Tanys Gladiatrix (The Chronicles of Tanys Book 2) (3 page)

Danella set the tongs aside, quietly singing to herself as she took up a warm rag and washed Tanys' naked breasts. Afterward she dabbed a cloth over the wet mammaries, drying them gently. Next she took up a strip of white linen, and, after calming Tanys' protests, bound it as a blindfold over the raven girl's eyes.

Tanys lay on the table, unable to see what the Danella was doing. Her breath came faster. She expected at any moment to feel her nipple punctured between the jaws of those steely tongs. Instead she felt Danella's strong fingers folding around her own hands, lifting her arms above her head.

"What are..."

"Trust me, Tanys."

"Hey!" Tanys shouted, feeling leather cuffs slipped over her wrists.

"Trust me, Tanys," Danella's voice soothed, "It's for my own protection. I don't want you knockin' my teeth out if you start to get scared."

Tanys relented at last, allowing the girl to bind her wrists securely above her head. A tingling sense of foreboding washed over her, and Tanys began to question the wisdom of giving herself over into the power of this deranged medic.

Danella continued to sing softly, stroking the undersides of Tanys' arms with her fingertips from the elbows to her armpits. The sensation hovered between a tickle and caress, and Tanys sucked in her breath at the girl's feathery touch.

Danella's hands traced along the line formed between the bulge of Tanys' ample breasts and her ribs, curving up underneath, to meet at her sternum. From there, her fingers fanned outward across the tops of Tanys' breasts, massaging the muscles below with her fingertips, as her palms brushed lightly over the budding nipples. Tanys surrendered to Danella's will, and did not protest when the girl's hands traced down her sides to the cords binding Tanys' skirt about her hips. With a determined tug, the healer yanked the skirt free, baring Tanys' shaven sex.

Tanys clenched her fists in their bindings, shifting her hips in anticipation. She knew that she should protest. Haru was watching after all. The girl's touch robbed Tanys of her will to resist. She gasped as Danella took her left nipple into her mouth, sucking and pulling like a calf hoping to drink her fill of her mother's teat. Tanys groaned as the girl's long fingers slipped between the folds of her sex, spreading the petals of her flower, teasing its delicate bud into bloom.

Tanys writhed on the table as Danella's hot wet kisses wandered further down her body, pausing only a moment to lick her navel before venturing below. Danella's tongue proved unusually long and pierced with a golden stud that found its way into the most secret places of Tanys' body. The raven girl no longer cared who was watching. She moaned and twisted, unable to resist the slave girl's powers.

Danella's soft, wet moans blended with Tanys' whimpering sighs as the girl's tongue probed deeply then withdrew to lap tenderly the delicate lips of Tanys' sex. Presently, Danella's hands stretched up to grasp Tanys' breasts. The girl's long fingers kneaded and pulled, her fingernails plucking and scratching her nipples until they swelled, hard and full. Danella's hand moved away, and Tanys lifted her breast unconsciously, offering it again to that sweet torment. This time, Tanys felt the icy weight of steel laid upon the hot softness of her breast. Cold metal jaws lay on either side of her unprotected nipple. The fleshy bud ached and throbbed with anticipation. A thought of protest flickered through Tanys' mind, but, just then, Danella's tongue moved deep and hard and fast, and all thoughts were swept away an orgasmic flood.

Tanys screamed in pleasure, distantly aware of the sound of creaking leather as her bonds strained to hold her and a sharp metallic click. Fire erupted in her chest as the same moment Danella's tongue stud raked over the pearl of Tanys' sex, driving her into a state of transcendent ecstasy. Tanys gasped. Her hips shook convulsively as her limbs went slack. Danella leaned close over her, pressing a steaming kiss to Tanys' mouth. Tanys moaned, tasting herself on the girl's lips and wanting more. Danella pulled away.

