A Tale of Ties and Binds - Chapter 30

Chapter 30. A War of Whips

The Princess of Sparta

The sun had only just risen and she already knew it would be an uncomfortably hot day. The air was shimmering over the golden-brown grass in the fields either side of the sparkling river. A bead of sweat rolled down the slope of Adara's bosom and nestled in her cleavage.

The barbarian army of Thracians and Scythians was descending on Thessaly from the north. But to get there, they would need to cross a certain bridge. It was on that ruinous pile of sticks and stones that the Spartan princess had chosen to make her stand.

"The river is too deep and rapid for a fully-armed soldier to swim," Adara had told her shield-bearer. "So they have two choices. They can ignore us and find a different bridge, though the nearest crossing is over a day's walk from here. Or they could try their luck with a battle."

Adara's shield-bearer, Lamia, was the only Spartan in the cohort of youths to have received any officer training, making her second-in-command by default. Her hair was dark brown and styled into long dreadlocks, and she bore the full bosom and wide hips common to all her countrywomen. "Your soldiers are eager for a fight, Princess. As am I. We shall take many slaves."

It wasn't until midday that the lookout spotted a long column of dust in the distance. Soon after, Adara received word from Lamia.

"We count their number to be at just over two-thousand, Princess," said the shield-bearer.

"Against two-hundred Spartans. The odds aren't looking good."

"Aye," Lamia agreed. "I wouldn't be too enthusiastic if I had to fight two-hundred Spartans either."

Adara ordered her troops into position along the mouth of the bridge. The only armour a Spartan relied on was her large hoplon shield emblazoned with a red lambda, a bronze helm, a leather skirt and a long red chlamys cape. They were the only Greeks who fought bare-chested and were easily recognised on any battlefield. It helped their enemies know who to fear the most. Their weapons consisted of an ordinary leather whip and two ordinary bolas, though the women wielding them were anything but common soldiers.

The princess' armour was more elaborate. Her bronze helm bore a large black crest made from the hair of a horse's tail and she wore a chainmail mantle around her shoulders. Adara had also taken to using the bronze phallic-tipped spear she'd stolen from the Etruscans to knock her enemies off their feet. She donned the helm, shouldered the shield and picked up her spear. The stage was set and the battle was soon to begin.

Return victorious, or not at all.

---

A more ignorant commander would look at that army across the river and see nothing more than a rabble of barbarians. But Adara was a Spartan, and Spartans made it their business to know their enemies. The bulk of them were lasso-hurling and whip-wielding warrioresses from Thrace. These infantry wore tall caps to add to their height, though they were still more than a head shorter than the Spartans they were facing. Scythian mercenaries bolstered the enemy numbers, riders from the distant lands to the north clad in only flimsy horse hide loincloths.

Barbarians, yes, but not to be underestimated. Any Spartan who didn't watch her back would soon be lying on it, watching as her hands were bound and helpless to resist as the experienced raiders straddled them like horses between their uncivilised legs.

Two-thousand against two-hundred, she repeated in her mind as the first of the enemy arrived at the bridge. Scythians, she knew instantly. They were five in number and all on horseback with whips attached to their belts and nets resting across their laps. The tallest was a giant of a woman, even by Spartan standards. She loomed over her companions by at least another head.

It was that giant who came forward alone on her black stallion while the other riders held back. Adara went to greet her, one-on-one.

The Scythian had white-blonde hair and prominent cheekbones. Her breasts were as large as grapefruits and bounced hypnotically with every step of her mount. She wore nothing but a loincloth and a perpetual grin on her face. Adara hated the grinning types. They were always the slowest to realise when they'd been beaten. "Who is barring our path?" the rider demanded in her fractured attempt at the Greek language.

"An army of free women," Adara stood her ground, "and I am their commander, Princess Adara of Sparta."

The Scythian looked down on the princess with what could have been curiosity or a scowl. "You are having the honour of meeting Xarthyrsi, the warmaiden of The Stallion's Paramours. If you are ever hoping to become a Spartan queen, you will be getting out of our way, hmm."

"I wish that were possible," the princess said with a shrug, "but we seem to have taken quite a liking to this bridge. Once we dig our heels into the ground, I'm sure you'll find it very difficult to move us."

Xarthyrsi turned her head and spat into the river below. "Then we shall be riding over you." She kicked her horse and jolted forward. Adara raised her spear and pressed the bronze phallus against the mount's chest, forcing the black stallion to a halt. The Scythian bared her teeth. "How many are you? I am counting no more than two-hundred. That is not enough to be stopping us."

Adara cocked her eyebrow. "And yet here you are - stopped. You must have miscounted."

