Anya was frogmarched across the deck to the other side. And far away, ahead, there was land, beautiful, matt green against the blue and rising to dark, mist-shrouded hills. The boatswain came up and stood beside them, gazing across the water.
'That is it?' he asked. 'The island?'
Travix nodded slowly, her eyes half closed. 'It seems our merchant friend was faith-worthy after all. Have Kasger prepare the slave-decks for cargo and the captain's coffers for gold.' She stared at the chart. 'We must approach from the south.'
The boatswain pointed his thumb over his shoulder. 'But what of them? What good your secret chart? They know now where it is.'
Travix chuckled. 'Then let them dare to follow.' The boatswain frowned. 'Let them brave the reef - without the chart,' said Travix calmly. And as the boatswain smiled slyly, Anya's brief exhilaration rapidly ebbed away. She turned towards the other ship, but now she could no longer see it. She turned back. Travix was watching her and Travix's look was no longer cruel. Anya's tears had dried, in the soft warm wind, but now her face was burning. Travix looked upon her - looked into those liquid eyes, still brimming with the last salt wet. She lifted back her hair. She raised her chin. She stroked her finger across the upper lip, full red - very warm. Now Anya wanted to look away, but could not. 'I will have you for my own,' Travix whispered. And Anya, looking up into that face - the scar, the earring, the deep incision through the lip - was frightened by the feeling in her belly, and below, within the soft skin pouch that sealed the purse of her desire. 'I will be your Prince,' murmured Travix. 'And I will train you to my ways.'
'No!' cried Anya, not forcefully enough, adding: 'Never,' very weakly.
'We shall see.'
And that afternoon on deck, Anya's punishment was very severe and no reason for it was given. Her pouch was taken away. Kasger's broad hand pinned her belly to the mizzenmast while the backs of her thighs were smacked. Then she was made to open her knees, press her thighs tightly to the mast, with her arms about its enormous girth and her breasts pushed to the sides, while her bottom was smacked. Travix, standing to the side, watched the tears roll down her face. No pleasure was bestowed. Afterwards Anya fell, dizzy, to her knees and Travix walked away.
That same night, her wrists were chained above her head and fastened to the headboard, but her feet were left free. Then she was pouched. It made her frightened, for she knew this was a preparation and that eventually, that night or in the early hours, Travix would come to her. Later, Kasger returned and she was suddenly afraid that he would smack her. But he massaged her arms, then opened her thighs, tightened the pouch and left again. Soon afterwards, she heard noises next door. When she turned on her side and wriggled down the bed, she could see. The man was there again with the blonde girl. Both were nude. Travix, fully clothed, sat on the bed, with the girl half reclining against her. She pinned the girl's arms back with one hand. With the other, she played with her breasts, nervously plucking at the nipples. The girl's knees were tightly bent. Her ankles were held apart and pinned against her bottom by the man. His face moved slowly between her open thighs. She could not move, with Travix holding her arms and the man's hands tight about her ankles. And Travix's fingers moved from one nipple to the other, steadily plucking, as the girl's hair lay draped in snaking golden strands across the pale blue suit and the man's lips and tongue worked between her thighs, wetting the soft blonde curls, then moving down to suck upon the entrance to her bottom. When the girl's first shudder came and her belly tightened, Travix drew her head back, drew the hair back from her dense dark eyebrows and her delicate ears and held her tightly as the eyes closed, as the full lips opened to a softened moan, and touched those lips with the tip of her tongue. Each touch triggered the surge of pleasure between the wide-open thighs. Travix held her while the man's tongue laved her sex and bottom until he too was satisfied, having drunk his fill of her liquid warmth and burning sexuality. Then Travix lifted the slim yet suddenly very heavy body, chained her with her legs apart, face down on the straw and bade the man watch her while she attended to the girl next door.
