A Tale of Ties and Binds - Chapter 8

Chapter 8. A Mistress of Malice

Her Greek vocabulary was limited. She could not describe the weather, nor ask about one's health, nor recite the alphabet. The vocabulary of the warlady, Ceinlys Lachtnatorix, was limited to a select choice of words, and the only words she would likely ever need to know to command a Greek slave girl. She could say 'you' and 'I', 'here' and 'there', 'scrub' and 'sweep', 'kneel' and 'lick'. The only other word she knew did not apply to Penelope, Daphne, Adara or Zia, because it was meant for a Greek phallic slave. That word was 'rise'. For everything else, she would simply point and growl in the guttural language of the Celtic people.

The longhouse may have looked ugly from the outside, but the inside was lavish and toasting hot. The inside walls were lined with nets that were just as effective at catching fish as they were at capturing future slaves. Dense fur rugs covered the floor, and a large fire pit was placed at the centre of the structure which radiated heat like a slave girl after ten days of tickle torture. Ceinlys' bed was in the loft, which was where one slave would be hogtied each night at the foot of the bed and forced to service her mistress with her tongue. The warlady would growl and squeal, then fall into an exhausted slumber.

The day Penelope had arrived in the slave caravan and Ceinlys had eagerly agreed to take them, there was a slight argument. Serena was hoping to exchange the slaves for new stock captured by the Histri so that she may return to Thessaly with something to show for her journey. Ceinlys had merely snorted and jiggled her massive breasts in disdain. She did not have any slaves to trade, apparently. A lingering storm had stopped her and her tribe from raiding the coastal villages and she had been unable to pay Serena, so Serena decided to stay around until she received her payment.

To wait out their client and business partner, Serena and Guard spent their days doing a number of disruptive activities. The most popular was mudwrestling. It is a tradition that mudwrestling be done naked, in Greece, and Serena was only too happy to compete traditionally. Guard had her own traditions and played while wearing her helm, but only her helm. The loser of the match would be hogtied and taken to the champion's guest chambers, forced to service and honour the victor at night. They would gather a crowd of passing Histri mistresses and slaves as they tussled in the mud, and would often taunt their audience for challengers. Only a few natives ever took the offer at the chance to be serviced by the stunning blonde that was Serena, but she was never beaten, and it was always her chambers that were full of trophies come sunset.

Penelope and her fellow slaves were having mixed experiences with handling their new lives of slavery. Zia the Dacian, who could speak the barbarian tongue, was often given the task of sweeping the floors of the longhouse. This was always difficult for three reasons. First, Zia was quite short and did not have the strength or stamina to sweet for long until she became tired. This, secondly, was made worse by her fur bindings which made sweeping more difficult than if she'd been free. Thirdly, any kind of object that resembled a phallus inspired the warlady to remind her slaves of her dominance, and Zia found it incredibly hard to sweep when she was held down on all fours with her broom repeatedly thrust in and out of between her legs. She walked bow-legged most days, if she could walk at all.

Adara the Spartan was the most well-endowed of the slaves in Ceinlys' service, and larger of chest than almost all of the mistresses and freewomen in the Histri tribe, save Ceinlys herself. Had Adara been born a barbarian, she could have challenged the warlady for dominance. But she was just a common slave now, and she followed orders like a common soldier. For her mistress' pleasure, Adara was tasked with beating out the many fur rugs in the longhouse. This was not a routine that would inspire the warlady to take carnal advantage of the Spartan, but it was most amusing for her to watch as the formidable slave girl slammed the rugs against a rock, enjoying the way the slave's breasts bounced and jiggled with every swing. Ceinlys could often be heard laughing her guttural chuckle across the village. Nothing amused her quite as much as the sight of what her culture deemed to be authority forced into such a menial task.

As for Penelope and Daphne, Ceinlys had chosen them to be her personal handmaidens. At any time of day or night, no matter what they were doing, she could call upon either Penelope or Daphne to service their fur-clad mistress. Penelope had been a captain and a matriarch back in Thessaly with handmaidens of her own, so she found this duty quite demeaning. She knew that if she complained, Ceinlys would gag her and most certainly show her who was dominant all night long. Penelope was unsure if Serena had told the warlady of her past, that she was a matriarch before she became a slave. If Ceinlys knew, she didn't care. Penelope supposed it didn't matter all that much any more. A slave is what a slave is, and a matriarch she is not.

Even Daphne had stopped referring to Penelope by title or rank, and simply called her by name now. Her former matriarch had neither ship nor household to her name, but Daphne's loyalty remained nonetheless, even if that loyalty was reserved for a fellow slave.

As handmaidens, it was Daphne and Penelope's duty to bathe their mistress in warm water. On the first night with the Histri, Penelope was ordered to scrub her mistress' feet and forced into using only her tongue to clean the gaps between the toes. Penelope began to wish Ceinlys stayed inside the longhouse more often just to keep her feet less muddy and made a mental note to resort to subtle flirting to keep her mistress preoccupied between the furs. It didn't work all the time. Sometimes Ceinlys would deliberately muddy her feet just for the sick pleasure of having a slave girl lick them clean. The gaps between the third and second toes were the most difficult, Penelope discovered. She had to work her tongue extra hard to get into there. The big toe was easy, all by itself. The two smallest toes had less to clean. But the other toes were tightly placed together and Ceinlys never made it easy for her slaves to get between them. If one asked her to flex her toes, she'd simply shove her foot into the slave's mouth, such was the warlady's lack of generosity. But at least the constant treatment of mud made her skin delicately soft

