A Tale of Ties and Binds - Chapter 1

Chapter 1. A Triumph for Trojans

The call came loud and lasted long, echoing along the great stone walls of the city. Not a single Greek soldier could have misheard such was the power in the general's voice. Unfortunately, every Trojan heard it too.

Despite her sense of pride, Penelope knew it was the right order for the general to make. To her left and her right, her sisters-in-arms were falling; knocked down by enemy shields and tangled in their nets and their whips. High above the chaos, on the wall, Trojan slingers were sending bolas down upon the invaders, knocking out some and snagging most around the ankles. The Greek slingers had no hope of matching the distance from down below, and their ammunition fell several heights short to land unthreateningly in a heap at the base of the wall. The Trojan shields were larger, their whips longer, and their nets heavier. They hadn't been so well equipped last time the rivals went to war. The Greek line had been slowly peeling away and the call for retreat seemed more an observation than anything else. Greek horns blew rapidly and frantically ooora ooora ooora, met with the longer and deeper booms of the Trojans' vaarrooooo vaarrooooo. And then the drums on the walls began beating like thunder and the Trojans' lust for captives grew all the more.

The battle was lost.

Her sisters turned and fled. Sandalled feet stampeded along the hard Anatolian soil towards the distant shoreline where the biremes awaited them. Bolas came whirling overhead, no longer intending to find specific targets but hoping to catch anything. Penelope tried to keep her head turned as she ran -- to keep an eye on the projectiles coming towards her -- but the glare of the sun was too great to keep watch. Not that she would be able to see the bolas anyway.

The Greeks had landed mid-morning on the eastern bank of the Isle of Lesbos, hoping to catch the Trojan garrison unawares. The sun was in their favour then, but the goddesses were not. They could hear the city well before they saw it. The alarm bells, the horns -- there would be no surprise attack today. The garrison filed out and formed their ranks alongside the base of wall, ready to charge if needed and capable of withstanding one with their backs to the wall. Behind the high parapets, Trojan slingers raised their bolas in anticipation. Armies met at mid-morning, and it was late afternoon when the Greeks sounded retreat.

Some of the smarter soldiers dropped their shields to help gain speed. Others tore off their leather bodices which left them naked and shimmering in a mix of sweat and dirt. They ran the fastest. Most of her sisters were not so clever and soon found themselves falling to the ground with their ankles tangled tightly together, immediately consumed by the Trojan line as it ran down the invaders; the line which had all but broken during the battle.

One sister lay in Penelope's path, ankles bound and crawling in the dirt, an arm outstretched and begging for help. Penelope knelt down to untangle the leather cords of the bola wrapped around the girl's legs. As more and more Greeks fled, and more and more were captured, there were less and less targets for the Trojan slingers. The girl had barely taken three steps before she was snagged again; ankles, thighs and midriff, pinning her arms to her sides as she fell once more the hard ground. But Penelope kept running.

Far ahead now, with the bulk of the Greek women, was the general. General Cassia was taller than most by at least a head, with darkest brown hair nearly black tied in a thick braid halfway down her back. She must've known what awaited her back in Larissa. The Queen would not forgive a defeat, let alone a retreat. Cassia would be stripped naked, hooded, collared and cuffed hand and foot, paraded through the streets and flogged and paddled by any freeborn Greek who wished. Then she would be escorted back to the palace astride a horse with a special saddle designed to penetrate and humiliate its user. Once returned to the palace, she would find herself among the forges of the royal smiths where she would have her wrists chained and cuffed with iron manacles. She would then be taken to the Queen's own royal harem and forced to service Her Grace day and night. Such was the punishment for shaming the Queen.

The Trojans, should they capture someone of high rank, would not be so... merciful. It was a Trojan custom to give highborn slaves to highborn mistresses, and the noblewomen of the Trojan culture were renowned throughout the Aegean as the cruellest mistresses of all. The history of Troy, so the storytellers would sing you in your youth, dated back hundreds and hundreds of years, back before the goddesses made the mountains in the north and the deserts in the east and the great sea in the south. There was a mighty warlady named Creia whose many victories had earned her many slaves. Such a number, the storytellers would say, that the mighty warlady's household was too cramped to roof them all. One day, fed up with restrictions, Creia ordered all her tables, chairs, shelves and cupboards to be broken down and thrust into the soil to form a wall around the estate. The wall was built by Creia's first phallic slave named Troy. "Yes," the storytellers would say, "the first Trojan wall." Creia then ordered her many slaves to take the place of her furniture. Every table, chair, sconce and cupboard was a nude captive. She would plan her wars on a table of feminine beauty, rest her firm backside on the softness of a slave's rump, and sleep on a bed of naked flesh. When asked how the warlady used her female slaves as wall sconces, "where did she put the candles?" the storytellers would only smile cheekily and promise to tell you when you were older. One day, as reward for his excellent wall building skills, Creia allowed her first phallic slave to lie with any woman he desired. So he lay with them all, including Creia. Within ten years, Creia's household had nearly tripled in size. Her mud brick estate grew into the royal Trojan palace that still stands today, and the wooden palisade was expanded and replaced with stone to form the great Trojan Wall of the capital.

The tradition has survived even hundreds of years later. Trojan noblewomen force their slaves to do everything from sweeping the floors to being the floors. It was a fate no Greek desired. At least, so they said. It would be treason to say otherwise. So perhaps it was the better decision to head back to Greece, after all.

