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  Jelkrael stepped quickly back. Cianna shook out her hair, which had come lose in the fight, and bared her teeth at Moloa, her mouth wide to show the sharpened points and red blood on her lips. Moloa gave back a hard, set look, angry, with none of the amusement she had shown before. Raising her arm to her mouth, Cianna clamped her teeth into her own flesh, bit, to feel the skin burst and the sharp pain. Sucking, she showed her blood filled mouth to Moloa, swallowed her mouthful and pointed at Moloa’s neck.

  Moloa motioned to Glaydrak, beckoning him back from the corridor mouth. Briefly they conferred. Glaydrak signalled a pit official, who listened to Moloa, then glanced at Cianna and back. Nodding, he walked to Cianna.

  ‘A point of rule,’ he announced. ‘Attempting to kill your opponent leads to disqualification, in the same manner as the breaking of bones. It will also be treated as murder. Do you understand?’

  Cianna laughed and spat sideways, leaving a red mark on the sand.

  ‘I understand, and I laugh in the Feast Hall, Makean pig,’ she answered.

  He gave her a puzzled look and backed hastily away, but nodded to Glaydrak and Moloa. The gong sounded, the men hastily departing the sand. Cianna shook her hair out once more, screamed and lunged. Moloa met her, arms up, face protected, striking out with her fists. A punch caught Cianna’s shoulder, spinning her around even as he knee came up into Moloa’s side. They clung tight, Moloa frantically defending her face from Cianna’s teeth, falling, to crash to the sand, Cianna on top.

  Moloa’s hands lashed out, a double fisted blow, driven straight to Cianna’s face, missing to the side. Darting her head in, Cianna buried her teeth in Moloa’s arm, evoking a scream and a frantic bucking motion that sent Cianna sprawling into the sand, teeth still locked in place. Moloa hurled herself away, rolling in the sand, kicking and punching in blind panic, to strike Cianna’s face.

  Cianna rolled back, dazed, cursing herself as she struggled to clear her vision, kicking out wildly as she scrambled back. Her leg cut through air, the blur clearing to show Moloa on one knee, clutching her bleeding arm, her huge chest shivering to quick, hard breaths. Cianna bared her teeth, crawling forward. Moloa swallowed, bunching a fist, her face setting in determination, but also fear.

  ‘You’re not human!’ she babbled. ‘You’re a beast! A man-ape!’

  Cianna nodded her head and licked a fang, braced herself and lunged, her arm out to parry Moloa’s furious punch, crashing together, head to neck, her teeth locking across Moloa’s throat…

  ‘Submit!’ Moloa screamed. ‘Submit! Get her off me! Glaydrak, help!’

  Immediately Cianna bounced back, and up, laughing to the ceiling high above her, a wild, uncontrolled sound of pure, feral glee. It lasted only a moment, before her strength went, fading to leave her weak kneed. She struggled to stand, the stands spinning around her, noise and faces blurring, clutching for the pit wall. All around her was noise, cheering and the furious stamping of feet, voices raised in salute, or anger. Someone touched her and her head snapped round, teeth bare, only to see that it was Babalyn, holding out a flagon of water.

  Cianna took it, her hand shaking as she poured the full contents down her throat. Slowly her vision cleared, if not her hearing, her ears buzzing with sound. Across the pit Moloa was still sprawled on the sand, Glaydrak standing over her, expostulating. Two pit officials stood by them, frowning.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Babalyn asked, her arm going around Cianna’s shoulder.

  ‘Yes,’ Cianna answered weakly. ‘Let me stand.’

  Drawing in her breath, she forced herself to let go of the wall, turning to find Jelkrael coming towards her, the dildo thrust out before him.

  ‘Fuck her!’ he said, pushing it at Cianna’ chest.

  ‘Fuck her?’ Cianna managed.

  ‘You must!’ he hissed. ‘For the victory, for your title, for my money!’

  ‘I spit on it.’

  ‘Then for our team! For honour!’

  ‘Moloa is beaten. There’s your honour.’

  ‘Then for Babalyn. Think how Moloa abused her! She pissed on her in the sand! This is not her signature!’

  ‘For revenge, yes. Revenge for a friend is good.’

  Cianna snatched the dildo from Jelkrael, holding it up. A great cheer rose from the crowd, coins showering downs, demands ringing out that Moloa be made to kneel, or sodomised, or urinated on first. Cianna ignored them, still struggling to stand up properly as she strapped the dildo into place.

