Wheldrake
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On the Block, Part 8
A Fantasy of Slavery by Wheldrake
In the carriage Lohni and I both dozed, slumped in our chains and our blankets with Crell between us and Relkada and Clista watching over us from the opposite bench. Relkada appeared exhausted herself, but whenever I came partly awake I noticed her looking at me with a satisfied little smile that suggested she was pleased with the evening's work she had done on my body. Once or twice I thought I also detected something else, a hint of concern or even foreboding in her dark, liquid eyes, but I was too tired to worry overmuch about what Relkada might be thinking. For the most part my own eyes stayed firmly shut, and I was simply relieved that I was no longer being tormented for the pleasure of a cruel audience.
All too soon, as far as I was concerned, the gates of Relkada's manor creaked open and the carriage came to a halt in her stableyard. Clista grasped Lohni's leash to lead her out of the carriage, as before, and Crell took hold of mine. Every muscle seemed to protest as I rose from the hard wooden seat of the carriage, and I was acutely aware of just how roughly I had been treated by Relkada and her accomplices. My body ached from the blows of harsh implements and the effort of endless futile struggles, and there was even a burning sensation around my anus to remind me of my degradation at the hands of the male slave Golaz. I did my best to keep up with Crell's impatient tugging, and took a little comfort from the fact that Lohni and even Relkada were moving rather gingerly themselves. It had never occurred to me that the effort of putting slaves through their paces might leave a slave-driver sore and tired, but that seemed to be the case with the woman who owned me.
Despite my exhaustion, I was a little nervous as I followed Crell through the narrow side-entrance into Relkada's manor house. I assumed that I was going to be separated from Lohni and locked up in the male slave quarters, alongside strangers who might regard me as a rival for Relkada's attention. I was sure that the slave quarters would be a far safer place to spend the night than Karyana's bedchamber, but I could hardly expect them to be comfortable. However, Relkada seemed to have no intention of sending Lohni and me straight to bed. We all walked together into a vast kitchen with a high, vaulted roof, the kind of place where a meal could have been prepared for hundreds of guests. Crell and Clista sat Lohni and me down at a trestle table in one corner and divested us of our blankets, which was a relief considering that the air in here still sweltered with the heat of the dinnertime cooking fires. They also removed our chains, leaving us naked and entirely unrestrained apart from the collars around our necks. No one had bothered to lock Lohni back into the belt that was supposed to keep her from pleasuring herself, and I noticed that she kept her hands on the table as if to prove to Crell and Clista that she was not taking undue advantage of the situation. I imitated her, although it was not as if I was going to start masturbating in the kitchen in front of the others in any case. Given a little privacy, I could probably have brought myself to a climax in literally a few heartbeats, but my prospects of being left to my own devices for even that long seemed remote. I looked across the table at Lohni's firm, pale breasts and wished that I could throw her down on the floor and take her then and there, and then my thoughts slipped away into a hazy daydream of being thrown down myself and taken by Relkada. In reality, of course, I was more than likely to be consigned to the slave quarters without experiencing anything half so exciting.
Meanwhile Relkada had found a sleepy servant, a thin, sour-faced girl in a white robe. "They got a few table scraps at the palace," Relkada was saying, "but I think they've earned a proper evening meal. Bring some bread and cheese, and a little of whatever meat is left over from dinner. Afterwards they can each have a bowl of mashed sharr fruit, but don't make it too big. I don't want to spoil them."
Sharr fruit, I was well aware, was the local name for the purple squash that always struck me as somewhere between unappetising and downright repugnant. My distaste must have been obvious, because Relkada shot me a curious look. "You're not fond of our sharr fruit, Areth? It's considered one of Ariskayne's greatest delicacies."
"It doesn't suit my northern palate, my lady," I mumbled. It seemed absurd to be discussing something as mundane as culinary preferences with the woman who had purchased me that afternoon and had essentially been torturing me all evening, but being a slave in a foreign land was bound to involve some absurdities.
"Then what would suit your northern palate?" she asked tartly, although her eyes twinkled with amusement. "The raw and bloody testicles of some hapless ox, perhaps?"
