Princes and Pawns

Taressi and Marquaise followed the page to their master’s chambers in silence, it had appeared obvious to them both that Count Tomas was needed by her majesty. They had retired from the hall to prepare his chamber for him. As they filtered through the darkly lit halls of the palace, the only noise was the footfalls of the page and occasional rustle of the diathermanous skirts they both wore.

Taressi could not believe such opulence as they passed through the gilded halls of royalty. She could never have imagined so much wealth could be so vainly displayed. In a strange way, she was in awe of her new circumstance as she shuffled along. Trying to not be obvious in her quick glances side to side, forcing her lips to remain stoic and not reveal how dazzled she was. It was on these occasions that she relished her new life as her father’s tax to the count. The objects of beauty and depths of depravity she had experienced far surpassed anything that she could have imagined in that long forgotten life as a common.

Marquaise’s powder blue eyes watched only the slow passing of the great tiled floor in front of her gown. The feel of the long dark hair on her head as driving her mad, she had not felt hair on her neck or scalp for three years now, and this wig for public was quite uncomfortable. He would not even allow her own natural color. All must be of his choosing, that was the price she would pay for the rest of her life for the sins of her father. Marquaise blinked her long lashes trying to suppress the memories and regrets as she passed through the halls of Ostingham Palace.

She had once as a very young girl accompanied her father here, never leaving the side of his bodyguards. At the time she did not know why, but now, now that she was a woman she knew why her father had tried so hard to shield her from the world of the nobility. Shield her from men like, like Count Tomas of Aquee. Her tiny hands balled into fists clutching at her gown as a single tear began to slip from her eye and onto her cheek, as memories of a more recent time, a time when she was last home, a time when...

Marquaise remembered the day her life ended only so well that she could never quite keep the day from her mind for long. She remembered passing through her father’s private office, he was discussing the news that his lord, the late Count Geffroy of Aquee had died. He was speaking loudly about not serving the son of a pauper monk and a whore. He would see the rampant dragon of the House of Marchone down trodden and slain before he would pay full tribute to the loin spring of a consort and a priest. His red beard was flying about and he was rising his hands over his head and shouting loudly as Marquaise slid into he shadows of the doorway to listen to the business of men.

“I will be damned!” spat the flushed face Baron of Marchone to his assembled men, his son, Gunther the younger, the captain of his guard, Rasption, and a few other soldiers that Marquaise could not recognize from her secreted vantage point. “Since, his, excellency,” Gunther the elder, let the formal title slide from his tongue like sparks from steel, “the young Count of Aquee demands tribute, I say we send him one half his annual due, since he has but one half the blood of his title!” The old man whose red hair as beginning to fade bellowed to his lackeys. One of the hidden men began to speak, “Sir, are you not concerned about...” An overweight and past its prime fist landed hard upon a table cutting the man off abruptly. “No! I will not let myself, a Marchone, fear a man with the blood of a whore consort and an adulterous monk! What can a bastard do to threaten a man of proven ancestry? No, sir, we send half the tribute and see what this bastard is capable of!”

How prophetic those words her father spat had been, Marquaise thought as she watched a drop of tear fall to her tightly pushed and barely covered bosom. It as not a fortnight after she had slipped quickly away from her father’s office to avoid discovery that she and the world learned just what the bastard count was capable of.

She heard the echoing screams of her stepmother from down the hall of Marchone Manor. She could still feel how cold the stones were on her bare feet as she raced into the hall to find her stepmother collapsing in a fit before the open door of her father’s bedchamber in the dark of the hall. Marquaise ran though it as if she was hardly moving at all, her breasts seemed to move in slow, heavy motions as she ran, bouncing slowly with every motionless step beneath her thin chemise. It seemed hours before she reached the door and looked in.

