Female guard | ON THE CHAIN | bdsm stories

The five sweating women strained up the hillside, their naked bodies gleaming with their own perspiration and the grease with which they anointed their delicate skins. The grease was a protection against the strong sunlight up here in the mountains. It was spring, and the air was warm by day, the light strong, but the roads were high up and the winter had

only just passed.

Down on the plain, close to the sea, the climate was pleasant all year round. Indeed, it verged on excessively hot in mid summer. But the winters, here in the mountains, could be severe. The Caucasus rose up thousands of feet, the snow persisted in isolated pockets, even in summer, and storms, frost, and floods damaged the vital roads, cutting off the border forts' lines of communication. These roads must be repaired and rebuilt most years, if the defences were to be resupplied, the weary garrisons relieved, the sick and wounded evacuated, before the Barbarian struck at them.

It was the women who struggled to make good the winter's ravages. For weeks now, this gang of five, linked in every move by the chains riveted around their ankles, had been moving stone. At first they had worked with their sister gang marching alongside, each pair carrying a dressed stone for the masons. The weight, as much as they could manage between them, was slung in loops of rope, which formed handles for them to grip.

They worked from the local quarry site, where men prised out the rock, and lugged the unwieldy stones up to where the masons were rebuilding the washed out wall that supported the road. Here it crossed a gulley, spanning a culvert at its base that was designed to relieve the rain and snow water from above.

Inadequate on this occasion!

The women, and their fellow gangs, had toiled ten hours a day, their muscles straining and bulging under the weights they carried, their thighs rippling as they forced themselves up the slope from the quarry. Many of them had started soft and white, unused to more exercise than their husbands gave them in their beds, but they were hardier now, bodies tempered by the unremitting toil, reconciled to their rigorous life, even taking pleasure sometimes in their health and strength. They played like children in the freezing mountain streams that were their only means of cleansing themselves of the day's sweat and grime, plunging in with shrieks and cries, someone always pretending reluctance to let the icy snow water touch their tender naked skin, each pulled in by her sisters on the chain, those inflexible iron links that never left them, never let them separate for a moment.

The guards gazed at their innocent bodies, exciting but inaccessible, as they splashed in the tumbling waters, and watched that they came to no harm in a sudden deep pool, and thought of their own wives and daughters. Even Claudia felt a new sense of vibrant life flowing through her, despite the bone weariness with which they all sought their beds.

Beds? Rather the earth floors of simple huts, erected to protect the gangs from the chill of the nights, up here high in the hills. They had little enough to cover themselves against the cold, but five healthy young female bodies, pressed into tight and intimate naked contact, generated their own warmth, reinforced by amorous play to relieve the tensions of the day, and keep the blood flowing. For, though they were sealed, and the nature of the burning and stitching was such that their vaginas were inaccessible, their Venus buds were easily reached between open labia.

The state was not cruel. It had secured them against the predations of lustful males that might otherwise assault them in their naked bondage, but it had no wish to deprive them of Sapphic compensation for the loss of their husbands and lovers. With cheerful sisterhood, and a fine impartiality, each would kiss or stroke a needy neighbour's erotic pearl, or sensitive teats. First a flush of arousal would warm her body and her sister's by her, then passion would drive her limbs to spasm, her womb to pulse, her blood to run hot all over. Warm and tranquillised, the close knit group of female flesh would rest happy for the night, sleep no problem in their exhausted state, rising renewed and refreshed with the dawn.

If they felt some chill when they tumbled out at the sound of the overseer's horn, bare skinned and sleepy eyed, it was soon dispelled by the warming slaps of his strap on naked rumps as they were marshalled for their simple breakfast, then sent to relieve themselves, a gang at a time squatting in the grass, before being marched off to their place of work.

Now the revetting wall was complete, and the masons had moved on, to effect other repairs, where the stone from the previous works still lay to hand and only needing relaying. They left the gangs of women to break up the loose material in the quarry, and haul it up the slope to be used in remaking the road bed.

