Chapter 3

“Here they come,” someone warned nearly a mark later. Almost five hundred men stood ready on the catwalk, hidden behind the wall next to the crenellations. They readied their crossbows as the Kahjohngi troops, who were equipped with hastily built scaling ladders, formed into ranks. Their battle cry began quietly and quickly rose to a fever pitch before the front rank of their troops moved forward. They marched deliberately to and beyond the two-hundred-pace mark. Evidently, they thought archers outside the walls had managed to kill so many of their men earlier. When the front rank neared the one hundred-pace mark, they began a sprint towards the wall.

At that point, Acabo loosed a handful of fire arrows, three of which ignited the coal oil out near the thorn bushes. Other men dropped torches over the wall, igniting the coal oil from this end, too. Our archers began picking off the closest targets while I targeted the two officers who remained beyond the two hundred-pace mark. When the first officer fell, the second looked around frantically trying to determine where the hidden archer was that had killed him. He didn’t look for long. Then I began picking off men nearest the flames at the two hundred-pace mark.

The screaming of men hit by bolts and arrows blended with the screams of those who stepped on caltrops and fell. They were then trampled by the troops behind them still rushing towards the wall.

In much less than half a quarter-mark, barely three hundred of the Kahjohngi troops were still standing. All of them had thrown down their weapons and surrendered, hands in the air, silhouetted by flickers from the slowly dying flames. Smoke from burning grass and brush continued to swirl above the battlefield, finally reaching us atop the wall. After clearing the firewood from the gate, half of our men went out to collect prisoners while the remainder stayed atop the wall and guarded our men who were searching those who had surrendered.

I slipped out and crept towards their camp to confirm there were no troops hiding there in reserve. The only person I found was a terrified girl who was naked and shackled to a tree.

“Is anyone else in the camp?” I asked.

“Three more slave girls shackled inside the officer’s tents,” she barely whispered, trembling.

“Did the two officers who went to the battle have the keys?” I asked and she nodded.

“You can relax. Our troops won’t hurt you,” I tried to reassure the girl. “I’m going to get the keys to release you,” I explained, and then headed over to where the two officers had fallen to my arrows. Each man wore a leather thong around his neck with a key on it. The first officer groaned when I rolled him over. Since he wasn’t going to survive the arrow through his chest, I used my short sword to put him out of his misery.

Once I had both keys, I hurried back to free the girl. “While I’m freeing the other girls, get dressed, including shoes if you have any or can find any. Gather anything you need for tonight. Grab a knife or short sword if you know how to use it. Just don’t hurt any of our troops. The Kahjohngi troops who aren’t dead have been seriously wounded or captured,” I told the girl as I removed her iron collar.

I released a girl from the tent of the second officer I hadn’t killed in his sleep and told her the same thing. I found the other two girls gagged and trussed up securely and uncomfortably. Both were beneath a blanket. I had mistaken the lumps for piles of clothing and bedding when I killed the two officers in their sleep. I gave those girls the same instructions as the first and went back outside the tent.

After dressing, the first girl approached nervously, stopping to bow. “You don’t need to bow to anyone but the King or a noble, and there are none here. I may be your new master, but you won’t be abused or mistreated as long as you behave. My clan would punish me severely, possibly even banishing me if I abused one of you without a damn good reason.”

“What about...” she started to ask and suddenly stared at the ground.

“Sex?” I asked. She nodded. “We will have sex, but not if you are injured. When we do have sex, I will try to make sure you enjoy it as much as I do. Tonight, we will just sleep. Tomorrow you will probably meet another of my slaves, and you are free to ask her about our sex, or anything else.”

“Ummmmm...” she said, looking towards the last tent I had exited.

“If there is something in there you want or need, feel free to bring it. If it’s heavy, maybe I can get some of the troops to carry it for you,” I offered.

“It’s money,” she said nervously.

“Ah, the payroll,” I surmised aloud, feeling stupid for not thinking about it already, especially after our first raid on a Kahjohngi camp. “Let’s look at it.”

It was the same size pannier but weighed a lot more than the last one. “If you can carry my bow and quiver for me, I think I can carry it. Did you find a knife or a short sword yet?”

“No, I thought I misunderstood. Any Kahjohngi slave with a knife or any other weapon would be executed,” she replied.