The sight on the floor of her father’s chamber was abject horror made real. Her father lay wide-eyed on the cold stones. Dressed in only skin biting ropes, hips lips thickly gagged to stifle the sounds of his murder. His nude form lay on a gathering pool of blood that spilled about a shaft of iron, that still glowed from its baptism in the overly bursting flames from the bedchamber hearth. Marquaise could not take her blue eyes off the display of her father, stabbed without a piercing of his skin. That cruelly glowing shaft having been driven deep into his bowels from his exit. The sight of her father having been savaged was even more overcoming than the fact that he had been murdered. Marquaise tried to faint but could not. Her brother tried hard to pull her from the doorway had broke three of her nails on the heavy oak of the door before passing her off to a flock of nannies and guards and her own inconsolable sobs.

Two days later came the news that her brother had been captured and the forces of Marchone had been blasted from the field by Count Tomas’ cannon. The Manor was in an uproar. People scrambling, Marquaise could not understand what was going on with her world, she was still in shock of her father’s death and now this?

Then she remembered seeing the black and silver banners of Aquee crossing the river Aqualba just across the glen from Marchone Manor. His heavy carriages slow, grinding wheels carrying those engines of fire and death right to her doorstep. The next morning she heard the gates thrown open without having heard one sounding of cannon. Her father’s remaining soldiers surrendered without a fight. Terror gripped her breasts as she heard the approach to her chamber of the heavy boots and clinking armor of her father’s foes. She stood and tightly gripped her nurse’s hand, squeezing it white from lack of blood, waiting, waiting breathlessly.

Suddenly, with a heavy crash the door bent back and splintered, just as the fortunes of her house had done. “The Former Lady Marchone, I presume?” She heard the words piercing her ears like daggers piercing her heart as she aw for the first time a man in black his figure surrounded by the shattered entryway to her chamber. She screamed and he laughed motioning his followers to move for her. Four Men with brutal strength and lust in their eyes grabbed her hard and lifted her on armored shoulders carrying her like looted booty from her bedroom screaming at the top of her lungs, only being drown out by the mocking laughter of her captor.

A cresting tide of callous hand washed her out of her chambers and through the empty halls of Marchone Manor. Finally, she was thrown down face first on the ancient wood of her father’s banquet table. She could see the entire household of the House of Marchone watching her as she lifted her head, her long fiery red trusses spilling over her bared shoulder as she lifted her tear streaked face. Before she could find the strength to push herself up her, arms were roughly seized, and she was spun around. She could now no longer see the throng of the room, she could just feel their eyes upon her as her arms were pulled forward and her wrists were bitten by rough rope and drawn as if to be pulled from her sockets as they were lashed to the carves legs of the table. Marquaise screamed loudly and kicked her legs only to have them captured and pulled out at angles. Her ankles finding the same coarse bite of ropes as they were trussed up leaving her splayed over the table, her bare toes barely touching the cool stones of the hall. The hard rounded with time and smoothly polished to her father’s tastes, ground hard and deep against her waist. She heard the ripping of cloth before she felt the cool brush of air and the hard coldness of the razor sharp steel sliding down her spine from her neck painstakingly slow until the evil point of the dagger slipped between the crack of her table raised ass cheeks.

She gasped in a panic at the feel of the blade washing over her skin. The hot burn of the entire hall filled eyes seared her steel chilled nerves as her dressing gown had been cut free from her milky white flesh. First her shoulders as the top of the gown ripped away, she felt her breasts swell and fall more loosely to the top of the table as the limp cloth fell revealing the profiles of her ample breasts. The sharp dagger sent dangerous sensations rippling through her untouched skin to a core she never knew existed. Her light blue eyes stared wide and her lips were frozen in a silent scream, she could not fathom if it were from the terror in her mind from her captor, or it were a terror of her own blossoming awareness.

Then the sharp flat of the blade caressed the inside of her thigh as the skirt of her gown was sundered. Her virgin flesh now completely evident to the entire crowd. Her legs twinged at the feel of the steel, like a metallic lover’s hands running the length of her flesh was setting ablaze with cold fire. Her cheeks flushed as the last of her gown fell free, like the last toppled banner of the House of Marchone, pooling in its defeat to the mettle of the House of Aquee around her bound and spread feet.