They carried the broken stone in large wicker baskets, equipped with loop handles on either side, gasping them with a hand over each shoulder, bending forward to support the weight on their backs as they laboured up the slope. For some protection from the sun, and the harsh weave of the baskets, they had been given pieces of sackcloth. They wore these over their shaven heads, dropping down their backs behind to protect them from abrasion, the front corners hanging over their breasts and shoulders to keep off the scorching sun.

The filled baskets were very heavy, at least a third of their own body weight and, as the hours passed, what had started as hard work became physical torture. Their legs ached from struggling up the unremitting bank, their arms ached from grasping the weights, their backs ached from their bend and straining position. Every part of them ached. The sweat and dust ran into their eyes, stinging without respite, for they could spare no finger to wipe them. More perspiration ran in their armpits and groins. The dust worked into the tight hot wetnesses of their vulvas. Their painfully acquired seals were good against the predations of any men they met along the way - yes, the signature of the state offered potent protection from men, but it was on no use against flies and stinging insects which ravaged them at will.

They had worked now for nearly four hours, with only the briefest of respites to take water and ease their limbs, refold their sacking to cover themselves better or brush the in sects from their moist crevices. Time after time they had taken their baskets to be filled by their sister gang that squatted in the debris of the quarry, breaking one stone upon another to reduce the material to suitable road metal, then shovelling the heaps they had prepared into the empty baskets as the bearers arrived. The baskets filled, the carriers would toil off up the sloping side of the embankment, marching in step, as they did all things, linked permanently as they were by the inexorable chain on their ankles. Their bare feet struggled for a grip of the loose bank, sharp stones cut their tender soles and insteps, but not as much as they had, for their feet were hardening now after some weeks of toil.

At the top, they would march along the road bed for a thousand paces, to the point where the surface was still being laid, and tip out their loads for others to spread, then turn and march back the way they had come, to fill their baskets once again. Soon though it would be break time, a short rest, some food and water, then they would exchange places with their sister gang, taking their shovels and hammering stones to break ballast for the road, while the other gang forced straining thighs and aching backs to carry it up to where it was required, their struggles to keep their limbs moving under the cumbersome loads setting breasts to swing on their chests.

And all the while the overseers encouraged them with their whips and straps. If the tempo fell below that of a hive of industry, the smack of leather on bare flesh soon had the culprits livened to the pace. When all were failing with fatigue, the cracks and gasps rose to a crescendo, but the work went on.

But after the break, there was an interruption. An overseer they did not know came to speak to the senior of the rough males, in whose care they were put, asking for a gang to haul a vital load up to the workers on the next site, some miles up the track. Their own master looked around, selecting a suitable group for an extra arduous task, and his eye fell on the five in which Claudia served.

"That lot will suit you," he said, pointing with his whip to where they had just got to their feet to resume work.

The stranger ran his eye over them.

"Not a bad bunch, but one of them's already carrying a load, I'd say."

It was true. Besides herself, Claudia was teamed with two solid looking women, whose muscles were kept hard between periods of service by their trade as bakers. Kneading dough, and carrying loaves in and out their ovens, had kept them fit where others would lapse into idleness between their terms of toil for the state. The fourth was a woman in her thirties, strongly built in a wiry way, looking as if she was not the sort to let indulgence weaken her. But the last, and youngest, though a fine strong young woman of nineteen or so, carried in her swollen and bulging belly, that load of which the new overseer spoke.

"You needn't worry about that," their own supervisor assured him, "she's barely into her sixth month, and can pull with the best of them. Best be a little sparing of your whip on her, but the others will pull all the harder, to take on her share if she tires."

"Very well. These cattle are meant for work, and don't seem to take any harm for a brat in their belly. Come on then, girls. Move your bums and get hitched to the wagon up there on the roadway."

