Galley slaves, pirate | FLIGHT | bondage stories

"Oh Gods!" cried Claudia, clinging to her brother's arm. "Marcellus, what is that ship?"

The galley had sprung at them unawares, coming at them as they began to round the headland and set course to the south west and the security of Bysantium. It was a long lean craft, banks of oars on either side thrashing the water as she swoops upon the more cumbersome sailing vessel. But it was not the flashing oars, or the armed and bearded men lining the rails, that had caused the young Roman noblewoman's cry of alarm. Lashed to the stumpy mast of the oncomer was a naked girl, and to the bow another woman, more mature, but equally naked, her arms drawn back behind her to fasten her to the rail, her legs stretched back on either side of the bulging stem forcing open her thighs to reveal a thicket of dark curls at her fork, and the strain on her arms threw out her magnificent full breasts.

Their captain had taken in the situation at a glance, and had let out the leeward sheets, yelling at the man on the steering oar to let the boat fall off to run with the wind on her best point of sailing, south-east. The Gods were kind: even as they turned, the wind backed and freshened, the yard creaked as the sheets took up the strain, and the boat began to gather speed.

Still the galley continued to gain. The heavy trader needed time to get way on. As the two passengers stood by the stern rail watching the pirate ship, its conduct and decorative female additions left little doubt of its status as it continued to close, creeping inexorably towards them. They could hear the shouts of the stroke masters, as they urged on the slaves shackled to the oars, and the crack of whips, the sudden cries as leather fell on naked flesh.

The two boats were no more than a length apart now and, from this distance, the white and wave-lashed forms tied to bow and mast could be clearly seen. From their appearance they might be mother and daughter, an impression heightened by the fact that a keen eye could discern a trickle of blood down the younger woman's thighs, suggesting she had but recently been virgin, while the mother's body showed violent bruises to breasts and belly. Her mouth gaped as her eyes searched the skies, for a cord woven into the long wet hair hung down her back and drew her head up, exposing her throat. The glorious thighs looked as if they had seen good service in a matrimonial bed, and displayed little sign of the poundings they must have received from the multiple rapes they might reasonably be assumed to have endured so recently. The usual tell-tale witnesses of sweat and semen had been washed away by the slashes of spray that lashed her as the surging galley crashed through the waves.

The daughter carried the evidence of her distress more openly. The delicate ivory of her inner thighs was bruised and grazed by men's rough usage, her maidenhead spread thickly on those thighs, so fresh and red indeed that the crew must have been about their rough male business as the trader had rounded the point. Their lust-induced inattention had gained the trader precious time or, Claudia reflected in horror, she might already be joining the other two females at the pirate feast.

The archers on the pirate's bow began to let fly, their arrows humming through the rigging, passing close to the steersman, where he strained against the oar to keep the sails filled and pulling. If he were hit the prize would be theirs instantly. Claudia ran across the deck and put herself between the archers and their prey. Her long hair, loosened in her haste, streamed out to leeward, and her light white robe fluttered in the breeze, shielding the steersman from the enemy view, though it did nothing to conceal from them the voluptuous curve of her thighs or the delicate rounds of her buttocks, or the perfect globes of her firm breasts as the wind moulded it to her form like a second skin.

Marcellus cried out at her to take cover.

"They won't shoot at me," Claudia called back, "they'd have no sport with my dead body. Besides, if the helmsman falls, I would think myself better off dead, so what have I to lose?"

Her guess proved true. The great black-bearded man who seemed to command the pirate craft shouted at the men in the bows, knocking their weapons aside, and no more arrows came from them. Clearly the pursuer calculated he could overhaul the sluggish trader and grapple, gaining all her cargo, including the striking young woman standing in the stern, her body outlined by the winds pressure on her thin robe. He'd keep that one for himself, he decided. Once his men had all had a turn he would chain her in his cabin, and use her as he pleased.

Inexorably the sea-wolf closed on its prey. The bow was level with the trader's stern, and another spurt would put them alongside. Fierce men would be leaping aboard to cut down the unarmed crew, seize and strip the haughty young woman who stared them out. Inside, Claudia trembled, envisaging her virginity ravished, her pure body become a mere cracked bowl, a crack from which some small barbarian shaped bastard would sooner or later emerge.

None on either ship considered the dark line racing towards them across the western sea, so intent were they upon each other, the one to catch, the other despairing of escape. Their steersman, brave and faithful to his duty, felt it first. His eye never left the sail as he leant on his oar to keep it filled. Now he yelled at the captain, for the wind had hesitated, backed, and filled again, this time from the west. He hurled his weight against the oar, bring the boat fully onto the wind as the captain called on his men to trim the great yard of the sail.

As it heeled, the trader turned away from the galley, which swept across its wake, carried on by its own momentum. By the time the cursing steersmen and sweating slaves at the oars could bring her round, the trader was five lengths away.

