The Great Conquest · Part 2

The Great Conquest · Part 2 (2/4)
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chain that links the cuffs and she's hanging with her feet off the ground, no room to kick at any of them either. She doesn't understand most of what they're saying, but threats are hard to mistake.

They put the collar on her and the big orc walks her down to the square outside. A grid of sturdy posts supports a cloth canopy that shades a broad area in front of the auction house; many of them are already occupied by other girls even as the sun is just rising. The orc locks the chain between her wrist cuffs to an anchor at the top of one of the posts, leaving her standing in front of it with her hands over her head like all the others. The orc locks a heavy chain around her ankles and passes it behind the post as well, with enough play to it that she can stand up but no more. Only a few girls put up enough of a fight to be subjected to that measure.

As Treesha is brought outside, newly clean and shivering in the morning air, the bookkeepers come around to Twil. They check her brand number against her ledger entry and assign her a starting bid, writing that alongside her number on a bone plaque and hanging it from her collar. The sales will be handled by a silent auction that will run all day – unless there's more than one bid on a girl in the last fifteen minutes before sunset, in which case she'll be sold in the live auction that takes place at midnight each night. Until then, they're all on display here.

When the sun has risen fully, the market opens for business and the customers begin to trickle in. Most are orcs and hobgoblins, with a few ogres and goblins in the mix. Many are window shoppers only – Dael's doesn't allow "free samples" like some of the less prestigious brands, but for some the chance just to feel the girls up is enough to draw them in. Then there are the drow and grey dwarf agents, the same sort as out in Gatling. And a number of visitors are human – personal slaves accompanying their owners on a shopping trip, or those trusted enough to give their owners a report on the most desirable wares.

Most of these latter sorts are garbed in simple but scanty clothing that makes their status clear even without a closer look at collars, brands, tattoos or piercings. One of these takes a particular interest in Twil, a willowy blonde in a loincloth and mantle of fine white cloth and fitted with a golden collar. She walks around where the onetime knight is bound, appreciating her from various angles, before getting a more hands-on look. She feels the heft of Twil's breasts, bouncing them in her fingers a few times, and assesses the redhead's reaction to a thorough grope at her ass. Not put off by the growl of rage that provokes, she strokes Twil's hair a few times and even manages a look at her teeth without getting bitten. She writes Twil's number down and moves on.

The parade of spectators continues through the day, and Twil, nerves worn down, eventually does bite someone. The Dael's staff strap a ball of hard black rubber between her teeth, and bids on Twil slow after that. Still, there's enough interest that she'll be at the live auction later.

Treesha generates plenty of interest herself: her magical potential is noted on the plaque at her collar, and besides, one stroke of her big sensitive elf ears and her superior sulk dissolves into knee-knocking desperation. Understandable, perhaps, when that silver chastity cage has been locked on her for months, but pathetically adorable enough that her price is driven twice Twil's even before the live bidding begins.

When the sun hits the horizon, the floor closes and the Dael's clerks are occupied with a flurry of bookkeeping. The winner of each slave is determined, identified, and summoned to the counter, and payment is demanded and recorded, and then they wait in a small but well-appointed antechamber while the clerk fetches their property. Even with four such counters working in tandem, moving from the largest lots going to one buyer down to individual purchases, the process takes chaotic hours.

Meanwhile, other staff, armed with a list of numbers slated for the live auction, lead this hot merchandise one by one back into the auction house to be prettied up. Treesha's one of the first they take down from her post, though rather than removing the sturdy leather wrist cuffs, they re-link the chain behind her back. A sturdy hobgoblin guard hurries her into the stone-tiled bathroom. It was crowded this morning with a dozen slaves and half again as many staff. Now there's only six staff working assembly-line style and six standing guard or fetching product as needed.

Treesha begs the first worker to let her piss, not having been allowed since shortly after midday. He takes her into a closet with a slick wooden grating for a floor and an acrid scent hanging in the air. The orcs dump both greywater from the baths and blackwater from the chamber pots in here, to be flushed out to the river by the city's aqueducts. The spindly orc unlocks and removes the short silver rod from Treesha's urethra. She can barely hold her bladder long enough to keep from pissing on his hand, turning and aiming through one of the large holes in the grating.