"A tankard of ale would hardly be unwelcome," I answered recklessly, and instantly wished I could take the words back. To my surprise, however, Relkada turned immediately to the white-robed servant.
"Very well. Bring ale for the boy, though not a whole tankard. One of the small porcelain cups will do. And spiced wine for me."
The servant nodded, though with a slight frown that probably indicated disapproval.
"Don't look so surprised, Areth," Relkada chided. "When you please me, you will be rewarded, and tonight you managed to please me very much indeed."
"By enduring what you did to me, my lady?"
"By helping me put on a good show, and by choosing me instead of Karyana." She pulled a chair out from the table and sat down facing Lohni and me. "What about you?" she asked Lohni. "Do you want ale as well?"
"I prefer the sharr fruit, my lady," Lohni replied promptly. She cast a mildly guilty look in my direction. "I've loved the stuff ever since you introduced me to it."
"I seem to remember that she licked it off the belly of another female slave," Relkada remarked, "for the amusement of an audience almost as decadent as the one you faced tonight. But really, you both did well."
"Thank you, my lady," we murmured almost in unison, and then fell silent until the serving girl returned with bread, cheese and cold strips of mutton. When the food appeared on the table I abruptly realised that I was starving, but the training I had received from Viyana made me eat slowly and with some sense of decorum. Lohni seemed to be restraining herself in a similar way, while Relkada, Crell and Clista picked casually at the food but mostly eyed Lohni and me like farmers who wanted to ensure that livestock of some delicate breed were eating enough to remain healthy.
The servant returned with drinks for me and Relkada, and sharr fruit for Lohni, just as we were finishing. I forced myself to sip my ale slowly instead of gulping it down, and Relkada watched me with a cool smile.
"Is the reward to your liking, Areth?"
"Of course, my lady. I've not had an honest cup of ale since the day I sold myself to Viyana."
"Don't expect it too often." She reached across the table and casually ruffled my hair. "Only when I find you particularly pleasing. Tonight you were perfect, although I can't help but suspect that Karyana will devise a way to make both of us suffer. She is not a woman who takes kindly to having her will impeded."
"Then why did you not give me to her, my lady?"
Relkada shrugged and sipped at her wine before answering. "Because I can be too stubborn and possessive for my own good, I suppose. You belong to me just as much as this table does" – she emphasised her matter-of-fact words by rapping it sharply with her knuckles – "and I've never been prone to letting others take liberties with my property. I wanted to show Karyana that hiring me to provide an evening's entertainment did not entitle her to do whatever she liked with the slaves I used in the performance. She may be Suzerain, but I am a full citizen of Ariskayne, and I have my rights."
"I suppose I should thank you for saving me from her, my lady."
"You're really going to have get over this tendency to see me as a protector," Relkada sighed. "Has it not occurred to you, Areth, that I might have kept you out of the hands of a cruel woman tonight only because there are certain cruelties that I would rather introduce you to myself?" She was still smiling, but she was looking straight at me across the table with a dangerous glint in her eye. "Perhaps I have plans of my own for your utter degradation and abasement, plans that will brook no inference. Lohni, I think, has some inkling of what I'm talking about."
"Are you really going to be that harsh with him, my lady?" Lohni asked in a hushed, tentative voice. "Of course you can do whatever you desire, but he's not an enslaved criminal who deserves to suffer for what he did. He only –"
"He only sold himself into slavery, of his own free will, knowing perfectly well how slaves can be treated in Ariskayne." Relkada shrugged, and her tone became almost nonchalant. "So yes, I'll be just as harsh as I like. I have no intention, however, of inflicting much more harshness tonight. Is there anything else either of you would like to ask me, or say to me? When we are relaxing under this roof, Areth, you may speak freely provided your words are respectful."
"Actually, there is something, my lady," I replied at once. "I'm curious about Golaz. Is he really a prince? How did he come to be in Ariskayne?"
