Soldier On

by N. J. Lysk

  “No…” I got out weakly, and then stronger. “No, don’t…”

  He paused, taking his hand away. “Don’t worry, dear. I’m no brute. I will marry you,” he promised, and hoisted himself over me, sitting heavy on my exposed thighs. His legs were strong with muscle, he was not young anymore but he was strong as a bull still. My breathing was coming out ragged now. I had to do something, I looked wildly around and quickly pulled my gaze away from the greedy eyes of the guards. The lord seemed to remember they were there. “Oh, of course. A man and his wife should have privacy,” he said, like I had given him a good idea. He looked at them. “Wait outside.”

  He didn’t wait for them to leave before he put his hand on my sex again, pushing his thumb in between the slickness there and rubbing with the back of his hands against my prick till it started to stiffen. That was too much, I took hold of his wrist and pulled it away from my body. “I don’t want to be your fucking wife!” I shouted. He looked at my hand holding his wrist curiously, he didn’t seem angry at all that I had stopped him and that made me even more furious. “This is bad enough, just let me go. This is not part of paying defeat!”

  “But I can’t let you go,” he explained reasonably. “Like this you can’t take care of yourself. It’s my responsibility to take care of you now.”

  “Taking care of me?” I asked incredulously.

  “As my wife you will have everything you need,” he said, meeting my eyes. “As will your family.”

  My family. How was I going to get mother enough to feed the little ones like this? I could hide it. I could just… But then I thought of the men in the fields dropping their clothes next to a stream to wash the sweat off, of opening my breaches to take a piss wherever. They would know the moment I stopped doing them things. They would know as sure as if I did them and they saw what was left of my prick.

  “We will move them into the castle. Get the little ones some education, and your mother a soft bed,” the lord continued. He didn’t need to bother, I knew he was right. I wanted to give up, just die like those men who came back changed and hung themselves. But I couldn’t, giving up would kill me real fast and that seemed nice. But I couldn’t leave them, I couldn’t let them die of hunger or cold in the coming winter. My da was gone, Jemiah was gone, there was only me.

  I closed my eyes, because this wasn’t a fight for my pride no more. My pride was all gone. It was a fight for them. I only had to do this and they would be ok. I could make sure because the lord was gonna need me, and maybe he could do this all he wanted but he couldn’t marry me and keep me locked in the dungeon so he had to do it. He had to take care of them, or he knew I would jump right out the window of his fancy white tower. With the… with his child inside me. I shuddered, feeling sick to my stomach. I thought of Kieran, how big his belly had looked, how he had looked away in shame. I thought of me looking away. And then I thought of my little sister Mili, too little and always hungry.

  I let go of his wrist, put my hand down by my side. And waited.

  “That’s better, sweetheart,” he praised. He put a knee between my legs and pushed them apart. Then quickly opened his breaches, a moment later I felt it, heavy and warm, pushing against the new place. The head went in easy because I was all wet like from come, only it wasn’t, it was… He pushed a little more and his cock touched mine, soft and hot, making me shudder. I didn’t want it to be good, I wanted it to hurt. If it hurt it was easy, I couldn’t… I didn’t want it, it shouldn’t feel good if I didn’t want it. And then I was sorry I thought that because he leaned in and pushed and pushed, so deep it was like it was never ending, like it was gonna go right through me. And god it hurt, it hurt like he was making the hole right then. I gasped for air, he was so heavy on top of me I couldn’t get enough and I just didn’t know what to do to stop the pain. He lifted his hips, coming half out of me and then went in again, making me clutch at his arms like crazy for something to hold. I screamed and then bit his arm when he came down again to keep a second scream in. He groaned and did it again, breaching me like... and then he moved his leg and his prick was touching mine again. I almost wanted the fucking thing gone for good because it took one second of rubbing against his big wet cock and it was getting hard. He noticed, too, he grumbled happily in my ear, “Yeah, come on, like that, it’s good.”

