The Women of a Fallen Noble House, Part 2
The return on the investment showed itself at once. Only two wagons remained in the train, and every heavy load rode in the trucks, so their pace leapt. They pushed that speed all the way across the border.
The Zahed Empire had clashed with Drail only a short while before, yet it did not bar merchant companies from crossing. In a world that still ran on human labor, a slave trader was one of the pieces that kept the economy turning. They passed into Zahed without trouble.
Even so, they could hardly wander Zahed's territory with an easy heart—not after they had fought under Drail's banner. They skipped the cities, camped mostly in open country, and cut straight across the land.
A long day's march brought the company to the outskirts of Cosia, a relay city of the Zahed Empire. They found a stretch of level ground beside a stream not far off, and Marco took the lead in laying out the camp.
Tents and cauldrons came down off the trucks, and the slaves who were still sound of body set the canvas up. Once the pots were hung, I drew provisions from my magic pouch and set them to cooking.
The firewood fell to Argon.
"Ha!"
Whenever Maximus rooted a dead tree out of the woods, Argon stepped in, loosed a light shout, and swung his aura blade. One stroke sheared a trunk as thick as a man's embrace clean through, and he did not stop there. Cut after cut, and the tree was firewood before the echo died.
Maybe I hadn't taken him on for nothing. He had his uses at times like this.
They hauled in a great store of wood, set water to boil, and made a porridge packed thick with ingredients. The slaves were in poor shape; feeding them well was the best I could do for them. I stuffed them full, laid them all day in the two-level space I had partitioned off, and let them sleep. Their medicine, too.
All one hundred and ninety-two of the sick slaves grew visibly healthier by the day.
I looked at Marco.
"How much farther to Europa?"
"A week or so should see us at the gateway to the Europa continent, Guildmaster. The magic wagons have cut the time to a third. Your foresight, as ever."
So he knew how to talk like that. Dutiful of him.
Time before money—that was an old rule of investment. Reach Europa sooner, sell them off sooner, and every day saved was cost you did not pay. Profit, plain and simple. No one paid for air freight, dear as it was, without a reason.
"Then feed them well and let them sleep deep. We move hard again tomorrow."
I left the slaves to him and returned to my private tent.
A tent for sleeping. One for the latrine. A shower. A windbreak for meals. A whole camping ground, each piece built on its own.
There, the slaves who had once been maids of the viscount's household were preparing my meal. The noblewoman and her children had been given the cleaning and the sorting of the baggage.
There was no need to dine in style out in the wild, so they set out a stew heavy with meat and vegetables, and rice. People here took whole-wheat bread as their staple, but rice occupied less space than bread. I had drawn the rice from my magic pouch and had it cooked in a solid cast pot. Former maids—they picked up the method in no time.
After the meal, tea to finish. The viscountess brewed it herself.
"The flavor of tea changes with the skill of the one who steeps it. None of you will have been taught. From now on, I will see to this myself."
She said it to the maid-slaves with her chin held high.
What was this? She spoke as if she were still their better.
Even so, she set the cup of brewed tea down in front of me.
She was not wrong that training showed. The viscountess, lowering the cup, was elegant enough to look graceful. Her face, of course, was thick with displeasure.
"You don't look pleased."
A blunt answer came back.
"My lord the baron has obtained me, who once stood a rank above him as viscountess, but I have lost my husband and come down a step. How should I be at ease?"
Sharp.
She was still under a delusion, though. She had not come down a single step into a baron's house. She had come down from person to slave.
Then again, to fall from noblewife to slave in a single stroke—how else was she meant to feel?
Thirty, perhaps. A pretty face, white and fine, without a wrinkle. You could tell at a glance she had never done a hard day's work. If she had ever used her body, it would only have been to attend her husband at night.
A thought struck me.
A noble wife. No disease to worry about, was there?
And with that I remembered what Argon had given me. A highest-grade potion. A draught that could close a mortal wound in a single dose could cure an ordinary illness outright.
The unease in me cleared, and lust moved in to fill the space it left.
I spoke to the viscountess standing quietly at my side with the teapot.
"Enne."
"Yes. M-master."
"Enough tea. Wash, and wait in the bedroom."
Shock flooded both her eyes. I could feel the surge of feeling climb all the way to her throat.
"What are you saying? You cannot mean you intend to disgrace a noblewoman."
Disbelief and disgust in the same breath. She still had not taken in what was real.
"No? Then shall it be Siliya?"
Siliya was the viscountess's youngest daughter. A girl still in her late teens. A year remained before she came of age.
In that instant the woman grasped what had become of her and of her daughters, and fear strangled her voice.
"What? No. You can't. Please—anything but that."
"That depends on how well you do what you're told."
The noblewoman's face crumpled. She drew a long breath, set the teapot down, and went quietly toward the shower.
I went into the bedroom.
Bright platinum hair hung wet, heavy with water. Fresh from the wash, she wore not her usual clothes but a scrap of cloth open only at the arms and the throat. Through the damp cloth clinging to her, the deep cleft of her full breasts showed bare.
It had been a long time since I had held a woman. Now and then I had a blonde, or one of the catfolk, take the edge off my lust, but I had never gone as far as putting it in. Tonight I meant to settle that properly.
I flung my clothes off, sat on the edge of the bed, pushed Enne onto her back, and climbed over her.
