A Tale of Ties and Binds - Chapter 19

Chapter 19. A Trouble of Teenagers

After the escape from the Island of the Sirens, there were pressing matters that needed to be discussed. "What is she now?" asked Daphne as the two of them leaned out over the gunwale of The Mermaid's Revenge, watching the waves rush past them. "Is she a hostage or have you released her?"

Penelope looked over at the subject of discussion. The golden-haired teen was inspecting the mermaid's sling, figuring out how to calibrate the mechanism to adjust for power and distance. A pair of Hera's Daughters were by her side, but Serena was by far the most technical among them. They stood there nodding while Serena did all the talking. The buxom blonde had been gagged and bound for so long that she was relishing in the opportunity to work her nimble hands through the mechanism and speak proudly of it while she did.

"She's still our hostage," Penelope replied.

"Forgive me for noticing, Captain, but aren't hostages usually tied up in some way? There's not a single rope on her."

"She can hardly escape, Daphne. We're in the middle of the ocean on a ship she can't sail by herself which is crewed by seven soldiers who are all keeping her under watch."

The redhead sighed. "She's the Celt's sister. Who knows what she's capable of. She's already shown herself to be smarter than us with that stunt on the island, jumping ship as soon as we crashed. And she rescued us with a key she forged out of iron nails. I wager we'll all wake up in a trussed ball of naked flesh before long, mmphing into our gags and pleading with Captain Celt to let us go."

Daphne had a vivid imagination. "I seriously doubt that would ever happen," said Penelope with a chuckle.

"I don't trust her."

"Then trust me." Penelope placed a reassuring hand on Daphne's shoulder. "She won't do us any harm. I trust her."

The redhead shrugged away sullenly. "Like you trusted Lydia?"

---

"Scylla!" the Matriarch of the Thunderbolt called from the bow. "Have you realised where we are?"

Penelope had been watching the land creep closer over the horizon as the ship sailed between the two masses of the Three-Cornered Land and the boot peninsula. "The home of my household's namesake," she replied with a nostalgic smile.

It was the legend of Scylla and Charybdis. One side of the strait was occupied by the five-headed serpent, Scylla, who lived in a secluded cave on the face of the cliff. She had scales like a crocodile, heads like snakes, a body of an elephant and a tail like a giant eel. Her sister, Charybdis, was a monster of a different sort. She was a giant octopus with a pair of large black eyes and eight long tentacles that she used to swell the water below passing ships, causing them to tilt and overturn, throwing the sailors into the water. The tentacles would close around the sailors and drag them under the water into Charybdis' undersea lair where she'd keep and take the pleasure of her collection of prisoners, never to be seen or heard from again.

Travellers attempting to avoid passing too close to Charybdis would inadvertently pass too close to Scylla. The sailors would be snatched from their ships in her serpentine jaws and thrown backwards into the cave. Now trapped with the monster, they would be helplessly suspended high in the air, their arms and legs locked in four of Scylla's five jaws, the fifth head digging deep between their legs where she'd take her nourishment from their orgasmic juices. It was this lasting image, this distinct contrast between absolute dominance and absolute submission, that a Greek warrioress had taken as her sigil after being granted lands and titles by the Queen of Thessaly many years ago when she founded the Household of the Scylla.

But as the ship entered the strait, no creatures emerged to greet it. The whirlpool wherein Charybdis was said to live had managed to pull some driftwood, but little else. No tentacles stirred the waters. The ship did not even so much as tilt. And not one of Scylla's five heads emerged from the eastern cliffside. At closer inspection, it seemed her cave was nothing but a shadow under an overhanging rock, exposed by the dusking sun.

They're just stories, Penelope remembered, passed down from one drunken fool with an overactive imagination to another until people started believing them. We're all stories, in the end. Maybe one day they'll say I had tits the size of Mount Olympus and twice as pointy.

