A Tale of Ties and Binds - Chapter 10

Chapter 10. A Bribe for Barbarians

They could not sail southeast. The clouds were dark as night and the flashes of lightning were a bad omen for ships. Home would have to wait for now. Instead, the winds were blowing southwest, and Penelope and her crew were travelling even further from home.

Daphne had named the longboat Sisters of the Scylla in honour of her captain's household. She had even painted the old sigil on the mainsail - a maiden trapped in the jaws of a five-headed sea serpent with one head tucked between her thighs - and all using the traces of dirt found on Serena's bound body. Penelope had no idea the fiery-haired nymph had such an artistic side.

The pair of former slavers turned hostages supplied the crew with a fair amount of amusement. Guard was more than a willing concubine and would enthusiastically lick away at anything set before her face. The pale-skinned captive did not seem to tire as other women did and her tongue was always strong and flexible, from start to earth-shattering finish. Whenever her tongue wasn't flicking out, the linen gag she so loved was shoved in and tied tightly behind her neck. As far as hostages go, she was perhaps the best kind.

The same could not be said for Serena, however. The blonde sister from the Household of the Celtic Knot was not so generous when it came to coming, and would keep her wet tongue in her mouth. She would glare whips at her captors whenever they tried to force her, and she growled like a lioness when they groped her (though she purred like a kitten if they touched her in just the right places). It disappointed the crew so much that they couldn't stand to have her so temptingly on offer, strictly hogtied and cleave gagged, naked and vulnerable on the deck of the longboat. So they decided to tie her to the ship's mast, hands trussed and wrenched far around the thick wooden pole, and blindfolded her to avoid the anger in her eyes. Unable to glare, she soon found the crew all the more willing to tweak her nipples as her breasts were thrust outward. She purred then too.

The Sisters of the Scylla had been at sea for two days when Zia the Dacian called from the dragon-headed prow, "LAND!" and sure enough, the flat horizon had buckled into a mass of brown and grey. Streams of smoke rose into the sky and the tell-tale signs of life were littered across a thin strand of beach.

Penelope had spent the last two days wondering how she would handle this situation. In the event that they come across foes, they would be outnumbered and would surely be recaptured and sold to a warlady from who-knows-where. And the chance of coming across friends in this world was not one on which Penelope was willing to wager her crew's freedom. She decided it was safer to avoid whoever these people were. "Come about!" she yelled to Daphne on the rudder. "We'll keep sailing along the coast until we lose sight of civilisation, then we'll sail a little further."

Daphne complied with the order and brought the ship parallel to the coast, keeping a safe distance from the village and hopefully staying unnoticed. It was an ill-mannered jest of the goddesses above that caused the ship to scrape the corner of an underwater mesa, fracturing one of the boards of the hull and allowing a quick trickle of seawater into the ship. "Zia! You're meant to warn me about obstacles!" yelled the redhead.

"I couldn't see it!" replied the Dacian.

Adara the Spartan, who had been fondling Serena's equally voluptuous breasts, began swishing her sandalled feet through the ever-growing puddle. "Captain, we're sinking."

The blonde hostage, who had heard a crash and could also feel the water between her toes, began to struggle with a reinvigorated need to escape. "MMMMMMMMPPH!!!"

Curses, thought Penelope. That's limited our choices. "Daphne, bring us to shore. Adara, grab an oar and we'll do what we can. Zia... try to keep Serena quite. She's distracting enough without having to hear her screaming."

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The seawater was swirling around their knees by the time the longboat crunched into the beach. Penelope was sweating from her furious effort on the oars to keep pace with the Spartan, and wayward strands of her cherry-red hair were clinging to her face. The rosy-cheeked Guard gave a wink of approval, and Serena let out a long sigh of orgasmic relief as Zia finished keeping the hostage distracted. "Captain," said Daphne as she rose from her seat, "who are they?"

Turning, Penelope saw who 'they' were. Tied to a pair of posts driven into the sand dunes was a pair of damsels. They were both naked, young and beautiful. Their hands had been bound behind the posts and their feet likewise tethered to the base. Rags of some sort were clenched mercilessly between their teeth, but that did not stop the brunette from shrieking. That one struggled with all her strength against the confining ropes, and her eyes were full of fear.