The orc puts a hand on her shoulder and leans around to watch – if she were to store magic power in some object secreted on her person, she could theoretically build up enough to start slinging fire around… eventually. So she's always to be closely monitored while the grounding rod is out of place, which is also why staff couldn't find the time to take care of it earlier. The orc is impatient and his replacement of the rod is quick and rough.

Back in the main bathroom and hurrying to catch up, the spindly orc brushes out Treesha's hair, pale green and grown to shoulder length by now, and then dumps a bucketful of water on her. He goes to fill it again while the next orc in line lathers her skin and hair with soaps. The next scrubs her off anew and gives her hair a trim with a pair of shears, and the next applies an oil to her skin that has it shining in the torchlight. The last two paint her face and nails with makeup, adding a touch of rouge to her nipples as a finishing touch. "Rub that face off and you're in for a beating," is their send-off as a guard leads her downstairs to the backstage.

The house's patrons begin filtering into the house's central chamber when the doors open an hour in advance, slaves or retainers holding seats for their lieges, then the small time buyers. The riffraff is kept out with a modest entry fee, counted toward the cost of any slave bought throughout the day. Finally the truly wealthy trickle trickle in last-minute, and the hour of midnight arrives.

The auction chamber is built of hard mountain wood trimmed with heavy carpets of woven papermoss, grown in the caverns of the south. It spans two stories in height, the ceiling painted with geometric mosaics and hung with iron chandeliers suspended from heavy chains. There are several rows of comfortable chairs arranged at the front of the room; those who arrived later content themselves with the wooden pews behind, rising slightly with each row to afford each patron a view. The semi-circular stage rises comfortably to eye height for an orc sitting in one of the chairs on the floor. It's inclined more for the high-heel effect on the slaves displayed there than for visibility, being only large enough for a few people to stand on at once. It's ringed with hanging braziers, and behind it is a wide door to the backstage hung with white curtains.

Where the auction chamber is built to impress, the backstage is pure function, low lights, cheap materials, a few shelves of equipment, and enough space for the thirty or so girls going on auction. They're lined up with their backs to the wall, each having gotten the same treatment as Treesha, wrist cuffs locked to a long metal bar set into the wall. Some squat down to rest their legs, but the height of the bar doesn't really permit them to sit comfortably.

Twil was one of the last to be brought here, having waited on the emptying market floor for the staff to reach her number on their lists. It's not long before a loud gong marks midnight and the start of the auction, prefaced by the several-minute-long dance of two human girls in lingerie replete with kissing and heavy petting. Dael himself scores the performance with a rapid and rambling monologue thanking the audience for their patronage and touting the virtues of his wares.

Meanwhile, a pair of guards retrieve the first lot from her place on the wall and stand her before the curtain. When the proprietor's patter reaches a height, they push her through and the audience goes nuts.

Twil watches with dread as girl after girl is pulled to the hungry mouth and its white shroud, then pushed through, the frenzy of the audience only climbing. Treesha, one of the first to be sold, elicits a particularly rabid response. As the room in front of her empties, Twil finds herself shivering violently. But of course there's no escape, only that hideously heavy curtain. Some of the other girls try to run or fight at the last minute when the guards retrieve them. Others faint or piss on the floor. Most cry. No use. One exit.

Twil isn't crying by the time the pair of brawny orcs disconnect her wrist shackles from the wall. Each takes an arm and they frog-march her to stand behind the curtain. Even from here, the heavy curtain blocks her view of the stage, but she can hear Dael's patter as the count climbs and the patrons cheer, leer, and jeer their hearts out.

The guard on her left pinches her nipple and a surprised squeal escapes her painted mouth. "Makes them hard," the orc murmers in her ear as he rolls the other between his fingers, wiping rouge off on his sleeve. She tries to flinch away, but the other guard's hand is resting on her head and keeps her in place. He doesn't say a word as the one on her left slips his hand between her thighs and strokes her. She closes her eyes in shame and humiliation, tears finally welling up in her eyes. Worse, she feels herself become wet as the guard frictions against her – everyone will see immediately the evidence of her excitement. She takes a shuddering breath and sobs slightly but the guard takes no notice as he continues.

