slaves with us,’ Jekka said. ‘The men who replace the guards and handlers can make sure the three remain gagged and as soon as it gets dark they can give them a sleeping draught. There is a potion in with the medicines we brought for Lord Savatch, which should be plenty to keep them quiet until the dawn, by which time with luck, we’ll be well away.’

  ‘And what about their perimeter guards and the pickets further out?’ Pecon interrupted. ‘They’ll have a double line, especially that close to Garassotta and that far north.’

  ‘But they’ll be guarding against attack from the outside,’ Jekka pointed out, ‘whereas we’ll be attacking from within and we can cause plenty of confusion to cover our break, once we have Lady Corinna safe with us.’ She looked up at Ceth and at the troopers on either side of him.

  ‘While Lady Alanna and I find Corinna, you lads can find which wagon they use for keeping their lantern oil. A few flagons of that should be plenty. Just douse the covers of as many of the other wagons as you can and we can set them alight when we go.

  ‘I also have this,’ she said, drawing out a small wooden box, which she opened carefully. Inside were several packets made from some sort of parchment-like material. ‘I got this from one of those travelling magicians in Erisroth, while I was looking for an apothecary to make me some more oil for my fire bottles,’ she explained.

  ‘I’m sure you’ve all seen that trick they do, disappearing in front of
the crowd in a puff of smoke. Well, this fellow assures me that one pinch of this powder is sufficient to make a large puff of that smoke, when a light is touched to it. He says it comes from the east and is almost unknown in these parts. This box contains enough powder to make a thousand such puffs, if not more.’ She paused and looked around her rapt audience once more.

  ‘Or about ten very large ones,’ she added, grinning wickedly.

  Chapter 5

  ‘I suppose we’ve got the bloody captain in the wagon again today,’ Gorus Tarin said morosely.

  His companion, a younger fellow by a good five or six years, shrugged. ‘I expect so,’ he said. ‘He hasn’t said anything, but he’s been riding in it these past three or four days, shafting those two young things his lordship gave him.’

  ‘Greedy bastard,’ Gorus muttered. ‘What can a man do with two women that he can’t do with one?’

  ‘The same thing, but twice over, I reckon,’ Brin Artim sniggered. He gave an experimental tug at the traces that held the two horses’ heads and sniggered again. ‘You’d think he’d be getting too old for all that sort of thing,’ he said, ‘but then I suppose it’s not that hard, laying on your back all day with a sweet pair of lips sucking on your cock.’

  ‘Officer’s perks,’ Gorus said. ‘But you’d think the bastard might share it about a bit. I wouldn’t mind an hour or so alone with either of them.’

  ‘No chance,’ Brin said flatly. ‘If he was going to offer his little fluff heads to anyone, it wouldn’t be to the likes of us, would it? We’re the shit end of the army as far as the likes of Ingrim are concerned. This is the fourth day out of five I’ve pulled this duty.’

  ‘It’s my third,’ Gorus said. ‘Another day of eating the dust and shit at the back, but it does have its compensations.’

  ‘It does? You could have fooled me.’

  ‘Ah well,’ Gorus laughed, ‘that wouldn’t be too hard now, would it? But it’s easy enough, if you don’t mess around. I managed a quick poke with two of those pony women yesterday, after we’d changed them over.’

  ‘Lucky you,’ Brin retorted, pulling a face. ‘I wouldn’t fancy going with one of those sluts after she’d been pulling a cart for four or five hours in all this heat and dust. Ye gods man, they smell terrible by that time and we only ever change them if they’re dropping on their feet. I’d get more fun out of fucking a corpse, I reckon.’

  ‘Yes well, each to his own, youngster,’ Gorus cackled. ‘And it passes the time.’ He turned around, scanning the milling crowds of soldiers, handlers and pony girl slaves. ‘Where’s that damned Karliean bastard got to with the women? The head of the column is already moving off and we’re nowhere near ready yet.’

  ‘He’ll be here, don’t worry,’ Brin said. ‘And so will the captain, even though it’ll be last minute as usual. Yes look, there he is, the brown bastard, and what a sorry looking bunch of fillies he’s leading. I wouldn’t want to fuck any of them when they’re fresh, let alone five hours from now.’

  ‘That’s fine by me,’ Gorus grinned. ‘I’ll shaft yours for you, if you like.’

  ‘Be my guest,’ Brin retorted. ‘I’ll wait ‘til this evening and see if any of those Colrasian girls is free. They wash up quite well and I do love those brown tits.’

  ‘Bugger the colour,’ Gorus said. ‘Just as long as they’re good and firm, they’ll do for me. Now, have you checked there are two fresh canteens in the back and another up front? I don’t fancy disturbing his nibs when I get thirsty.’

  ‘We’re about two hours ahead of them now,’ Jekka said, reining her horse over to the side of the road. Behind her, Savatch, Alanna, Opal, Pecon and the eight remaining Illean troopers followed suit, two of them seated on the wagon in which the two former slave girls remained hidden.

  ‘Two of you gather the horses and then get them and the wagon up that trail there,’ Savatch ordered, pointing to the gap in the trees on the western side of the trail. ‘There’s a clearing a little way up for the wagon, but take the horses a little farther in, in case they start making a noise.’

  ‘Make sure they bring everything from the wagon I said,’ Jekka instructed Pecon. ‘Go with them and make sure. Apart from Ceth, they’re not the brightest bunch of men I’ve ever met.’

