Confessions Of An Apostate

This story contains many themes beyond "sci-fi and fantasy" including mind control, BDSM, dubcon, voyeurism and a light smattering of cuckoldry. It's set in a world of swords and magic, so here we are, but please be warned there are darker elements. Thank you for reading.

***

I searched the market-day crowd for the old trader, passing between the people haggling in front of market stalls and gathering around fountains to gossip. Normally I'd climb up onto one of these fountains to search for him, but today's market was fairly lightly attended. I'd heard snippets of conversation as I passed through the thinned-out throng about missing merchants and unsafe roads, rumors about monsters of legend roaming the countryside. Many of these folk were simple peasants, prone to superstition and always ready to spin a yarn.

Finally, I caught sight of him just as he was entering the bazaar. The grizzled old iron monger led his oxen into the square and unhitched them, leading them to the water trough and giving a coin to a stablehand. By the time he'd made it back to his wagon, I was waiting for him. He saw me and shook his head.

"You're as predictable as the sun, Aldric," he grumbled in the common tongue. "I shall never be rid of you, I suppose."

I straightened my posture, coughed, and then bent my tongue into still unfamiliar patterns, punctuating words with throaty and guttural exhalations.

"Good morning to you, Roland," I barked out. "I have been sent by the Abbey to purchase ingots, how many do you carry today?"

Two children running by stopped and gawped at me, and I smiled back at them. I heard the old man sigh, and then Roland said back in the same rough tongue. "I still have 20 ingots of the best quality iron the hills can provide, squire. But I think I will start charging you extra for making me speak this awful bastard language."

"If it is a recompense you require for our conversations, let me buy you a cup of ale after our transaction is completed," I said, growling and working my jaw strangely to make the bizarre sounds. "But so many ingots? The Abbey's smiths will be happy, I think, to be provided with so much metal."

He frowned at me, but nodded.

"Many of the farms and villages I usually sell to on my way into Laurelton were abandoned, Aldric," he said. "I thought it was a coincidence at first, that I had just missed the first few with bad timing, but then I found one burned out and blood stains on the grass."

It was my turn to frown.

"Then maybe some of the rumors I have heard today are true," I said slowly. "Can monsters have returned to these hills?"

"More like bandits, probably," Roland said. "Now come, let's finish our transaction so you can buy me that ale. An empty road makes me just as thirsty as a busy one."

I grinned and nodded, and pulled out my purse, filled with silver from the Order of the Laurel's coffers. Market day held a special place for everyone in town, but me most of all - I cherished the opportunity to practice this forgotten language with Roland.

I'd discovered that Roland knew this odd dialect thanks to runes on the necklace he wore. A few months ago I'd uncovered a scroll with unfamiliar runes in our archives, and just a few days later spotted them on his pendant. He'd proclaimed the inscription had meant "Sharp iron is the only cure for hard luck" and shocked me when he pronounced it in a harsh language I'd never heard that he called "Mountaintongue." He allowed me to make a careful sketch off the runes and jot his pronunciation phonetically.

By the next time I'd seen him, I had scoured the archives for more scrolls, and made efforts at translations. I'd showed them to him and shaken his head - he didn't really read the language, only knew snippets his grandfather had taught him while they mined and worked iron when he was a boy. Still I forced him - well, bought him enough ale to persuade him - to sit with me and together we worked out as much of the runic form of Mountaintongue as I could.

I bought his ingots and had them delivered to the armory, and then got him into a tavern and kept him there until sundown when he was too drunk to think and speak in the ancient tongue anymore, and finally shooed me away. I trudged up and out of the lower town and into the citadel where the abbey and the barracks sat, passing through the gates with a nod to the acolytes standing guard.

***

The next day I stood in the training yard, a large waterskin slung over one shoulder, my healer's satchel slung over the other. The yard was filled with the clack of wooden weapons, the clang of dull training blades, and the grunts and cries of the women fighting with battlefield intensity.

Directly in front of me two paladins of the Order of the Laurel sparred with the precision of familiar foes; the shorter one with a long glaive, the taller with sword and shield. Valerie, the redhead with the glaive, was attacking relentlessly, whirling and thrusting, dancing forward and back to probe the tall blonde swordwoman's defenses. The taller woman, Anna - my paladin, who I had served as squire for more than three years - withstood Valerie's attacks with a calm determination, dodging and catching thrusts on her shield.