It was a two wheeled construction of stout timbers, designed to take the rigours of the rough mountain roads. A long hitching pole at the front, with two cross pieces that projected either side, enabled the women to thrust against them in pairs, the fifth, usually the centre girl on the chain, contributing her share by pulling on a rope attached to the front of the pole, which she would take over her shoulder. The gravid youngster had this pole position and leant forward over her bulge, the rope cutting into her shoulder, while her sisters on the chain took the bars at the level of their bare breasts and pushed against the load.

The wagon was filled with the masons tools, heavy mauls, iron chisels, picks and crowbars, pulleys and hoists, all the heavy equipment they would need to make repairs on a winter ravaged fort, and it was all the five naked women could do to get it moving up the slope towards the distant fortress. Their first futile attempts were sharpened by quick slashes of the overseer's whip, dealt

out to each of them impartially, spurring them to that fraction of extra desperate effort that got the stubborn wheels moving. The man was not cruel - he used his whip only when necessary to help them overcome exceptional difficulties, but the track was only partly repaired, lacking its top layers of finer metal in many places and, though he drove them with care, they sweated and smarted from their necks to their buttocks in the first hour.

A halt was called and five exhausted females, rivulets of salty perspiration, streaked with the dirt from the road, coursing down their stinging backs, trickling through the soft valley between their heaving breasts, running down their bellies to soak the matted fur growing in their crotches and making their tender slits smart before flowing on, mingled with their female juices to slick their rounded thighs and firm calves.

The pregnant girl, particularly, shone with her body's wetness. Her swollen belly gleamed like some flesh coloured melon newly steeped in honey.

Water and ten minutes rest, and the overseer's bark and stinging whip had them on their feet and grappling with the dragging load. It had to reach the fort that evening, so that the masons might be at work at first light. They stopped twice more before they started on the final leg. Each new start was harder to achieve than the last as limbs grew more tired and wills weakened, but the lash never weakened and it aided their efforts, so that they got their burden moving eventually, though at a cost that, their bleeding backs and tear streaked faces told only too clearly.

That night they were almost too done to eat their evening meal. They scooped up their bowls of stew with weary fingers and collapsed into a mingled heap of sweat soiled flesh and sticky limbs. They missed their usual sport in the icy stream, conscious of the smell that arose from their bodies, as they warmed in intimate contact. It was only later, when the first touch of light was faintly visible in he eastern sky, that first one then another let her hand fall on the nearest throbbing fork, where the strained thighs ached from four hours continuous heaving against the unfeeling cart, and slowly stroked the pulsing bud they found there until its owner arched her back, moaning and crying as the blessed relief flowed over her.

When all had had their solace they fell back into healing sleep again for the remaining hour allowed them, before they must drag their weary, stinking, bodies back to work.

They were not returned to the road gangs they had been working with, but were hitched to a wagon returning to the coast with soldiers' belongings, and military stores and equipment being returned for repair and renewal. The cart weighed almost as much as before, but they were going downhill almost all the way and, when the road eventually flattened on the plain, its surface was good and there were only a few pot-holes to jolt them, or call down the driver's whip on their bare shoulders. They were two days on the road, but their sufferings were as nothing compared with that dreadful four hours when they had fought their tear and sweat stained way up the pass, though their backs still clearly showed the ravages of that savage haul two days later.

They seemed to have become permanent draught animals, sent down to the docks to unload the ships as they returned fearfully to the Euxine sea after the dangers of the winter had prevented any sailings. The numbers of vessels was reduced to a handful by fear of the pirates that Claudia had seen at first hand two years back.

She shuddered at the recollection. Undeniably life was hard for her at this moment, as naked as that pathetic mother and daughter on the ship, but at least she was protected from rape, and she would be free to return to a life of luxury in a month or two, while they were condemned to be the sport of cruel sailors so long as their bodies aroused men's lust. Then, they would be either dropped into the sea with stones around their necks or sold for cash to some landsman who would drive them in his fields or mills for the rest of their miserable lives. It was hard to decide whether death or slavery would be the worst fate.

15 - SUBVERSION, THE MILLS, AND CLAUDIA'S RETURN

Down in the city, the women working their state service were kept in large camps, unlike the small groups operating in the mountains, and there was some small opportunity to mingle and exchange news in the short time between the end of the day's work and their being barred in their huts for the night.

