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Larra knelt by the area of the ruins that
had been set aside as a garderobe.
She was already experiencing morning sickness and it was only two
weeks since Prince Selwin had forced her to his
bed. She had not revealed her
condition to anyone; not even when she managed to pick up a bit of the
language. With her natural language
ability it had not taken her long to pick up a basic vocabulary from her
female attendants. The male guards
would not speak to her, but the girls seemed to have no aversion to answering
her questions.
She learned that the man who had forcibly
impregnated her was the son of their king, a man considered so holy that
he could not be named. Strangely
enough Prince Selwin was someone the harem girls could talk about, although
they were all careful about what they
said. It was clear that they
all lived in fear of him and dreaded being called to his
bed. What had happened to Larra
drew their sympathy. Even the
girls who had helped hold her down while he violated her seemed
apologetic.
The girls called themselves the Prahgan although
Larra could see that even among the women there was quite a bit of ethnic
variety. It was obvious that
the Prahgan had been trading in slaves for quite some
time.
Larra held no
grudges. It was apparent that
the women in Selwin’s harem lived in fear of their
master. It was something she
intended to do something about as soon as the opportunity presented
itself. The prince, however,
had been absent since the fateful night when he had taken Larra to his
bed. None of the girls was certain
about his whereabouts, but Larra learned that the purpose of their expedition
was to acquire what the girls called “new
blood.” Larra was astute
enough to realize that this phrase meant
slaves.
She spat, ridding her mouth of the last of
the contents of her stomach. At
least while carrying out bodily functions she was left
alone. In spite of the fact that
she had kicked the prince’s head guardsman in the chest, they did not
appreciate the fact that she might actually be
dangerous. Apparently the other
guards considered it a complete fluke.
The notion that any woman might actually be able to defend herself
was quite laughable.
Larra did not disabuse
them. She was usually watched,
but the iron collar about her neck had been removed and she was not closely
guarded. She intended to take
advantage of the situation as soon as she determined where her children
were.
That was not as easy to do as she would have
liked. She and the other women
were not allowed to wander about on their own except when going to the
garderobe. Her son and daughter
were being held somewhere in the ruins, but she had no idea
where. Time, however, was not
on her side. By good fortune
the prince was not present, and she had no intention of waiting for
him. Once he returned there was
little doubt he would call for her again and then escape would be doubly
difficult. In addition, she had
learned enough to understand that it had taken many weeks for the prince
and his retainers to travel to the site of the ruins from their mysterious
kingdom. When the prince arrived
with the “new blood” the expedition would begin its long return
journey. She had to locate her
children and escape before then.
She decided that she could wait no
longer. Tonight, when most of
the guards and servants slept she would make her attempt.
Waiting was the hardest part of her
plan. All day she sweated it
out, fearing at any second to hear of the return of the prince, but she forced
herself to remain calm and acted as she usually did, associating with the
other members of the prince’s harem and continuing to learn their
language.
The evening came at last and with it the evening
meal. It was not an elaborate
repast, consisting primarily of rice, but it had been explained to her that
even members of the harem were expected to have to put up with a little privation
while the prince was on one of his slaving
expeditions. It apparently had
never occurred to the prince that he might actually have made sense to leave
his harem at home while he was away.
In any case although the food was plain, there
was plenty of it and it was frequently supplemented with native tropical
fruit and the ubiquitous bamboo shoots gathered from the rainforest around
them. Occasionally meat was added
to the meal, but Larra studiously avoided
it. She wasn’t certain what
it was, but she knew that the forest contained a number of simian species
and she wasn’t inclined to dine on one of her distant
relatives.
The evening meal finished, she and several
of the others shared a cooling bath and then retired to the pile of cushions
that was their communal bed. She
had been informed that when the prince was in attendance there were usually
a number of evening activities, using torches as a source of
light. But with the prince away
it tended to be early to bed early to
rise. That suited Larra, and
snuggling down beside the other girls she closed her eyes and feigned
sleep.