  ‘That must be your bend up ahead,’ Savatch said, pointing to where the road suddenly seemed to disappear. He nodded approvingly. ‘Very tight indeed,’ he said, ‘and completely blind. A good choice, my little warrior pony.’ He said this last thing very quietly so that only Jekka could hear it, and he was rewarded by the sight of her blushing furiously. She dismounted and glared up at him.

  ‘Bastard!’ she hissed, but there was a smile on her lips. ‘Now, my lord, will you get off that horse, or shall I tip you off? Time is of the essence now.’

  To her annoyance Corinna found herself back between the shafts when she had been anticipating another day of relative ease with Halit in the wagon. She learned that the pace of the trek north, while slow by most military standards, had begun to prove too much for several of the pony girls, their task made even more difficult by ground baked hard after so many weeks without rain.

  As a result, Fulgrim ordered the handlers to rotate the girls more frequently during each day and another of the horse drawn wagons was cleared enough so that eight girls at a time could ride on it between their pony shifts. The wagon Corinna and Halit had been utilising now carried five more of the reserve girls, leaving only a very few to walk in the rear section.

  ‘Never mind, princess,’ Halit whispered to her, when the young handler responsible for hitching her section of the cart line had finished with her and moved on up the line, ‘I’ll arrange things later so that you can be back in the wagon again. If not that, then at least you can go with the rear guard party, so you’ll only have to work for an hour or two at most.’

  With the sun already burning hot in the morning sky, there was nothing Corinna could do but bite on her bit and bend her back. Ahead and behind came the muffled grunts and groans as many other girls, all far more exhausted by the past few days than she, did the same and slowly the column began to move again.

  Niti Ingrim smiled craftily to himself as he moved the empty boxes forward inside his wagon once again. It had been a close run thing and if the young trooper had not warned him of Fulgrim’s orders in just the nick of time, he would have been hard pressed to explain to the old sergeant why he should not take the four pony slaves aboard his vehicle. Even an officer of his rank could not be seen to be openly flouting his lordship’s orders, but placing the empty crates so close to the tailboard, with the two maids perched on the very edge, their legs dangling over the road, had given the impression that the wagon was already fully loaded and the grizzled old veteran had not given it a second look.

  ‘Well, my pretties,’ Ingrim said, as the two girls spread the fur rugs on the wooden floor once more, ‘let’s make ourselves comfortable, shall we?’

  Minnie grinned back at him and ran her tongue across her lips. Moanie formed her lips into an O shape. Ingrim chuckled and began removing the belt of his breeches.

  ‘There’s a large flagon of water just there, Minnie my dear,’ he said. ‘Get the stopper out and soak a cloth with it. It’s so damned hot in this wagon I think I could easily cook.’

  ‘And you much prefer your oats warm but raw, master, don’t you?’ Moanie giggled, crawling towards him and reaching for the lacing at the front of his breeches. She deftly pulled it apart and very quickly had his limp penis in her small hands. Immediately, it began to respond to her soft grasp.

  ‘Why master!’ she exclaimed. ‘We have a sausage to go with our oats, I do believe!’

  ‘I think we’re ready now,’ Jekka announced. She walked slowly along the roadway, keeping over to the side where the trees offered some shade, for the sun was unusually hot for the late summer. Savatch met her two hundred yards sout
h from the bend that would mask their attack and turned to look in the direction from which Fulgrim’s army was coming. So far there was no sign of the vanguard troops, for the gently meandering trail bent out of sight a mile down and they had posted a lookout there to give plenty of advanced warning. So far the young Illean trooper had not appeared.

  ‘I’ve decided you’re right,’ Savatch told Jekka. ‘It is best that I do not try to disguise myself as either Vorsan trooper or Karliean handler, but not because of my health. I may not be fully recovered, but I am fit enough for this little subterfuge.’

  ‘Fulgrim, I suppose?’ Jekka said.

  He nodded. ‘Not just Fulgrim, but there may be other Vorsan officers there who would know my face and perhaps see through any attempted disguise. Therefore, I think it best that I hide away in that wagon that travels with the rear party. I can hide among whatever it carries and remain out of sight until darkness comes, perhaps with one of your fire bottles and at least one of those powder packets.’

  ‘If you are sure, my lord,’ Jekka said. ‘The bones of your chest may still be brittle, don’t forget.’

  ‘They were firm enough before, if you recall,’ Savatch grinned. Jekka smiled at him and ran one hand back over her peculiar pony mane, which she had now dyed a darker brown to cover the startling red colour.

  ‘Indeed I do recall,’ she smirked. ‘Perhaps we shall live through this to test them again,’ she added, ‘though of course, if we are successful, then you will have another proving ground, I suspect.’

  ‘I hope so,’ Savatch said, serious now. ‘But I shall never forget and there will be other times and opportunities, if you are still willing.’

  Jekka pressed one finger to her lips and then placed it on his. ‘Always willing, my master,’ she chuckled. ‘And a willing horse is worth twice its weight, so they say.’

  ‘How come he gets to keep that wagon for himself, eh?’ Gorus said, wiping his brow with the back of one grimy hand and jerking his head to the canvas covered vehicle in which Ingrim still travelled with the two young maids. ‘I mean, just look at this sorry lot,’ he continued, indicating the coffle of four pony slaves who stumbled along between himself and Brin and the wagon itself. ‘If he put them inside, they’d be a damned sight fresher by the time they’re needed.’