The strange glare on the Scythian's face returned to an annoying grin from ear to ear. "Harr! True! The Spartan is enjoying making jokes. But are you enjoying riddles too?"

"As much as the next Spartan." Which was not at all.

"Excellent," Xarthyrsi grinned as she wheeled her horse around. "Tell me, what is happening when an unstoppable force is meeting an unmovable object?"

The Spartan princess didn't need to reply. They both knew the answer.

---

The first attack came soon after. Horns were blown, drums were beaten, battle cries were cried, and over one-hundred confident Thracian tribeswomen filled that narrow bridge. The Spartans kept the brave and the foolish for themselves and sent the cowards screaming back.

Thracian lassos and whips bounced harmlessly off the Spartan shields and their bolas were a nuisance akin to flies. Those who came too close were met with Spartan fury. The shield wall parted for just a moment and a barrage of whips flew forth like a cloud of black bats from a dark cave. The leathern lashes closed around the Thracians' wrists, ankles, shins and elbows, and the Spartans reeled them in. Once behind the wall of shields, they were swiftly bound in the strictest of hogties. They became the Spartans' first slaves.

As the first wave receded back across the narrow bridge, Adara stood proud and tall amongst her countrywomen. She wasn't one for speeches, but it seemed appropriate for the troops. "Spartans!" she called. "What are we to do when an enemy stands before us?" The princess was greeted with three replies from every soldier as each cracked their whip thrice in unison. Short and sharp, and more fearsome than any barbarian battle horn.

The second attack was less of a failure, but a failure nonetheless. Ten Scythians began crossing the bridge on their stallions, lined up shoulder-to-shoulder, and hurled their nets into the Spartan formation. One brushed through the crest of Adara's helm and enclosed around a few soldiers behind her. Some nets were blocked by shields, but enough of the soldiers were caught that the Scythians did something stupid. They charged.

Presumably, their tactic involved grabbing their nets and dragging the trapped occupants back across the bridge. They'd spend their night with a Spartan's unwilling tongue between their legs and they'd be happier than ever. This may have been the image going through their heads when they charged, but it was a short-lived fantasy.

At Adara's command, the Spartan formation split into a tightly-packed inverse wedge. The shields absorbed the shock of the cavalry charge as the horses funnelled in. First, the Scythians lost their speed, then they lost their mounts, then they lost their freedom.

When there was a lull after the fourth wave without a single loss on the Spartan's side, Adara thought Xarthyrsi may have given up and decided to find another bridge to cross. But the princess was wrong. The Scythian warmaiden had merely recalled her troops to unload the supply wagons and erect their tents. The battle would continue on the morrow.

---

As it turned out, the barbarians were more cowardly than Adara had anticipated.

The Spartans were sitting by their campfires as the dark night crept in around them. Without horses, weapons or clothing, it was impossible to tell the Thracian captives from the Scythian captives. Their helplessly guttural pleas for freedom and mercy sounded exactly the same to the Greeks. The response was the same for both: whip them until they licked, and keep whipping them until their tongues were exhausted from overuse.

After a round of tonguing, the princess followed her nose to where a few of her soldiers were cooking fish. She sat down with them, spoke with them, ate with them, and treated them as she would her sisters. It reminded her of the time she'd spent in Penelope's company. She began to wonder how much longer she could hold the bridge.

The Fates answered her almost as soon as the thought crossed her mind. From out of the darkness, a single lasso emerged. It fell down past one of the Spartan's shoulders and was pulled tight underneath her breasts, pinning her arms to her sides. She managed a brief curse before being pulled into the black beyond the light of the campfire. Then she was gone.

"Cowards!" Adara yelled, rising from the ground to threaten the shadows. Another lasso flew at her and struck the shaft of her phallic-tipped spear before falling to the dirt. It slithered away without a prize.

The shadows whispered back to her. "One down."

---

That one had grown to fifteen by daybreak, if Lamia had the count right. Some of the barbarians had managed to swim across the river during the night and steal away the Spartans while they slept or sat with their backs to the darkness. Worse, the barbarians gloated of their cowardice. They bound their Spartan captives to large wooden stakes implanted along the riverbed; hands tied above their head with ropes woven from horsehair, legs spread wide, gagged with the shreds of their own leather skirt, and with a red lambda painted across their breasts.

The hot day soon returned to sweaty battle. Adara donned her crested bronze helm and held the frontline against one attack after the other. Xarthyrsi sent wave after wave of courageous young barbarians across the bridge, and Adara returned those who were cowards. The brave remained on the Spartan side of the bridge, though bravery means little when you're hogtied so tightly that your tits barely touch the ground.