It took a long time, or at least it seemed
that way, for a number of the girls to stop giggling and chatting and settle
down, but at long last their voices quieted and were replaced by the sounds
of deep breathing and the occasional
snore.
Moving with the utmost care so as not to disturb
the other young women, Larra crept from the
bed. She had managed to settle
herself in such a manner that she was not actually touching one of the other
members of the harem. Some of
the girls slept with their arms about one another, a custom Larra had not
shared. Perhaps if the nights
had been a little cooler she might have acted
differently. She had no aversion
to a little innocent cuddling, but with the heat and humidity she preferred
to sleep alone. It made it all
the easier to sneak away.
Getting past the guards was not too much more
difficult. They were there more
to keep people away from the harem than keep in its
residents. Larra slipped between
them without difficulty. Now,
however, came the hard part. Where
were her son and daughter?
It took her much longer than she wanted to
finally determine where her children
were. It was the only place in
the acres of ruins where she found any concentration of
guards. An ancient ruin which
Larra took to be the remains of a palace had been partially repaired by sealing
the gaps in its walls with broken chunks of
stone. Guards were posted about
its perimeter hinting at the fact that there might be something inside worth
protecting.
“Or imprisoning,” Larra thought
grimly.
She worked her way around the building and
found that all sides seemed to be
guarded. “Alright,”
she thought, “if that’s the way it has to
be…”
She crept toward the closest
guard. She was no longer nude,
only nearly so. She had been
provided with a sheer silk outfit that hid almost nothing of her considerable
charms. It wasn’t even a
particularly good screen against mosquitoes, but it did have other
uses. Knotting a length of it
made a very good garrote.
The guard didn’t even know she was there
until the silk tightened about his throat and then it was too
late. Larra came out of the darkness
like some sort of avenging angel and lifted him clear off his feet and then
dragged him out of sight of the other guards before anyone noticed anything
was wrong.
She didn’t kill him, but would not have
been too concerned if she had. Her
children came before anything else and if anyone got in her way while she
was trying to save them then that was their sad
misfortune. She let the guard
struggle until the lack of oxygen overcame him and then released the garrote
before he was finished. He would
no doubt have one hell of a headache when he awoke, but at least he would
still be alive.
She bound and gagged him with strips of his
own clothing and what was left of hers and then moved toward the
palace. The way was now open
before her, but she was careful not to simply rush
in. There might be guards inside
and if a single one sent up a shout her endeavour would be
wasted.
It was well that she was
careful. Just inside there was
not one guard but two. There
was no way to take out one without alerting the other and so Larra simply
walked into the interior in plain sight.
Her gamble paid
off. The two guards were so
astonished to see a semi-nude white woman walking toward them that they simply
stared. By the time it occurred
to one of them to ask what she was doing there it was too
late. She attacked with a flurry
of kicks and punches that simply gave the unsuspecting guards no
chance. Both were down on the
floor unconscious before either had a chance to sound the
alarm.
Larra looked around the inside of the
palace. Only a single smoking
torch provided any sort of illumination, but she could clearly see that the
large space in front of her was packed with dozens if not hundreds of
people. Larra’s eyes
widened. This was kidnapping
on a huge scale. She had expected
there to be a few captives in the room, but not this
many. It presented a completely
unexpected problem.
At that moment two figures detached themselves
from the mass of people in the room and came running toward
her. “Mummy,” one of
them cried.
Larra knelt to receive her seven-year-old
daughter. Lin Yao flew into her
arms, James not far behind, although being all of twelve, he was a bit too
much of a man to emulate his sister
exactly. “Mummy,” Lin
Yao exclaimed when she had gotten over the joy of reunion, “where are
your clothes?”
