A Fall of Ashes: Chapter 7, Captured
Ashes awake after drinking drugged wine.
Ashes’ arms would not move. Snapping her eyes open, she struggled to sit up but couldn’t. Terror sped her pulse; this wasn’t the room she had gone to sleep in.
A low chuckle came from her left, then a voice said, “Awake, I see.”
Ashes shifted her eyes.
A seated fat man looking down on her was speaking. She could see at least two other men sitting with him.
She tried to speak, but something filled her mouth.
Damn it! They’d drugged her, then tied and gagged her.
Was she to spend her whole life with men trying to make her into a whore? Some of her terror faded when she found rope, not leather or iron, bound her wrist. The cantrip for getting out of rope she’d come up with after her Stallion trip would work here. She could even cast that one gagged. A small hope, but still hope.
They’d left her to wake on her own. That puzzled her. According to all she’d heard, men wake naked tied girls by violating them. Other than stripping her, they hadn’t touched her, yet.
Ashes sniffed. The smell here was wrong.
So were the sounds.
Not only, not in the same room, this wasn’t the Ram’s Pen. Why move her?
“Let’s give her a going away party,” said another.
“The Night Witch won’t like it if we damage her. She would make us eat our own guts.”
Ashes’ heart raced. A deafening thud in her ears was all she could hear for a moment. They were selling her to a witch!
Her mistress forced her to read a Dark Path book on how to effectively use a mage slave to achieve specific things after she got back from her first healing trip. It drove home the point of the risk of being enslaved again.
That book had sickened her and was the beginning of more than a dozen books her mistress owned on the subject. She described how that many Dark Path mages take on apprentices with the sole purpose of doing exactly what was in those books.
Chills ran down her bare back. Only a mage planning such would pay to have lesser mages taken. It was a fate far worse than being a tavern whore. Had Corin known her value to them, she would not have gotten free of him.
The man who wanted to give her a party crossed the floor and squatted down next to her, then placed his hand on her thigh. “We won’t damage her.”
She had no choice; she put all her effort into getting these three men focused on what they might take from her. Squirming as much as the ropes allowed, appeared to be in mild protest to being touched by him, but by her design, the hand on her thigh ended up on her womanhood.
He took the bait and started stroking her.
Ashes moaned, stopped struggling, and spread her legs for him as much as her bound ankles allowed.
Just like last time, she was helpless; she was wet.
“See, she isn’t going to make trouble for us,” he said, holding up a wet finger. “Be a real shame to waste this chance.”
The fat man looked at the fingers, then her wet spread womanhood, and said, “Set, you can unbind her ankles, but tie each ankle to the end of the yoke we have around here. She stays gagged and her hands never get untied. That keeps her secure, but fuckable.”
Two of the men carried her to the middle of the floor and the fat one placed the yoke at her feet. Only then did they unbind her ankles from each other and tie them to the yoke, spreading her wide. Ashes offered no resistance or protest to being tied so spread for them until well after they had her spread and helpless. At that point, her struggles only emphasized how exposed she was, and how easily they could take her.
“Look at how wet she is,” said the one that had been touching her.
This time, being wet for men about to rape her didn’t humiliate her the way it had at the stallion; it was a tool to be used. She moaned when he touched her to prove his point.
She used every trick she could to keep these brutes interested in her, very interested. Maybe even too interested. All three had her twice; yet it availed her little opportunity. They maintained enough caution she could not act.
Every time one had her, her body reacted to them, and she moaned with pleasure. She hated it that those moans weren’t fake, and her body’s response made it difficult to stay focused on looking for an opportunity.
“I’ll get another cask of wine,” said the big one. Now that he was naked, she saw more muscle and less fat on him than her first impression. He stood, dressed, and left the room.
Heart again racing, she smiled behind her gag. Down to two, and the most cautious one out of the room.
One decided he wanted more and squatted down on her chest. “You try to say a word and I will slap you silly.”
To her relief, the gag came out.
“Suck it, bitch.”
She did; and did the best job at it she could. She worked very hard to get his full attention on what she did with her mouth.
It didn’t work. Even when he came, he paid her too much attention, and she dare not loose her hands. He picked up the gag from beside her. Would she have to act now?
“My turn,” said the other.
They changed places, and she took this one into her mouth, working just as hard to give him the impression she was an eager little slut, glad to have his cock in her mouth. This one was easier to distract than the other with that ploy and not observing her as carefully as the other had. He even closed his eyes at the pleasure she was giving him.
Ashes pictured the ropes on her wrist coming loose, then used that nonverbal spell she had worked out so long ago.
The rope binding her wrist together behind her back parted.
Neither man noticed.
He came and pulled out. The moment her mouth was empty, she acted.
“Kia Dawn.”
She shoved her arm into the elbow under his ribs and pulled out his heart. His body fell backward, and the other sprang for her, knife in hand.