The Spartans held their formation as the sun rose and fell, repelling each fresh attack. But they were growing exhausted. Xarthyrsi could afford to lose a few hundred of her tribeswomen but Adara couldn't do the same. The Scythian warmaiden knew she couldn't win the bridge with force so she was winning it with attrition, wearing down the roughness of the Spartan formation with constant attacks.

Adara sent half her troops back to rest and kept half on the bridge. They'd rotate positions every so often to keep themselves fresh and help bring food and water to those defending.

It was the opportunity Xarthyrsi was waiting for.

The last Scythian charge had been ten mounted riders in a line. The new charge was thrice as many horses in a wedge, all tied together with only a single rider at the back. The topless barbarian whipped the stallions into a panic and sent them over the bridge.

"Brace!" the princess screamed above the sound of hooves on stone. Her countrywomen locked their shields and bunched up tightly. But though they tried, the Spartans couldn't deflect a stampede. Unstoppable force.

The wedge split the formation and pierced through to the other side before it came to a halt, but not before many Spartans were pushed off the sides of the bridge. They hit the water and were instantly caught in the rapid flow. The lone rider dismounted and ran back, leaving the horses clogging the bridge.

A hundred paces downriver, the Spartans who fell were fished out by Thracian lassos and Scythian nets. The stakes along the river bank were decorated with another two score captives.

---

On the third morning, Adara woke to the sound of horns. The day was still stinking hot and a great dust cloud filled the sky above the barbarian camp. Something big was happening.

The princess grabbed a handful of fish from a spit over one of her fires and made her way to the bridge where a few dozen of her soldiers had been keeping the overnight watch. It was the best place to avoid being snatched in the darkness. She found Lamia waiting for her there. "What's the count this morning?"

"Another twenty, Princess" the shield-bearer growled angrily. "They liberated a few of the captives as well, though we don't have the count for that. I don't understand how it happened. We lit fires all around our camp."

"War is full of unexplainable events, Lamia," Adara said. "All the same, I'd like to know what's happening on the other side of this bridge."

"Their camp is splitting up. Some of the Thracians are leaving and taking our captive sisters with them. I don't think they're trying to find another bridge because they're not following the river, just going back north."

Strange, Adara thought. "Stay alert. It might be some dishonourable barbarian trick." She was just turning to go find the slave with the longest tongue when Lamia called back to her.

"Princess, they're attacking!"

But they were only sending three riders, and one of those was Xarthyrsi herself. The grinning Scythian stopped with her two guards at the mouth of the bridge and made a show of handing them her nets. She dismounted her black stallion, breasts bouncing and white-blonde hair blowing in the light breeze, and approached the Spartan formation on foot. She stopped at the halfway mark - out of range of the bolas. "Spartan princess!" she yelled. "I am wanting to talk!"

Adara donned her crested bronze helm and made her way out onto the bridge, leaving her whip and bolas with Lamia but keeping her phallic-tipped spear. "What do you want, Scythian?"

"The Stallion's Paramours are becoming restless," Xarthyrsi grinned. Annoying grin. "We are tiring of waiting, of attacking... of stealing you away in the night. It is a slow way to be winning a battle and lacks honour. Surrender now, and we will be letting you go."

"You speak of honour as though you know what it is, yet you ask this of us. We are Spartans. We do not surrender."

"Harr! You have lost half your soldiers. Choose your words carefully, Princess. I am not making this offer again."

"Why?" Adara asked. "Because some of your soldiers are retreating?"

"Not so!" Xarthyrsi insisted as though her feelings had been hurt. "If they were retreating we would not be allowing them to be taking their new bedslaves, hmm. No, these Thracians are having trouble at home. Tribes are turning on tribes and... actually, you are not needing to know more. I have made my offer, you have refused. Now you will be paying the price for your stubbornness."

-

Adara had trouble sleeping that night, though the rest of her soldiers were exhausted. Many dozed off without the help of their slaves licking between their legs. Adara had a young Scythian captive with blonde hair in her lap, pretending it was the warmaiden as she forced the slave's head deeper. After Xarthyrsi returned to her camp without her terms met, she stationed hundreds of her troops on the bridge. They randomly mock charged and retreated, keeping the Spartan force on edge. The barbarians brought forth their captives, strictly bound and tightly gagged, and raped them repeatedly where every Spartan soldier could see and hear. Every Spartan was helpless to stop it, free or captive. The spectacle lasted the entirety of the third day.