In comparison, the blonde damsel was as quiet as a mouse, and merely stared at Penelope and her crew with almond eyes and a curiously cocked eyebrow. Her breasts were larger than her friend's, her skin slightly smoother, her hips slightly wider, her waist slightly trimmer, her lips fuller and ripe for kissing, her hair thicker and made for gripping, her demeanour much more accepting of her fate (whatever that was meant to be), and everything about her suggested she would make the perfect bondage pet. Penelope's breath caught in her mouth, and she could almost hear the twitch in her companions' loins.

It would be foolish to ask if they were friend or foe, gagged as they were and unable to reply. And what kind of foe would bind themselves to posts? Unless they were meant as a trap or a diversion. To divert our attention from where, thought Penelope. We have the sea to our back and an empty stretch of sand to our sides. A trap? No, they're bribes. Penelope remembered Serena telling her upon their arrival to the Histri village that many villages would offer some of their nubile women as offerings to the pirates in the hope that they would take the bribes and leave the rest of them alone. The people here no doubt saw a longboat on the horizon and feared they were under attack. If they fear the Histri, Penelope reasoned, then we surely shouldn't consider them our enemies, but allies.

Penelope disembarked and stood on solid ground. "We mean you no harm," she said, showing the palms of her hands. "We are not here to take you captive or to plunder your treasures. We are -"

"Greeks," said an unseen voice from beyond the sand dunes, "speaking Greek. And I have been knowing no Histri to taint themselves with the foreign tongue... well, not in that way at least." The accent seemed a strange mix of barbaric growls and civilised purrs.

By this time, Daphne and Adara had taken a place at Penelope's side. "You know who we are, but who are you?"

A woman appeared over the bank. She had hair of cherry red, like Penelope's, and had a face full of wisdom beyond her years and a linen tunic that stopped half way down her thighs. "What we call ourselves would be too difficult for you to be pronouncing, I believe, but the peoples to the south are call us the Picentes. You are not Histri pirates coming to steal our girls, I am seeing this now, though I am wondering why you are sailing in one of their ships?"

Another thing Penelope had wondered was, when asked who they were and where they come from, whether to tell the truth or a lie. "We stole the ship." That much was true. It wouldn't do to tell this woman they were former slaves. "We three are Greeks, and a short one on the ship is a Dacian. Those two are our captives we took from the Histri village." Also true. Serena and Guard had previously been their captors, but this stranger did not need to know that either. And two burning questions remained. "Who are you and how is it that you speak fluent Greek? So far from the lands we call home, we had never expected to hear our language from another's tongue."

The woman smiled nostalgically. "To the first question, I am being Narcholeptix, the chieftess of my people. Come to feast with us, traveller, and you shall be hearing an answer to the second. An easy question is not always easily answered. But first, help me to untie these two bribes. Aysthetix does not mind being bound, as you can be seeing, but Merinthofobix fears nothing more."

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The communal hall was not grand, but it was warm and full of good company, and arguably the least run-down structure in the almost ruinous village. The many dozens of Picene women crouched on their haunches as they nibbled away at the various breads, cheeses, fish, boiled eggs and meats that were the local idea of a feast. Not a single phallic slave to be seen, Penelope lamented. They were surely all stolen in raids by the pirates yet another reason to despise them.

Daphne had exchanged her furs for more familiar leather armour - not quite the Greek style but leather was always a preferable look to fur - and sat at Penelope's side at the head of the hall facing the flap the natives called a door. The two blonde captives, Serena and Guard, had been left hogtied at the far end of the straw mat on which the food had been placed, ungagged and free to eat any food they could wiggle their way towards (though that did not stop anyone from moving the food or the captives for the fun of it). Adara the Spartan preferred not to take an interest in the barbarian hosts, and stood to the side of the hall as she chewed on a leg of roasted goat. Spartans rarely spoke when it was not necessary, so she would simply have nothing to say in conversation. Zia, on the other hand, was a delightful guest and struck up conversation with any of her hosts and entertained them with stories of her travels. It was a good feeling, Penelope could understand, to be able to speak your own language again and have others understand you. Though the Dacian language was not the same as the Picentes' dialect, there were enough common words that Zia managed to get the point across and anything she couldn't say with words was said with her gestures and expressive face.