A warm, damp rag dabbed at Tanys' freshly pierced nipple and a tingling, numbing balm rubbed in by fingertip. Tanys lay on the table, breathing heavily, drawing her knees up as her senses began to return. Danella pulled the blindfold from Tanys' eyes and looked down at her, glowing with the pride of her work. Smiling, the girl's fingers moved to her own dusky breast, unclasping the golden ring transfixing her brown nipple. Deftly and painlessly, she slipped the ring through the tiny hole she had made in Tanys' russet nipple.

"It kinda makes us like sisters now," Danella said.

Tanys' thin yellow robe billowed in the desert wind upon the road to the Holy City. Everyone wore the yellow cloth, from the regal satyrs astride their richly decorated oxen, to the slaves walking at their sides. The heat of the stone road baked the thin leather of Tanys' sandals, stinging her feet with every step. She had bound her breasts snugly with a linen strip to remedy the constant chaffing of her pierced nipple against her robe. Already the linen was soaked with sweat.

Jorva had ignored Haru'Luk's advice and faced the desert shirtless, his bronzed skin flexed tightly over his rippling muscles, making his swirling, magic-resistant tattoos appear to dance in the shimmering heat. He seemed to sense someone watching and lifted his squinting eyes to smile weakly at Tanys. Wherever the little man came from originally, it was probably not much warmer than Tanys' icy homeland.

Danella seemed the most at home, chatting cheerfully. Her hips swayed with an easy rhythm as she walked beside Haru's fly-swarmed oxen.

Haru struggled to hold his battered yellow parasol between himself and the sun, while the wind fought desperately to claim it. The irritable faun did his best to hold up conversation with the healer, but he seemed distracted far more than his battle with the elements could account for.

Tanys gazed out across the endless dunes of the Rashaki wastes. Only a few black birds circled over the sandy hills. Her foot came down in something soft and hot.

"Dammit!" Tanys paused to shake the ox dung from her sandal, gooey clods remained stuck between her toes. The fat satyr riding the offending oxen ahead looked back over his shoulder and smiled. Haru and his unruly slaves had been sent to the back of the caravan train early in the trip. According to Haru, it would be another three days before they reached the Holy City. Tanys groaned at the thought of three more days of dodging shit piles on the road to the grand arena.

"What's so holy about this city anyway?" Tanys asked.

"It's where they keep all the money," Haru said, cursing suddenly as the wind finally got a grip on his parasol, tearing it away. He watched it pinwheel away over the dunes.

"Oh, Tanys," Danella said, "You should see it. It's beautiful. White spires reachin' up to blue skies, the sun shining on golden domes. Oh, and the food..."

"Food?" Jorva spoke up.

"They have these little cakes, dusted with sugar, I swear they have some kinda juice in 'em."

"Will you please not talk about food right now?" Haru snapped.

"Hush!" Tanys said, looking back over her shoulder.

"Don't hush me!" Haru said, shielding his eyes against the sun.

"Hush!"

Tanys stopped moving, allowing Haru's lumbering ox and its muttering cargo to pass. Jorva took note and paused as well. "Tanys see something?"

Tanys squinted her eyes against the glare of the white dunes. A pale haze hung over the southern horizon. "Danella," she called out, "Is that the wind?"

The slave girl stopped walking and sauntered back to where the two warriors stood. Shading her eyes, she said, "Maybe... Maybe not."

"Why are we stopping?" Haru said, drooping in his saddle as his ox slowed to a halt.

"I think we should drop back from the caravan," Tanys said, "I think it's being followed."

"The whole point of joining a caravan is to stick together for protection."

"That would make sense," Tanys said, "if there were caravan guards capable of defending a dung heap. All this one's got is a few private bodyguards and tax collectors."

"It's better than going it alone," Haru didn't sound very confident of his words.

"I think we need to get off the road."

"But the ox... and the sand... the others won't wait for us."

"Come on," she said.

"This is because I made you walk, isn't it?" Haru moaned as he reined his mount down the clinking pile of splintered shale that formed the shoulder of the road.

The four of them made their way toward an outcropping of black rock jutting up like the prow of a ship from the pearlescent sand. They took shelter in the shade, making a meager camp. Tanys tied the ox in the shadow of the stone and unloaded its packs. She wanted to put as much space as she could between herself and the rich target of the caravan.