Finally the last girl before Twil is sold. One orc draws aside the curtain; the other places a hand between her shoulder blades and shoves her forward.

She stumbles onto the stage and, not having been prepared for it to be slanted forward as it is, nearly trips as the two dancers from the introduction catch her and slow her momentum. Now she's face to face with the crowd and she feels blood rush to her skin in a body-deep blush, knees almost buckling with the humiliation. And while she's distracted, the two dancers slip her cuffs onto a hook suspended on a wire, which is then drawn up by a hidden winch to pull her arms up behind her back in a strappado, only made more precarious by the slope.

Dael roars her starting bid over the noise of the crowd, and paddles go up as the auction proceeds apace. Although any of the buyers here who noticed Twil at the market know that she has a discipline problem, raging lust does a lot of work against that "caveat emptor" marked on every entrance to the city's trade quarter, and a couple attendees throw out tentative bids for her sight-unseen. Then a more serious bidder offers twenty percent higher. Twil doesn't understand the language very well but the lull in the bidding hangs over her like a reaper. She can't pick out the one who placed the bid.

Then one of the dancers prods her finger up Twil's asshole as the other slaps her hand hard against the girl's tit. The noise she emits is actually audible over the hoots of the crowd, and her stumble forward and subsequent wince as the strappado pulls at her arms is just adorable, but it's the ever-so-slight spray of piss that really has the crowd jumping.

Twil starts to sob in earnest as another bid is called from the back of the room. When a man on one of the padded chairs at the front of the room counters, the source of that twenty-percent-higher price earlier pulls the same move and the bidding stops. Now Twil gets a look at him through her tears. He's got a chair too, right in front of the pews, and in his lap sitting pretty as you please is the blonde with the gold collar who groped Twil an eternity earlier. One of a thousand who grabbed at her today, but the human woman stuck in her mind.

Where her clothes were scanty before, now she's dressed downright scandalously – her tight red dress has her perky breasts right out on display, and the way she's sitting over the man's leg exposes her panties, the center panel covered only by a fine crimson mesh. One ankle, visible when she reclines across the huge orc's lap, has a golden bangle around it that draws the eye to her ruby slippers.

Dael declares Twil sold as she locks eyes with the satisfied-looking blonde, and a guard pulls her off the hook and half-carries her to a small room on the second floor, furnished with a bed and little else. She tenses when she sees inside, the routine familiar from her winter of bordello work. But the hob just walks her in and sits her down on the bed, then pulls the door closed and stands in front of it, watching her.

Wishing she could be alone just this once, Twil sinks to the floor and huddles in the corner, glaring at the guard out of the corner of her eye. She wishes she could cast the last dregs of her dignity aside and just howl and sob, but the guard's dour eye on her is binding enough to keep her crying to silent shakes.

Eventually she has to use the chamber pot, and at least the hob does turn away briefly as she squats over it. He sets it outside the door when she's done and resumes his watch.

Some buyers pony up and arrive at the courtesy rooms immediately, but on the whole most sit through the whole auction. Still, having been sold so close to the end, Twil doesn't have long to wait before a knock comes on the door.

The guard exits and rather than the man who bought her it's the blonde with the golden collar who steps into the room. "Come," she says in Twil's own language, "stand up. No use cowering here all day, it's no place to be at all."

It's less her reassuring tone and more whatever energy she felt just before getting dragged offstage that draws Twil to rise to her feet. The blonde unlocks her shackles with the key the guard gave her and hands her a wet cloth. "Your accident earlier, clean up and we'll get you dressed, yes?"

Twil feels the blood rush to her face at the reminder and sponges off her thighs, curt and prim as she can manage, which isn't saying much. It's as prim as she can manage, which isn't saying much. It's practically the first time she's had the chance to actually lay hands on her own body since she was at the brothel, and she feels tears spring to her eyes again at being treated like a human… or, well, like a human would treat a human.

