She and Djordj had often ridden their horses through the city, so she had a fair general knowledge of the various sections and streets. And she and her “guide” had not walked a half mile from the fortress when she realized that this route could not possibly lead to the area where the well-to-do craftsmen’s shops were situated. When she spoke of this to the man, however, he smiled and nodded agreement.
“The captain sez to take you, lady, but he don’ say how we gotta go. It’s a long walk, it is, but I got this friend, y’see, as has this ass cart an’ goes that wav ever mornin’. Ifin he ain’ lef yet, we can save our pore feet a bit.”
The tale sounded plausible, so Neeka nodded assent and continued to follow the scale-shirted guardsman. As they passed the mouth of a narrow alley between two stone warehouses, the guardsman stumbled and half-fell. Neeka bent to give him a hand up and, as she straightened, a thick sack was dropped over her head. Despite her struggles and her muffled cries, several pairs of strong, ungentle hands bound the mouth of the sack tightly about her, pinioning her arms firmly against her body. An unseen man lifted her clear off the ground, and another bound her at knees and at ankles with scratchy rope. A thrill of burning agony shot up her arm as the tight-fitting silver ring—given to her by Djordj, at the midwinter Sun-birth Feast—was jerked off her finger and she screamed.
But screams gained her nothing, nor did demands or entreaties. Rough hands lifted her, bore her up the alleyway, the stone walls scraping her. Then she was unceremoniously dropped into a fishy-smelling cart and, with the snap-crack of a whip and a shout and the shrill protest of a grease-starved axle, the conveyance began to move. Over the cobbled streets, the springless vehicle provided a swaying, bumping, jolting and thoroughly uncomfortable ride. Each time Neeka tried to sit up, a horny hand slammed her back down onto the slimy boards. The last time, her head struck the wood with enough force to fill it with flashing light before a total blackness descended.
Chapter XI
Djoy Skriffen had been miscast by nature. Only her genitali and her huge breasts imparted a hint of female appearance; otherwise her physique was masculine—broad shoulders and muscular arms ending in big square hands, narrow hips and once-flat buttocks. Her jaw was square and her chin prominent; prominent too was her nose, and when she allowed them to grow out, her eyebrows were bushy. Nonetheless, twenty years before, she had been a highly successful camp whore, following condottas and armies on the march and to the rear of siegelines, ready and willing and able to take on a dozen or more men in a night.
Then, during the great rout at the Field of Hats, as she leaned forward on the seat of the cart she had hurriedly stolen to lash the mules to a full gallop, a war dart near the end of its cast had penetrated her hipbone after tearing through the flesh of her right buttock. Due to its angle, she had been unable to get either hand in position to remove it and so had, perforce, ridden the jolting cart on away from the lost battle, screaming with agony.
Eventually, the cart lost a wheel and she was thrown from the seat, to roll down a steep bank. This stress caused the ill-tempered dart point to snap, leaving only the few millimeters of steel that were imbedded in her bone, while the shaft and the rest of the head were jerked out of her flesh. Fortunately, she was shortly found by a small condotta of Freefighters from the victorious forces of the Count of Keelzburk. The men knew Djoy of old, and seeing her grievously hurt, they halted, kindled a fire and doctored her on the spot, laying a red-hot spearblade to her lacerated, blood-spouting buttock.
Even after her burned wound was become only puckered, purplish scar tissue, Djoy found sitting on the seats of wagons or carts or sitting even the best-gaited mule pure torture, and such activities or even damp weather would cause her right hip to swell and to ache intolerably, so she knew that her days as a camp whore were numbered. She spent her last few months in her initial profession servicing the winter siege lines around beleaguered Balzburk and, when at last a general attack proved successful and the camps were almost deserted, she and a pack of carefully chosen noncombatant ruffians murdered the guards at the pavilion of the siege commander and made off with the army’s pay chest and everything else valuable-looking and portable.
In the course of the long flight from Balzburk in the western mountains, across the widths of both the Kingdom of Pitzburk and the Kingdom of Harzburk, to the port city of New Filburk, on the seacoast, almost all of the ruffians had met with “accidents” and a large part of the loot had been frittered away. Even so, after she had paid for the murders of the last two of her original companions, Djoy still had enough gold to establish and set herself up as madam of a fine bordello, wherein she prospered for a number of years.
But then came the night when, in a drunken rage, she stabbed one of her silent partners—several dozen times. He was not the first man or woman she had slain in New Filburk, but he was not just some nobody of a seaman or whore who could be dumped into a convenient cesspit or weighted and dropped into the harbor. She packed a small trunk with the contents of her strongbox, her jewel chest and her victim’s well-stuffed purse, a few items of clothing and a few personal possessions.
She bought passage on the first ship she found and, thus, came ashore in Esmithpolis, where she scouted about, greased the proper hands with gold and set herself up in another bordello. After twelve years of her experienced, ruthless operation, Djoy Skriffen was more than prosperous and had run to fat, being almost as broad as a huckster’s table, though there still were hard muscles, a harder heart and a cold, calculating mind lodged within the mounds of jiggling adipose tissue.
Neeka was not the first kidnapped girl she had bought, but most of her whores were in her house on a voluntary basis, originally at least, though they all soon found to their sorrow that getting in was much easier than was getting out—alive, at least. Djoy handled some of the inevitable discipline problems herself: most she left in the hands of her four resident goons, all former Freefighters and sadistic murderers, all with prices on their heads in the Middle Kingdoms. Recalcitrant “recruits” were given to the foursome for a day and night, sometimes for a weekend; few visible marks were ever left on their flesh, but subsequently a girl so treated would accept, would perform, any act a customer demanded, rather than chance being again turned over to Stoo, Neel, Djimi and Iktis.
On her way down to the lowest cellar to inspect the girl offered for sale by three city guardsmen, a servant reminded his mistress of the unfortunate incident of the previous night—a valued and regular customer had been bitten by a rat.
“Send a boy to the fortress,” she snapped. “Tell them to send me a hungry fencat—maybe two, since we have no idea how many rats we have.”
As Neeka’s consciousness slowly returned, she thought at first that she was back in that horrible, freezing cell in the fortress wall, for she had been stripped of every shred of her clothing and she lay on a narrow cot set against a stone wall. Then, as things became a bit clearer, she could see differences. This cell was wider and she was lying on a true bed, not in a trough of straw. Two walls were of stone, but the other two, including that in which the door was set, were fabricated of wide, age-darkened boards; the board walls reached to within a couple of feet of the timber ceiling, fourteen feet up, from which hung a large brass oil lamp. The cell was comfortable—cool, but not cold. Aside from the bunk, there was a covered slop bucket, a box of hay balls, a stone jug and a clay cup.
She heard voices from somewhere beyond the door, but could not understand what they were saying. The language sounded much like Confederation Mehrikan, but also differed in many ways. Her first attempt to sit up resulted in a sick dizziness. But her mouth felt dry as sand and she was just mustering herself for another effort at reaching the water jug when the door was flung open, then shut and bolted behind a guardsman.
She was taken quickly, brutally. Then, while her ravisher lay still atop her, he said, “Likely you don’t know me, bitch, but you will, oh, how you will. I’m Loo Fahlkbp and it wuz my own first cousin, Garee, was striped and sent off to fight in the friggin’ mountins ’cause of you. Damn barbarian run a spear right through his dang belly ’cause of you.