“We’re not in Kahjohng, and you have my permission to carry weapons as long as you behave with them,” I teased. “Please let the other girls know, too. If there aren’t any swords here suitable for you, we might find one later among the captured weapons or be able to trade for one.” She scampered off to another tent and returned a little later with the other three girls.

“We can really carry knives?” the oldest looking of the four asked.

“Yes, and you have my permission to even carry a short sword and a bow if you want. You’ll probably want to wait for daylight in order to find a sword short enough to carry comfortably,” I replied. The first girl smirked at the other three and handed each of them a knife.

“Stay behind me because we set out traps that can severely cut your feet,” I warned the girls. They followed me, nervously watching the dark shapes of our troops moving among the fallen Kahjohngi troops. With the fires burned out, the only light was from the moon and the torches carried by the Donnakian troops. Fortunately, aside from a little residual smoke, it was a clear night, and I could see well enough to make my way back to the town.

“Coming through with four rescued slaves,” I cried out several times so nobody would try to put a bolt through me.

When I reached the repaired gate, one of the guards laughed at me and slapped me on the shoulder. “Relax, even in the dark, nobody could mistake you for one of the Kahjohngi troops. You’re too tall.”

“Hey, why do you always get the good-looking women?” he teased.

“Because I’m the one dumb enough to sneak into the officers’ tents in the middle of the night to kill them.”

“True enough,” he laughed.

Acabo was beside himself with joy when I found him. “We did it. We did it,” he exclaimed excitedly.

“That we did. Did anyone send a messenger to Captain Karbo?” I asked.

“One left even before you were back out the gate,” he laughed. “You seem to have a knack for finding beautiful slave girls.”

“I have a knack for finding and killing enemy officers,” I corrected. “They are the ones with the beautiful slave girls. I just take them away from the dead officers. I missed two of the girls when I killed the first two officers. They were beneath a light blanket, and I thought they were a bundle of bedding or clothing. It’s probably just as well given how many men were shooting arrows at me as I escaped their camp.”

“Why don’t you use my parents’ house tonight?” he suggested, pointing to one of the houses.

“Are you sure? I don’t mind sleeping in one of the haylofts.”

“We can bunk more men in the haylofts than in my parents’ house,” he reminded me while nodding towards the girls. While the girls looked nervously around inside the house, I took two pitchers out to the cistern and filled them with water. I’d thought about having the girls help but didn’t want to chance any problems with them being outside alone in the dark, even if I was on the same side as the other troops here. Once I took the water back to the house, I went back outside and found my two horses, no easy thing to do with so many horses in the barns and the hastily erected rope corral in the marketplace. My saddle and pannier were nearby, and someone had already brushed the horse. I took my belongings inside and set them near the pannier with the Kahjohngi payroll.

“Are you girls hungry?” I asked. They looked back and forth at each other anxiously.

“If I ask you a question, I want an honest answer. I don’t ask questions to test you or trick you. If you’re hungry, there’s dried food in my saddlebags and the pannier. You can cook it with water to make a sort of soup or stew. I’m going to wash up and go to sleep. If you need more water, the cistern is near the center of town. Find a room or bed when you’re ready to sleep and I’ll see you in the morning,” I told them. Since there were only two beds in the house, I unrolled my bedroll in what looked like a common room or parlor. After wiping myself down with a damp cloth, I fell asleep almost immediately.

I was still tired, having gotten no more than a mark-and-a-half of sleep when an exuberant rooster awakened me.

“Oh, that feels good,” I moaned when someone started to suck my cock. When I opened my eyes, the oldest of the four girls was my fellatrix. The other three were stark naked, watching and grinning.

“You are very talented at that,” I complimented, getting a smile from her. It didn’t take long before she coaxed a load of cum from me, one she pointedly swallowed.

“Thank you,” I sighed happily, as I pulled her down and kissed her.

“But...” she gasped in surprise.

“What?” I asked. “You can suck me off, but I shouldn’t kiss you afterwards?”

“By the way, I apologize for not asking your names last night. As you could tell, I was very tired,” I told them. The oldest girl was Betra, and she was seventeen. Niara, the girl who had been chained to the tree, was sixteen. Caliia and Leica, fifteen and fourteen, were the two girls I hadn’t seen when I snuck into the tents and killed the officers who owned them.

“We should probably start something for breakfast,” I suggested.

“We already made the oat porridge you had in your saddlebags. We came in to wake you,” Niara said.

“And a wonderful wake-up it was,” I replied as I got up from the floor.