"Hhk—!"
A sound through her nose, surprise braided with dismay, and it only fed the want. I found her lips, forced them open, and pushed my tongue in. The kiss that followed had no patience in it. Less a kiss than a taking.
"Mmph—!!"
My hands, past caring where they went, stripped the single layer of skirt away. A lush body in its mid-thirties, carefully kept. I swept my palms over the viscountess's long, soft nakedness and kneaded it. One hand could not even hold a single breast. I seized the heavy, damp swell of them hard enough to split.
"Hhk—!"
A pained sound, bitten back. I watched her fight to stay quiet, and I spoke.
"You'd better answer me properly. If the taste goes flat, my interest may move on to your daughters."
She jolted to herself, and in the next moment she turned eager. She wound her arms around my neck and offered her tongue of her own accord, licking my cheek and my lips. Each time that tongue traveled my throat, my face, and down to a nipple, a bright shiver ran the length of me.
I did not fight the heat. I laid her flat and spread her thighs.
There was no hair there. In an age that prized cleanliness, custom was to shave nearly every hair on the body but the hair of the head. I parted the pale cunt to either side. The seam opened and showed itself.
She broke into a sob.
"Quickly. Please, quickly! Master! Put it in—quickly. Hnn— please— hnnn—"
Both hands came down. She caught my cock and rubbed it over and over, sobbing as she did.
"Yes. That's how it has to taste."
I drove my standing length straight into the opened hole.
"Haaaahn—!!"
I held there a moment and took in the shock of the first thrust.
"It's good! Master! Please! Take me! Take me as hard as you like!"
Both hands pinning her thighs, I drove up into the hips I had lifted. What began as an easy stroke grew rough, and hard, and fast.
Schlick. Schlick. Schlick.
Each time my hips slammed down, thigh and ass answered with a thick, solid sound.
"Haan—! Good! Aah— aah— nnh—! Master!"
The heat climbed. I put my mouth to her ear.
"Call me darling. You fucking bitch."
"Darling! Darling! Hhk! Hah—! Deeper! Drive it in deeper!"
More than the feel of using a slave, the feel of taking another man's wife pushed me higher. My hips went faster. Her waist bounced up off the air mattress.
Slap. Slap. Slap. Slap. Slap. Slap.
"Aah—! Aah—! Aahn— aahn— haaahn—!!"
She poured the cries out, brow knotted, and I seized both breasts in my hands.
"Aahk— it hurts! Gentle! Darling— please, be gentle—"
"Hold still. Suck my fingers."
She opened her mouth and took the fingers I held out. She sucked hard enough that they were drawn in. While I used that mouth, the dusky shaft drove into her cunt and drew back out, again and again. A cloudy fluid coated it each time it pulled free. She was soaked through.
"You like it that much? Hm? Do you?"
"Haan— I like it! Haan! Haan! I like it! Darling!"
"How much? How good is it?"
"Aahn! Aahn—! Good. Good enough to die! Hhk! Aahn! Aahn—!"
I caught the slender noblewoman by the waist, held her up, and drove into her without mercy.
Slap. Slap. Slap. Slap. Slap. Slap.
She threw her head back and kept crying out through her nose.
"Aahn! Aahn—! Darling— darling— hhk— aahn! Aahk—!"
The rhythm, fully roused, hit its peak. It had been so long that I felt the blood rush hard around my cock almost at once. The guilty thrill of taking a noblewoman piled onto it, and the need to come surged in like a flood.
"I'm coming."
"Aahk—! Come! All of it, inside Enne!! Darling— aah—! Aah—! I'll take every drop! Aahn—! Aahn—! Haaahn!!"
I could not hold the swell of it any longer. I drove into her as deep as I could go.
Slap!
"Hhk—!"
"Hyaaaahk—!!!"
A light convulsion ran through my whole body. Right on its heels, the fluid that had gathered poured out through me and into her.
Pulse. Pulse. Pulse.
My cock, swollen fit to burst, throbbed and emptied itself into the viscountess's womb. Riding the rush of it, I collapsed over Enne.
After that first time, I took her three more in a row. Once from behind. Once with Enne set astride my waist, where she worked her hips over me as lewdly as a woman riding a horse.
Whether it was the fear that her daughters would suffer if she failed to satisfy me, she was desperate to please. Because of that, after I came the third time I dropped, wrung out, into the first deep sleep I had had in a long while.
Morning came.
Just as spent, she slept on while I idly worked her breast in my hand and enjoyed the hazy slack of early day.
She woke and searched my face.
"Master. Were you satisfied?"
"I was. But in bed, you call me darling."
"Darling. Last night was so good for me. Good enough that I wanted to die. Every night—no, day and night—please take me. Won't you?"
I could not tell whether she meant it. Her eyes were full of pleading all the same.
At the plea to be taken, my cock lifted its head again.
"Let me suck my darling's lovely thing."
She pressed herself low against me, opened her mouth, and began to suck with care. Stiff with morning, it rose as if it meant to climb, and inside the noblewoman's small mouth it was soon full to the point of spilling.
"Ngh—! Take it down your throat!"
I pressed the back of her head and drove in to the root.
A thick pulse. Again. Again.
I pumped it out of her as if wringing juice, and poured my cum down her throat.
Still savoring that clean rush of release, I finished getting ready for the morning.
A fine other world. Truly.