  ‘A moment!’ Glaydrak shouted. ‘Lord King, I dispute the victory and ask your judgement.’

  ‘On what grounds!?’ Jelkrael demanded, his voice loud in the sudden quiet as every face turned towards the King. ‘Damage? Not so! Moloa lives, with no bones broken!’

  ‘I challenge on the grounds that Cianna is not fully human,’ Glaydrak said evenly. ‘Look at her, Lord King. She is unnaturally tall, her skin white, her hair red. No others have such characteristics. Jelkrael may claim she is from the northlands, but there is no proof of this. I say that somewhere in her ancestry there is Red Ape!’

  Cianna’s mouth came open in protest and she started forward, pulling against both Jelkrael and Babalyn. The King raised his hand, then put his fingers together, his eyes flicking to Cianna, then the crowd. An angry murmur began, but died as the King once more raised his hand.

  ‘Is there a rule on this matter? he demanded. ‘A precedent perhaps?’

  ‘Neither, Lord King,’ an official responded.

  ‘Then the savage girl has her victory,’ the King answered.

  Wild cheering broke out immediately. Glaydrak bowed and quickly stood away, leaving the centre of the pit clear. Cianna stepped forward, beckoning to Moloa, who pulled herself to her knees, crawling slowly to the centre of the pit with a look of consternation set hard on her face. Head towards the king, she went down, lifting her vast ash-black buttocks. Cianna took a deep breath and stepped behind Moloa, looking down at the fat, hairy sex lips. The skin of Moloa’s tuppenny was near black, the lips plump and heavy, also swollen, with the pink centre moist and puffy, the huge clitoris taut in excitement, the hole pooled with white fluid.

  Cianna gave a chuckle and squatted down, over Moloa’s huge bottom, putting the dildo to the wet hole. She pushed, and the thick head went straight in, without difficulty. Grinning maniacally, she began to fuck Moloa, posed to make sure as many of the audience as possible could actually see the dildo going in and out of the sopping, quite obviously aroused vagina.

  The position hurt her aching muscles, but she kept it up, and after a while reached down, to rub on Moloa’s outsize clitoris. Immediately Moloa gave a moan of shame, but she held still, and in seconds she was coming, with the same low sigh as when she had been sat on Babalyn’s face. Cianna rose immediately, pulling the dildo from the gaping hole of Moloa’s sex. Raising her hands, she flourished the juice stained cock to the crowd, stepped back, staggered and collapsed onto the sand.

  Chapter Six

  Jelkrael sat, his hands folded over his ample stomach, a huge cigar clamped between his teeth. Babalyn was beside him at the table, counting gold and silver coins into little piles. Yufal stood, looking happily over her shoulder, with the three girls seated cross-legged on the ground, Cianna with Glaucum’s head in her lap, as usual.

  In the three days since her victory she had done little but rest. The fight had left her whole body aching, with barely an inch of skin unbruised. Even at the parade Jelkrael had organised in her honour she had done nothing more than stand to accept the plaudits of the crowd. All offers to have sex with her had been denied or delayed if the gap in social status made it impossible for Jelkrael to refuse outright.

  It had also taken Yufal two days to gather in the bets, but it been done, and in the early hours of that morning the money had at last been brought to the rear door of the Five Moons. Since then, Jelkrael had been in an irrepressibly good mood.

  ‘Done,’ Babalyn declared, dropping the last coin into place. ‘Forty-one
thousand, seven hundred and twenty-eight standard.’

  Jelkrael’s hand went to his cigar. He drew on it, removed it from his mouth and blew a thick yellow smoke ring towards the ceiling.

  ‘Say that again,’ he ordered.

  ‘Forty-one thousand, seven hundred and twenty-eight standard,’ Babalyn repeated. ‘It’s correct, I assure you.’

  ‘I don’t doubt you for a minute,’ he answered. ‘I merely wish to hear the words. That is enough, you may not realise, to allow me to sell up and retire. A villa in the hills, I think, with an orange grove and pond where I will keep carp.’

  ‘Sell up?’ Klia asked in shock.

  ‘Not you, my Warrior,’ he said. ‘None of you. I shall keep you all, and we shall talk of the old days while pretty Vendjomois girls serve us tea in the most delicate of porcelain.’

  ‘You mean to free us?’ Cianna asked.