Penelope was pulled from her thoughts as a hand fell on her shoulder. The maroon-haired Ellisia had joined her. "We'll be making port at Syrakousai tomorrow morning. They'll have everything we need before we cross the sea."

Even over a decade later, the Messapian War was still leaving rope burns on the combatants. Penelope and her companions needed to avoid the peninsula completely and travel due east until they hit Greece. But it would be across open waters with very few islands between them. The Greek colony of Syrakousai would be the last time they docked before making the voyage and so the necessary supplies needed to be acquired.

Ellisia continued. "The same pirates who attacked my crew might be patrolling these waters. They do their best work on the new moon when the night sky is darkest. I'll take first watch with one of my sworn sisters and wake you later. Get some sleep, Scylla."

---

The horse felt sticky between her legs - the result of the long walk from the slave market district mixed with the hard leather phallus imbedded in the saddle.

She could see their faces, the entire population of Larissa, laughing at her shame and cursing her for the crime she hadn't committed. It wasn't me, she tried to reply, it was the Celt! But the cleave gag between her teeth held in the words like the leathern coils held her hands tied behind her back.

Everyone was mocking her. The lowborns wore nothing but dirty rags, yet they laughed. The slaves, handmaidens and bedwarmers who had likely been captured and sold under the Celt's slave empire were laughing too, unaware of the irony that they were mocking the woman with whom they'd had a mutual enemy. The noblewomen laughed loudest of all at the Matriarch of the Scylla, though she'd fought to secure their freedom for the past decade. Whether she felt anger at their insolence or pity for their ignorance, she could do nothing to stop them from laughing.

The Celt rode in the lead, holding the reins of Penelope's horse in one hand and waving to the crowd with the other, golden locks flowing behind her, iron-trimmed armour shining like the stars, and beaming radiantly with her arrogant smile. I'll take revenge on you, Penelope swore, and I won't stop until I've beaten you.

The Matriarch of the Celtic Knot must have heard her thoughts. She turned in her saddle and looked Penelope straight in the eye. "You're my slave now, Penelope. My property," she gloated.

I'll find a way out of this, Penelope tried to yell, but all that came from her lips was "Mmpph!"

"Try all you like," the Celt replied, still waving to her crowd. "You have the rest of your pitiful life in bondage to try. But know that the Fates do not need so long to make a mockery of your wants and dreams."

The horse between her legs neighed loudly. It sounded like a creaking board.

-

Penelope opened her eyes and cursed herself for falling asleep on watch. She looked around to check if anyone had seen her. There was nobody else on the deck except for Daphne and she was facing out to sea, scanning the nocturnal horizon for sign of ships.

She felt embarrassed. Not entirely because she'd fallen asleep, but in that way a bad dream can spoil a day with its lingering thoughts. The moon was a pale grey shadow of itself nestled amongst the dark clouds. Even the light of the stars was scarce.

Chink

Penelope's heart beat double-time. Her eyes widened and her ears perked like a cat hearing a mouse. "Daphne, did you hear that?" she asked, rising from her chair.

"There's driftwood all through these waters," the redhead replied dismissively.

She's still angry at me, Penelope thought. But she considered the idea. "I know what driftwood sounds like. This sounded like metal."

Daphne gave her captain a doubtful look. "Perhaps if you hadn't been sleeping you'd..." She stopped suddenly midsentence, staring down at the grappling hook that had lodged itself in the woodwork of the gunwale.

Penelope and Daphne both dropped their stances and plucked their whips from their belts in an instant. They peered over the edge of the ship, expecting to find a rowboat full of pirates. The grappling hook was tied to a rope, and the rope trailed down the side of the ship, and that was all there was - a rope swaying in the night's breeze over the soft waves. Penelope wondered if the hook had always been there and she'd only just noticed it.