“Kyayonday.”
Her hand, still holding the other’s heart, burst into flame. She willed those flames to shoot out and engulf the knife wielding man’s head.
He fell, screaming.
This spell was a risk. This wasn’t its intended use. She held the spell on him by force of will. Had he understood, he could have charged, breaking her concentration.
He never charged.
The screaming stopped, then he lay still.
With both dead, she untied her ankles from the yoke.
Nothing of hers but her spell book and her two other books were there. Not knowing when the other would get back, she grabbed an undamaged shirt of one of the dead men, plus those three books, then ran from the room.
Another door led outside, and she found herself in a dark alley. Heart pounding in her chest, she looked for escape.
Sound from the end of the alley startled her, freezing her blood.
She spun, only to find a drunk bent over puking near the end of the alley.
She backed deeper into the shadows. With care, making sure she didn’t damage them, she set her books down while keeping an eye on that drunk. Only then did she put the shirt on. It was baggy. She hadn’t yet fully removed the rope that had held one of her ankles to the yoke. She bent over and untied it from that ankle, then used that to cinch the shirt tighter to prevent it from snagging things.
The drunk stood and staggered back out into the street.
Ashes picked up her books and stepped in that direction.
She froze, then squatted down deep in the shadows. Her third captor, carrying a wine cask on his shoulder, entered the alley where the drunk had just left. She had nothing but minor healing spells left.
Backing up another step, and she was in a pile of rotting hay and rags. Some beggars bed?
She backed further into the shadows, passed the door she had come out, grateful for just how dark that alley was.
He pulled the door open and stepped inside.
The moment that door closed, she sprinted past it into the street, then turned right. A few steps passed that corner and she heard that door being slammed open in the alley behind her.
Heart racing, she ducked around the next corner, then slowed to a walk. She spied a public well in the dim light not far down that block and made for it.
The well bucket was half full. She picked it up and moved behind the well, squatted down, and began washing the blood from her arm, watching over the well to see if anyone approached.
Ashes swallowed, seeing that blood washing from her arm. She’d killed for the first time in her life. Her mistress warned her that killing always cost those that walked the Grey Path far more than White or Black. She could sense her balance had shifted toward the dark. Now she must take action to offset what she’d done and do it soon.
But first, she needed to get out of this city.
In a bare whisper she breathed, “Seaos.”
Able to see better; it only took her a moment to get enough bearings to head for the nearest wall.
When she turned a corner, heading for the wall, she saw her surviving captor ahead of her heading in the same direction.
To cut her off?
As much as she wanted to run the other way, she closed the gap between them, but stayed in the shadows. Her night-seeing cantrip made that easier, as the shadows had more definition to her now.
He headed for the same gate she had planned on. His voice carried well enough she didn’t have to get close enough to attract his attention to overhear what he said to the gate guard. Not once had he looked for her behind him, but always scanned the night ahead of him.
“Mistress Gru’s slave escaped, a young blond girl. I am offering thirty silver sovereigns to anyone that gets her before Mistress Gru gets back in town.”
The guard sneered at him. “If you lost one of Mistress Gru’s toys, you are a dead man.”
“She isn’t out of the city, yet.”
He headed west. To the next gate?
Ashes headed east. She had to beat word there. At thirty sovereigns, she would not be getting past any guard if word beat her.
Nearing the East gate she saw two men, one younger, one older, going that direction pushing a hand wagon full of manure.
“Going out of the city?” she asked, already knowing that answer.
“Why you ask?” asked the elder suspiciously.
“Get me out and I will make sure you both have a good time.” Just to be sure, she pulled up her shirt showing nothing under it.
“Steal some books?”
“Hell no; the people that stole my clothes also had my books. I could only grab one or the other when I ran. My books were more important to me than my robes.”
The old man’s eyes leered over the scarf covering his lower face. “You give me the books, start pushing the wagon, and you can have them back at our farm after you do a good job giving both of us good times.”
She gave him a smile she didn’t mean. “Set, but you damage those books, and you will piss me off. You better take care of them.”
“Magic?” his tone was mocking.
“Not exactly. My father’s a healer. Those are his.” Not the truth, but not totally a lie, either. The two largest might be owned by healers, and the pictures in them are what would be expected in books for healers.
“Healer’s daughter, is it? Is what they say about bedding healers true?”
She gave another more mischievous grin. “Looks like you get to find out.”
With great reluctance, she handed her books over and took his place next to the young man pushing the wagon. That young man grinned at her, and she had no trouble guessing his thoughts. Yet, doing two more men was a sight better than ending up in the hands of the mysterious Mistress Gru.
For that reason, she put as much promise into the smile she gave him as she could.
As Ashes expected and counted on, the gate guard ignored the shit wagon and half-dressed woman pushing it.