“Why didn’t you sleep in a bed?” Leica asked.

“There were only two beds in the house for the four of you to share,” I explained.

I almost had to force the girls to eat at the same time I did. When we finished, I led the way outside to see what the new day brought and to collect my share of the spoils. Only a few sentries were awake, but I could see that the other troops had been busy long after I went to sleep. A large pile of clothing and weapons from the four officers and other Kahjohngi troops I killed was stacked on the front porch. My arrows were even piled neatly, each with the arrowhead still attached or lying loose in a small pile next to the shafts.

Betra and Niara stayed to wash and patch the clothing stripped from the dead men while Caliia and Leica went with me. I felt that we should pick up the caltrops this morning before someone got hurt on one of them. I was surprised that none of our men had accidentally stepped on them in the dark while rounding up the surrendering Kahjohngi. Once we were outside the walls, I saw that the bodies in the area where the caltrops had been put out had been left where they fell. We walked slowly through the area, gingerly picking up the caltrops and putting them into empty grain bags I had found in one of the barns.

Mid-morning, a small army of squires and slaves arrived from the previous camp. Doreta headed straight for me. After hugging and kissing me, she did the same to the other two girls with me. “Acabo told me where you were and that you’d found four more girls,” she said, looking around.

“The other two are washing the clothing recovered from the men I killed,” I replied.

There were quickly more than a hundred people helping us pick up the caltrops. Someone even brought out a wagon that must have just arrived. We emptied the filled bags into the wagon and went back to filling them again. Noon was nearly upon us by the time we were confident that we had retrieved all the caltrops.

More workers followed behind us. They turned over the bodies that were left from the battle, removing any caltrops they fell on or had stuck in their feet. Then they stripped the bodies. Others were busy helping the captured Kahjohngi soldiers dig a massive grave. The soil above that grave would be extremely fertile for years to come.

The four of us joined Betra and Niara for lunch. Anticipating our arrival, they’d already started lunch and had drawn food from the Kahjohngi army’s stores to restock my quickly dwindling supplies. In addition, Doreta had brought the rest of my supplies so we had enough food to support my extended group. Doreta greeted Betra and Niara with hugs and kisses the same way she had greeted Caliia and Leica.

After lunch, we headed for the enemy campsite only to find that most of the tents had already been removed. Those that remained had been struck and neatly folded, seemingly left for me. They included the officers’ four larger tents. The blood on the ground near the other remaining tents told me they were the tents closest to where my swords inflicted their damage as I fled from the camp.

While I had intended to bring packhorses to carry things, Doreta had insisted on a wagon. Evidently, she had agreed to Captain Karbo’s request to borrow enough silver from the first payroll we captured to have several men ride back to villages farther down the pass and purchase ten wagons with teams of mules or horses to carry additional supplies here. They would then be used to haul what we captured from the Kahjohngi troops back to the valley.

“Excellent idea,” I told her, seeing how nervous she was about having approved the extemporaneous purchase without my permission. It also explained how she got here without riding a horse.

Doreta may not have known how to ride a horse, but she sure knew how to hitch mules to a wagon and drive the wagon. We filled it with the tents and other gear that had been left for me and headed back into town. I suggested that the girls lay out all the swords we had received and then check with the other troops to see if anyone had shorter swords they wished to trade. That task took them half the afternoon, but the four new girls finally found short swords they were happy with, as well as a bow for each of them.

The girls had set aside one of the swords that had two red jewels in the pommel. I had no idea what kind of jewels they were, but assumed they were valuable.

Captain Karbo and the main body of Donnakian troops arrived shortly after lunch. The Congraian troops were now building and manning another wooden barricade at the camp site the Donnakian troops had just left.

I sat down on the porch to rest and immediately fell asleep. Sunset was approaching when I was awakened by the raucous laughter and shouts of celebration of exuberant Donnakian troops filing back into town. They were coming down the steps cut into the hillside west of the village. Captain Karbo had a huge, smug grin on his face.

“We did it!” he exclaimed. “They had ten thousand men in the pass. We had several of our men dress in captured Kahjohngi uniforms and act like their sentries. Using the Kahjohngi’s shiny shields and their signals that we learned a month ago, we signaled that they had captured the pass. We waited until we could trap most of their troops by using the scree to block the pass in two places. The regular archers convinced them to surrender. You and the crossbow archers have had all the fun so far,” he teased.

“I could have helped,” I protested, feeling as if I’d been purposely left out.