"Eager to find out about your new lover, are you?" Relkada asked dryly, but then gave a gentle laugh. "I don't blame you for being interested, Areth. Karyana is a great collector of the exotic and unusual, and Golaz is one of her greatest prizes. Before he fell into Karyana's hands he was a prince in the far south, well beyond the mountains and the Narrow Sea. I honestly find his descriptions of his country a little difficult to follow, but I gather that it is a city-state not so different from Ariskayne except that the country around it is dense jungle and even the largest buildings in the city are made entirely of wood. They fight constant wars with the cities nearby, but the wars are conducted according to amazingly complicated rules that ensure hardly anyone is killed. Usually the price of defeat is capture, and most of the captives are quickly released in exchange for a small ransom. In certain situations, however, they can be condemned to a term of slavery. For some reason Golaz had been chosen, from among dozens of princes and princesses, to take charge of breaking in the slaves who were doomed to serve the royal family of his city."
"Was that what you meant when you said to him that he wasn't a prince having his way with captive warriors?"
"Exactly," Relkada affirmed, sounding rather pleased. Perhaps she was happy that I had been attending so closely to her words. "Because so few prisoners were handed over to Golaz to be inducted into slavery, each induction was a major event. The one that was Golaz's undoing involved a female warrior who had been taken in an ambush, a commander who was famous for her personal bravery as well as her skil as a tactician. Golaz might be exaggerating, but he describes her as very tall and strong and also very beautiful. He felt honoured to be the overseer of her enslavement, which like everything else in the wars of the far south is very ritualistic. The custom is for the prisoner to be led naked to a special enclosure in the centre of the city, a sunken pit surrounded by an open space to accommodate an audience of townspeople. Inside the enclosure, the overseer can subject the prisoner to all kinds of cruelty and degradation – much like I did with you and Lohni this evening, come to think of it. The prisoner is honour-bound to obey the overseer's demands and submit to his or her cruelties for as long as possible, but sooner or later every prisoner either becomes defiant or begs for mercy. Defiant prisoners are forcibly bound and dragged off to the Slave House, but ones who beg are usually allowed to walk there under heavy guard. Prisoners who hold out in the enclosure for a long time are actually treated more severely during their term of slavery, but they are also spoken of with more respect.
"The whole thing is very peculiar," Relkada continued, warming to her tale, "but the main point is that warriors of Golaz's people value their honour so highly that they always try to maintain their dignified obedience in the enclosure for as long as possible if they have the bad luck to be captured and enslaved. The overseer, on the other hand, is supposed to give them a chance to prove their mettle but also break them in a reasonable amount of time. Golaz knew this woman would be an enormous challenge, so he took his time making plans for her. He left her locked up in the Battle House for days, which was his prerogative, while he had a blacksmith forge a special set of restraints that were meant to be awkward and cumbersome but not immobilising. The logic of the ordeal that she was about to face meant that she could not be completely helpless.
"Finally Golaz called for her to be brought to the enclosure. He says that the guards from the Battle House threw her down in the sand literally at his feet, but that she knelt up and waited with great dignity in spite of her nudity. I can imagine how terrified she must have been, with Golaz towering over her and an eager crowd gathered around to witness her sufferings. It was the middle of the day, and the sun beat down relentlessly as he put her through a series of very demanding calisthenic exercises, lashing her with a whip made from the hide of some monstrous jungle beast whenever she slowed or faltered. Only when she was sweaty and half-exhausted did he apply the restraints to her naked body, and then he made her begin the calisthenics all over again. That would probably have been enough to break many prisoners in itself, but this warrior woman was made of sterner stuff. She did her best to obey Golaz's commands and ignore the kicks and blows that rained down on her body.
"At one point he did to her what he did to you, pounding her rear end in front of the crowd until he filled her with his seed. She wept and groaned with discomfort and humiliation, but kept her self-control and remained obedient, so he sighed through gritted teeth and picked up the whip again. To hear Golaz tell it, he and his prisoner spent the entire afternoon locked in a terrific battle of wills, but of course Golaz held all the cards. He was gentlemanly enough to give her a mouthful of water now and then, but she had to go without food, and even warrior women of the southern jungles can endure only so much torment before they simply collapse. Golaz says that it was when he made her kneel, and then pissed in her face and hair, that she finally decided she had had enough. She bowed down so that her head was touching the sand at his feet, and begged to be taken to the Slave House and allowed to begin her servitude. Golaz agreed and she got to her feet, her forehead caked with sand and urine.