When Travix entered, Anya's pouch was wet indeed. Travix drank the scent from Anya's underarms, brushed it with her lips but did not lick, while those arms were tightly stretched, held by the chains, while those underarms were quite defenceless against that soft-lip brushing. And having charged her lips with the warm musk of wanting, Travix brushed her fingers through that hair, then touched the nipples, which were hard. Then she lifted the ankles, bent the knees, lifted the hips, pushed until the back was vertical, and beyond, until the knees had tumbled over with the feet against the elbows, leaving the wet tight pouch exposed. She fitted the small bone key within that sweet warm fleshy lock and turned. The small pouch tightened. Very carefully she split the double thong that bedded in the groove and held it open so the entrance to the bottom was accessible and the tension was increased within the pouch. And then she smacked - two fingers, wetted and pressed together, she smacked within the groove, against the tightness of the mouth; she smacked once, twice, rewetted, then thrice and the pleasure was triggered. Travix leaned her weight against the thighs to stop the feet from lifting while she pressed her hand against the belly and slowly turned the key. Then she stripped the pouch completely from the sex and held the lips open with her fingers while she massaged the small round arrowhead back and forth across the nubbin, with the knees still tucked tight, the bottom in the air, until the pleasure came again, delivered by the smooth bone key.
'Yes, Princess,' she whispered, 'I will train you to my ways,' and she stretched the girl out, secured her ankles together and turned her face down with her tight full breasts pressed deep into the straw.
[7]
Abaata
Next morning, the long chain was unfastened and the lamp was filled, but Anya was not taken up on deck that day. She kept dozing. Eventually she was woken by a sound as of a giant hand pounding on the hull. The ship was rolling strongly, groaning, and every few seconds it would shudder beneath this terrible slam. She could hear a distant low howl, like the wind, and occasionally, faint shouts, she was sure. She looked through the hole in the wall but the cabin on the other side was in blackness. When she called through, there was no reply. She got up, ambled to the door, dragging the chains between her feet, nearly falling as the floor kept swaying whenever she put a foot down, then fell against the door and listened. There were no human sounds, only the pounding and, up above, the noise of chairs sliding and objects falling to the floor. The chains that hung from the ceiling were intertwined and swinging in a large erratic circle. Suddenly, the ship pitched steeply and she fell to the floor. And now it was like a giant hammer slamming against the hull. The reef, she thought, the rocks; the ship is banging on the rocks. She had been afraid from the beginning but now she was terrified. She buried her head in her hands. But she kept looking up, watching the hull, expecting it to cave in at any moment.
Then all at once, the pounding stopped and gradually the ship steadied. The wind seemed to have got fainter - she couldn't hear it. Anya waited, then got up and stood there, listening. For a long time, there were no sounds other than occasional creaks. She moved back to the bed and sat down warily. Gradually, her breathing slowed. Then there were footsteps along the corridor, voices, some laughter and sounds of doors being opened. Her door opened.
'Get up, Princess. She wants you up on deck.' It was Kasger. He wore a cape and it was saturated.
'What is it? The ship is leaking?'
He chuckled. 'No - some big waves, though, through the reef. But it's quiet now. You'll be safe.'
He unfastened Anya's chains, then took her out, up a flight of stairs, past a landing with a heap of chains to one side, then up twice more and through a hatchway which opened below the foredeck. The sudden blast of fresh air made Anya shiver but the scene was beautiful. Beyond the prow, she could see green mountains lit by the sun, but the ship itself lay in the shadow of bronze-grey clouds raging silently above her. The deck was wet. At her back was a continuous roar. She turned and they picked their way along the deck, through snaking coils of rope and fragments of timber spars. Halfway along was a longboat tipped on its side. High above were sailors, drenched to the skin, struggling to stow a tattered sail. Anya's face and hair were already wet; her naked body was rapidly coating with a film of spray.
Travix stood with the captain on the quarterdeck. She was illuminated by the low, bright golden light. Her suit was wet and for the first time, her coarse blonde hair had fallen free across her shoulders. It was weighted by the rain. The single earring glistened with reflected light. Her lips curled in a smile of cruel satisfaction.
'Come up, Princess - there is something you might wish to see.' She turned and looked over her shoulder towards the thick clouds and the roar.
Anya was afraid to move. Travix strode impatiently up and down, then stopped and waited with her hands on her hips. Finally, Kasger had to take hold of Anya and push her up the steps. Travix caught her and held her head up. 'There - the fate of fools,' she said.
