The Great Conquest · Part 3 (3/4)
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goblins dispose of his body. The head they tie by the hair to a chain hanging over the floor, the blood dripping off it and swirling through the rainwater in the corner of the Floor, a grisly piece of scenery to draw in spectators and set the tone for the day.
He's the only capital offender today. About two thirds of those who take the stand are orcs or hobs guilty of violent assault against a citizen, armed robbery or banditry, or repeat offenses of thievery. Assault is punished by an approximation of the same violence committed by the perpetrator. The goblins strap them to the slanted metal grating behind the stand and the reeve sets to breaking bones or cutting skin as appropriate, binding the wounds immediately and pausing anytime the subject briefly loses consciousness. When he's taken his pound of flesh, he takes them back to the pillory to stand the remainder of the day.
Property offenses see the judge getting more creative. They aren't cutting off hands here, but thieves do receive a lashing, five to twenty strokes of a nasty whip from a very strong ogre before being returned to their pillory perch. Robbers and bandits get a more drawn out punishment – the three here today are each bound by wrist and ankle to stretching racks, which the goblins draw gradually tighter for an hour or so (though not actually to the point of dislocation) before the reeve comes around to beat them with a light club. They aren't returned to the pillory, remaining on the racks until nightfall.
The remainder of the offenders are human slaves, confiscated permanently or temporarily from their owners for the sake of setting a public example. Plenty of those passing through the plaza on business are slaves themselves, after all.
A half dozen of the women are convicted of assault, usually punished by one's owner, but Justice handles cases of particularly grievous harm or of the victim being a third party not satisfied with the punishment the owner doles out. Like the orcish offenders they're strapped to the metal grating – upside down, in their case, to ease access to their feet – and the reeve duplicates the violence they inflicted, which mostly isn't so terrible as that which can land a free man on the Floor. Then each is caned quite mercilessly across the feet, to teach respect, and receives a small brand on the bottom of one heel. Standing in the pillory the rest of the day after that treatment is slow torture in itself.
The brand takes the shape of a simple circled "X." A first serious offense by a slave is so recorded on her flesh to remind the girl of her place and to mark her out as a troublemaker to any potential buyers. A second offense earns a mark on the other heel, and if a slave with two branded heels should cause trouble… executions are rare, but she'll probably wish they weren't.
The rain hasn't let up by noon bell, so the crowds through the morning were sporadic, but it's lunchtime and the plaza is at its busiest when the judge arrives at the last five offenders: slaves who have incited escape attempts involving the property of at least one other owner. "Incitement" can be vague in definition, but it's a serious crime. The first of these to be dragged from her pillory is Oenone.
She's been castigating herself all day for her stupidity in going along with Fivette's demands, but she can't take it back. She's been pinched and groped all day by those incredulous and amused at the rumors of her offense, not to mention the dozens of dicks that have been surreptitiously rubbed against her legs and belly. Two men even started fucking her for a few moments before the guards chased them away.
When the reeve retrieves Oenone she hangs limp and uncooperative in his grip, dragging her feet on the staircase, but there's no way she can resist against someone of his size and strength. Finally she stands on the block of stone before the judge. Her offense having been against the military, it's actually a military court that decided her punishment, but the judge has a report in front of him and reads it off.
"Girl One… excuse me, Girl Wennin, you stand guilty of eighteen counts of attempted theft of military property. For this offense, you are sentenced to eighteen days on the Penance Floor. On this first day of your sentence the punishment is a hundred strokes across the belly and breasts, periodic ducking, and branding of the heels."
Oenone begins to sob fearfully, but the judge continues. "One of those you attempted to set free being the princess of your former kingdom, you are also found guilty of treason against the Nation to which you now owe your allegiance. For this most grave of crimes, after you serve your sentence here you will be pilloried for a day and a night in each town along the road to Alabaster Keep, where you will be cast into perdition. May your penance reshape you into a more perfect servant."