Her defense was active but economical with motion, her posture and stance remaining perfect throughout the onslaught, her mouth set in a straight line as her eyes scanned her opponent's relentless attacks for an opening. Her long blonde hair was bound up in a braid that crowned her head, and her leather and linen Order uniform hugged her lithe form to show off the statuesque figure she'd honed into a weapon. There was no slip in her defenses, no hesitation in her parries, and no unintended movement along that perfect body; not even her huge full breasts moved out of turn, as they were bound by a specially made harness that kept them carefully clasped in place.

I'd helped her into that harness this morning as I had countless times, hefting and adjusting her chest until her flesh sat immobilized and her training leathers were buckled securely. And I had thought this morning, as I did every morning, that Anna surely must have been touched by the Goddess herself, so great was her physical perfection. Just as surely the Goddess must have blessed me, because the Order of the Laurel swore an oath of chastity, so I was the only man whose hands touched that perfection. I was assiduously professional - Anna could have beaten me senseless, and would have, had I not been - but even in that capacity I relished my duties. To me, she was the Goddess's very avatar - beautiful, strong, stern and honorable.

Now I watched her carefully, memorizing her every move, considering her every form, as she would ask me to recount the fight later and analyze it. She knew I did not expect to become a knight myself - my passion lay in healing, language and knowledge - but she insisted I study the martial arts with the same intensity as I did the scrolls in the order's library. But I watched and memorized her forms gladly, as her body in motion was artistry, as surely as an artisan's tools created physical art. I was a good fighter as a result, and had won the squire's tourney last fall for the first time under her tutelage.

"Think Val will slip one in this time?" I heard a voice say from my right side, and I barely suppressed the urge to startle. I had been watching Anna so intently that I'd not even heard my friend Evelyn approach. She was Valerie's squire, and we'd both joined the Abbey to study and train in the same week.

It was Evelyn I'd beaten in the squire tournament finals, in a bout that went the full five touches. She'd trained like a madwoman every day since, and switched the spear as her primary weapon to make up for her smaller frame. Since then I had only taken three touches off her in the last nine months using my preferred hatchet and fighting knife, while she thrashed me regularly.

"I doubt it," I said with a small smile. "Anna is setting her up right now, leaving a small opening under the shield. Valerie sees it and thinks it's a trap - and she's right, of course - but pretty soon she won't be able to resist the attempt to strike at it anyway, because she's too Valerie not to."

I glanced over at Evelyn and saw her freckled face smiling up at me, smudged with dirt and sweat from hard training, and I grinned back.

"You know Anna's tendencies so well, Aldric, after all these years," Evelyn said with a laugh. "Could you beat her, do you think, with some hard training and everything you know?"

"Definitely not," I said. "I'll never be anywhere near good enough for that. I'm not sure anyone is - not even you, Evie! I've only seen her yield four touches in three years of constant sparring, and she went over and over those mistakes in her form for weeks afterwards, and trained that much harder to remove them."

It was then that Valerie made her move, feinting high with a jab and then rotating her wrists into a low slash where the high-held shield exposed Anna's calf. As I predicted, it was a trap.

Anna parried with her sword in a lightning fast flick of her wrist and stepped forward to stomp on the shaft of Valerie's glaive. Valerie kept a hold of her weapon but the sudden advance unbalanced her, and a half-second later Anna's shield crashed into her shoulder and she fell to the dirt. The redhead made to roll away, but the point of Anna's practice blade pressed forcefully into Valerie's exposed armpit, and she froze, then sank limply to the dirt.

"You couldn't help yourself," Anna said, standing over her, the dull blade pinning her friend.

"You were taunting me," Valerie said with a touch of anger in her voice. She threw back her head so her curly red ringlets bounced away from her face in a motion that screamed of pure frustration.

"Of course I was," Anna said, calmly. "You always rise to it."

She stepped back, sheathed her sword, and then helped Valerie up to her feet. I shot a grin at Evelyn, then stepped forward quickly with the waterskin and offered it to Anna. She took a long drink, then handed it to Valerie, who drank a long pull.