  I didn’t say nothing. What was the point in saying no when he could feel it? I just took the air I could while he pulled up, it had stopped hurting so much when he put it in. Maybe coz it was getting wetter in there and it was easier for his cock to go in. My little prick was hard and wanting, every rub of his cock sent a rush through me, but it wasn’t enough for nothing more to happen. But then he changed something going in and it felt good inside, just like when he had done me the first time. I grunted, surprised, and my prick jumped between us. He chuckled, pleased. “That’s it, isn’t it?” he asked, and did it again. I don’t know what it was but his cock was making something inside me throb, like maybe the parts of my cock that were gone were inside me now. He did it again, thrusting quicker as my breathing went crazy fast and I squirmed, couldn’t help it, it felt so good. And then he pushed his cock in one more time and pressed his body close, trapping my little prick between our skins and that was it; it was spluttering come between us, my hips lifting up for more. I moaned, not able to stop myself, and he went faster and harder in me like it was the end now and he knew it. I was too lost in the strange dizzy feeling of my new body to know how long it took. He went tense on top of me and emptied, going in and out a little the whole time, like he couldn’t really stop. I was all numb from coming so I didn’t mind so much; he could use me now. Then he laid down on me, still connected, and I knew it was over.

  He had put it inside me. It would grow and grow till everybody could tell just looking at me what he had done. What I had let him do. I wondered if he would have stopped if I had said no again… But what did it matter? What mattered now was that he helped my family. Thinking of my mother and Milli and Gali and Shan didn’t help, what would my mother say? I shuddered imagining the way she would look at me, the sadness and disgust in her face. That bothered the lord and he rolled off me, his cock slipping out of me almost like he had forgotten it was there. I concentrated in the new place, feeling muscles that had never been there before, it was a little like clenching my buttocks. It almost didn’t hurt compared to the way my arse still felt. I closed my eyes, wanting to be away from that place, away from me, from what I was now.

  But I didn’t get to sleep, I heard the lord get to his feet and I thought he would leave again. But he didn’t.

  “Come on, get up now,” he told me, almost gently, and if I hadn’t felt so bad I’d have snarled at him. Why the fuck be all gentle and shit after he had done this to me? When I didn’t move fast enough, he leaned down and took hold of my wrists, then slowly pulled me upright. I wobbled, so tired and sore that I would have preferred to fall if that meant I could go to sleep. “It will only be a few minutes,” he promised. But it didn’t matter how many minutes, I put one foot in front of me to follow him and the pain was so bad I lost my balance completely. He caught me around the middle and I panted, trying not to throw up the water and bread I had eaten earlier. “You are in really bad shape…” he said, and I thought he might be getting suspicious. I didn’t say nothing, I couldn’t, for one, and I didn’t know what the hell to say, for another. He sighed noisily in my ear and then he let go of me with one of his hands and suddenly he was picking me up. Like a doll, like a baby, like a woman on her wedding night. But I didn’t care, the way my legs were pressed together made my arse feel like it was getting done all over again. The breaches were tied again so he must have done it but I couldn’t remember it, either.

  He turned away from the hay and headed for the door and I closed my eyes.

  “My lord?” One of the guards asked. The… the one who had bragged. “You need some help getting him to the keep?”

  I opened my eyes in pure alarm, and t
he lord looked down at me. He had noticed. Would he… would he change his mind if he knew what they had done to me? He had said sometimes they could get the child in you when they mounted you. What if he thought the child wasn’t his? I realised I was shaking. If he kicked me out now… If he didn’t help me with ma and the little ones… “No, I have got her,” he responded and even though I didn’t know him, I could tell he was angry. I shivered, was he angry because he knew?

  I stayed quiet, and closed my eyes again, trying not to make noise when he moved me too much and it hurt me inside. He spoke to some people, and I heard doors open and close, and then he was putting me down and down and my eyes snapped open. I was in a basin, big enough for a grown man and made of shiny metal.

