Annie and the Slavers
"Well, we don't have to worry about money for the moment," Annie's mother said, with a full measure of bitter bile. "The millers have paid back your dowry."
Annie scrubbed the cooking pot and said nothing.
"We can't buy back any measure of respect, of course. Even here in this mudhole."
Annie kept scrubbing. Mother had been going on about her public humiliation for days now. She'd forbidden Annie from leaving the cottage for any reason other than emptying bedpans, lest the other villagers see her.
For her part, Annie still dreamed of her walk though the middle of the square. The jeering faces, the rude words, and every eye on her—all things that made her warm inside. And wet, too. Every man (and a few of the women, which Annie had never noticed before) watched every bounce of her tits as she'd walked past, nipples hard not just from the cold, but from the forbidden thrill of it.
"Mother," Annie said at last, "why should you hate me? I could understand if Father did, since... since I'm not of his loins, but why you?"
"You've been plenty 'of his loins' since you were old enough."
"You knew? Is that it? You're mad that he uses my mouth sometimes?"
"Gods, no! You've given me a valuable respite from that man's incessant lusts, and for that I'm grateful. I didn't care that you played the slut for him, or for every other boy."
Annie gulped, thinking her secrets must be a lot less secret than she supposed. "Then why?"
Her mother grabbed Annie's hair, and tugged painfully. "Because you're my shame! Because your every breath reminds me of the time I've had to be on my knees for those bandits in the woods!" She released her grip and went back to angrily sweeping.
Tears were coming again, and Annie didn't want them. "B-but, Mama..."
"Don't worry about it," her mother spat. "The Gods provide."
Annie was determined to stop herself from blubbering, determined to stand up to her mother, but the pain in her heart felt like a spear. She was saved from sliding deeper into a pit of her own thoughts by a commotion outside. Both of them moved over to the one tiny window that faced the village square and peeked outside.
In the ruts of the trail stood an immense wagon, pulled by four dappled brown-and-white oxen. Behind it were a whole crowd of people, strangers, and what seemed like the entire village come out to watch.
"What did I tell you," Annie's mother said. Leaning her twig broom aside. "Come along."
"I can leave the house?" Annie asked.
By way of response, her mother grabbed her by the wrist and marched out the door.
The wagoners were not Woodsmen, though some of then also seemed to favor leather clothing and lots of weapons on their persons. Most of them proved to be wearing only rags and tied by their wrists to a heavy bar that dragged behind the wagon.
In a flash, Annie knew: slavers!
The wagon was completely enclosed, looking like a cottage on wheels. No one got in or out of it, and there were no openings Annie could see. The slavers seemed content to ride on the sideboards or walk alongside their charges. Only one in the entourage rode a horse. The slavers' leader was the biggest, darkest-skinned woman Annie had ever seen (or possibly heard of). Taller by head and shoulders than the largest man in the village, she had muscles that rippled on her bare arms and beneath her garishly-colored wraparound, breasts bigger than Annie's head. She moved with an ease that belied no concern for the mass of armed men around her, much less the gaping denizens of the village.
But why were they here? No one here could afford something so outrageously expensive as a slave, no matter how well their crops came in.
"This is the one," her mother said, and pushed Annie forward. So absorbing was the spectacle of the slaver woman goading her horse forward that Annie didn't register what her mother had said.
The woman squinted down at Annie from a horse that looked like it could out-pull the massive oxen. She lowered a short horse crop, and turned Annie's head to one side. "Hair is good," she said, a rich honeyed tenor voice much less frightening than her scowl. "Boobies good. Turn around," she said. Annie, numbly, did so. "Virgin, you said?"
"Yes," said her mother, despite several snickers from the other villagers which were quickly silenced.
"What?" Annie said.
"This one is no more a virgin than I am," the slaver said. "But she looks the part." The woman took a small purse from her sash and threw it to Annie's mother. "Put her in the wagon with the other exotics."
Rough hands grabbed her arms before she could react. Two of the slaver armsmen produced little hooked knives and with a single movement, slashed Annie's blouse and skirt without touching her skin. Another flick of one's wrist and her breechclout fluttered down around her ankles to join them. She was as naked as the day she'd marched through the square.
The laughing and jeering of the people she'd known all her life started, and Annie didn't even have time to blush completely before a collar was fastened around her neck, cold metal that bit cruelly as she was pushed into the wagon.
~~***~~
Myfwyn knew she'd made a mistake before she heard the first footstep behind her. She'd pressed close to the human houses, much closer than she'd ever dared before, trying to see where the sun-hair girl had gone. She'd caught glimpses, but for days the girl had hidden away in their stone piles. For some reason, she couldn't get the girl out of her mind. It was madness to stay so close to their dwellings, risking detection and the axe.
And then the snare had closed around her neck.
Thrashing at the end of the catch pole, all her wiles and caution and knowledge of how to disappear in the woods were as nothing. The humans threw her in this hateful box, this cave made of dead trees, and hobbled her with lodestone. She lay on the stripped wood, hearing the ghostly whisper of the trees, held down by the weight around her neck. There were gaps in the top of the box that let in light, sometimes, which was good. She stayed away from her fellow captive, who stayed in their corner of the box and said little. Myfwyn attempted a greeting, but like most humans they couldn't understand her, and eventually she gave up.