"Again," Anna said, and she pulled her sword free again and fell into her fighting crouch. Valerie twirled her glaive with a flourish and did the same. I stepped back, and watched them spar, following every move Anna made while Evelyn stood next to me in companionable silence.

***

That night, I sat in the dining hall and sipped an ale, smiling as my friends joked and laughed with one another over their own mugs. Evelyn sat across from me but was turned to talk to the other squires down the table. I had some scrap paper pinned to my sketching board, and was sketching Evelyn in profile as she talked.

I knew Evelyn's face well, she was one of my favorite subjects to draw. The dusting of freckles across her high cheekbones were like a constellation of stars I'd gazed upon countless nights, I could have drawn them from memory. She had wide eyes that were startlingly blue, sandy blonde hair and a big smile that split her face and showed the adorable gap between her two front teeth. Just seeing that smile warmed my core and made me feel happy.

She glanced over and saw that I was sketching her again and made a big show of rolling her eyes, but I saw that her smile deepened slightly, and how she held herself just a little straighter. Without looking, she reached across the table and laid her right hand on my left, where it sat curled around the paper, holding it in place. She gave my hand a little squeeze, and left it there. It was my turn to smile, and I took another sip from my ale.

"Anyway, I doubt we'll be out long," one of our fellow squires, Imogen. "Unless they're suicidal, these bandits will melt away once they realize the Order is hunting them. Hopefully we can find wherever the families from the farthest farms are hiding and help them rebuild a little, but I don't think that will take long."

I hadn't really been paying attention to the conversation, and I put down my pencil and turned to listen. Imogen's paladin, Gwendoyn, was one of the Order's strongest, and like Anna was often tasked to lead squads on forays outside the walls.

"How big is the detachment going with Gwendolyn?" asked Thomas, a newer squire who still had some stubborn baby fat on his face that his paladin hadn't managed to train off.

"Twelve in total, including Gwen," she said. "Two squads, their squires, a smith, a farrier, a healer and a cook."

I leaned back and whistled. "That many?" I said. "That's nearly a third of our strength."

Imogen shrugged, and took a long pull from her mug.

"Gwen says the Abbess wants this stamped out now," she said. "You know how much Laurelton and the Order depend on the local merchants and farms. Harvest time is coming soon, and new recruits will arrive next month, too."

"We're also sworn to protect them," Evelyn said, her smile sliding off her face. "'To be a shield for the innocent from the depredations of evil' is right there in the oaths."

Imogen and I grinned at each other, then back at Evelyn.

"She does love to quote the oaths," I said, teasing her.

"Yes, yes she does," said Imogen, picking up our familiar refrain. "Holy Evie, at it again. Someday you'll learn that not everything is so black and white. Not even Gwendolyn sees it that way."

This time, Evelyn's exasperated eye roll was very much real.

"I never claimed to be holy," she said. "I just ... want to be one of them, so I try to think like them."

She started to pull her hand away from where it still sat on mine, but I grabbed it and held it there. I met her eyes and switched my tone from teasing to earnest.

"I doubt Anna ever sets a toe over the line where the oaths are concerned, and she's a great champion. You will be too, Evelyn," I said. "You're a shoo in to pass the tests; we all see how hard you work. You're the best of us."

I was rewarded with that smile, and I smiled at her back.

"Speak for yourself, nerd," Imogen said, playfully slapping the table and rising. "I was sick at last year's tourney. I could have kicked your ass."

"Sure, sure," I said. "Evie's ten times better than I am already, so you better be getting up to go jogging right now if you want to stand a chance."

"Definitely not, I'm going to bed," Imogen laughed. "We leave before dawn tomorrow."

Evelyn stood up too, stretching her back.

"You headed to bed too?" I asked.

"Gods no, I'm going jogging," she said, and Imogen groaned.

The whole table burst into laughter, myself included, but others stood and stretched, and we wished happy hunting for anyone leaving with Gwendolyn first thing in the morning. Evelyn left too - there was a good chance she actually was going jogging - so I folded my sketch board, tucked it into my breast pocket with my pencil, and slowly finished my ale, chatting idly with Thomas as he finished his. Finally we got up and went our separate ways.

