A Fall of Ashes: Chapter 8, Ashes in the Wind
Getting out of the town is only the beginning of Ashes' new troubles.
Once through the gate, both men stepped back from the manure wagon or rather cart, leaving only Ashes to push it. But not too far back, as both crowded her to either side.
None of the gropes she expected came. She’d half-expected them to leave the pushing to her once out of the city, but not this crowding her if they weren’t trying to feel her up.
As she continued to push that shit filled cart untouched, it dawned on her. They thought she’d run rather than pay what she promised. A sigh escaped her. She would keep her bargain, even if they didn’t have her books. There was too much black in her balance to break her word. But even without that, having those books ensured she gave them what they wanted.
She pushed that stinking, shit filled cart, alone, most of the night.
With the tiniest bit of pink showing in the eastern sky, the elder pointed to the small farmhouse beside the lane and said, “This is it. You can dump that around back.”
Ashes toyed with using a minor cantrip to show she was a mage, bluffing them out of her books, and leaving.
Drenched in sweat, and with aching muscles, breaking her word tempted her far more than it had just hours ago. Surely, pushing that cart out here this far would counter a large part of the black she would get if she broke it.
But no, besides going further into the black, it would give these two incentive to make sure the guards were pointed in the right direction when they arrived looking for her. From the comment of her captor to the guard, she could not doubt that they would be after her as soon as they figured she got out of town, if for no other reason than that big of a reward. Nor could she really afford to break her word with as much black karma as she now carried from those deaths. No, she would keep her word.
With another sigh, she grunted and began pushing the cart around back, both men crowding even closer but still not helping push that cart.
They built the cart to be dumped. The younger one helped her position the cart, pulled the locking lever, and dumped it.
No sooner was it empty than his hands were pulling her shirt off her.
She didn’t protest, and he stripped her naked in an instant.
“Later, Cass.” said the elder the moment she stood there nude. He pointed at the younger. “Put the cart away, first.”
Then he pointed at her. “You come inside.”
Outside the door to his cottage, he set down her books, stripped his clothes, dropped them in a barrel, then used a horsehair duster to brush the accumulated ash off himself, then her. Just before entering, the scarf over his face went into the barrel too, then he picked up her books again.
He was older than Ashes guessed, and not that bad looking. His leering grin showed he still had most, if not all his teeth.
She looked at his house. A solid home with blankets blocking the door and shuttered windows. He pushed aside the one in front of the door, holding it for her to enter. Taking a deep breath, she stepped forward; a promise was a promise. The steps he took to keep the ash out of his house were surprisingly effective, as she saw only traces of ash inside the single-room house. Naked and erect, he wasted no time climbing onto the bed set against the far corner.
“Let’s see just how good you use those lips.”
Those words, and the tone he said them in, confirmed to her that he thought she was a whore who stole some valuable books from a client and that they were not hers.
She didn’t argue. Playing along with that fantasy until she had rested and memorized spells was a better option.
Climbing onto the bed with him, she went down on him, glad he was much cleaner than the two that forced her to suck them earlier.
No sooner than she started, his son came in, and without asking, took her from the rear as she was sucking his old man, as if the two of them had had a woman in this position before. They traded places in a way that convinced her they double-teamed girls often, maybe even giving them less choice in the matter than she had.
When she finished off the old man, he got out of the bed and took a seat at the table, leaving her to concentrate solely on the son. That young man had staying power and demanded having her in every way a man has a whore. When he finished, the old man came back to the bed, and the younger took that seat. She realized she was in trouble. Staying power ran in the family.
Trading off went on, one watching, while one had her, until close to noon, when the two of them began making lunch.
“That manure is dry enough to spread now,” the elder said, handing her a bowl. “It is going to take us until nightfall. You can have the bed until then.”
Unstated but understood was that both men planned to continue using her after getting the manure spread if she was still here. The two finished eating, dressed, put rags around their faces and left her there.
She debated getting dressed, grabbing her books, and leaving.
But she was completely helpless and needed to memorize some combat spells, then rest. There may not be a better place. Besides, that shirt was outside, and all she had. If she stole clothes, she would have more black karma against her. Then there was having been rape, made to push a cart, and then used hours on end after. She was dead tired. She sighed in resignation and picked up her spell book, accepting she would have to use her body to pay for having a safe place to rest and try to bargain for clothes.
* * *
Shouting startled her awake.
“I tell you she’s gone already.”
“I’ll just see for myself.”
Terror turned her blood to ice. Ashes knew that voice. She rolled off the bed.
There was a gap under it! She squirmed under.
The door burst open, and light flooded the room
She wasn’t fast enough.
“Ha!” the man she had escaped from exclaimed, grabbed her leg and pulled her out.
“Hilcol,” she shouted, tossing a bit of lint she picked up last night, relieved she had had time to study and rest.
He and the two guardsmen that entered with him fell to the floor.
Ashes sprang to her feet.
“You’re a mage!” The old man’s voice rang with shock from beyond the three unconscious men.
“I told you those were my books.”
“I didn’t believe you.”
She spied a knife on the table and grabbed it, approaching the three men on the floor.
“What are you going to do?”
Instead of answering, she slit the throat of the man who’d raped her.
“Don’t kill them!”
“They had their chance to let me go and live. They threw it away.” She cut another throat. “Besides, you lied to them. You’re dead if I don’t get this done now and they wake.” It was going to take years of good deeds once away from here, but she had little chance to escape if they lived.