The reeve deftly lashes the weeping and terrified Oenone to a heavy beam of wood with thick ropes of soft rope, which he winds around her with practiced ease. The ogre prides himself on leaving only what damage on his clients he has been instructed to leave, even when they flail and lash out as this girl does. In no time flat she's got her ankles bound to her thighs and both bound to the wooden beam stuck horizontally behind them. He straps her wrists into leather sleeves that bind her hands in fists and protect her from the bite of an enormous pair of iron shackles. They're well-fitted and well-filed at the edges but very, very heavy and with only a couple links of chain between them.
Next he gathers her thick blonde hair and ties it into a rough braid incorporating one of the circular anchors, a goblin winding a leather thong around the ends to keep it from unraveling as the reeve sticks a blunt hook of polished steel up her asshole. He attaches a cord to the outer end sitting at her tailbone, and then passes it through the gromet in her hair, then through a wide hole drilled through the center of the big wooden beam. He secures a piece of leather between her teeth with a tight loop of cord, for her to bite down on, and then picks up the beam by the heavy ropes tied at the ends.
Oenone is lifted up along with it, and the reeve hangs her upside down over a giant wooden barrel of rainwater. Her hands, dangling over her head, are submerged, which eases the burden of the heavy cuffs a little, and her head is therefore only the length of a forearm away from the surface. The water is cold despite the heat of the summer day, a thin cloud of steam wafting off, and swirls with dirt, grime, and oil washed off the taut canvases overhead. The reeve attaches the cord linked to her hair to a long tight spring suspended above, putting no tension on it for the moment.
He brandishes a cane and she throws up her hands to ward him off. He shrugs and nods, and a goblin throws a lever to release a coiled winch, and with no more warning than that Oenone plunges into the huge barrel, her descent only stopping when the beam splashes into the water and she's fully submerged. She writhes in sudden pain as the spring above pulls her hair and the anal hook sinks deeper in. Arching back to relieve the pressure on her hair eases the pressure, but it's not an easy position to keep up. Then that pain is forgotten when the brand, pulled from the Floor's central brazier moments ago, is pressed firmly to her unprotected and immobilized left heel. She tries to throw up and gags on water.
She's pulled quickly out of the water after only a few moments and, the tension relieved on the hair rope, slumps down and begins to cough out water. The reeve smacks his long thick cane of supple wood casually across her midsection, the first of a hundred strokes. He does it a few more times as she coughs and convulses, then aims a slap across the underside of her breasts. Gasping, she brings up her arms to block the assault. He politely gives her a few moments to recover.
"Before the hundredth stroke I'll brand your other heel, girl," he murmurs to her. Then without so much as a signal from him she's dropped back into the barrel.
She's at least able to hold her breath as she cranes her head back, when she's not surprised by a branding iron. When they pull her out again and she shields herself from the cane with her arms before the reeve even lands a blow, he drops her back in. This time long seconds pass, Oenone trying to reach at her bonds with her useless hands, before they begin to pull her out again. It's much slower this time and by the time her head crests water she's aspirated some again.
The reeve returns to methodically caning her belly from pubes upward, with an occasional shot to her pendulous breasts prompting a half-hearted swipe upward of her hands. A few times, she gets her breathing halfway under control and blocks again, getting a short respite from the blows and another quick dunk. But halfway through the hundred she tries to block a blow and finds she doesn't have the core strength to lift the heavy cuffs out of the water, abdomen quivering with effort.
Now more blows fall across marks from previous ones than not. The reeve counts every tenth stroke, and it's a couple long minutes before, panting with the effort, Oenone raises her hands before number seventy-one can land.
Oenone is very aware of the second branding that awaits her at the end, all that's shooting through her head as the reeve allows her several seconds grace before nodding his head and having her dropped into the water. The act of craning backward is difficult now too, and she's forced to leave more tension on the rope, working the anal hook tighter into her.
She knows the ogre wants her to fear the brand as long as possible, so she's not surprised it's to come so close to the end. But, she thinks as the winch is wound and she rises out of the barrel again, he'll want it to be a surprise too. So it will come soon, she thinks desperately.