***

I can't say why my feet took me where they did, but it wasn't straight to my own chambers. Maybe it was the ale, or the good company, or just the end of a long day, but my mind had set to wandering and I guess my feet followed suit. I can tell you I was definitely thinking about Anna, going over her sparring still in my mind, remembering how she'd dominated first Valerie, then Valerie and another swordswoman paladin named Bethany at the same time, with the cool efficiency she always displayed. I could picture every sword stroke she made, every thrust she caught on her shield, every time her strong thighs coiled and she sprang forward on the attack.

But just as I realized I was in the paladins' wing walking absentmindedly towards Anna's chambers, instead of heading to my own in the squires' wing, I heard a noise that took me up short. I froze midstep, cleared my head and listened intently. I heard it again.

A faint moan.

I often wonder what might have happened had I turned around and gone to my own chambers, offering the paladins of the Order of the Laurel a chance to keep their secrets and their dignity in my mind. Would I have made later choices differently? Would the Goddess have changed our paths?

But I did not do that. Instead, I moved forward, towards where I'd heard the gentle, intimate sound. I was careful not to let my footfalls make noise, but also not to creep like a thief in the night lest I come across another paladin in the hallway. I almost wish I had. But instead I heard another moan, louder this time, and I kept moving.

I found myself in front of Anna's door, which was open a crack, perhaps just an inch wide. I remember frowning to myself: Anna was fastidious, if nothing else, and she never would have purposefully left her door open at this late hour. I stepped up and peered through the crack in Anna's door. Instead of knocking, instead of pulling it shut, I looked into Anna's bedchambers.

There, on Anna's bed, the paladin I believed to be a perfect avatar of the Goddess in the flesh lay naked. Her skin had a light sheen of sweat, and candle flame cast a flickering orange glow across her pale body. She had her hands cupped under her huge, magnificent breasts as they jiggled, her thick nipples pointing to the ceiling and skewing wildly as she took ragged breaths. Her back was arched, and her head was thrown back onto her pillows, her long hair unbound and falling down the side of her bed in waves. I saw she was biting her lip to keep from crying out. I saw her gasp in a sharp breath and moan around her perfect white teeth pressing into her own plump lips, and it was the same sound I had heard from the hallway.

The slim crack only allowed me to see Anna from head to her ribs, but it was an enthralling sight. I watched her face as she swam through the throes of ecstasy, the candlelight just revealing her eyes rolled back in her head. I watched her calloused palms kneed at her own breasts, thumbs occasionally tweaking her fat nipples, in ways I'd fantasized about thousands of times. I watched her shake and shudder; then I heard a loud slurp come from someplace further down the bed. So without thinking, I slowly pushed open the door further so her full bed came into view.

Between Anna's long, toned thighs was a mass of curly red hair. As I gaped silently from the door, two familiar hands with coppery dark skin pushed their way up from under Anna's bottom and slid up her waist. Valerie pushed Anna's hands off her own breasts and took over, pinching the tall blonde's nipples and pawing at the large globes that hung on her chest. Anna's hands, now free, dug into Valerie's curls and pulled the redheaded paladin's face harder into her crotch, grinding her hips lewdly and whimpering. Valerie's shoulders and back flexed, her sinewy strength apparent in her naked form, and I saw for the first time she had a birthmark shaped almost like a crescent moon just below her ribs on her back.

My heart leapt in my chest, then dropped through the floor. Here was my perfect Anna, grinding, sweating and moaning, sullying herself with a fellow paladin, both of them breaking the Order's sacred vows of chastity. I felt like I was going to be sick; I realized my manhood was rock hard in my trousers. I was frozen as I watched, my mind reeling and my body bursting with turmoil I didn't understand. I involuntarily moved my hand to my heart, as if to feel my own pulse, but instead I found the hard surface of my sketching board. My hand froze on top of it for a moment, and then I reached inside my jacket and slowly pulled it out.

I looked down at it as I unfolded it, and Evelyn's face smiled back at me in profile, her eyes big and twinkling in delight, just as I'd drawn them less than an hour ago. I pulled the paper free, turned it over, and quietly began to sketch the scene in front of me.

I carefully mapped each curve of Anna's body: the way her neck met her shoulders, sinews there straining for control; the swells of her huge breasts as they heaved on her chest and molded around Valerie's greedy fingers; how Anna's thigh met her knee and turned into a slender calf; her jaw clenching and unclenching; her lips; her slender torso and wide hips pressed into the mattress.