  ‘That I cannot do,’ he said. ‘A slave is a slave, and besides, I would still wish to command obedience when I wanted my cock sucked or to have a girl on the saddle. Or, if you do not wish to join me in a life of ease, I will sell you to Glaydrak at the Dock Pit and you may seek to hold your title. There is much of your precious honour in it, ease too. Moloa has her own apartments, beside Glaydrak’s, in the attic of the pit. It is said that no slave lives so well.’

  ‘I’d rather go home,’ Cianna said quietly.

  ‘An idle hope,’ he answered. ‘How would you get there? Wherever she goes a girl as pretty as you will be taken as a slave, save Aprinia, and their ships do not touch here. I would let you though, in gratitude, if there was a way. You also, Babalyn.’

  ‘What if we found a way?’ Babalyn asked. ‘Buy a fishing vessel, perhaps? The coast of Cypraea is no more than four hundred leagues away, the southern border perhaps six hundred. It could be done.’

  ‘Well…’ Jelkrael began doubtfully, only to stop at the sound of a sharp rap on the door.

  ‘Glaydrak, probably,’ Jelkrael said, ‘with an offer of a rematch.’

  ‘If Moloa dares!’ Klia laughed, rising to open the door.

  Cianna turned to see who it was, finding a young man in a robe of brilliant turquoise blue standing outside, evidently an Elite. Jelkrael stood immediately and hurried over, then out into the passage, closing the door behind him. A brief conversation could be heard, before Jelkrael returned, now downcast as he addressed Cianna.

  ‘The Exquisite Ulourdos has offered a thousand standard for you,’ he sighed.

  ‘A thousand?’ Cianna answered. ‘What of it? It is little enough for you now, surely?’

  ‘True,’ Jelkrael admitted, ‘but one such as Ulourdos is not to be refused. He is an Exquisite, and stands in line for the throne. He has boasted that he will be the one to tame the Ice Cannibal, to his royal relatives apparently. He will not be denied. I am truly sorry.’

  ‘I don’t want to be sold!’ Cianna complained. ‘Besides, what of my title?’

  ‘All that matters to Ulourdos is that he gets his way,’ Jelkrael answered quietly, with a glance to the door. ‘That is his aide. He himself is downstairs. You had better go.’

  ‘Now?’ Cianna demanded.

  ‘Now, please,’ Jelkrael insisted. ‘If I keep him waiting he is likely to have me whipped for insolence, or to drop the price! Come on.’

  ‘What of me?’ Babalyn demanded.

  ‘What of you?’ Jelkrael answered.

  ‘I must be with Cianna!’

  ‘You must? Very well, if you can persuade Ulourdos to buy you as well, you may go.

  Babalyn got up hurriedly, knocking over some of the piles of coins. Cianna also rose, reluctantly, shocked at the sudden change in events. They trooped downstairs, after the aide, who never so much as glanced back. Stopping in the main room of the inn, the aide crossed to a tall, slim young man, his robe brilliant golden cloth set with jewels, who Cianna recognised as Ulourdos. His bearing was erect, his expression of amused contempt as Jelkrael and the aide fussed around him. Four guards followed him, also young, and in extravagant blue, crimson and gold uniforms.

  As he came towards them Cianna gave him a sulky look, feeling instant dislike. There was a cruelty in his eyes, a callousness, which if typical enough of Makean men, seemed far more intense in his case. As the others fell to their knees she remained standing, hoping that he would be put off by her failure to show proper respect. He crossed to her, stopping a foot in front of her, his eyes lifted fractionally to stare full into hers, full of arrogant certainty. She bared her teeth, but he responded with an amused chuckle.

  ‘Wild indeed,’ he remarked. ‘She is unbroken, you say?’

  ‘Many times I have whipped her, Exquisite,’ Jelkrael answered hurriedly, ‘many times she has been put to the dog. Still she refuses to plead, or to show proper respect. You saw, perhaps how she spat on me in the pit?’

  ‘I did,’ he answered. ‘It amused me. Clearly she needs to be trained by a more skilful hand. Yes, a thousand, why not?’

  He snapped his fingers and the aide quickly gave Jelkrael a bulging leather bag, which vanished into the folds of his smock. Again Ulourdos snapped his fingers, turning for the door, only to stop as Babalyn snatched at the hem of his robe. He turned, looking down on her with amusement in his eyes.

  ‘Take me also!’ she begged. ‘Please, Exquisite, please! It makes me shiver just to look at you! My cunt is wet and ready, my breasts are straining!’