"The slave guards sang in praise of her bravery even as they drove her to the Slave House with their goads and whips, and Golaz and the others toasted her with palm wine that night around the communal hearth. She was apparently caged in the female part of the Slave House with a bottle of water and a bowl of plain rice, and Golaz once told me that he still wonders if she cried herself to sleep listening to the revelry outside. If she was driven to despair, though, it was very short-lived. The very next day, someone began to claim in public that the woman had been captured unfairly. Golaz is rather vague about this part of the story, and I sometimes suspect that he's holding back to avoid making someone look bad – not that I would know one southern barbarian from another, mind you. But the end of it was that the council that adjudicates the wars between the southern city-states investigated the matter, and found that the woman and her followers had indeed been ambushed unlawfully. Apparently they had been attacked on the bank of a river where fighting was forbidden at that time of year, or some such nonsense."
Relkada handed her empty goblet to the servant to be refilled before continuing. "The woman was set free immediately, and the customs dictated that Golaz had to be punished even though he had not orchestrated her capture and had no way of knowing exactly where it had taken place. Ordinarily he would have been consigned to the Battle House in the woman's village, and then gone on to the enclosure and the Slave House, but he asked the council if he might be allowed to offer himself up for slavery in some foreign country instead. He felt that he could not bear the humiliation of being enslaved among his own people, a fate that hardly ever befalls their royalty. The woman actually supported his petition, which I thought was amazingly generous of her considering that the marks of his whip were probably still fresh on her body, and the council had enough sympathy for his position that they finally agreed.
"He was allowed to simply begin walking north, and I don't think anyone was at all concerned that he would fail to keep his promise to become a slave. After all, he was a prince and an honourable man. He had heard vaguely that Ariskayne was a powerful city-state with a cruel Suzerain who kept many slaves, and by his own account he thought servitude in a such a place would be an appropriate punishment for his unwitting crime. He made his way here over many months, asking directions and improving his knowledge of our dialect as he came.
"The most difficult part, it turned out, was obtaining permission to speak to Karyana." Relkada chuckled easily and sipped her second goblet of wine with relish, while I looked wistfully at my empty ale cup and felt more like a slave than ever. "If he had known that he would end up in an animal mask and a chastity belt," she went on, "to say nothing of the other torments and privations he suffers in the male harem, he would probably have stopped trying and found some gentle old widow to enslave him instead. As it was, he had to pester the palace guard for days before they finally added his name to the list of people who were to be granted audience. When he actually stood in front of Karyana's throne, though, and told her in his strange accent that he had left the jungles and crossed the Narrow Sea because he wanted to be her slave, she was immediately intrigued. Eventually he let it slip that he was a prince, and that he had broken in dozens of male and female slaves himself, and Karyana's courtiers tell me that she practically started to drool. She asked him if he was sure about wanting to offer himself, and he had barely finished saying yes before she set the dungeon guards on him. Four strong men had been surreptitiously summoned at a much earlier stage of the conversation, and were lurking in the corners of the throne room. Golaz would have easily been a match for any one of them, but together they had no difficulty knocking him roughly off his feet and carrying him down the dungeon stairs by his four limbs. Karyana followed as soon as her audiences were over for the day, and rumour has it that people in the throne room could hear groans and bellows of pain wafting up the dungeon stairs before ten minutes had gone by. And that was how Golaz became hers."
"It all sounds so..." I struggled for the right word. "So exotic and improbable, my lady."
Relkada laughed aloud. "Oh, I know. There are times when I suspect Golaz fled north for some perfectly sordid and ordinary reason, like debts or a bad marriage, and made up a story about being a disgraced and exiled prince to make Karyana want to own him. Perhaps he thought that slavery would be easier than begging in the streets." She drained her goblet for the second time and paused thoughtfully before continuing. "Then again," she added, "the world is a vast place, full of very strange things. Here I am sitting at a table with two golden-haired northern slaves, and here you are in Ariskayne sitting at a table with the woman who owns you. I cannot deny, either, that Golaz is capable of being masterful, as befits an exiled prince. Consider how he dealt with you this evening, Areth."
