Chapter 1: Piercing Eyes

The jailer reluctantly gave me a prison uniform, and signed me out under the supervision of Caption Ulf. I was still a prisoner, but now the captain was my captor. The jailer told me the rules. The captain owned me, body and soul, like a dog. He could do anything he wanted with me, except let me go, until my six months were up. The jailer gave the captain a bag with some chains and manacles in it.

The captain made me carry the bag. "Come." he said. I followed him out into the street.

We walked down the main street of the city. I could feel the eyes watching me. Everyone on the street was looking at me. I felt like something the dog dragged in. I stuck close to the captain, as if somehow that would make me smaller.

He took me to down to the magician's quarter, to a door with a small notice on it that said "Wiz. Dulath Ironhand." The captain knocked, and a young boy opened the door. "Captain Ulf, I have an appointment with the wizard", the captain said.

The young boy gestured for us to follow him in, and led us into a dark room with a single table and a bench seat. We sat on the bench, and then the wizard walked in. I recognised him at once. He had visited Tom several times over the last year, but I had not known anything about him, except that he was always overdressed and wearing flashy jewellery.

"I'd like you to look at this young girl", the Captain said. "Her story is not unusual - she is a seedie, someone gave her the seed to entrap her. I'd like to know if she is or was subject to some curse too."

The wizard looked me over. Then he pulled out his wand and said words in a language I didn't understand. I felt weird, as if someone had walked through me.

There was a silence. The captain said, "It seems very likely to me that there is a curse. If you can't help me I'll have to wait to see the high wizard." It seemed to me that there was a distinct menace in the way this was said. The wizard, who had been about to say something, changed his mind, and looked at the captain.

"So you're that Captain Ulf?" he asked. The captain nodded. The wizard considered this for a short time, and then said in a resigned voice, "I can help. She is under a curse to strengthen the effect of the seed, both the desire and the vagueness."

I gasped. I didn't know about that. "Now would be a good time for you to fix her problem." There was a definite menace in the captain's voice this time.

The wizard nodded. He shut his eyes, recited a whole lot of words, and then waved his wand. Once again, I got that feeling that someone had walked through me.

"Thank you", said the captain. "The Amartis effect too?"

The wizard was surprised. "Yes, it seemed appropriate. You're sharp."

"Yes, and I'm not the only one. You will be watched. You will find your income elsewhere from now on."

The wizard nodded. "Surely." The captain paid him and we left.

I walked behind the captain. Who was this man? How could he threaten a wizard? What was that about? I didn't feel any different for anything the wizard had done. I just felt like a puppy dog, bought and owned, now walking to the heel of my master. I would've licked his boots on the spot if he had asked me to.

He took me to a store for frontier soldiers. We purchased some wonderful gear for me — really high quality coat and boots, and some heavy clothing for the mountains. Not the most suitable gear for a woman, but I didn't care. I was just starting to really enjoy myself, even in spite of the looks from the man in the store at my jail clothes, when the captain told me to change into the new clothes. I looked around, and there was nowhere to change in the shop. I suppose that I could've changed my clothes in parts to retain some modesty, but it seemed that modesty wasn't appropriate for a whore, so I stripped the jail clothes off first, before deciding what to wear. I felt that the captain was pleased with me. The man in the store was certainly pleased.

By the time we had finished in the store, buying lots of other things as well, including a number of soft woollen blankets, we had a substantial load of stuff. The captain arranged for the whole load to be delivered to some military station, and then we left.

I felt so much more confident, no longer dressed in jail clothes. But as we passed through the door, the hunger for seed grabbed me again. Reminding me just what I was, what I needed to do to pretend that I was OK.

The captain took me to some other shops, where I bought some girl's clothes, and some other girl's things, including some tools of my trade, things I had learnt from the other girls. I had never spent money in a shop before. The captain seemed to have a great deal of money, and he let me buy anything I asked him for, though he warned me I had to carry anything I bought.

As we passed through the town square, there was a crowd standing in front of a platform. On the platform were a number of naked people, all chained to the platform. All of them were very fair skinned, with blond hair. The captain stopped to look. "Enemy slaves" he told me, when I looked to him. There was a man selling them, a young girl crying on the front of the platform as she was made to show herself to the crowd. I had heard of these slaves, but not seen them — Tom's specialty of the house was full blooded Livian girls only, no ugly pale foreign women. Surely this poor girl would end up as a sex slave of some sort. Would they control her with selial seed too?

The captain frowned and made me leave. He took me down a side street and through a dark doorway into a dim room. I recognised the smell immediately, we were in a healer's treatment room. A wizened old lady came into the room and looked at me.

"Hello child", she said, "you come to me at a time of great need. I will do what I can to help you. But you will have to find some strength from within you." First, she made me undress, and she examined me thoroughly. Even after all that had happened to me, it was embarrassing to be examined so personally in front of the captain, who didn't move to leave. She made me spread my legs and lift my groin so she could spread my vaginal lips and look up inside me. I asked her what she was looking for.