  ‘This is usual, when women meet me,’ Ulourdos answered.

  ‘I am her lover too,’ Babalyn went on. ‘We will perform for you, the lewdest of tricks! Please, I beg you!’

  ‘A hundred standard for the little fat Aprinian,’ Ulourdos said suddenly. ‘She grovels so prettily.’

  ‘A gracious offer, Exquisite!’ Jelkrael answered.

  ‘My aide will fetch the money,’ Ulourdos said.

  ‘Yes, Exquisite. I am honoured, Exquisite,’ Jelkrael stammered.

  Ulourdos ignored him, signalling to a guard. The man stepped forward, holding out a chain. Numb, Cianna allowed it to be fixed around her neck. Jelkrael had been on the verge of giving in to Babalyn’s argument, granting them freedom. Now, minutes later, she had been sold to some hateful new master, with no choice whatever in the matter. The guard pulled and she stumbled after him, Babalyn following, both glancing back as they were pulled from the inn.

  Outside was a carriage, of elaborate design, painted in a complex pattern of gold, dark blue and crimson. A guard helped Ulourdos into this, while Cianna’s chain was clipped to a hook in the rear. The carriage set off, Cianna and Babalyn running behind with the guards, save for the one who drove.

  They left the square, travelling slowly through dense traffic, to Cianna’s relief, along one crowded street, into another, and at last to a broad avenue with great houses set behind high walls to either side. The traffic had thinned, and Cianna found herself forced to run once more, with the collar jerking at her neck. Only when she was sure she would fall did the carriage slow and turn, past two guards in the same livery and into the grounds of the largest house she had ever seen.

  With the carriage parked outside the house, Cianna's neck was unclipped. Ulourdos alighted, walking up the broad marble steps and inside, to dismiss his aide and the guards with a wave. Despite her feelings, Cianna could only stare, open mouthed, at the expanse of marble, brilliantly polished wood, rich fabrics and features of gold-leaf. A magnificent double staircase led up to a higher level, which Ulourdos climbed, the girls coming behind. From the landing huge doors opened into a room hung with drapes of crimson and gold, the colours mirrored in the carpet. They crossed it, and into another beyond, larger still, with a vast bed at the centre, wide enough for six or seven people. Cianna stopped, looking around, still with her mouth open. Beside her Babalyn had sunk to her knees.

  ‘Never have you seen such riches, is it not so?’ Ulourdos demanded.

  ‘Never,’ Cianna admitted.

  ‘You see,’ he said. ‘I know your very thoughts!’
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  ‘You are a warlock?’ Cianna asked.

  ‘Never have you met a man such as me,’ he went on, ignoring her question. ‘Be sure of it. Now, the fat showman said that you have never been broken? Never made to beg for mercy while under the lash?’

  Cianna nodded uncertainly.

  ‘Excellent. To tame you will be a pleasure indeed!’

  ‘Why break me?’ Cianna asked. ‘I will do as you ask.’

  ‘Why break you? Why break you, she asks! For the pleasure of it, my little one, and because it is needed. You stand before me, when you should think it a privilege to kneel. You do not address me by my title! Insolence, sheer and bold! Oh you need to be broken, make no mistake, and you will break with me! You will grovel, begging for mercy, on your belly in your own sweat and urine! Just wait!’

  He cut a caper, a flurry of legs and robe that left Cianna wondering if he was entirely sane.

  ‘You will be whipped,’ he went on, ‘by me, the most skilled of men! In hands such as mine the whip becomes as an artist’s brush, able to cause ecstasy or agony, a whimper or a scream! It is the ideal implement. All women, slave and free both, understand the whip. Not so men, to whom brave defiance is natural!’

  Again he cut a caper. Cianna and Babalyn exchanged worried looks.

  ‘Should the whipping fail to break you,’ he continued, ‘which is unlikely, it will be down to the dungeons, for a little play with knives and fire! In fact, it might be anyway, if it amuses me. Now, let us begin. First, slaves should be naked, completely. Remove your jewellery.’

  Babalyn moved to comply at once, her fingers going to one of the ornaments in her nipples. Cianna did nothing.

  ‘Your necklace, remove it,’ Ulourdos said. ‘You must be naked.’

  ‘I cannot,’ Cianna answered. ‘It is part of me.’

  ‘Ha, ha,’ he crowed, ‘resistance, and so soon! Now, I could easily have you held while it is removed, but this misses the point. You must take it off yourself, to my order.’