It was thus that Claudia made the acquaintance again of two women from her social days, days that seemed a lifetime away now, after months on the chain.

Her gang had been wandering within the fence that surrounded the camp when they came across several other groups, apparently listening to some speaker. They went across to hear what was being said, and Claudia recognised the two cousins, Messalina and Poppea, the wards of the temple of Isis, whom she had seen occasionally in that other life.

Claudia was horrified to hear them denouncing the state, and particularly the men of the state, for demanding this service from them. They claimed that it degraded the women and affronted their dignity, and failed to mention that it was their way of repaying the men that fought and bled for them, and that there was dignity and nobility in serving the community, work that enhanced and valued their worth.

More and more women came over to see what was afoot, attracting the attention of the guards and, eventually, their commander. He did not approve of the sentiments the two rebellious cousins were expressing, and ordered them seized and recorded the tag numbers of the gangs that had been listening.

Retribution for this traducing of the state was not long in coming. The next morning, before work commenced, the women were paraded in a hollow square.

At its centre the two cousins were secured by their wrists either side of a solid whipping post, set on a small platform so that all could see. The others of their gang, still chained to them, stood by in silent resentment and fear.

The camp commandant mounted the platform and addressed the assembled women.

"Women of the state," he pronounced, "your service here is an honourable one and, moreover, one you owe the state for your protection and living. There are those among you who would fly in the face of reason by denying these manifest truths. Such folly cannot go unpunished and an example will be made."

He gestured towards the two naked women hanging from the post by their wrists.

"By rights," he said, "they should be flogged to the blood for their subversion, but I have been petitioned to show mercy by their guardians at the temple of Isis and certain noblewomen of this city. Accordingly they are condemned only to serve in the mills for a month, together with the rest of their gang, who did nothing to stop them and, indeed, seem infected with their pernicious poison. I only hope I do not live to regret my leniency."

A look of relief briefly crossed the faces of the two at the post at his decision, followed by a smirk of triumph, though their chain companions showed some apprehension at their own sentence. The Commandant had not finished, however.

"Moreover," he went on, "I am ashamed to hear that many of you seemed to feel that they might be listened to without protest, thus encouraging them in their folly, and exposing yourselves to their poison, when you should have cried shame on them and refused to let them pollute your minds. For this dereliction of duty, all those gangs found to have listened without protest will serve two weeks in the mills, to give them time to reflect on their ingratitude and folly."

The mills! Claudia had never been there, but she recalled only too clearly what Lavinia had said at their first meeting about her own punishment for selfishness in sex, and was not cheered.

Nor were her spirits lifted when her gang, along with the others, arrived at the place of their punitive labour. The mills ground all the corn for the city, crushed seed for oil, worked the pumps that lifted water from the river to the higher parts of the town via an elaborate system of lead pipes, letting it flow from ornamental fountains where all could come to fill their pots and jars.

They were housed in a set of gloomy halls, bare stone walls contrasting with the decorated marble facades and interiors of all other public buildings. This was a strictly utilitarian institution, a place of grinding labour and aching toil.

Pumps and mills were driven by great wheels, similar in construction to those built to make use of a free flowing river but, in this case, the flow of water over the treads of the wheels was replaced by an endless succession of

bare female feet, ceaselessly climbing the wooden stair that, just as remorselessly, lowered them back to the level from which they had started. In order to maintain one's position on the stair, and there were compelling reasons why they should wish to do so, the women must march upwards at the pace of the wheel, be they never so weary. Limbs would ache until they felt they must drop if they moved one pace more. The air was filled with the groans and gasps of labouring women and fetid with the smell of their hot and unwashed bodies.

Claudia's flesh crept as she was marched, naked as ever, into this dim and stinking world of sweating flesh and creaking machinery. The half-naked guards, with their long whips of plaited leather, left no doubt that their fate of a shirker here would be hard. In the event, she found that Lavinia had exaggerated nothing; in fact the reality was even worse than she had supposed.