Her shock was interrupted as a black glove thrust the dagger that had tattered her gown into the ancient wood of the banquet table next to her ear. Marquaise shook her head to catch a glimpse through the shroud of her own dark red locks at the gloved hand, it slowly clapped into its mate and she heard the same voice that had so terrorized her only moments before, “All of you here assembled, look well upon the delicate flower that is the House of Marchone,” his tone was sinister as it was mocking. Marquaise felt the burn of a thousand eyes, everyone who had waited upon her childish requests, put up with her tantrums, and set to please her to keep her father on their good graces now had his or her eyes over her bare shoulders, the delicate sweep of her back, the perfectly curved rise of her creamy cheeks, the soft length of her white thighs, and the now open and parted of her always secreted blossom. Marquaise suddenly got some freedom from the spell of the blade on her flesh and thrashed violently against her bonds shrieking pitifully for help.

That evil laughter taunted her even before she felt the glove wind itself deep into the tangled mass of her hair, “Now, daughter of Marchone, I think I shall take the rest of my tardy tribute,” the icy voice of Aqyee hissed close to her ear. “NOOOOOO!!!” Marquaise screamed and flexed her bound limbs against the restraints with renewed strength. Aquee simply laughed in response, “Oh, no, my lady, I think your father has kept you a child far too long, how old are you, eighteen? yet still unknown to men? Well, Don’t you think that it is high time to correct the errors of such a miser?” Count Tomas mocked as he held her hair tight and she felt his leather clad legs close between her bound open thighs.

Marquaise shrieked and screamed thrashing about but that only succeeded in grinding the hardness of the table edge against the seed of feminine lust, which made her gasp in surprise as air left her lungs. Time seemed to stand still as she could hear quiet rustlings then a heavy thunk as the count’s belt and sword fell loudly on the tabletop. She could not believe what was happening, he had taken his belt off. Somehow, she knew, but could not allow herself to know what was happening.

Tomas smiled cruelly as he pulled the glove off his free hand with his teeth, he let her turn her head in his grasp just enough to lock her eyes upon his discarded belt. His victory was nearly complete, he to but finish the effort with one quick thrust of his blade. That would be so simple; he could not resist showing all how he savored this moment. He paused with his black leather glove hanging in the air as he devoured her flesh with is devilishly green eyes, a reaper’s smile slowly spreading across his lips, then he broke her concentration on the belt in a lightning quick slash of his arm.

Marquaise was still staring through the shroud of her crimson locks at the heavy leather of his belt when she felt the hot burn on her ass. The loud, flat slap of a leather glove slamming hard against her delicate flesh echoed in her ears and she shrieked with surprise and pain. Her tethered limbs flinching, in yet another vain attempt to escape. The coarse ropes biting her joints as she struggled. The nub of her womanhood pressed hard against the edge of the banquet table, sending a second wave of internal flame bursting through her depths. She felt her body betraying her as she struggled against her conqueror. She felt her secret wells beginning a trickle as she felt another blow from the glove, the unrelenting caress of the ropes on her wrists and ankles, and the constant hard pressure of the wood upon the peak of her sex. Marquaise screamed, this time hoarsely, and more at her outrage with herself as a third blow landed. She had almost stopped struggling because she did not know where to go. She could not decide whether to pull on ropes, grind her sex against the seduction of the table, or just raise her ass for the next blow.

Tomas seen he had her; he had her conquered body and soul. With that, he pulled hard on her hair, jerking her head back and lifting her breasts from the table. Her confused body was evident to all assembled by her revealed nipples, hard as pink pebbles, as her breasts swung off the tabletop.

Marquaise’s neck creaked at the sudden pull towards her captor; her eyes went out of focus as her head was bent far back. Then in what was but a split second she felt many things, only now in memory, it seemed like it took forever to realize. She felt her neck strain; her shoulders and wrists were stretched as if she had been placed on the rack. The ropes bit deeper into her wrists, and her fingers seemed to go numb from lack of blood.

Then there was a slow, shocking realization of something hot and pointed, yet round pressing it where only she had touched her body, and then only in the dark of midnight hen she was alone and unwatched. It was impatient, as if it was eager for a prize. She thought she could feel a rampant pulse, throbbing against her heated petals briefly. “NOOOO!!!” Marquaise shriek echoed in the hall as her denied terror began to complete itself.