She braces herself as she wards off the eighty-first stroke for a moment and loses her nerve, dropping her hands for another few strokes. By now the cane is breaking skin, and thin ribbons of blood spill into the water below. On number eighty-eight she finds the strength to block again, and prepares for the brand as she falls into the drink.
The brand doesn't come. They pull her out of the barrel and the ninetieth stroke passes her by. She blocks the ninety-third and get dunked again, and the brand doesn't come. She tries to block the ninety-fourth and ninety-fifth, managing to raise her hands against the ninety-sixth, not sure if she's trying to get the branding over with as soon as possible or hold it off. Fueled by desperation, she blocks the ninety-eighth stroke twice in a row and is dropped back in to be pulled out horribly slowly. She weakly coughs up water at the ninety-ninth stroke and, despite her limp arms, is dropped into the water again. The brand is pressed against her heel and she screams and tries to throw up some more as they pull her back out and the reeve's cane slaps wetly and perfectly horizontally across both nipples, earning a final shake and a ragged sob.
An audience ringing the Floor, having stopped to watch the spectacle, is ravenous. Perhaps the soldiers on leave or slacking on their duty recognize her from the Blue Moon. Possibly they'll go there after this and fuck some luckier whore than Oenone.
She's left hanging there as the reeve takes a single, curt bow and leaves to fetch the next girl from the pillories. Oenone blacks out a few times, but now and then, seconds or minutes apart at random, the goblins drop her into the barrel and pull her back up at their leisure. The reeve keeps an eye on them but their cruelty is generally a capable sort, and she's at little risk of injury by his judgement. It will keep her attentive and contemplative, he believes.
The second attempted slave-thief is sentenced to ride a wooden horse an hour for each she attempted to set free; with eight offenses and a rest period between each hour she'll be down here the next two afternoons as well. The third, guilty of freeing a much more valuable slave before the two were caught in the act, is strapped down on a table and forced to drink great quantities of milk and honey, which she throws up and shits out at a staggering rate. They force a tube into her throat and do it again, then lock her in a tiny cage for the remainder of the day to be harassed by flies and ants. The fourth has her hair shorn off and is forced to cum again and again by the reeve's expert hands and instruments, long past when she begs for it to stop, and the fifth, the lightest offender, receives only the same heel brand as they all have and is returned to the pillory for the rest of the day.
Over the course of two and a half weeks Oenone will be subject to all the punishments she's seen today more than once, and to a few she hasn't. Meanwhile the wagon bearing Fivette to the capital advances faster than the forced march of Twil and Treesha along the same road did, and on the day a wrecked Oenone is shipped off on her long journey to the Alabaster Keep, the princess is delivered to the capital of the orc nation.
~ 5 ~ 7 ~ Scrimshaw in the summer is a stinking mud pit, the seasonal rains always threatening to overwhelm its overtaxed sewers. The Dael's auction house in previous years, sitting on the higher ground of the trade quarter, has been free of such issues in previous years. Now, though, the rapidly swelling population of the capital has the waste-filled aqueducts lapping at Dael's basements and threatening to spill through the wooden grate of the room where Treesha was allowed to piss that one time.
The most exclusive flesh market in the city doesn't contend with such issues. It's on the same plateau where the Senate is situated, rings of mansions and parks around it, and where the ground begins to fall away sits the Pleasuredome.
The opensided wagons and their army escort proceed through the gates and up the broad thoroughfare to the Pleasuredome in a victory parade. Several senators and their retinues, those clamoring for further expansion, join the march extolling the spoils of war.
One of Senator Bloodfeast's aides goes so far as to step into the wagon in the lead, the senator waving off the soldiers. The aide stands Fivette up and holds her to the wagon's bars, an arm around her throat from behind. The crowd lining the streets clap and holler as the princess ascends to the Pleasuredome, symbolizing her kingdom's ultimate defeat.
Among the revelers is one whose good cheer is only a facade for grim determination and gut-churning anxiety. No one takes much note of Severa Armstrong, a halfling draped in a traveling cloak, her grinning face belied only by eyes like prey, darting back and forth in a search for danger. But that's not unusual in a halfling – the orcish disdain for lesser goblins (in theory the name refers to their diminutive size, but the connotations are generally felt to apply) more than extends to their children with hobgoblins.