Each of the great wheels that lined the dimly lit hall was wide enough for a chain gang to stand on it at one time. It was a feature that owed nothing to chance and everything to a conscious provision for the disciplining of refractory women. Her group was brought to line up facing one such great wheel, and they prepared to mount together, on command. First, though, they were to receive their 'motivators'.

A guard passed down the line, slapping his hand down on one shoulder of each naked woman waiting to be set to the mill.

"Squat!" he commanded, and Claudia bent her knees until she sat on her heels.

"Put your hands on the ground in front of you!" and she leant forward to place her palms on the grimy stone paving of the mill building. The action lifted her buttocks slightly, and as her hands took her weight, her breasts dangled between her out stretched arms. Suddenly she flinched. A hand had invaded her anal cleft, seeking out her dimple.

"Be still!" It was the guard's voice that growled at her, and presently she felt something wet and cool slapped into the groove, then thumbed brusquely into the tight anal orifice.

She whined in protest at the humiliating invasion, but the guard silenced her again, telling her she'd be grateful for the attention in a minute. He was not lying. What came next was a hard metallic nose nuzzling at the lubricated aperture. It found its target, made an initial lodgement, then she grunted sharply as it was thrust deep into her bowel.

"You wouldn't have fancied that dry, I imagine," the guard responsible for her preparation observed, and she shuddered anew at the thought of that thick iron hook being forced into an ill prepared and reluctant sphincter.

Even so, it was no easy burden. She felt as if she was filled from butt to gills, her anus already aching from its rude stretching. She felt it even more when the guard gathered up the slack of the chain to which it was attached and yanked upwards, forcing her to her feet. Her hands went behind her in desperate defence of her ravaged rectum, but there was no way in which she could have relieved herself of its grip, even without the guard to prevent it.

As it was, he used his cruel purchase on her gut to force her forward onto the wheel and up the stair of wooden treads, until she stood just above the level of the axle, where her weight would have its greatest driving power on the mill. The chain from the hook on which she was impaled ran over a pulley in the roof, and the guard hauled on the free end, until the tension in the chain kept the hook, and her, firmly in place. He moved back and secured the free end to a ring. Now she was in one sense free, her arms with no fetters, her ankles only restricted by the chain that fastened her loosely to her neighbours on the gang, something she had become so used to as to ignore most of the time.

Those others had been given the same preparation as herself and stood now, with iron stuffed rectums, like so many gaffed fish on a river bank, or skinned rabbits hung up on butchers' hooks, grasping the wooden rail that ran across at chest level to maintain their balance the better. They braced themselves at a warning call from the guards, and the man in charge released the brake that had held the wheel steady while they were mounted.

Claudia gasped in pain and panic. All around her she heard answering grunts from her neighbours. It felt as if the earth had fallen away from beneath her feet as the wheel moved and the tread dropped, letting her weight fall even harder onto the hook in her anus. Shocked by the pain, as the tip of the hook pressed against her entrails, she staggered up onto the next step, relieving the

anguish in her belly, but the wheel was turning, the new step was falling in its turn, and she had to climb again and again and again and again...

It was an endless and unrelenting progression, marching up a slope that had no crest, doomed to climb and climb and go on climbing, until the overseers called a halt.

At first it was not so bad, once she had relieved the initial stab of the hook in her guts, no more effort than climbing a normal stair to an upper room, though a climb hampered by a solid chunk of iron in her rear that shifted with every movement of her thighs - each step twisted it in her bowel and reminded her of what would happen should she falter. But upper rooms usually require only a dozen steps to reach them and even if one is travelling to one on the fourth or fifth floor, there is an end to look forward to, and even respites on the way when one may pause on a landing and catch one's breath.

There was no respite on the mill. The floor above was never attained, and any pause in one's upward march was punished by a jagging pain as the hook struck home.