Larra simply hugged her daughter again before
replying. It was a bit embarrassing
to appear before her children almost completely nude or wearing something
so gossamer that it hid nothing, but she had never been much for
prudery. Smiling at her green-eyed
daughter she replied, “Yes, I’ll have to see about
that. Meanwhile who are all these
people?”
The question was addressed to James, not Lin
Yao. Her tall, dark-hired son
answered. “They are the
same as us.
Prisoners. Are you going
to help us all escape?”
Larra thought briefly about her
answer. James and Lin Yao were
her priorities; not all the other people the Prahgan had taken
prisoner. But she couldn’t
just leave them either. “How
many are there?” she asked.
Over a hundred,” James
replied. “I don’t speak
much of their language, but I think they are waiting for one more bunch and
then they are going to break camp.”
A hundred.
Larra hadn’t counted on that.
It was far too many to try and get away safely, but she couldn’t
bring herself to just leave them.
“James,” she said, “I want you to listen carefully.
I am going to put you in charge of Lin
Yao. You must make sure that
you get her away safely.”
It was all she could think
of. She knew that by asking James
to look after his little sister he would do as he was asked rather than trying
to stay with her and play the hero.
She was going to have an almost impossible task helping a hundred
or so men and women to escape and didn’t want to have to deal with her
children as well.
She explained to James what she wanted him
to do and then took him and Lin Yao to the
doorway. She had to move
fast. The missing guard was bound
to be discovered very soon and she wanted her children out of the
palace. Outside all was still
calm. The guard had not been
missed yet. Quickly she ushered
her children from the palace. A
few hundred feet away was the forest.
“I’ll try to join you shortly,”
she said, “but if I don’t make it try to find
help. Keep heading south and
take care of your sister.”
She gave her children one last
hug. “I’ll make sure
Lin Yao is safe,” whispered James as she held him, and then he was
gone.
Larra allowed herself a
smile. Only twelve and already
James was acting like a man. She
had trained him well. She turned
back into the palace. Now she
had to work quickly.
Larra surveyed the huddled
prisoners. Most of them regarded
her with a mixture of curiosity and
confusion. She realized that
she didn’t look like much of a rescuer in her see-through
garments. She wondered what her
reaction would have been if some half-clothed harem girl had showed up to
rescue her. Unfortunately there
was no time to prove her credibility.
Either she would be accepted or she would
not. She just hoped that enough
of them understood her broken Javanese to get them to do what was needed.
Speaking quietly Larra explained who she was
and her plan to get them out of the palace
prison. It was then that she
realized she had made a severe error.
It had not occurred to her that some of the captives might be too
frightened to escape or that some of them might be so fearful of being punished
that they might alert the guards.
But that is exactly what happened.
She had hardly begun her explanation when one of the prisoners started
shouting for help.
Larra used a choice British phrase comparing
the prisoner to an area of her anatomy.
There was now no point in continuing her rescue
attempt. It was obvious that
she should have simply taken her children and made good her
escape. Now it might be too
late.
It was.
She ran from the palace right into a horde of spear-armed
guards. She took out the first
three, but within seconds she found herself surrounded by a circle of
spearpoints. Had she some sort
of weapon she would have tried to fight her way through, but with only her
body as a weapon she risked serious injury if not
death. Resignedly she backed
away from the advancing guards and then allowed them to take her
prisoner.
The guards were not in a particularly pleasant
mood and the expressions on their faces told her that they would have liked
nothing better than to give her a severe lesson in manners, but they were
stopped surprisingly by the heavyset man she had supposed was the prince’s
chamberlain. She now knew that
he was actually the captain of the prince’s
bodyguard. Shouting for the guards
to halt he stepped in front of her, stopping just far enough away to avoid
a sudden kick.
“Stupid woman,” he
shouted. “If you were not
the favourite of the prince I would let the guards have
you. But his majesty would not
appreciate it if his white-skinned slave was ravished like a common
whore.”