Another board creaked, this time on the other side of the deck. The two Greeks turned to inspect the noise. Somehow, a group of five young women had clambered aboard without being seen. They wore skirts and bustiers made of ragged strips of leather that only narrowly covered the parts they were meant to cover, tied together with string. Their hair had been twisted and oiled to form long thick dreadlocks and their skin had been blackened with ash to hide them in the night. Whoever they were, they weren't armed with whips or nets, but two of them carried short sticks barely longer than their forearms. And they were young. Not one of them could have been older than sixteen.

"Who are you?" Penelope demanded of them. She was twice as old as they were and had been soldiering since before they were born. But even so, something about these strange girls made her uncomfortable, perhaps even frightened.

The girls didn't reply with words. The shortest among them, barely scraping the lower end of her teenage years, lifted her finger to her lips in a shushing gesture.

Penelope wasn't one to take orders from girls. "Daphne, go wake the others," she said with authority.

"Yes, Captain." The redhead kept her eyes suspiciously on the strangers as she made her way towards the hatch. "Ahh! Wha..." She only managed a few steps before she winced in pain, staggered to the right, plucked a dart from her thigh and collapsed sprawled on the deck.

One of the girls had her lips curled around one of the sticks - a dart blower.

"Ellisia!" Penelope yelled at the top of her voice. There were still six soldiers to warn below deck. "We're under att-ahh!" A pair of darts had landed in the soft flesh of her right bosom and another in her right thigh just below the hemline of her skirt.

The effect of the magic was quick. Like the realisation of being stung by a bee, she suddenly felt the witchcraft coursing through her. Her legs felt wobbly and her tongue felt numb. She dropped her whip, unable to keep her fingers closed around its hilt. All sense of balance abandoned her and she fell to her knees. She was about to land face-first on the boards until she was grabbed by small hands under her arms and dragged across the deck.

Penelope tried to yell again, but only a pitiful moaning whisper escaped her lips and her tongue had become completely useless. She was rendered almost completely silent without even using a gag, such was the power of the magic at play. But the magic didn't restrain Penelope's mind. She was still fully aware of what was happening to her, only completely powerless to change it.

The young girls hoisted her up over the side of the ship and pushed her off. There was a moment of terror as Penelope felt herself falling and she half expected to hear a splash when she landed, but she was caught by more hands and laid down in a small rowboat. Daphne's paralysed body was pushed over the edge next and landed in a separate rowboat. Then the intruders climbed down, took up oars and began rowing away. The light from the torches on The Mermaid's Revenge soon became a hazy glow in the distance.

As silently as they'd first appeared, some of the young girls began binding Penelope's legs. They wrapped several turns around her ankles before tying it off and doing the same above her knees and another wrapping midway up her thighs. Penelope, in her immobile yet still conscious state, could only imagine her captors were securing her before the magic wore off. Once her legs were bound, the girls flipped her over and pulled her hands behind her back. They tied her wrists crossed and hobbled her elbows loosely together before moving her into a sitting position where they wrapped more rope around her chest, above and below her breasts, to bind her arms to her torso. One of the girls pulled on the ropes to check their tightness. She could barely get more than a finger between them.

Penelope's tongue began to tingle - a good sign after not feeling it at all. She opened her mouth to try another yell in the hope that the distant glow was not too distant to hear. Just as she was about to scream, a hand slapped down on her lips and forced a scrunched ball of leather between them before securing it inside by wrapping another strip around her head, tying it off under Penelope's hair. "Mmmmmmmpphh," was all she could say.

Slowly, feeling crept in where numbness had stolen its place. Penelope curled her fingers and her toes, then bent her knees and her wrists as much as the ropes would allow. Her captors did not seem too worried about her returning mobility and continued rowing. Doubtless, they knew their ropes were secure. Penelope realised that too after a few moments. There was no point in struggling. Even if she could get free, she was still trapped in a small rowboat with several girls who could quickly swarm and overpower her. She decided there was little option available but to wait and see where they were taking her.

Continued in Chapter 20

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