Soon her legs began to ache. But she daren't pause, that first jab into her bowel had taught her what to expect. She bit her lip against the pain of the protesting muscles in her calves and thighs and stepped on. Sweat trickled down her back, and between her breasts. It was hot in this airless place and all the bodies treading the wheels streamed with perspiration, the heated woman flesh adding to the odour of pain and strain in which they were condemned to live.

Scents of excrement encouraged the flies that settled on their moist parts, nearly driving them mad with their obscene attentions.

On and on she tramped, the steps never staying beneath her feet for long enough to snatch even a second of respite before the hook bit. She was moaning with the pain of keeping up the effort, and could hear the same sounds of distress from either side of her, where the others of her gang trod their own path of pain, but could spare no strength to consider their sufferings. This martyrdom on the wheel was enough to absorb all her remaining faculties, and she blundered on in a mist of pain and exhaustion.

She was very near to collapse when the wheel finally breaked to a halt.

Only twenty minutes, but if felt like a lifetime! She hung sobbing to the rail in front of her, tears streaking her sweat-grimed face, her head drooping between her outstretched arms.

The relief was heaven, but it was not to last. The guards gave them water from a skin to replace the fluids they had lost in sweat and tears, and all too soon the warning came that the wheel would start again. The women groaned and pleaded, but the regime was inexorable: twenty minutes to each stint with a break of three minutes, a half hour every four stints, an hour every eight.

Claudia reached her first real break, after four stints, near to total collapse. Moreover her body was beginning to have other needs as well. She couldn't tell how her bowel was faring - it was too sore to know if it was filling and, in any case, she could not have voided it with that great iron stopper in place. That same invader was pressing on her bladder and, despite the perspiration that covered her in a sticky lather, she just had to rid herself of the water that they were only too grateful to drink each break.

Except on the greater break after eight stints, they spent their rest periods standing on the stationary mill wheel, the hook immovably in place, and here she had to relieve her aching bladder, letting the hot liquid trickle shamingly down the inside of her thighs to soak the stained boards on which her bare feet stood, boards already reeking of past female urine, sweat and stale blood. And other more foul excretions too, though it was difficult to see how these had got past an iron butt plug.

After the eighth stint they were taken down, the chains that held their hooks slackened to enable them to step down from the wheel. They pleaded for the hooks themselves to be removed and the guards obliged them, but told them they were foolish to wish it and that they would think differently by the time their second large break came round. Unable to take in what was said, they merely renewed their pleas to be disimpaled, and sighed with the relief as the horrendous metal crescents were withdrawn.

They were feed and watered, and allowed to lie in straw to one side of the mill room, until the horn told them that their blessed hour of rest was up. They all sighed and groaned as they were driven back into place before the wheel. All

too soon they were crouching again to receive back their hooks, and to learn their lesson. With the hook removed, their sphincter had relaxed again, closing the openings tightly and, moreover, the tissues were strained and sore. Entering the hooks was now even more painful than the first time, and they had to consider whether it might not have been better to have left them in place after all, letting the abused sphincter muscles stay open throughout the break, rather than causing them to be strained anew like this.

The second third of their twelve hour day was even worse than the first, and they were nearing the end of their endurance when the second large break was called. Food and water and rest restored their strength a little, but they were already tired when they stood up to mount the wheel again for the long last series. As they wore on Claudia felt herself weakening. Several times her limbs refused to move, until her descending weight drove the hook high into her guts, bringing a shriek to her tortured throat and forcing her to take another step.

The guards sensed the panic in her cries, and feared that too frequent repetition of these savage goring in the women's vitals might lead to serious harm, and started to encourage them with their whips...

Claudia could not walk when she was released after her final stint. She collapsed onto the floor and was pulled to one side by the guards. But the other girls on the chain were in no better shape and more guards had to be fetched to carry all five to the back of the hall where they were left to lie on the straw for the night.

If Claudia could have reflected on her fate at that moment she would have despaired of surviving for thirteen more days like the one she had just endured, but she was unconscious before she fell in the straw, and her gang sisters with her. No soothing fingers stayed to aching vulvas that first night, no probing tongues sought out throbbing love buds to bring relief to tortured minds. All lay as if dead until dawn.