“No,” Larra thought
bitterly. “He wants me saved
so that he can do all the
ravishing.” She imagined
she could feel the new life within her reminding her of her complete humiliation
even though it was too early in her pregnancy to feel anything other than
the morning sickness that plagued her.
She realized, however, that she was in an impossible
situation. Meekly she allowed
the guards to surround her and escort her to her
quarters.
They made sure she did not attempt a second
escape. The iron collar was returned
to her neck and her wrists and ankles were also
chained. In addition, two guards
watched her constantly although it was highly unlikely that she could have
done much when so heavily laden with
chains. However, her captors
were taking no chances. Apparently
no woman had ever so much as attempted to escape the harem before and
Larra’s short-lived escape had created quite a
sensation.
Unable to move, she had to be aided in everything
by the other members of the harem, including what she normally considered
very personal bodily functions.
Even in these the guards remained, refusing to allow her a moment’s
privacy. Her once friendly
relationship with the other harem women was gone as
well. They looked after her,
but steadfastly refused to speak to her, apparently fearing
reprisal.
It was a lonely, frustrating
week. Unable to escape, heavily
chained, and shunned by everyone around her, Larra spent seven days in enforced
idleness awaiting the return of the
prince. When he finally appeared
she was almost relieved, although she expected that he would be far from
pleased to hear about her escape attempt.
What did the Prahgan do to slaves who attempted to
escape? She had spent a good
deal of the seven days wondering what was going to happen to her, especially
as she knew that historically slave masters often took delight in inflicting
brutal punishment on slaves who escaped
them.
The prince strode into her
presence. She knew enough of
the language to understand most of what he said to
her. What he said was not
particularly reassuring.
“I do not usually speak with members
of my harem. Women have only
two uses, to serve as bedmates and to provide me with children to carry on
my name. You have dared to rise
above your station. If it were
not for your unusual beauty I would turn you over to the guards for their
entertainment and then have you staked out for the
ants.”
Larra did not reply, but neither did she lower
her eyes as she had before. Her
children were safe. There was
no point in arguing with this bigoted fool, but she would not let him cow
her.
Her seeming arrogance seemed to anger the
prince. He turned to the Captain
of the Guards and spoke quickly; too quickly for Larra to catch what he
said. Then he turned and left
the room. She soon discovered
what he had said.
The captain snapped out a terse command and
the guards closed around her. Her
chains were not removed, instead they were rearranged so that she could walk;
then she was led from the living quarters.
She was taken to an open area in the ruins
and placed as she had been before between two
pillars. Some slack was left
in the chains so that although her arms were pulled to the side they were
not pulled straight out from her shoulders as they had been
before. Then her revealing costume
was removed and she stood naked in the sun, her perfect body gleaming in
the light.
Prince Selwin appeared just as the guards
finished undressing her. He held
a thin bamboo rod in his hands. It
did not take a genius to figure out what was going to happen to
her. As a matter of fact she
would have had to be exceedingly stupid not to
know. “So I am to be
beaten,” Larra thought. She
shrugged mentally. She could
handle pain, although exactly how much pain the prince was determined to
dole out she did not know.
The prince approached until he was so close
that when he spoke only Larra could hear.
“You must be punished.
It would not do for other members of the harem to think that they
could do what you have done and get away with
it. But do not worry too
much. I will be careful not to
permanently damage your silken
skin.” He moved behind her
and signaled to one of the guards.
The guard immediately tightened the chain about her neck, forcing
her to bend forward. Larra now
knew what part of her anatomy the prince was going to
punish.
The beating as it went was far from the most
painful she had ever received. As
the prince had promised he did not hit her very
hard. Still, the bamboo switch
raised painful welts and the whistling sound as it swished through the air
would have terrified a lesser woman.
Larra endured the painful chastisement without
a sound; something that aroused both the prince’s ire and
admiration. As he finished the
tenth stroke he tossed aside the bamboo staff and moved to her side once
again.