A native girl who could have passed for Zia's long-lost sister sat close to her. Like her twin, she was shorter than most, slight of build with small breasts and hips, and had a mop of messy blondish brown hair. Though she was young, she was incredibly fast moving and flexible and enjoyed showing off. She would bend over backwards as far as possible, lay her hands flat on the ground while still sure-footed, and flip herself up until she was then standing on her only her hands. Ayrobix, the chieftess had called her.

Sitting cross-legged beside Penelope in the place of honour, Narcholeptix wiped the crumbs from her lips and cleared her throat. "I am not coming from these lands originally. My first home was in a place far away to the northwest, where the summers are crisp and the winters are cool, and the grasslands stretch as far as the eye can see like an ocean of jade and emerald.

"My mother was a druid. Or said she was, though the spirits never spoke to her to my knowledge. We were on our way to a sacred grove one morning when we came across a small band of cloaked farming women. Their cart had snapped a wheel spoke and was bogged in mud and they requested our help to pull it out. We obliged, as any kind people would be doing. Upon further inspection, the cart was not carrying wheat or grains as we had expected. It was carrying a farmer, trussed and tightly gagged, with eyes wide and panicking, warning us too late of the trap we had walked into.

"After binding and hooding us, we were taken far away. I lost count of the days. We were eventually sold to an unscrupulous slaver at a market on the coast and I was being bought by a wealthy Phoenician wine trader named Tanit. She was a well-travelled woman - dark skinned, darker hair, eyes like gemstones and skin as smooth and soft as feathers. She took me to her vineyard in Athens where I was being tasked with taking stock. I was needing to learn the Greek tongue quickly or my mistress would have no use for me and sell me on the less kind owners. The Phoenicians, I learned, do not bind their slaves as most others. Tanit buckled a thin bronze collar around my neck, from which draped my linen clothes, but left my hands and feet unshackled. Though they do not physically restrain their slaves, the collar is just tight enough that you are never forgetting what you are being. Tanit may not have held my body, but she held my mind. Not even in sleep could I be escaping the cold bronze at my throat.

"It is the Athenian way, as you are surely knowing, that the members of the Citizen Assembly draw lot for the roles and offices in the Boule of High Mistresses. Likewise, the servants who attend the High Mistresses are also drawn from lot and no Athenian is exempt - foreigner or native. The High Mistresses always come into office with sincerity and humility, but extreme power begets extreme egos, and the High Mistresses come to believe they are favoured by your goddesses. They soon abuse their servants. Not the usual fondle or grope or wandering hand that all mistresses have. No. They order their servants to strip, insert strange things between their thighs, rape each other, rape themselves, even to flog their fellow servants until all the pleasure has gone.

"Mistress Tanit was selected as a servant. To this day I am recalling the morbid fear in her gemstone eyes when she received the news and the way her hair flickered in the rising sun as she trembled. When a soldier came for her later that day, I was overlooking the courtyard of her villa from a window in the atrium as I was counting over some vases of wine. In the foyer below me, the soldier met my mistress and ordered her to offer her wrists for binding. I think I was being drunk at the time, because I dropped a vase off the balcony and it landed on the soldier's head, knocking her out cold. I gave my mistress freedom, so she gave me mine.

"We ran away together as fugitives. We could no longer stay in Athens. If the soldiers should capture us, we would have been enslaved for the rest of our lives and forced to serve every High Mistress who ever drew lot. We found ourselves aboard one of Tanit's trading cogs and sailed away before anyone knew we were gone.

"A storm caught us somewhere past Ithaca. The ship was torn apart in the wind and the waves and that was all I am remembering until I was waking up on the very shoreline your bireme is now stranded. I am not knowing what happened to my former mistress, but I am choosing to believe that she found her way home to Phoenicia." Narcholeptix finished the last few drops of goat's milk in her cup. "And that is how a Gaul came to know your language, Captain."