With the return of consciousness, and rational thought, they could reflect that they were not the first to tread this horrific road. Thousands had sweated on the wheels before them and survived. Their guards had learnt what could be endured without injury, at least to body, and would not overstep the limit. As they waited for their own shift to start, they watched the line of naked sweating bodies on the wheel, their buttocks pumping as they struggled to keep their weight off the hooks starkly springing from between the swelling nates, thin steel chains holding them in place, ensuring any slackening of their pace would bring its own automatic and instant retribution, its own irresistible spur to further effort, witnessed by knotted muscles in calf and thigh, the sinews straining to propel weary bodies, bone tired and aching unbearably. Their faces were twisted in pain and despair as the stint pursued its endless course, a slight lather about their gaping mouths as they fought for air, the unremitting effort evident in their straining limbs, their rasping breath, the stale scent of their hot and unwashed flesh.

They would suffer the torments of the damned, but they would survive. They questioned, as they awaited a repeat of the previous day, whether survival would be wholly welcome.

The question was even more in doubt before their dreadful fourteen days expired, and they could be returned to the relative bliss of the normal round of their servitude. When it was finally done they were totally exhausted, their bodies wracked with pain. Just to walk about furrowed their brows with anguish, and they found themselves moving like waddling geese.

The mills were a form salutary punishment. Nobody who had experienced it would willingly expose themselves to a second time, so it was a very potent means of curbing the rebelliousness of women. Claudia, certainly, felt her buttocks clench, her belly freeze, at just the thought of what she had suffered.

She could not bring herself to imagine how it must have been for the cousins who had brought them to it, who had themselves been condemned to twice their dose of the unpalatable medicine.

The radical effects of this drastic remedy for female ills was recognised by a day allowed for recovery before commencing work. It was a day spent cleansing themselves and resting all they could. Twenty four hours later, they were harnessed to a wagon again, limping still, but capable of serious work.

Anything was preferable to that remorseless grind on the hook.

Time passed, their bodies healed, in a month or so they were as good as new, better in fact, their bodies hardened by their labour, their minds by their ordeals.

Near the end of their six months of service, the pregnant youngster reached her term. They had done all they could to help share her burden in the weeks leading up to her delivery, and formed a corps of honorary amateur midwives when she went into labour. All the gang got extra delicacies as her time drew near, and all were excused work for forty-eight hours, until the new mother was on her feet again, the baby slung on her back as they went back to work. It was a fine new female, who would one day serve on the gang in her own right, rather than seeing it from a warm bare back between sucking lustily on a firm milk filled breast.

And then, quite suddenly, the six months was up. They had become so used to the life, and distracted by the new baby they thought of as their communal child, that they were scarcely aware of the approach of their release. On the day before the new draft was to be inducted, hot irons, sharp needles and cruel barbering and all, they were marched down to the lines and the blacksmith struck off the heads of the rivets in their anklets, opening the iron hoops.

For the first time in six months they stood alone with no chain restricting their movements. Claudia found it strange in the extreme. For a moment she actually missed the feel of iron on her leg, and experienced a sense of loss. Then memories of other times returned. She walked proudly with her

'sisters', naked and unfettered, her growing hair tied back with a piece of cord. At the entrance to the forum she found Marcellus waiting with a knot of friends and relatives, come to claim back their women.

He handed over his receipt for her body before signing another receipt acknowledging her safe return to him. He had her stand before him and looked her over as if checking a horse he had lent to an acquaintance, checking he had not lamed her, that her limbs were sound, and that she had come to no harm in the stranger's care. He was amply satisfied with what he saw. Her body was straight and firm. There was no surplus fat on her, every finely formed muscle was clearly visible, but she'd not been starved, and had that slight softening of the contours of her limbs that showed the subcutaneous padding of the healthy female. Her belly was flat, her haunches firm, and she carried herself with conscious pride in her physical excellence, her brow untroubled.

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