Daphne was well-suited to her job - not because she enjoyed it, but because Ceinlys enjoyed how she did it. Bath time was when Daphne could unleash all her frustration on the warlady with a stiff brush against her back with fiery aggression. Ceinlys was content to sit there in her tub of warm water and take it. She seemed to enjoy it. She cooed like a pigeon, Penelope noticed.
One torch-lit night while three of the four slaves were lying on the floor of the longhouse, wrapped and bound in their fur rugs (and the fourth was hogtied in Ceinlys' loft), there was nought much else to do so Daphne decided to criticise Adara for having the easiest job. "Does she ever even touch you? Does she never fondle or grope you? Ever shove anything inside you? You've seen what she does to Zia with the broomstick. You can hear what she's doing to Zia right now. And what do you do about any of it? Nothing. You do nothing but take orders from her. You could snap out of those fur bindings anytime you like, I bet. If I were your size, I'd escape first chance I could. And yet here you lie, an obedient slave, listening as your friend has her head forced between some filthy barbarian's legs."

Adara, who never seemed to struggle as she was wrapped and bound in her furs, lay counting the wooden beams in the ceiling as she did most every night. "Zia was born and raised in Dacia, and is surely used to the ways of barbarians. I do not believe she is worried about servicing our mistress."

"Our mistress?" asked the red-headed nymph. "She's no mistress of mine - she's just some barbarian wench with big udders. That doesn't give her a right to anything where I'm from." She squirmed in her wrappings like a pink and red butterfly trying to emerge from a cocoon that was just a little too tight.

"It is strange, Adara," began Penelope, "that a Spartan is so willing to roll over and take this kind of treatment. I've always wondered why you don't fight back. You were a soldier, no? How did you come to be a slave?"

Adara turned her head, midnight hair sprawling across the fur-lined ground. "I was beaten in a dual," she replied laconically.

Penelope and Daphne lay staring in silence, broken only by the guttural wails of Ceinlys in the loft and the muffled warbles of Zia between her legs. "You? Were beaten?" asked Daphne in disbelief.

"Go on," Penelope beckoned.

"I was part of a small unit of fresh Spartan soldiers who were ordered to test our mettle against some Helots. They were working in their fields when we fell on them. They carried hoes and shovels; we carried nets and whips. I took four of them captive - the most in our unit. We found that the Helots were illegally in possession of a phallic slave when slaves have no right to own other slaves. I claimed him for myself because I found him first. A companion of mine claimed that she'd found him before I did, so she challenged me to a dual - winner takes all." Adara's expression was perfectly calm as she recalled what happened next. "My opponent was quicker of wrist and snagged my ankles with her whip. I was shamed to be taken captive alongside the Helot girls and the phallic slave and was ostracised from the unit. But my new mistress had no need of me, or perhaps she feared the vengeance she suspected I would bestow on her. She traded me to a well-known Thessalian mistress called Titania, and that is how we came to meet."

"And you never fought back?" asked Daphne, still wriggling.

"I follow orders," Adara said plainly. "I am a soldier."

"You were a soldier," Daphne corrected. "Now you're just a slave like us."

It's not often that a Spartan will pause during a conversation to think, scrunching up her brow and staring off into the distance, but that's exactly what happened. Spartans are soldiers through and through, and it is a rare thing that they will ever question an order. "You're correct. I am just a slave now. And how did you become slaves?"

"We were captured by the Celt... Titania, just like you. She blindsided us and framed Penelope as a traitor."

"Why?"

"Because she needed Penelope out of the way? I don't know why," said Daphne.

Adara looked to Penelope, oddly inquisitive. "Were you important in Thessaly?"

She considered lying. People find it harder to betray you if they don't know who your are, the thought. But Spartans are known for being brutally honest so Penelope didn't see a risk. "I was a matriarch, once," she said. "I had a ship, a crew, a beautiful estate overlooking the sea, handmaidens to tend to my needs, labourers to work the olive fields, a phallic slave to ride, and more. I had everything I'd ever wanted. And then Titania took that all away from me, as did my younger sister." It all seemed a distant memory as if it were a lifetime ago. In a way, it was.

"You had many things to lose, Penelope," said Adara with uncharacteristic concern. "A Spartan has only her whip and her net. If she loses them, she fights with her hands. She fights in a unit with a commander, sleeps where and when she is told, captures who she is told, and charges into any battle against whatever numbers if she is told. I have not lived your life. I have never owned anything but my clothes and my weapons, and even then I would give them up if I were ordered to. I have never lived in my own home, never commanded a household, and never even been on a ship. I never had the freedom you had. Perhaps this is why I do not fear slavery. They could not take from me what was never mine."

"You've never been on a ship?" asked Daphne, incredulously. Adara replied that Spartans fought on land in hand-to-hand combat. Ships were not the Spartan way of dealing with conflicts.

"Perhaps we can all go on a voyage one day," Penelope said hopefully, trying to bring a little optimism to an elsewise pitiful situation and hoping Ceinlys hadn't somehow heard her.

"We'd need a ship," added Daphne. She stopped struggling. It was the first time since the dungeon back in Larissa that Penelope had seen the redhead cease her fidgeting. "Those dragon-headed longboats along the shoreline... do you think they handle like a bireme?"

Continued in Chapter 9