The princess stared at the night sky, watching as the stars were swallowed up by the rolling clouds and listening as the river flowed by. Bolts of lightning flickered in the distance. A storm was approaching. Perhaps it would flood the river and wash away the barbarians or the bridge they wanted to cross. Adara could hope. But hope doesn't win battles. Soldiers win battles, and she was running out of soldiers quickly. She had made the arrangements earlier.

Lamia was a good fighter. She'd taken at least a dozen captives. She was sisterly to her countrywomen, cruel to her slaves and unforgiving in the heat of battle. Most of all, she was loyal to the command of her princess, which made it all the more painful to give her the task of a messenger. Adara had called on her as the sun was setting to hand over the phallic-tipped spear and help tie as many slaves to as many horses as could be controlled. Then the shield-bearer left under the cover of darkness. An army as large as the Xarthyrsi's travels slowly. Lamia would return to Penelope and the others before the barbarians arrive. Then it would be home to Sparta to present the Empress with the spear and the news of Her daughter's fate. Adara could only imagine how her royal mother would react to the news that Her only daughter had been lost.

She didn't know when she'd fallen asleep, but a raindrop roused her from slumber when it fell on her cheek. The storm was above them, finally bringing an end to the impossibly dry heat. She realised there was something missing. Where was the sound of the flowing river?

The princess sat up and looked around. The Spartans were asleep. The hogtied captives were also asleep. But they weren't alone. Dark shapes stirred in the shadows beyond the light of the campfires. "Spartans!" Adara called. "Defend!"

It all happened too quickly. One moment the Spartans were sleeping, the next they were drowsily fighting a losing battle with a shower of lassos and nets. Adara somehow managed to find her feet and her shield. She lashed out at the barbarians attacking her sisters, but for every one she pushed to the ground, another two took her place.

She was surrounded by a ring of barbarians. Her soldiers struggled in the Thracian lassos and Scythian nets. They cursed and punched and kicked to no avail. Adara felt a bitter taste in her mouth as she realised she was the only one still standing. There was a sudden flash of lightning overhead and suddenly the rain began pouring down.

A black stallion forced its way to the front of the ring. "You have fought well, Spartan," Xarthyrsi grinned. Adara hated the grinning types. "We shall be singing songs for the gift of victory you have given us. You said we would not be crossing the bridge, so we damned the river and crossed the mud instead. Harr! But the battle is ended, hmm. Your soldiers are all captured and enslaved."

"There is no shame in defeat," the Spartan princess sneered through gritted teeth.

The Scythian laughed. "Harr! But there is! Surrender now and I am promising, you will only be raped half as much as the rest of your army. End this Spartan foolishness. Throw down your weapons."

Adara listened to the rain falling. It felt cold on her bare skin and soaked through her jet black hair. Her mind filled with images of home - of young girls trussing up slaves merely because they could, and of the marble throne where she used to sit on her mother's lap.

Return victorious, or not at all.

She let slip the shield from her arm and unclipped the second whip from her skirt. "Let your bards sing that we Spartans defended ourselves to the last, that we fought beyond the call of duty to protect our homes and sisters." Her tears were invisible in the rain. "If you want my weapons, come and get them."

The princess didn't wait for the Scythian's reply. She flicked out her whip in an arc to the right and brought down a rider. To the left, and a Thracian ended up on their back. She danced and spun between lassos and nets and launched what she knew would be the last attack she'd ever make as a free Spartan soldier. The lash of her whip flew through the air towards Xarthyrsi's annoying grinning face.

The Scythian was too quick and snatched the lash out of the air, snarling like the stallion she rode. She furiously shouted commands in her barbarian tongue and Adara was instantly overcome. Lassos closed around her wrists, ankles and neck, and were tugged tight. Her freedom was stolen from her as her arms were spread apart and her legs were wrenched out from beneath her. The Spartan princess fell to the muddy ground below. Before she could regain her stance, her wrists were corded together as thick horsehair rope slithered across her chest and arms.

"Brave, Spartan princess, but ultimately futile," Xarthyrsi growled. "You should have surrendered." The warmaiden dismounted her black stallion and landed in a puddle, splashing Adara's face with specs of mud. She knelt down to look her captive in the eye. "Have you found the answer to the riddle? An unstoppable force is hitting an unmovable object. No two can be existing at once, and it is seeming you were not unmovable."

"Nor are you unstoppable. Your victory here will not las-mmph!"

"Silence now," Xarthyrsi purred as Adara was gagged with a leather thong. "Slaves must be saving their tongues for their mistresses, and tonight, you will be passed around our camp and forced to service every rider and her stallion, twice. And on the morrow, we are riding for Thessaly."

Continued in Chapter 31

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