  “Take off your clothes,” he told me and I just stared back. He sighed, and lifted my arms over my head. I managed to them there for him. I was afraid he would take it back, now. There was no way he was angry because the guards wanted to watch him do me; he hadn’t even cared. He had to know and now… My shirt went over my head and I almost lost my balance again.

  “I am really sorry it had to be this way, sweetheart,” he said to me, “I really wish there had been another way…”

  I didn’t understand what he was talking about, but I didn’t ask. I just wanted to sleep, but the moment I let my eyes close I felt his hands on my breaches again. My hand shot out, and I looked up at him in desperation. “Please…”

  “Oh, no, sweety, you don’t have to worry about that,” he said softly. “I just want to clean you now…”

  I took my hand back but didn’t close my eyes. I didn’t trust him. He shook his head at me, like he thought I was funny. “That was just to make you ready. Now that I have filled you up, you can rest. You need to be strong for the baby.”

  He slid the pants down my legs very slowly, like he really cared about not hurting me. I couldn’t understand. Why did he care now and not before? A servant walked in with a basin of hot water and a cloth and I tried to cover myself, but it hurt so much I only ended up crying out. He ignored the servant like he wasn’t even there and leaned in closer to me to put a hand in my hair. “Shhhh…. It’s ok, it’s ok,” he murmured, in a soft voice, like my ma’s voice when we were sick. I turned my head away from him and looked at the fancy wall carpet thing with the horses and knights. “We just need to get you cleaned up,” he told me, and I felt him take hold of my knee and move it so I was open and exposed to the air: my tiny dick and my woman hole in the place where my balls were before. All of it. I clenched my eyes closed as tight as possible and told myself the servant had gone. Then I felt the water falling on me, warm and then hot. I tried to sit up and pull away from it, and it stopped.

  “It’s too hot!” The lord snapped, and I knew the servant was still there.

  “I’m sorry, milord,” he apologized very quickly, like he was afraid. He had seen. I wanted to get out of there and hide, to never have to look nobody in the face again.

  “Fetch some cold water,” the lord told him, and I heard the steps scamper away. Then his hand parted my arse cheeks, exposed when I had tried to move back. “Those brutes,” he said with disgust and fury. For a second I didn’t understand because I was sure there was only one servant. “It is my fault, I shouldn’t have left you with them, but all my loyal knights are in the front, you see,” he explained this and separated my cheeks some more to see. The way it felt, I thought there musta been blood. I wanted to pull away, and I had to bit my lip to keep from making noise. But I didn’t want to interrupt the words. I needed to understand the words first. “And I had to have you,” he insisted, almost an apology. “The moment I saw you I knew it, you were meant to be my wife. You look so much like she did…”

  It was like the words were inside my head, beating, like the hammer falling on the anvil. The moment I saw you… look like her….my wife. “You…” I got out, and then I started coughing, my throat was still raw from the young soldier using me.

  He made me sit up and put a cup to my lips, the water spilled into my mouth and I swallowed a bit before weakly pushing his hand away. His hand came back to card through my hair, and I flinched. I raised my eyes to his for the first time since I had let him put it in me a second time. Put it in me like a woman. “You knew,” I accused. Only, accuse is when you think something, and I wasn’t just thinking it, I was sure.

  His mouth twisted down, just in the way it had when he had looked at me before doing me the first time. Pity, I thought, too tired to be angry. “Yes,” he agreed easily, like there he had done nothing wrong.

  “But defeat…” I said. I don’t know why, nobody needed to be too smart to know defeat was only given one time, and only the person who captured you. He had to know he had done me wrong when he had left me there with the guards to… I shuddered, remembering the first guard putting it in me, and how I couldn’t stand after, when the second guard took me on the hay. He had known, he had wanted them to that to me.

  “Defeat is an awful thing,” he said, looking sad again and I stared, not understanding. Defeat was bad enough, but he had done much worse. “There will be none of that when I am king.”