When she's done with the washcloth the blonde hands her a bundle of white fabric. It's a dress and panties in the same avant-fetish style as the other woman is wearing, uncovered breasts and mesh panties and all, just white where her outfit is red. Twil pulls it on blushingly. As she's buckling the slippers, which are held on with a strap behind the heel to leave the heel and arch bare and the forward half of the foot protected only by the thinnest of soles and a wrapping of silk over the toes, the blonde retrieves the pisspot from the hall.

"Have to go again before we leave?" she asks Twil, who blushes again at the reminder of her most shameful moment. She shakes her head and the blonde hikes up her dress, holds the pot in place, and pisses in it herself, only she doesn't remove her panties to do it. Despite the mesh panel, the garment gets quite sodden in the process. Only when she's finished does she put down the chamber pot, pull off her panties and give herself a once over with the washcloth.

"What's your name, sweet thing?" the blonde asks as she tugs her dress back into place and steps closer to the girl.

Twil, struck dumb by the baffling act, startles and speaks. "Twil Tuo, madam. I was… a knight."

"That's fine. I'm Sext," replies the blonde, which is an hour of monastic time and also playfully contains the word sex, and has nothing to do with text messages in this context. "I'm head of my master Lord Bloodcastle's bitches, of which you're now one. Open wide."

"What?" Twil starts to ask as Sext grabs the back of her head and sticks her red panties between the redhead's gaping lips. She forces them through her teeth and holds Twil's jaw closed as she struggles reflexively.

"Hold those in your mouth until we reach our master's carriage, or you'll spend your first night at the manor in some wretched pit, and that would sour the mood of your welcoming party," Sext hisses in her ear. Twil, shocked, almost chokes before getting control of her breathing. As Sext takes her by the hand and leads her downstairs, Twil feels dizzy and queasy at the shock as well as at the taste of the other woman's piss seeping down her throat. As they approach the red-and-gold painted coach with the Bloodcastle sigil across the side, the feeling reaches a crest, and a sobbing hiccup turns into a retch and she coughs the panties out, catching a breath and swallowing down vomit. Her knees knock, but she stands, pulling out of Sext's grip, and another lord's retainer puts a hand on her shoulder, holding her in place.

"That little move will cost you," Sext sighs as she takes Twil's bicep and marches her over to the carriage, pausing to collect her fallen panties. "And me, for allowing you to do it, which will cost you more."

She opens the door of the carriage and pushes Twil inside ahead of her, and Lord Bloodcastle has a golden collar for her, and a lesson for the two of them about losing him face in front of another noble, and a variety of wretched pits at his disposal where Twill will have plenty of time to consider his teachings.

~ 5 ~ 1 ~ Weeks later, the caged-in wagon carrying Princess Fivette and the few of her peers not picked over by the southerners rolls through the border town where Twil and Treesha spent the winter. Since last autumn it's gone from a quiet hamlet around a small military outpost to a bustling junction for merchants and armies alike. The convoy stops for a few days for resupply, and they park the wagons in the courtyard of the old base, right next to the military brothel.

There Oenone Able is still turning tricks for the pleasure of the soldiers – and the profit of the contractor, Blue Moon Lounges, that bought up the building and some of the slaves the military was renting, and added a new wing, when the soldiers kept coming and the demands of running the business grew. A bog-standard winsome farm girl didn't cost them much, so here she is after Twil and Treesha went to the capital.

Having worked here so long, she actually has limited privilege to walk the grounds between the buildings of the lounge and inn, as well as several outer areas of the military base, where she's tasked with running small errands when things aren't busy. She's not allowed any clothing but a loincloth, simple sandals, and a bulky leather-and-iron collar, and her legs are always bound with metal shackles. The Blue Moon brand on her back is hardly necessary for anyone to tell what she is. But cleaning, fetching water and foodstuffs, and doing other tasks in such a state is worth it just for the pleasure of being outside the brothel. After the miserable, stifling, stinking winter, she's a fresh air addict.