Danella tended to Haru'Luk. The shaggy satyr looked positively wilted by the heat. Tanys hoped they had brought enough water. The beastman drank nearly as much as the rest of them combined. Danella passed a waterskin to Tanys as well, and she drank, marveling how much sweeter water tasted in the desert.

They waited by the rock as evening fell. Long purple shadows stretched across the white desert, and, to the south, the dust rose higher against the glittering sweep of stars. Haru protested loudly when Tanys forbade the building of a fire, but retreated to sullen silence when Tanys suggested that he bed down with Jorva for warmth. His mood improved somewhat when Danella crawled under the blankets with him. Muffled giggles sounded from beneath the covers, and Tanys sighed, grateful at least to hear the end of Haru's complaints for the evening.

The last daylight bled from the sky as Tanys settled into her blanket. Starlight spilled across the pale sands of the Rashaki desert, and the hot wind died away to a whispering chill. Tanys listened to the sounds of her companions breathing. Soon all were asleep but her. She lay back and watched the timeless swirl of strange constellations in the cloudless sky. Her mind drifted again to the sorcerer she had loved in the ice-locked lands of the north. His memory felt like an old wound, half-healed, a distant aching. She pushed him from her mind. It was not the memory of Carathan that robbed her of sleep.

How had Baran defeated her so easily? What had he meant when he spoke of her animal spirit?

She tried again to recall the moment in the blood pits when she had given herself up for lost. Something had wakened within her and given her the strength to escape the death machine that had nearly devoured her. The master of that machine had died in its jaws, but, before that, he too had seen something special in Tanys' eyes. It was something about her mother, the witch-woman, from whom Tanys had inherited her raven-black hair, and, perhaps, some measure of wild magic. Memories of her mother fluttered like bright moths, just beyond the light of recollection.

A sound roused her, a distant scream, or maybe the cry of a night bird. Tanys gathered up her blanket around herself and stood up. She looked across the sands, up the road where the caravan had gone, but saw nothing. She sighed at last, returning to her bedding, but the vision of Baran's grinning face and the memory of his touch kept her awake far into the night.

The white sands shimmered as dawn stretched itself upon them. No wind blew, and the sky hung empty above the rolling dunes. By the time the group had returned to the road, Tanys' could feel the first trickles of sweat tickling the skin beneath her robe. Haru's ox grunted setting its hoof back on the broken shale of the road. The satyr astride the beast had already regained his sullen demeanor, but Danella moved with an easy grace and a satisfied smile on her face. Jorva's weary look served as a fair mirror to Tanys' mood as they set out upon the trail to the Holy City.

Around noon they came across the first slaughtered ox. Black flies weaved among the forest of red-feathered arrows bristling in its flank. Nearby, the body of the fat satyr lay, stripped of everything but the red-stained tatters of his robe.

"Raiders," Danella said, looking at Tanys, "You were right."

Further along the road, they found more bodies and scattered, smashed supplies. Anything too large or heavy to take had been broken and left strewn among the dead. Tanys and Jorva searched for anything worth salvaging but found nothing. The raiders had been very thorough.

"Did satyrs do this?" Tanys asked.

Haru spat, "Humans! Escaped slaves and renegades. They live in these wastes and prey upon travelers such as ourselves."

"Well, we should be fine them," Tanys beamed, "If we come across any, we'll just throw you at them."

Haru gave her a twisty little smile and a narrow squint, and they continued down the road.

By the time Jorva's stomach had begun to grumble for supper, they crested a small hill to find a trio of wagons overturned. Casks of wine lay tumbled and broken, staining the sands beside the road. A few barrels stood intact, and around them loitered a dozen men. They wore scarlet head wraps and curved swords hung from their broad belts. Their horses, tethered to the ruined wagons pricked up their ears at the approach of the newcomers.

"Shit." Haru said as the men rose, somewhat groggily, to their feet.

"Well," Tanys said, "they've seen us. Just keep walking."

The raiders fanned out across the road as Tanys' group moved down the hill toward them.