“You are a powerful woman,” the
prince said, quietly. “And
possessing you will give me great power as
well. Be assured that I will
tame you. I will bend you to
my will and then your strength will become
mine. This little lesson is but
the beginning.”
The prince walked away, leaving the guards
to deal with their prisoner. Larra
was removed from between the two stone pillars.
The chains were reattached to
her body, making it almost impossible to move and then she was marched back
to the harem. It took all of
her self-control not to show the pain she felt with every
step. The welts on her buttocks
were extremely painful and she wanted nothing better than to lie on her belly
and attempt to recover.
She was given that time
eventually. Upon returning to
the harem she was turned over to the other women who bathed her as best they
could despite her chains and then placed a tingling ointment over the mild
lacerations on her buttocks. Then
she was returned to her couch and allowed to
sleep.
She was awakened far too
early. “What now?”
she wondered. She was far from
refreshed. The time in chains
was wearing her down, and the mild caning she had received had not made matters
better. She was tired of being
a prisoner and being ordered around.
However, things were not about to
change. She was rousted out of
her bed of cushions and forced to stand.
Several guards surrounded her.
They immediately tended to her
chains.
The iron collar about her neck was not removed,
but the chains on her wrists and ankles
were. She wondered at this for
a few seconds until the guards secured her arms with another
device. An iron shackle was placed
on her right arm just above the elbow and an identical one on her left
arm. Linking the two shackles
was a heavy metal rod that ran across the small of her
back. It pulled her arms painfully
back, arching her back and making it difficult to breath.
The eyes of the guards were drawn
to her upright breasts, made even more prominent by the painful position
of her body. However, no one
made any attempt to molest her.
Instead she was pulled forward on the end of the chain and led from
the harem.
Outside Larra saw that she was part of a large
gathering. Apparently all of
the captives had been herded out of the palace and placed in one
spot. There were many more than
Larra thought there would be.
Apparently the prince’s slaving expedition had been
successful. They were completely
surrounded by armed guards. A
number of the prisoners wore chains, primarily young men, although none were
chained the way she was.
The guards began to organize the prisoners
into a long line and march them out of the
ruins. Larra was required to
wait until the end of the procession and then a young light-skinned girl
was led forward. The girl wore
an identical iron collar about her neck although Larra did not think the
girl was a likely candidate to escape.
She was heavily overweight and although several inches shorter than
Larra must have weighed a good fifty or sixty pounds
more. However, it soon became
apparent why the girl had been selected.
The length of chain attached to Larra’s collar was locked to
the girl’s collar. Then
both prisoners were prodded forward.
Larra had to admit the arrangement was
clever. Unlikely as it was that
she could run off with her arms secured in such an awkward and painful position,
she now had no chance of escape.
Being chained to the heavyset girl was like being connected to a mobile
anchor. Even if she could somehow
elude the watchful guards for even a few minutes it would be almost impossible
for her to get far while attached to her
chainmate. She lurched forward,
following the girl as the guards directed them from the
ruins.
“Bastards,” she thought, but she
tried to remain calm. She would
need all of her energy for the walk.
Even after only a few steps she could feel the strain on her arms
and shoulders.
A movement to her left caught her
attention. Prince Selwin came
into view as his guards cleared a path through the
crowd. He motioned for her and
the guards escorting her to halt.
“It is unfortunate that I have no time to devote to disciplining
you. I expect that you will be
difficult to break; however, there is more than one way to capture an
elephant. A month marching in
chains should make you more
compliant.” He flashed her
a sneering smile and then turned and left.
Larra was left standing for a few seconds. A month in chains. It would cripple her. Somehow she had to find a way to escape. Not to do so would probably be her death sentence. The butt of a spear between her shoulders jolted her back to the present. She staggered forward. Ahead of her the line of slaves was moving. She shortened her step, attempting to adjust to the awkward and painful position of her arms. She took a deep breath. The next few days were going to be a long and painful experience.
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