The Trojan cavalry emerged riding through the thick wooden gate, nets in hands. They galloped along the flanks of the retreating Greek army, hurling their heavy nets at the stragglers and earning themselves at least one share of the battle captives. The horsewomen of Troy were effective at what they did, despite their focus on armour and force, but it made them slow when they needed speed. This was why the Trojans often employed the help of Scythian mercenaries. The light horsewomen from the northern mountains made for a much more effective force when running down an enemy. They wore no armour but a thin leather loincloth over painted and patterned skin, let their long and messy locks flare behind them as they rode, and their bare breasts bounce uncontrollably. Perhaps this was part of the Scythian tactic; to mesmerise the enemy with their jiggling twin mounds. It was said that the horsewomen of the steppe took no phallic slaves with which to mate (the barbarians!), but instead lay with their horses at night, thus giving birth to chimaeras with the beautiful bodies of women and the skilful minds of beasts, capable of controlling a horse with only their thoughts. It was just a myth though, surely. Regardless, the mounted mercenaries were making short work of the routing Greeks and capturing any who strayed from the bulk.

How many of her sisters had fallen at the walls of the city, Penelope could not say exactly. Two hundred? Two hundred and fifty? They would be Trojan prisoners now; battle captives at first, taken to the slave markets and sorted into groups according to their birth. They would be stripped and bathed in warm water, as is the custom of all new slaves across the Aegean, and have studded leather collars attached around their necks. The mistresses would arrive shortly after to claim their merchandise, and the leftovers would be handed over to the soldiers.

How many had been netted by the Scythian riders? Penelope did not know that either. The lowborn captives would be reserved for the mercenaries as payment for their services, and the captives would then be forced to service their barbarian mistresses, day in and day out.

How many soldiers were taken captive overall? That Penelope did know. Of the five hundred sisters-in-arms who approached the walls of the Trojan outpost of Mytilene, only two hundred made it back to the ships. The sand of the shoreline was too soft and the slope too steep for the horses to follow them that far, so the Greeks were unmolested as they boarded their biremes. Or perhaps the Scythians felt they'd taken more slaves than they knew what to do with.

Penelope's ship was named The Sapphic Scylla. She was a beautiful ship with a sturdy hull, a long, hard and bulbous ramming head, and a vibrant pink stripe along its length. The sails were unfurled to show the sigil of Penelope's household, a nubile girl locked in the serpentine embrace of a five-headed sea monster on a pale blue sea. Each of her wrists and ankles were gripped between the creature's jaws, and its fifth head was thrust neck-deep between her legs.

Regrouping on the deck, Penelope found that most of her sisters had managed to escape the Trojans. There was Daphne, the fiery-headed nymph with a temper as hot as the colour of her hair and eyes as green and large as the Macedonian plains; Alexis the Binder, a veteran of the games that had earned her a title to match, with a firm and voluptuous chest, midnight hair and a slender waist; Lydia, the most dutiful of her household, younger sister and second-in-command, auburn hair and a beauty to make Aphrodite herself envious. Bright of eye and dark of spirit, Lydia could be your best friend one day and your sadistic mistress the next if Penelope gave the order. They and the rest filed along port and starboard sides to find a hard wooden oar.

The specific households the soldiers served were identifiable by the armour. Any sister who served Penelope wore a stiff black leather bodice with a matching skirt studded with bronze serpent head rivets, a long whip coiled on one hip and a pair of bolas on the other. Of all her sisters-in-arms, the cherry red-haired Penelope wore her armour the finest. As the young matriarch of her household, her armour was understandably more ornate, with bronze bracers along her forearms and grieves along her shins, hard iron studs on her bodice where her nipples were, and a figure-hugging fit which elevated her firm breasts to draw the attention of her foes as if to say 'I am in charge and you will be servicing me come sunrise.'

Along the bay, Penelope recognised the general's ship, Poseidon's Mistress, with the sigil of a collared trident on a dark blue ocean; Hera's Glory, a thunderbolt thrust between round spherical breasts on a field of silver clouds; Helen's Whip, the flagship of the Thessalian army, an iron-studded whip on a midnight background; The Celtic Knot, a leathern coil intricately woven into the barbarian art form of binding their prisoners using every possible anchor point, a golden-haired Illyrian maiden locked tight in the confines of the coarse twine; and at least twenty more with the sigils of lesser families emblazoned on their sails. Many appeared to be underwomanned, most likely having lost most their crew to captivity at the hands of the Trojans and Scythian mercenaries.

The captain of the Celtic Knot was a blonde Greek of north Illyrian descent; a ruthless warrioress and a cunning politician. Her family had come to Thessaly first many generations ago as wealthy traders of barbarian slaves, and had provided so much merchandise that the queen at the time had honoured them with ladyship. They took their renowned artistry as their sigil, and have been the bane of many Greeks' political careers ever since. Every queen had favoured them, decadent and covetous as only queens can be, for the Celtic family provided the largest income of exotic barbarian slaves in all of Greece. The masses of freewomen loved them for what they sold and the lesser slavers hated them for the very same reason. The current matriarch of the wealthy family was called Titania, but most simply referred to her as 'the Celt'. The Celt's ship was the most well-womanned of all the ships in the bay. Where General Cassia had lost at least half of her marines, and Penelope seven of hers, the Celt still managed to woman all her oars with even some sisters left to spare. It was as if she hadn't lost a single soldier at all. In fact, it seemed she'd even managed to take a prisoner or two and bound them to the mast in the barbarian fashion of her sigil.

The horns echoed across the foaming waves at the call to take to the water, reminding Penelope they were midway through a hasty retreat. One by one, a bireme was pushed off the sand until it was fully afloat, came about, and set sail for home; for the Queendom of Thessaly and the city of Larissa. The Queen would hear of a defeat and would surely want to know why her army of five hundred warrioresses failed to take such a small Trojan force.

Continued in Chapter 2