“We had far more men than we could use,” he assured me. “I sent all the crossbow archers back here in case some of the Kahjohngi troops somehow got past the wall blocking the pass. After hearing how you hacked your way through the Kahjohngi camp with your two swords last night, you were right where I needed you. If they tried to attack the town, you would have been awakened to help defend the battlement with your bow, and then with your swords if it came to that.

“Besides, once they realized the pass was blocked going both ways, and that we could easily pick them off, they surrendered. The troops trapped between the first rockslide and the gate are already on their way to the capital as prisoners. The rest should arrive here soon. They had to clear the loose rocks off the trail between them and the town first.

“We’re letting them through the gate ten at a time to surrender. They have to unstring their bows and sheath their swords before they reach the gate. Archers guard them as they approach the gate, and more archers guard them once they pass through the gate. They are required to put their bows and quivers in one wagon and their swords in a second. Their packs go in the third wagon, and any other weapons or gear in the fourth. Then they strip and we search them before allowing them to dress again. We’re sending groups of a thousand to the capital with a hundred archers to guard them. We’re giving every group of prisoners minimal food and fifty torches to use when it gets dark. They should be hungry and exhausted when they reach the valley tomorrow morning.

“From what we learned from the prisoners captured after the battle behind the village last night, this group and the two previous groups account for two-thirds of Kahjohng’s standing army, including all their best troops and officers. They won’t be able to mount a credible attack again for years, but we’re still going to keep more troops up here. And we won’t let the Kahjohngis send any more merchants, either. They disguised their troops as merchants and their guards. That’s how they originally captured this village and secured the bluffs above the village. Fortunately, the villagers managed to escape the first night.”

“If two thirds of their troops have been killed or captured, you should attack them now, before they can rebuild their army,” I suggested.

“We’d have the same problem getting our troops through the other end of the pass that they did here,” he reminded me. “Maybe your King can be convinced to attack them from the south and from the sea.”

Three of the girls were still busy washing the clothing we had stripped from the dead Kahjohngi troops. They had used my good climbing rope for the inglorious task of hanging the clothing on to dry, tying it between the posts holding up the front overhang of two houses, and between the two houses. It was covered with wet clothing, most of which wouldn’t be dry until tomorrow. Two of them carried a tub of filthy water to a shallow culvert and dumped it out. Then they carried it to near the cistern and refilled it.

I noticed that Doreta had found the needles and thread stored in my supplies and was busy repairing any clothing with holes in it, either from wear or an arrowhead. When I asked, I learned that Betra was cooking dinner. Jori showed up a short time later, still half-asleep. “Morning, or evening?” he asked, looking at the sky since the sun had recently settled behind the mountains.

“Evening,” I replied, chuckling. “They defeated the main body of Kahjohngi troops while you and I slept. They trapped eight thousand troops in the pass and managed to capture most of them. They’re sending groups of a thousand at a time to the capital under an armed escort.”

“Great!” he exclaimed excitedly.

Jori ate dinner with us and Acabo showed up right after we ate. Betra managed to scrape together enough food for him to have dinner, too. He gave us more details about the “battle.” He reiterated what Captain Karbo had told me. When Jori asked why he didn’t have us helping, Acabo replied that they didn’t even need the Donnakian crossbow archers. Captain Karbo had sent their crossbow archers to guard the gate across the pass and wanted Jori and me available here just in case.

Doreta was eager to go to bed after dinner and quickly had me naked and washed. I gave her two orgasms with my fingers and tongue before sheathing myself in her. Betra, the boldest of the four new girls, volunteered to go next while the other girls watched. Once I filled her with cum, I rolled over and went to sleep while the five girls talked quietly.

A rooster somewhere nearby awakened me in the morning. The girls fixed more porridge and started baking bread in the communal bread oven using the town’s firewood and some of the supplies taken from the Kahjohngi troops. They made several batches of dough knowing that the smell of baking bread would have everyone salivating. Once the oven was full of baking loaves of bread, they turned the bread-making task over to other slaves. The first batch of bread had just come out of the oven when Ashia ran up to me, almost knocking me over as she leapt at me.

“I heard about everything!” she exclaimed excitedly. “There were several messengers riding to the capital to report to the King. A few of them recognized me and told me what had happened and what you accomplished. I heard you had at least four more slaves, so I stopped in one of the villages on the way here and bought ten more slave collars.