Author's notes:
About the language and notation:
The Baylon language is a predecessor to Latin, which is why it looks like Latin at a glance.
Mental communication is denoted by a < and ends with a >, so a mental communication will look like this: "< Who are you? >"
Some warnings
:
This is erotic action adventure, meaning that there will be both sex and violence, but I don't mix the two.
This story is posted on the Literotica website and the author does not give permission for it to be reposted or reprinted anywhere else without consent.
P.S. I haven't gotten an editor yet, so any mistakes are mine. Interested editors are welcome :)
P.P.S. While you're here anyway, please rate the chapter and leave a comment :)
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Chapter 22 -- Flashback: Pirates
Alashiya (Cyprus) and Wilusa/Troia, Anatolia (Modern Turkey). Ca. 1222 BC.
The trading area of the city was bustling with people going back and forth, looking at the many stands and the goods they offered. With the island kingdom of Alashiya being a major trade hub in the eastern Middle Sea, most of the goods were imported, while others were locally produced, like the copperwares and olive oil.
I smiled to myself as I made my way through the crowd. Some assignments are better than others and this one had turned out to be one of the better ones.
Some of the shipments of both cobber and olive oil meant for Baylon had failed to reach Honey Island and because I had done so well as a merchant on my previous trip, I had been sent out on an information-gathering trip that had taken two months so far.
In that time, I had lived here on Alashiya, pretending to be a rich merchant, buying, and selling goods and cargo space on trade ships in the area, while discretely searching the customer's minds for bad intentions.
So far, I had detected four different pirates who had bought goods or cargo space with the intention of assaulting the ship later. Those assaults had failed as the targeted ships had carried Baylon trained guards and a mage from Securitas Externus. Prisoners had been interrogated and more pirates had been taken out.
It might seem like a complicated way to secure our wares, but unfortunately, Securitas Externus didn't have the manpower to secure all ships and as most of the ships were local anyway, this was a way to take care of the problem discretely.
A well-dressed man selling three slaves caught my eye. I had seen him selling various goods before, but it was the first time I had seen him with slaves.
Not that there was anything unusual or illegal in trading with slaves, but as the source of slaves frequently were piracy, it could indicate that the man had dealings with pirates. Especially when considering the many different types of goods, he had been peddling in the last few months, as that type of merchants usually just sold plundered goods of any kind.
I changed my direction and walked over to him, followed by my armsmen. I had five of them, but as usual, only three escorted me on the marked.
Personally, I would have preferred to go alone, but as tradition dictated that successful merchant had armsmen for their protection, I had armsmen. Everything else would have been out of character for the merchant I was portraying.
As I walked closer, I looked at the slaves. It was a local looking man and two women that looked like they came from somewhere in the Nile delta of Kumet.
"Hello, Sir." Greeted the merchant with a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Could I interest a fine gentleman as you in some slaves?"
I hesitated, causing him to launch into a longer sales pitch about the slaves. According to him, the man was an excellent gardener and workman, while the women were good cooks and housekeepers. The only negative according to him, was that the women didn't speak the Alashiyan language.
Looking over the slaves again, their professions were clearly something the merchant had invented. The man had the look and body posture of a sailor, while the two women didn't look like house slaves. The women were also badly scarred on both face and arms, with most of the scars looking recent.
They didn't have the look of malnutrition some of the other slaves had and their arms looked too muscular for them to be daughters of a rich merchant. That made me look at their hands. Female slaves normally had their hands free, but those two had their hands bound.
Reaching out with my mind, I tried to connect with the still talking merchant, but his natural mind-shield was too strong for a causal examination and while I most likely could overcome it, I couldn't do it without him noticing that something was wrong.
Instead, I turned my attention and mental scan to the two women and quickly discovered that my hunch had been right: Their names were Nofret and Khenut and they were not housekeepers, but sisters and acolytes at a Bastet-Sekmet temple in Pi-Ramesses and had been caught when their ship was attacked while on the way to Byblos. Both Bastet and Sekmet were lioness goddesses and many of their followers, including their priests and acolytes, were trained in combat.
That explained their muscled arms as well as why their hands were bound. Their scars came from whipping, as the women had fought against the pirates attempts to use them for sex and had even killed one of their attackers, before the fight was broken up by a high-ranking female pirate.
Turning my attention to the man, I connected with his mind and struck gold. He wasn't a local sailor, but a Phoenician from Tyre named Batnoam, and he had been the navigator on the ship carrying the two women. As Phoenician navigators were usually either pressed into service or tortured for information on trade routed by the pirates, he had pretended to be an ordinary sailor when it as clear, that they couldn't escape the pirates.
The gold part was that he knew the route leading to the pirate's hideout and that there were no less than four pirate ships there... or at least there was two weeks ago, when the three of them were moved out.