  “King?” I repeated. It was like he didn’t know what I was talking about, and I didn’t know what he was talking about.

  He shook his head at me. “You do not even understand what you were fighting for, do you?” He put his hand on my hair again. I didn’t pull back, waiting for an explanation instead. It was too much, like when the priests came and talked about the Gods and the good thoughts and the bad thoughts, only with the really long words that nobody knew and we ended up letting them talk so they would give us some food from the Gods at the end. Only now I knew all the words he was saying, but I couldn’t get what they meant. “I will be king,” he continued. “And you will be my queen, and nobody in the land will ever dare to hurt you again,” he said it like a promise, and for a second I almost felt better. But then I remembered he had tricked me. He put his other hand on my belly and rubbed it gently, I looked down, confused. Then I remembered, the baby. “Tell me your name,” he ordered.

  I laughed, it was so stupid. He said I was his fucking wife and he didn’t know my name. “Seeran,” I said, what did it even matter if he had my name? He had everything else already.

  “Seeran,” he repeated. He still wasn’t looking at me, just my belly, like he could see the baby there or something. “That will be his name.” I didn’t say anything. I didn’t care what he named the babe. “But what will be yours?” he asked, looking up at me again.

  I watched him back, sore and tired and getting more confused every time opened his mouth. I wondered if he was trying to make me like a fool again. “What do you want your name to be?” he asked when I didn’t say anything.

  I frowned, then offered, “Seeran.”

  He laughed, then shook his head like I was being silly. “A woman’s name,” he explained patiently.

  I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want a fucking woman’s name, I didn’t want to be a woman and I didn’t want to be his wife. But I wanted his eyes off me, just so I could sleep a little and not think. I shrugged.

  “Very well,” he said. He pulled at my hair where he was still petting me and made me raise my head to look at him. No, to look at me. “You look so much like her…” He sighed. “But no, that wouldn’t be right. Maybe… Eliane. Like in the poem.” I was quiet, but he musta been happy because he let me go and I could lean back on the side and close my eyes.

  “The servants will be along to help you clean up, Eliane,” he told me, and I heard his heavy footsteps heading away. I didn’t want any servants to see me like this, but when I tried to get on my side the pain was so bad I must have passed out.

  The servants were two women, one young and one older. They didn’t talk to me, just moved me around and told each other to pass the water or the soap as they washed me. They went fast with my hair, but they were careful with the parts of me that were sore. I could have asked them to let
me do it, but then I would had to open my eyes and look back at them. I couldn’t do that. I didn’t wanna see their pity, or… I didn’t wanna see what they thought of me now.

  When they were done drying me with this very soft cloth they had, they put a long soft dress on me and put me inside the covers of this bed that was so big all my family could’ve slept on it. Our dogs, too. I woke up again when the bed moved, but I stayed quiet and only looked very carefully as the lord walked around. He was wearing a dress, too, for some reason. It musta been a lord thing because not even Kieran’s dad, the richest man I knew, ever wore a dress nowhere. He got in the bed and I closed my eyes again, pretending to be asleep. His arm came around me and pulled me close to him and I thought he knew I was lying. But he didn’t do no more, just held onto me, and then he started snoring and I must have fallen asleep again.

  The lord told me the next morning he couldn’t get to my family till he got to the town and the town was protected by our soldiers. He held my hand, like he thought I was really a lady and told me, “I will do my best to bring them safely back for you, Eliane.”

  I thought of not saying anything, but it was my family he was talking about, so I nodded and said, “Thank you.”

  So he went and I stayed in the castle, in the rooms where the lord lived. Every day I walked up and down, looking out the window and hoping to see something. At the beginning I wanted to see a cart with ma and Shan and Milli and Gali, and then I thought maybe I could see something about the war. But there was nothing, just the guards protecting the castle, and horses and dogs. And the servants, running around with dead chickens, and eggs, and boring stuff.