Severa, however, is more concerned with her mission than with the possibility of street harassment from the crowing horde. Grin plastered on her face, she climbs the hill alongside the parade, and watches as the soldiers deliver their spoils of war into the gilded halls of the Pleasuredome.
Princess Fivette weeps prettily and hurts verbal barbs at the orc eunuchs that collect her from the lead wagon in the plain but well-maintained receiving courtyard behind the dome proper. They bring her to a washroom and spare no effort in beautifying her. That evening, the first of seven, Fivette is displayed for sale along with two dozen of her kingdom's most beautiful noblewomen.
There's a simplicity of stringing a girl up on a post, but the director of the Pleasuredome has notions of grandeur. The dome's sparkling interior, lush with hanging plants and carved sandstone and overlooking the trade district on one side, lends itself to a display of conquest that would, excuse the Earth-icism, have any Roman emperor creaming himself hands-free.
The largest of the Pleasuredome's fifteen cages is given over to the director's fit of vision. It's a circular stage six yards across and covered by a shell of silvery wires woven into an ornate birdcage shape, not really sturdy enough to keep someone in against their will. It's set on a huge plinth rising from a shallow pool of crystal-clear water and glass beads. The arrangement leaves the cage's floor a foot or two below the floor of the surrounding lounge, separated by a moat only a foot across and three deep – but security would be on anyone who reached over the low railing of worked iron to touch those silver wires in a heartbeat.
Tonight the cage's floorboards are draped in a plush carpet and set with furniture in the style of the human kingdom. Fivette and several of tonight's twenty-four beauties are arranged in a diorama, a scene from an imagined salon in which the plump Fivette reclines on a longchair as the noblewomen lean forward in their armchairs and chat amongst each other.
Their costumes are fitted with the help of measurements sent ahead of their caravan by fast courier days ago, arranged in advance by the director. They're a skimpy parody of styles that were in fashion among human nobility twenty years ago, but quite expertly made.
The remainder of tonight's noble merchandise is in other cages, posed in fragments of the same scene scattered around the edges of the lounge interspersed with planters of lush greenery and water features. Lady Adelia Corvair ru Grace hovers over a plate of pastries offered to her by Corinne Raingold, daughter of the merchant-lord Harmony, never quite picking out one of the bite-size confections, which have been rendered inedible in order to keep them looking fresh through the six-hour-long diorama. The duchess Quinona Roanik ru Pierce pins the lady Ygli u Albi to a longchair, the two kissing gently.
Their compliance in the spectacle is assured by means purchased by special order from the caverns of the drow, in the south. Twenty-five magical sets of a collar, wrist and ankle cuffs, and a chastity belt that finally replaced those the noblewomen were fitted with back in their own capital. The restraints are cast finely in copper, and are capable of holding fast in space. The chastity belt, obscured by their clothing and padded with thick wormleather, is additionally capable of causing quite a bit of pain to the wearer through the copper-and-lapis anal insert, administering an electric shock or even allowing remote insertion of fluids – a big cold enema is just the thing for a flagging subject. The similar urethral insert is convenient as well.
Of course the Pleasuredome's director procured the evil restraints herself, and she's the one to operate them from her seat by the largest cage. The girls on display are occasionally allowed to shift position, but if it's not in line with the director's vision, she administers a shock and the girl returns to a safe posture. Lady Corvair takes up a pastry now and then, holding it without raising it to her mouth and then discreetly replacing it on the tray after a while. The duchess Roanik engages in some light tribadism with Lady Ygli, but that's as far as it goes. Fivette shifts position frequently, straight black hair falling heavy across her shoulders, but never stands up.
This display is the backdrop to the night's eating, drinking, and fucking for many of the nation's senators and men of business. From the evening bell past midnight the revelry carries on around the frozen and often-weeping former nobles.
At two in the morning the display is carefully deconstructed, the girls led downstairs to the auction floor and sold off. Fivette, they take to the director's apartment.