"My rear end is still throbbing, my lady," I murmured wryly.
"And what about the rest of you?"
"Also throbbing," I admitted. "Perhaps not quite as badly."
"I'm hardly surprised. I'll have you bathed and rubbed down with ointment before bed. Crell, Clista, bring both of them to the grooming salon. Valkni should be waiting up."
Valkni turned out to be a plump, good-humoured woman who somehow managed to seem motherly even though she could not have been more than two or three years older than I was. Under her supervision, Lohni and I lowered ourselves into a pool of unaccountably warm water in a large, humid chamber beneath Relkada's manor. Lohni had first collected a sponge and a bar of soap from a little shelf with her name written on it in the flowing script of Ariskayne, and after a moment Valkni bustled over with an identical set of items for me.
"Scrub," she instructed bluntly. "Relkada likes her boys and girls to go to bed clean. Don't be shy about washing your male parts in front of me, either. I've seen it all more times than I can count."
It actually felt wonderful to soak in the warm water, and to wash the accumulated sweat of fear, lust and pain off my naked skin. The pool was large enough that Lohni and I could bathe together without touching, but sharing the warm water with her and watching the sponge glide over her breasts and thighs was a kind of torment in itself. Looking deliberately away from her did nothing to soften my rampant erection, and the water was so clear that I knew my condition would be perfectly visible to everyone else in the room. I tried to ignore their scrutiny and concentrate on cleaning myself.
"I think I might as well go to bed," Relkada announced, and a glance in her direction showed me that she was addressing Crell and Clista. To my amazement, I saw her step towards Crell and kiss him full on the lips, caressing his arms and shoulders.
"You were wonderful today," Relkada purred throatily. "So powerful and commanding. You'll come up once Areth and Lohni are safely locked in the slave quarters, won't you?"
"As my lady commands," Crell replied with a smile. He enfolded Relkada in his muscular arms for another kiss, but released her instantly when she tapped him sharply on the shoulder.
"Enough for now," she insisted, though her voice was still unsteady. "Put Lohni back in her belt, as usual. Since we don't have a belt for Areth yet, he'll have to be shackled to his bed. By all means give him a smack if he makes any envious little remarks about the fact that you'll be coming up to my bedroom while he lies chained in a dormitory with four other male slaves, forbidden even to touch himself." Relkada turned to me and smirked, though her arms were still entwined around Crell's neck. I blushed and lowered my head, ashamed that my desire for Relkada was apparently so obvious. I was also angry that she seemed determined to consign me, and for that matter Lohni, to a night of lonely chastity in the slave quarters. A cup of ale struck me as inadequate compensation for the ordeal I had undergone that evening.
"I own you, Areth," Relkada remarked ominously, as if she had the power to read my thoughts. My disappointment must have been writ large upon my face. "I can condemn you to whatever I like."
"Please, my lady," I mumbled, looking down at my stiff cock in mute appeal.
Relkada shrugged. "You'll survive. If you like I can see to it that you spend the night in such discomfort that your unsatisfied lust will seem like a very small matter indeed."
"Please don't, my lady."
"Then shut up, and be grateful that you'll at least have a soft bed and a warm blanket in the slave quarters."
I wanted to scream that it was bitterly unfair, that Crell was only a muscular brute and that Relkada ought to take me to her bedchamber instead. At the same time, I doubted that screaming would do much good, and there was something almost pleasurable in being so completely in Relkada's power that she could decide whether or not I was to be permitted to masturbate that night.
"Yes, my lady," I said simply, and Relkada laughed aloud.
"Sleep well, my slaves. Lohni, you'll be back to your usual routine tomorrow. And Areth, tomorrow will be the day that you begin your formal training. Don't expect to get through it without being smacked around a little. For tonight, though, you can sleep soundly in the knowledge that I really am pleased with you." She smiled, in a bewitching way that made me want to suffer desperately for her merely so that I could prove my devotion, and then slipped out of the room.
[I should probably just give up on trying to provide updates quickly. It's just too hard to find the time. So there will be more... eventually.]
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Femdom Fiction: On the Block, Part 8 - 
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