A Fall of Ashes: Chapter 12, The Caravan
Ashes' fears of Mistress Gru causes her let men chain her to a wagon
Ice ran down Ashes’ back looking over the caravan Jakol led them to. Fourteen of those wagons were marked as owned by five traders, and their sour faced employees sat by them. Five more unmarked independent wagons, all old and ill cared for, sat on the end. Seeing those men, and this caravan was all men, made it far more difficult to keep her resolve to be better behaved until Lowford. Whoring in that caravan would be ten times worse than the inn she’d just left. Even worse, this caravan was as much a traveling fair as a means to get goods from one city to the next. Traveling with them would even be slower than their progress from Black Water.
But she had no real choice with Mistress Gru in town.
She shifted her gaze to the guards leaving to patrol outside the walls. Those guards may not have been put out there to catch her, but she had no doubt she was on their list of people to apprehend. The only impression she dared leave on anyone was that of a broken, well-trained slave.
Ashes took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She could do this.
At a camp on the edge of the grouped wagons, putting down his smaller pack, Jakol said, “Get set up here. After I check in with the caravan master, I’ll buy us some barley and beans, so have a fire going and the water already hot. Starting tomorrow, we eat what the caravan master’s cooks have for us, but today we feed ourselves.”
Her eyes checked the ground, then looked to Cass. People had long since scavenged every burnable around, even he could see that.
He stepped to the next camp over. “Want a bit of fun for some firewood?”
Damn him, she thought, though never the less gave the men a smile.
“Not really, but can give you a little for a copper bit,” the man said.
To her relief, Cass handed over the coin, and brought both wood and some hot coals over.
The water had yet to reach a boil when Jakol returned.
“Cass, while she cooks, get everything but your and my bed rolls packed up. Ashes, you share mine tonight. Everything into one pack. That gets put in the guard’s supply wagon as soon as it’s packed.”
“What about our cooking pot?” asked Cass before she could.
“We carry our bedrolls with us. I’ll carry our cook pot inside that, you the three bowls, though we will have little need of them.”
Ashes bit her lip to keep from protesting. Since she had no time for maintaining her magic, she was once again down to no defense spells and just one healing spell, and they were going to pack her spell book away, out of reach. City guards passing by convinced her it was the best option. Those books, to the right person, would point to there being a mage in the group.
It didn’t take long to combine everything into a single pack. While that large a pack might be too heavy to carry all day, Cass picked it up easily and followed Jakol to a nearby wagon.
Ashes added the beans and barley to the boiling water and moved it to the edge of the fire. It would be well after dark before that was ready. She sighed and moved to Cass’s bed roll. Both men would want her to use every skill she had pleasing them while that cooked. What’s more, those of the caravan would expect to see her doing just that. Why else bother having her in their camp?
. ***
The final three wagons joined the caravan in the hours just before dawn, including the whore wagon. Seeing that old broken-down wagon came close to breaking her resolve to be better behaved until the next city. The whore wagon had three bone-thin, worn down, sickly, scraggily headed, dirty young girls chained to it. They were Eighth-Girls, whores that men only paid one copper eighth to enjoy. She burned with fury. Putting her with them made her one, too.
A fat, toothless man, as broken down as his wagon, said, “You were right, she is better than what I have. Doesn’t change the way I do things. I’m not gonna argue with the customers about price. All girls are the same. My fee to you is four copper eights a day. I take them out of what she makes each day, and you pick up what’s left the next morning. She don’t make enough to cover that, then I take it out the next day.”
She fought hard to hold her tongue at those conditions and that ridiculously low price.
“Agreed,” said Jakol.
Damn it, he hadn’t tried to bargain at all.
“Then you hammer the pin in while I hold the collar in place. Girl, lay on the ground next to the wagon.”
Her breathing turned to short pants.
It took everything he had, but she made herself lay at his feet. Only by focusing on the idea that no one would ever look for the young mage running away from Mistress Gru chained up as an Eighth-Girl, let her do it.
The fat man sat on her chest and held the iron collar around her neck.
Despite her desperation to fight, she forced herself to stay still as he lined it up for the pin to be hammered in.
Cass, not Jakol, began hammering the soft copper pin in, locking it on her, and locking her to that wagon.
She shifted her eyes from the fat man to him.
That bastard was grinning at her.
It brought a tear to her eye. This was worse than being shackled in the inn. Far worse. She kept repeating in her mind that this was nowhere near as bad as what would happen if Mistress Gru found her. It didn’t make the situation better.
Cass finished hammering the pin in and stood, his grin even bigger. Damn him.
Jakol said. “We have to report now. We’ll end up out in front, so won’t see you again until well after we camp.”
He turned and walked away, and Cass got up and followed him, giving her a grin and a wink.
Feeling very alone and vulnerable, she stood up.
The fat wagon master folded down a long board which stuck out from the wagon next to where her chain was fastened to it. He patted the slightly warped board. “This is your whore cot. You unfold it the moment we stop, even if it is only a short rest break. You don’t worry about them paying. You just fuck any that wants you. I will make sure they pay before, after, or during. Whenever we stop, you are on this cot ready and eager to please anyone around, any way they want.”