Dozen El is an ogre and a powerful mage. She's taller than Gol Ga is and similarly lanky, but not so muscular as the warrior-general. She has the same almost-transparent skin and white hair as most all ogres do. Not such a concern when she rarely ventures out of the Pleasuredome.
Director El wears a slick and well-tailored suit, long hair in two neat braids, when she's on the lounge floor or overseeing the auction. Now, in the apartment behind her offices as she prepares for bed, she has her hair in a huge frizzy ponytail and her only clothing is a silk nightdress. She nods to the guards bringing her Fivette, and the two orcs help her fit the former princess with a straitjacket and gag, locking her in a padded box in one corner of the director's bedchamber.
Fivette remains locked away until noon, when the director pulls her out of the box and takes it upon herself personally to clean and dress her tenderest of prey. She dresses the girl in the same outfit she wore last night and brings her to a private room, no bed, just the longchair she's already spent so much time with. Patrons who attended the Pleasuredome are invited to meet her for five minutes apiece, a member of security standing discreetly in one corner to be sure they don't try to interfere with Fivette's chastity belt – and, she supposes, to keep her from trying to kill herself. They're quite careful about that.
Fivette, having fielded more than her fair share of cum spattered across her face, chest, and hair, is then cleaned up again in time for the night's diorama. Another twenty-four of her traveling companions join her in a boudoir scene, ladies in waiting helping her dress, and she spends the next day in a corset, slip, and stockings. The next day the scene is one of communal bathing, noble girls soaping each suggestively, large basins of water placed on stages for some of the stock to sit in. The fourth night the scenes take a turn and a few orcs join the girls on stage, unmoving in positions of seizing them by the hair or arm, furniture now broken.
On the fifth night they're bound with more restraints than just the magically powered ones, and many of the girls are subjected to painful slaps or stress positions in an interrogation scene. On the sixth night, one by one the slaves receive the tiny but prestigious Pleasuredome brand on their shoulder blades right on stage, with Fivette the last to be held to the leather-topped bench.
On the seventh night Fivette's is the only auction scheduled. She stands in one of the smaller cages, nude but for her chastity belt, feet apart and arms overhead, allowing a closer look at her than in the cage at the lounge's center. Of course, all the potential buyers have already had enough time alone with her to get a plenty good look already.
The midnight bell comes and goes as a pre-auction is held, every interested party making a blind bid. At two o'clock, all but the thirty who wrote down the highest figures are to leave the room and the auction will be held among those who remain.
It's past one thirty and most of the patrons are eyeing the door when an explosive bang sounds and Severa Armstrong is suddenly on top of a table. Having dropped from a vent in the ceiling, her middle-grey skin is visible only through the rectangular eye slot of a magically armored skintight black suit. She holds a pair of crossbows, enchanted to the hilt and aimed at two of the nation's most prominent senators. In moments, ten of her compatriots, orcs and hobs and halflings armed to the teeth, pour in through the doors from the kitchen.
They start screaming demands and waving their crossbows and spears here and there, nobody moves, on the floor, and such. Severa, the leader of the cell, reads off a prepared statement before, one at a time, the agitators allow many of the room's occupants to leave.
"We now buy and sell the flesh of animals out of season with the earth raised never having known the freedom of the wild, just as the human markets have swelled… we must return to our roots as peoples of the hunt."
The remaining hostages, ironically, include all those who would have participated in the auction tonight. About fifty of the most prominent political and business leaders of the nation are sweating through their loungewear where they sit on the floor.
Severa pries open the cage of Fivette and points a crossbow at the princess as she tries to free her hands. Suddenly there's a loud crack of bone and the ten militants who invaded the room drop dead. An arm reaches around Severa to grab her throat and the girl convulses, dropping the crossbows.
"My collar, gentlemen," says Joy of Regret, who managed to discreetly touch each of the armored men and wind an invisible cord around their necks, snapping them all in a single moment. She's a blue imp from beyond the Alabaster Keep, come to the capital just for the princess' auction, a represen