Anya's hands went to her cheeks. 'No ... Please no,' she begged, 'Oh please, it cannot be.' Her liquid eyes beseeched the waves, her trembling lips whispered forlorn prayers, then she stared in paralysed horror at that scene.
The small ship - her Prince's ship, closer than she had seen it - floundered in the mouth of the channel with her mainmast gone. She was pinned against the reef and being tossed by giant waves. Her plight was hopeless. Any minute now her back would break. Anya turned to Travix and the captain, looking for help. Vain hope that was. The captain's expression was impenetrable. 'You said that you would spare them!' she cried, as though he had decreed this fate. He would not look at her tearstained face; he stared out in blank impotence at the ship in its death throes on the reef.
But Travix was laughing. Anya's lips clenched, her teeth clenched, then her hands. 'No!' she screamed. 'You tricked them. It was you!' But Travix caught the small hard fist before it landed home.
'You are free now, Princess.' She reached, almost tenderly, to cup the tears that overflowed so freely down the cheek already wet with spray, but the cheek was jerked away. Then she caught the second fist. Anya spat. Travix, her face cold, her lips stitched together by that gob of spit, yet her eyes savagely intent, took charge. She pinned Anya's wrists together, then kicked the feet from under her and whipped her hand across that face again and again until Anya, terrified now, cowered down coughing, choking, then finally, as the vicious swipes assuaged, whimpering, her nose dripping, her burning cheeks bedaubed with snot, bespattered with her tears.
'The Princess will be taught her place,' said Travix coldly. 'Get the cat.'
Anya, her eyes wide with terror, wrenched her hands away before Travix had realised what had happened, then struggled up, half running, half falling down the steps and scurried back across the deck, dodging round the astonished men who tried to grab her when Travix screamed: 'Get her. Don't let her go!' Yet her arms were wet and she was too slippery to hold. She reached the hatch and ran down the stairs but hesitated at the second landing.
She could hear voices below. If she carried on she would be cornered. How could she escape? Frantically looking round, she saw again the heap of chains. She crouched behind it then threw herself flat to the floor when she heard her pursuers clattering down the stairs. They ran past, down towards the crewdeck and the cells. Anya waited, trying to keep her breathing under control. Another group passed. Then she heard slow footsteps. Travix was walking down the stairs. Anya briefly saw her face, which had that same intent look, and her fist, now clenched about the cat. Anya squeezed her eyes tight shut, held her breath and tried to press her body through the floor, but she could not quiet her heartbeat. Yet Travix somehow passed without noticing her.
In time the excitement seemed to calm. Crewmen still moved up and down the stairs, but no longer appeared to be searching. Anya knew it was only a matter of time before she would be found. It was a mistake for her to stay down here - the space was too confined. But wherever she went on this ship, she would never be safe from Travix. She looked up the stairs. Her only hope lay there: she must escape from the ship completely. She would hide on deck amid the debris, then in the morning try to swim ashore; the land had not appeared too far and the ship must be getting closer all the time. She might be seen, but she would have to take that chance. Clenching her fists, she stood up, started up the stairs and froze - for a pair of legs had appeared at the top of the flight. Her courage immediately drained. She panicked and turned to run the other way.
'Princess!'
Anya stopped and looked over her shoulder. 'Ratchitt!' Her eyes widened, then her legs were suddenly too weak to support her. She slumped against the wall and sank down, burying her face in her hands. 'Oh, Ratchitt - she is after me.' And it was clear, from his fidgeting and the nervous glances he kept casting up and down the stairs, that Ratchitt already knew. The whole ship must have known by now, she realised. Fighting back the tears, she looked up at the rotund pink face that was turning longer and paler by the minute and said: 'She will kill me if she finds me. What am I to do?' At the mention of murder, the cheeks above began to quake, the bottom lip was bitten. The ears moved independently. Ratchitt - what am I to do?' Her voice had softened to an urgent, plaintive lamentation that surely could not be denied. The feet in front of Anya shuffled back and forth. The tiny eyes above her darted about, the bottom lip was plucked, then the small brown curl that crowned the forehead was twisted into a corkscrew. But Ratchitt didn't speak until the sounds of running footsteps echoed from below.