Once more the whips sang, the drums beat faster, the rowing masters cursed and shouted at the galley slaves. At first they made up a little ground, but the wind was stronger now, and the slaves more tired. There was a limit to what men could be lashed to, and the limit was being reached. At first the trader held

its lead, then began, painfully slowly, to pull away. The pirate seemed to acknowledge defeat for the moment, but not entirely, and kept up the pursuit, albeit at a slacker pace, for the rest of the afternoon.

Perhaps he was praying to his Gods that the wind would disappear as fast as it had come. If so his Gods were not listening, for the breeze held and, by evening, the galley was an insect in the path of the setting sun. Looking at it, Claudia thought of that poor white figure, lashed starfish-like to its bow, that could have been her by now if things had gone otherwise. She hoped that the pirates, frustrated of fresh prey, would return to their older capture. At least the woman would be taken down from her place of agony and her body warmed by contact with others, unwelcome as that congress might be in every other way.

As she and the others watched, two more tiny insect shapes appeared silhouetted against the dying sun. The pirates were hunting in packs. If the captain who had pursued them had not been so greedy in wanting the prize for himself, he had only to have let them pass, and followed behind, knowing he was driving them into the arms of his comrades. It was to avoid having to share the woman with two other crews that he had lost the lot.

They had escaped but at the cost of flying out into the centre of the Pontus Euxinus, the Black Sea. Moreover the freshening wind that had saved them from the sea-wolves, now blew in such a direction they would have the greatest difficulty in fetching the haven of Bysantium, while the roving galleys, more manoeuvrable, and independent of the wind direction, could pick them off at will.

"There's nothing for it," the captain declared. "We'll have to run east to Pityus."

"Pityus?" Marcellus exclaimed. "I thought that was just a legend, the lost Roman colony at the foot of the Caucasus. The last outpost of Empire still standing against the Barbarian."

"It was still standing last year, I called there," the ship's master assured him, "and, the way they order things there, I don't doubt they've survived another winter too, and will a lot more to come. Rome may have sunk in decadence, but Pityus has put its house to rights, and stands tall."

"Besides," he added, "we have no choice. If we go west, your sister will be continuing the trip lashed to a pirate's bowsprit, with a bloody mat between her legs, and you and I will be lucky to be pulling oars. More likely feeding fishes."

They had left their home in the province along the Danube when the Barbarian had over run it, boarding one of the last ships to get away, with a few clothes, some personal possessions including Claudia's toilet equipment, an extensive apparatus as befitted her high station, and Marcellus's arms and military equipment, together with a considerable quantity of gold and jewels, secreted in a money belt about Marcellus's waist, or dangling between Claudia's breasts and thighs, concealed by the loose garments she wore. With Bysantium beyond their reach, they resigned themselves to trying to fetch Pityus.

Five days later they sighted that small defended enclave, where the Caucasus mountains came down to the sea and the hills enclosed a crescent of fertile lands. It was defended by a ring of forts high up in the mountains, guarding the passes through which the invading hordes tried cross each year, only to be beaten back by resolute action from well maintained positions.

From the sea, all seemed peaceful, the scene typical of any Roman provincial town, the clean tall walls of the city enclosing white buildings, some, the Forum and a great temple in the centre, actually marble clad. Away to the south, just outside the city wall, they could see the unmistakable outline of an amphitheatre for gladiatorial contests and other entertainments while, on the quays of the port, they could make out many tiny figures, obviously keen to greet a ship. Ships would be few and far between in these troubled times.

They tied up to the quayside. Then, after the harbour officials had boarded and heard their story, including the fact that the hold contained metals from Bohemia and grain from the Danube province, the officials ordered it unloaded for the benefit of the city, promising fair prices for everything requisitioned.

The two young strangers had expected a gang of men to be put aboard to lift out the cargo but, instead, several gangs of women appeared, and began to tackle the work, lifting the heavy bars of bronze and iron, carrying sacks of

grain between pairs of them. Such a circumstance was remarkable enough in itself, but magnified a thousandfold by the fact that the women were chained together in gangs of five - and were completely naked!

It was astounding to see women displayed so openly, their bare breasts swinging on their chests as they moved, the sinews in their thighs tightening under their loads, the muscles in their buttocks rippling with the strain of the heavy sacks of grain, but they assumed that they were slaves, and that this was just a local custom, based on climate and conditions ruling in this remote place. Still casting curious glances, not unmixed with an underlying lust in both brother and sister, the two refugees from Styria went ashore.

The harbour master had recommended them to the house of a respectable widow, where they might rest, and recover from the rigours of the journey.

"You should make an early opportunity to meet the Governor, and place yourselves under his protection," he told them. "The best time would be in the morning. There are games in the amphitheatre, and his Excellency holds audience in his box there."

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