One of her tasks as she gets her fix today is to fill the big metal jugs of water the prisoners in the convoy drink from. The attendant guard shows her to the empty jugs, and one by one she takes them to the little aqueduct on base and submerges them. Each one is quite a heavy load on its own on the return trip.

"Psst, girl!" comes a whisper as she brings one of the jugs by Fivette's wagon. The attendant for all the half dozen wagons is elsewhere, likely giving water to the girls in another cart, and there are no other guards Oenone has noticed, so she steps closer. "Please, please, can you get me out of here somehow?"

Oenone shakes her head and, suddenly fearful, glances around. They're still alone. "From the middle of the city? How do you think I'm going to do that?"

"Look at you, you're walking around out of a cage, you can go where you want, so just help me – I won't get the luxury of walking around where I'm going, they'll send me to some hell to get my liver ripped out or whatever they do there…"

Oenone rolls her eyes. "It's no picnic, but they're not about to kill someone as pretty as you are."

"I'm the princess, your princess, they're going to make an example of me, I know it," Fivette sobs.

"You're the princess? Princess Fivette?"

"Just look at me, you've seen the posters…" The posters only went up after Oenone was taken away, after the war properly began, propagandistic depictions of the royal family. Though she hasn't seen them, the princess' conviction reminds Oenone of her dreams of meeting the princess and befriending her when she was a little kid, and that's enough of a propaganda hit itself to put her on Fivette's side. She can tell the girl is really scared.

Alas, under the closed causality flowing from the broken vessel of the Center of Everything, no heroics are possible, and the traditions of royalty are crushed beneath the wheel of progress. Which is to say that when she returns the next day with a daringly-pilfered set of keys and gets the princess unchained and out of the wagon along with the rest of its occupants, all the escapees are caught in a matter of minutes and identify Oenone as their savior.

The day after that, the wagons depart for the capital, Fivette still in tow but leaving Oenone in a considerably less desirable position. She's in the custody of the military now, having been confiscated from Blue Moon as a criminal and held overnight in the base's jail. Now, as the day dawns and the convoy disappears over the hills, she's walked out of the base and before the Justice building at the center of town, nude and shivering in warm, light rain of morning and escorted by ten soldiers. At the center of the Justice plaza is a wide pit, twenty feet deep: the Penance Floor, where public punishments are carried out. Usually military crimes are punished on military property, but the case of a slave trying to free the human princess, they're happy to make a citywide example of her.

The reeve of the Floor, a shirtless ogre with a leather mask, sees that Oenone is locked into a pillory to await her sentencing. It's a vertical board at the rim of the Floor and looking down onto it, so she can see every punishment that takes place before hers. The reeve carefully writes the crimes she committed across her back in black paint. With her neck and wrists so enclosed, passers-by have free rein to lay hands on her – and sometimes other parts, when the guards are distracted. The paint is soon smeared, but word of mouth carries.

One side of the square Floor, closest to the Justice building, is occupied by such pillories, and of the thirty or so most fill up within the hour. The other three sides are unobstructed except by a wooden railing, for passing masses and curious watchers to edify themselves. Half the city comes through this plaza on any given morning. The Floor and the walkways around it are covered with awnings of oiled canvas against the rain, but it drips through in lines and the humid air sends wafts of steam through the torchlight. A ceremonial fire burns at the center of the Floor, symbolizing justice through penance and supposed never to be extinguished.

At morning bell, eight o'clock, the reeve bellows for attention and the judge takes his seat in the corner. Only those whose guilt is already established are here today; the judge's only role is to hand down a sentence. The reeve, with the assistance of a horde of lesser goblins who carry out his instructions to the letter, is responsible for executing those sentences.

A murderer is first on the stand, a stocky orc who glowers at the crowd as the reeve pulls him from his pillory and down the narrow staircase to the stand. The sentence is simply death, and the reeve picks up a square-ended sword and strikes the orc's head from his shoulders where he stands. Blood spatters across the stand and the

The Great Conquest · Part 2 (2/4)
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