Marquaise felt the hot, pulsing, ridiculously wide maleness press forward in a single sudden charge. Her scream was cut short as the pain of her splitting hymen wracked her soul. Her mind could not comprehend anything but the pain and sensations of being filled. Places Marquaise had no idea existed within the previously hidden depths of her garden now screamed to life with the pain of birth. An unholy birth of her ascendance into womanhood.

Marquaise felt her cheeks wet with tears of defeat, just as she felt her body mutiny against her will and begin to bath the lance of Aquee with something more than the small trickle of blood. The breath was driven from her body leaving her mouth locked in a silent scream. She could feel her exposed breasts swinging. The pressure of his member expanding her, withdrawing, and crashing back to the hilt. The speed of it causing a whirlwind within her body. Her flesh bowing weakly to his power, as she felt the rising tide of pleasure suddenly breaking through the pain in her mind. Marquaise screamed again, coerced ecstasy upon her lips, just as she felt for the first time the hot intrusion of the molten seed of a man, her conqueror.

Marquaise almost stumbled as the page stopped at a large wooden door. She smiled demurely and tried to hide the flush of her cheeks and suppress the dampness between her legs at the memory. The page ignored her and simply offered the key to Taressi who curtsied and smiled as the page turned and left hem alone in the hall. Marquaise closed her eyes trying to stop the memories, but only reopening them to her ruin. Marquaise was panting and gasping like a common room whore bent over a tavern bar as Aquee, having had his fill simply withdrew as if he had felt nothing. Her head crashed to the table, her face buried in a cloak of long crimson tresses, sobbing through gasps as her body shook from within. She could feel the hot, thick trickle of blood and seed cooling as it trailed down the inside of her still spread thighs. “Behold the last vestiges of Marchone!” Count Tomas shouted, holding an open palm towards her gaping open womanhood. The former household of Marchone stood looking on, silently. Tomas nodded and some of his men began clapping and elbowing some of their captured foes into doing the same. Slowly but building the hall was filled with the sounds of clapping that deafened Marquaise ears.

Then with a wave of a gloved hand Tomas silenced the room as he replaced his manhood within the depths of his codpiece. “There are a couple of traditions to uphold here,” Aquee began addressing the crowd but turning to look over his shoulder to look at the ruined feast tethered to the able before him. First, there is the fact that one lord has now derived a young lady of her support, to this I shall place her within my household, she is under my protection.” Marquaise barely heard the words and did not understand until later that she was to be taken like confiscated cattle by her new lord, Count Tomas of Aquee. She felt her long hair hiding her face and comforting her somewhat. How many times had she hidden her face in pillows and her long red locks her father had been so proud of when she had been admonished or denied some trifle as a girl? She did not know.

“The second, tradition,” Aquee said with a sadistic lilt to his tongue, “ages ago, when a rebellious subject was brought to heel, he was shorn of hair by his master.” Marquaise began to shriek. She was tossing her head from side t side violently trying to escape this last violation.

She felt the grip of firm hands of lackeys on her holding her face down. Her nose crushed to the cold wood of the table. Then she felt a hand lift a large quantity of hair from her back. She tensed every muscle and tears streamed from her eyes as the dagger just to the side of her face as plucked noisily from the wood. Then an all too familiar, but closer than ever before to her skin, she felt the chill of steel sliding with utmost care and utter cruelty. Her skin prickled and tingled as her nerves were stimulated and her hair was stripped. Tears flowed and the lackeys had to hold her hard to keep their charge’s sobs from causing an accidental breaking of skin. Though Marquaise prayed that he would slit her throat and spare her the theft of her hair, but this was the first of many things she would be denied in her new life. The next hour seemed to drag on forever. Until that dagger had swiped her scalp completely clean. Marquaise had cried until she could cry no more. Then she did not even notice as she felt her wrists and ankles slip on the loosening bonds. Soft fingers lifted her up to face the black clad man with the black curly hair and unnaturally green eyes. He smiled and said softly, “Marquaise, please sit up on the table. She shook her head and he simply lifted her up on to the table himself. She could feel long strands of her beauty crushed between the roundness of her ass and the hardness of the table.