She already hated him but answered, “Yes, master.”
“Now up you go. Let’s see how good you are.”
To her relief, he didn’t try to get on the board with her, but stood at its end. It was at the right height for him to have her from behind, then turn over and sit on its edge and have her that way. No doubt set to that height on purpose.
His breath was rancid. She struggled not to gag when it hit her in the face. Having whored in an inn, she knew most men bathed only when necessary. But this wagon master was one of the worst she had smelled.
But that wasn’t enough. He got her off the cot and on her knees. His foul-smelling, foul-tasting manhood must be diseased. Even though the spells she had on her should keep it out of her, Ashes resolved to use the last of her precious spells, renewing it when everyone slept. She would do so once more after getting to Lowford and being able to memorize them again.
But that could be all she did about it. Until she got to Lowford, she would be reduced to only her cantrips.
A customer was waiting to take his place when he finished, for which she was grateful. She suspected the waiting customer was all that saved her from more of his attentions.
A whistle blew.
“Cots up,” said the wagon master and climbed up onto the seat of the wagon.
The caravan master and city guard captain shouted at each other. They weren’t going anywhere until the wagons were searched.
Ashes heard her name, with her description, come up on the list of things they were to search the wagons for.
She was trapped, chained to a wagon, with no place to hide. There wasn’t another blond in the caravan. She realized too late she should have darkened both her hair and skin. Her bones turned to jelly, and she fell to the ground. She lay there trembling, tears now starting down her cheek as one grim faced guard approached the wagon.
The fat wagon master jumped down from his seat, walked past her to the back of the wagon, and opened the door.
Ignoring her and the other girls chained there, which were also now cowering on the ground in fear just as she was, that guard climbed in and searched.
He was only inside a minute before leaving. Neither he nor any other took any more notice of her than the other whores chained there.
It was true. Men really wouldn’t see a whore as anything other than a whore to be ignored when you were not using her. Even with a perfect description, and knowing she was hiding from them and no other possible candidate in sight, these men could not wrap their minds around the girls chained to a wagon being anything other than whores.
Screaming broke out two wagons back.
Accusations flew back and forth. The city guards might have missed her, but not the stolen goods that one wagon master had in his stuff.
The sun had passed zenith, and they were minus one wagon when they finally pulled out.
Ashes vowed not to hold being treated like a whore against Jakol, Cass or the wagon master who never connected the young blond chained to his wagon with the one the guards were looking for, either.
That vow became difficult to keep when Ashes learned the girls were not riding in the nearly empty wagon simply because their wagon master liked to have naked chained girls walking next to his wagon. No doubt had the wagon been lighter, and he had more girls, it would be them and not the mules pulling it. That bastard even took her sandals away after the guards left.
* * *
The sixth morning later, Ashes sat on the end of her board (she refused to call it a cot), as another guard took advantage of the fact that the wagon master was hungover and had her for free. He almost never bothered collecting copper bits on the girls in the morning, and all the guards knew it.
A commotion started at the end of the caravan, and that guard hurried that direction.
When Ashes looked that way with the rest of the girls, she saw five guardsmen in Liport tabards making their way through the wagons to the anger of their owners.
Her fear returned.
One pocketed an expensive spice bottle, and let out the breath she was holding. It was a shakedown, not really a search.
She spread her legs and concentrated on being part of the goods they were shaking down, and not who their bosses had sent them out to find.
One took her up on the offer. She made dam sure his mind was on how well she performed and not finding Mistress Gru’s runaway. His partner was just as eager to have her next.
The moment the last finished with her, the wagon master yelled, “Cots up,” and the wagons started forward.
Jakol showed up as her wagon moved out. Ashes hugged him with fake affection to give him a chance to say something if he needed to, like she had every time. Usually he said nothing, but not this time. He hugged her back, putting his lips by her ear. “You’ll have to stay chained until Lowford to keep up appearance and so word doesn’t get out, but that should be the last of Mistress Gru’s searches we endure.”
She snuggled into his neck. “The girl next to me is Peaches. You can probably buy her cheap. You get a room for all four of us in Lowford, and I will take a few days and cure her. This will give you a replacement for me.”
He eyed her with surprise, then looked at the skinny, sickly young girl chained on this side of the wagon with Ashes. His brow creased in thought. “I’ll think about that and talk it over with Cass.”
The girl would likely be dead in a few months without someone at least as strong as Ashes treating her. Possibly even weeks. She would need not only treatment but also better food than she was getting. Given that, she could be not only nice looking, but worth far more than the copper eighths she was earning now. Getting Jakol a slave girl that he could profit from, would go a ways toward paying him back for losing his farm and getting her out of Mistress Gru’s reach. Owning her would make Jakol’s life better. It would also not only give the girl a fighting chance to live, but to live a better life than serving someone like that wagon master. Watching him walk away, she let out a sigh. It would not balance out all the black karma Ashes had accumulated, but would be a step in that direction.