“Mistress Gru won’t forgive this. She’ll kill us all now.”
Helping them escape would be a start on the good deeds needed to balance her black. “I’m running. You’re welcome to run with me.”
He looked at her as she slit the third throat. “Cass, start packing up. We’re making a run for it.” He shifted his gaze to her. “I still have two of my wife’s dresses you can have, Mistress. My name is Jakol. My boy is Cass.”
He bent down and opened the chest near the bed and handed her a tan faded dress.
It was amazing how seeing her do magic changed how he treated her.
As she readied to put on the too-large dress, she stopped. “What will be our story when we are stopped?” Holding it out, she knew wearing that the too large dress would make her stand out, and she never learned the spell her teacher had used to adjust the size of clothing. Nor did she have time to alter it by hand.
“You’re my wife. We’re farmers going to my brothers.”
“Won’t work for many reasons. They will certainly look for two farmers and a sorceress. We can’t resemble that in any way. Calling me your wife isn’t going to fool anyone, especially with me in bad-fitting clothes.”
“You want to go separate ways?”
She did. But abandoning them might not be the smartest move. Far too many people would take notice of a lone girl traveling on her own even if she kept to the wood as much as she could. She said, “It’s tempting, yet that is a move they will expect too. We have two sets of armor,” she pointed at the dead guards, “Think you can fake being mercenaries?”
“I was conscripted for a war in my teens. I can show Case. We’re to be your guards?”
She laughed at that. “No, that would be like posting a sign, ‘here is the mage you are looking for’.” She thought, and distaste filled her mouth as an idea came to her. “I need to be someone far beneath notice. You both are on your way to a job. I’ll be a slave you bought to take care of you.”
“Mistress, can you convince people you are a slave?”
She suppressed an urge to say she had been a slave. “My life depends on people thinking that, so yes, I can do it.”
Taking the armor off the dead men, each began strapping it on, with Cass indeed needing some instruction on how it went on.
To everyone’s relief, the armor fit both men reasonably well. Instead of the dress, she fetched the shirt and rope she had stolen the night before from the barrel.
Jakol started making up three packs.
“Jakol, these are all the same size,” Ashes said, keeping her voice neutral.
“So?”
“Men with a slave give her most of the stuff to carry,” she said, not quite keeping her exasperation out of her voice.
His voice held embarrassment. “You’re right, are your sure you can handle it?”
She faced the older man and took a deep breath. “Maybe I do need to go on alone if you are going to keep on like this. You need to treat me more like you were this morning.” Yet going alone while being hunted held its own terror.
“About this morning, I didn’t know. I am sorry.”
“Don’t be. The only reason I am alive is you treated me as a whore you wanted to get to your home. The only reason you know different, is I had to use magic to defend myself. I was willing to act as a whore to get out of that town. I don’t blame you for believing that act and acting on it. I am willing to act as your slave to get away from here. But my act is no good if you can’t treat me as a slave in front of everyone. That includes not worrying so much about making me carry most of this.”
Case eyed her, his voice became gruff. “It is going to be hard not treating you as a whore, you wearing nothing but that.”
Steeling herself, hating her next words, she said, “Then treat me as a whore until we get to Lowford,” hoping she would not regret it. “If you are not treating me as a whore, people will be suspicious.”
“Even when it’s just us?” His gruffness turned to eagerness. That frightened her. Despite her killing three men in front of him, he still saw her as a whore, just a dangerous one with magic.
She sighed. She didn’t want this, but saw it had to be. “Yes, even in private. Be nice, but treat me as a whore you really like, except when I am studying, sleeping, or doing magic. It is unlikely people will consider the whore with you the person that this Mistress Gru has a reward out for.” She took a deep breath, trying not to regret her plan for getting away. “To be convincing, you need to be used to treating me as a whore, so yes, you can still do it when we are alone, and I will play along. When not working magic, I will be a whore. Just who is this Mistress Gru that is after me? I am not from around here, as my accent should tell you.”
Jakol said, “As evil a sorceress as there is, who exacts tribute from five towns around here to leave them alone. If you still plan to get to Lowford, you have to pass through one more town that pays her off. She has people there, too.”
He retrieved a set of leather sandals from the chest where the dress came from. “Go ahead and put on the sandals. I’ll tell people you have tender feet, and I got tired of you coming up lame.”
Then Case held up shears, a leather strap and bits of wire. “Are you ready?”
Her spine turned to ice. Could she let him put a slave collar on her? By the laws of most places, letting him put that collar on her was enough to legally claim her as a slave, even if there was a pin in it that would allow her to remove it instead of a rivet. She nodded her head and bent over, not trusting her voice.
Her long blond braid disappeared to the clip of his shears. Then the polished leather went around her neck, and he used wire and pin to lock it in place.
The moment he collared her, he put her up on the table and fucked her possessively. Did he consider her a slave now? She didn’t like that, but her body did and responded.
“Enough of that,” said Jakol as soon as he pulled out. “We need to be away.”
She stood up. “Damn, we’re forgetting something,” she said, looking at the dead bodies.
“What?”
“They’re going to wonder why we stripped them and where that armor is.”
“Then we do two things to distract them,” Case said.
“What.” asked his father.
“Cut off their heads and put them on stakes, then put the rest of the bodies on the woodpile and set it ablaze.”
Case handled that quickly and it a way that suggested he had removed heads before. Peoples, or animals?
With three hours still to go until sunset, they started down the road.