"I can see you've learned many things in your travels," Penelope complimented. Knowing Narcholeptix was a former slave, Penelope felt she could trust her. She shared her own tale - of the battle with the Trojans, of the generalship, of the phallic slave named Logical Phallusy, of treacherous Titania the Celt, of the ambush and Lydia's betrayal, of the just out of reach stone knob in the palace dungeons, of the cold nights spent huddled under her warm captors, of the cruel Histri warlady name Ceinlys Lachtnatorix, and finally of their valiant escape from bondage. It all seemed so long ago.

Narcholeptix sat intrigued for the whole tale until her interest turned to fear as Penelope elaborated on what she had done to the Histri warlady. "You forced brooms into her body? You humiliated and infuriated her?"

"I wish I'd been there!" laughed Daphne, slapping her thigh. "I would have jammed them so deep she'd be squirting splinters for years."

The chieftess rose from her mat, hands trembling. "You are having no idea what you did! The Histri will track you down! They will take their revenge!" Her voice became shrill and full of panic. "They will come here looking for you!" At this, Merinthofobix let out a scream and curled herself up into a ball as the rest of the tribe went silent with fear.

"Why don't you simply fight them off?" asked Daphne, incredulous. "Your tribe outnumbers theirs."

"Are you being blind?" snapped Narcholeptix. "Are you seeing any weapons here? Whips? Ropes? Nets? Bolas? We have nothing but numbers, and numbers without weapons count for much less."

"Our ship!" remembered Penelope. "It's stocked with nets for fishing, and ropes for rigging, and there's not much use for it now that the hull is wrecked. Strip the ship, and you'll have you weapons."

The chieftess thought for a moment as she paced the hall. "It is not enough," she said. "We are untrained in the ways of warfare. We cannot stand against experienced raiders. They will take us captive without any effort, and they will punish us for resisting."

Adara the Spartan raised her hand. "I can teach you to fight."

Daphne jumped up with an excited grin on her face. "I once captured an entire unit of Scythian horsewomen all by myself. I can teach you too."

Though Narcholeptix smiled and bowed in gratitude, she still had her doubts. "I am thanking you, but it is still not enough. They will be here too soon and no amount of training will prepare us in time."

There was complete silence except for the sound of Merinthofobix hyperventilating. The dozens of women in the tribe sat motionless with grim expressions, imagining the impending slaughter as they would be raided, captured, bound mercilessly, shipped back to the Histri village on the other side of the sea where they'd be raped without respite and sold to the mistresses with the biggest breasts. Aysthetix seemed unfazed by the possibility - quite content with captivity, it would seem.

Then Ayrobix stood up proudly, tall as she could though she was still at least a head shorter than most. She made a suggestion to her chieftess that Penelope could not understand, not being able to speak the language.

"Annysthetix? She is a superstitious old hag," the chieftess mocked. "Her potions are nothing but horse squirtings and fish oil."

"Potions?" asked Penelope. She had heard stories from travellers of witches who brewed strange elixirs that could make a single orgasm last a whole day, though she did not know what purpose that would serve.

"She is a druid who lives in the mountains," said Narcholeptix. "She claims to know the secrets of the sun and the moon, of night and day, that her potions can bring on a long-lasting sleep from which you cannot be awakened. Mystical nonsense."

Penelope had never been quick to believe in things such as magical potions. She enjoyed the stories as much as any other - something to picture in her mind while a handmaiden licked away at the sensitive region between her thighs - but she did not take them seriously. However, "You have nothing to lose by trying, Narcholeptix. If the potion doesn't work, we have lost nothing we'd not have lost anyway. And if it does work, we can use it to our advantage."

The chieftess with cherry-red hair considered it. "She will demand payment, and not of gold. Your precious metals are having no use to a recluse like her. She demands flesh - a nubile girl to comfort her in her hermitage. You have forced this on us, Captain. You will be paying the druid's price."

Luckily for Penelope, she was not short on currency of this type, for there at the far end of the hall, hogtied and ungagged, slobbering over a leg of goat, lay the only woman in Penelope's company who served no particular purpose - until now. Guard looked up from her meal through her short blonde hair, and Penelope could almost pinpoint the moment the hostage realised why the entire tribe was staring at her, grinning.

Continued in Chapter 11

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