"I'm looking for early signs of pox, dear, and you don't appear to have any."

Once she had given me the all clear, she gave me a brew to dampen the desire for seed, and explained to me what would happen when I didn't get seed. I would actually have six or seven days during which I would have no control over my body, nor any memory of the time, but that then I would recover fine, though I would always feel a desire for selial seed when I was tired, depressed, or pregnant. When I asked her how she could know that, she said something that really surprised me:

"I remember what it was like."

The captain asked her to help kit me out for winter in the mountains. I really enjoyed working with her to fill a bag of medicines. I found that I hadn't forgotten as much as I thought. How wonderful it was to work with a healer again, and even better that she shared a past with me. She taught me some new simple medicines, like the brew to dampen desire, and she gave me a good supply of thornstar, which I used to prevent my monthly bleed, and stop me getting pregnant. It had been the only plant that I had easily been able to get supplies of since leaving Undartha.

The captain had to drag me out of there. It was a long walk to the captain's camp, outside the city walls, and I had so much to carry; I was tiring fast when we finally arrived, and the need for seed was consuming me. I realised I hadn't slept for more than a day.

I struggled to be properly aware when the captain introduced me to his men. I was aware enough to see that some didn't seem to approve of me. He said I was known as "Magic Hands", which, to my surprise, some of them seemed to recognise. Sometimes Tom had called me that. I was glad that I didn't recognise any of the men, though that didn't mean that none of them had used me before. There seemed to be rather a lot of them. One really stood out — he had a deep scar running down the side of his face, but he gave me a nice smile. The captain took me to a tent, pulled a small bag out of a pocket, handed it to me, and said "I'll see you in the morning. We leave at sunrise."

All day I had hungered for this moment, when I once again held seed in my hand. But now that it had come, it didn't seem quite so attractive anymore. It didn't have the sweet smell I remembered, and the thought of taking it revolted me. But so did the idea of not taking it. I guessed that this what the wizard had done for me, I had never had anything but raging desire before.

I decided not to eat the seed. I sat on the bedroll and looked at it. After a minute, I crushed it, just to have another smell, in case the smell was different, but it wasn't. Once I'd crushed it, I figured I might as well eat it.

The captain woke me at dawn. We rode to the east, with the sun in front of us. At least I was comfortable on a horse, though it had been more than a year since I had ridden, so I would surely be very sore for the next few days. But right then, for the first time since I could remember, I felt good. Great, actually, happy to be alive, which was rather more than I had expected at this time the day before.

I rode in the middle of the group. I looked at the men riding with me. I counted them: eighteen, including the captain. I started to appreciate the magnitude of my choice. I would have to give myself to every one of these men. The sex bit didn't bother me so much; I had been giving my body to strangers for months, sometimes nearly this many in a single night. No, what bothered me was that not only would these men take my body, but that afterwards, they would not be strangers; I would have to talk to them, to live with them. More, that these men who had me would be my only company. Would I always be a whore?

I recalled how I thought that I would leave when the captain stopped giving me seed. But that didn't seem like a very practical idea anymore, as much as it had a lot of attraction. I thought of what the captain said: "I will hold you to your choice." What did he mean, what did he want? Would they take me whenever and however they wanted? Far away in the mountains, I would have no control, they could do with me what they wanted. But as a prisoner, they could do that anywhere, even right here on the road. My life was in the captain's hands, but what did he want? I thought about how he had treated me. He had treated me much better than I could have imagined. He had spent quite some money on my kit. And he had been interested in my healing skills. Much too interested — where had he found out about that? What had made him come to me? And what would've happened if he hadn't?

So, the captain wanted a healer. But that still didn't make sense. Why didn't he just get a real healer? Maybe it was for too long and none would come. A whole winter in the mountains was a long time. That got me thinking. The captain had felt like a master of men, in charge of his destiny. But frankly, some of the men looked like a bunch of losers. In fact, considering their auras — there was something I hadn't done for a long time — some of them were plainly drunks. What was going on here? I recalled a song from my childhood, called "Ship of Fools", about some crazy sailors with a loony captain on a death mission. This group kind of reminded me of that song, except for the captain. It had a catchy tune, and I started humming it.

The soldier with the scar was riding next to me, and he chuckled. I looked at him, embarrassed. He laughed at my expression. I asked him what was going on, with all these men going into the mountains for winter, whether it was usual practice for the soldiers. He looked sad, and explained to me what was going on.

The captain was the golden boy of the frontier army. Everything he touched turned to gold. It was him that had led the attack on the enemy last year that had resulted in reopening the trade roads with the Pindal mountains. But he had clashed with the army command twice over. The first way was by arguing that the king should make peace with the enemy and stop taking them as slaves. The second was by romancing the daughter of the commander of the army when he was a commoner. So the captain had been banished to The Dragons Backbone for the winter. The mission was to stop enemy agents creeping through the mountains. They had been causing trouble in the land — killing, raping and burning crops and villages. Since all the other borders were monitored, the army command had decided that they were coming through the mountains, and sent the captain to close them for winter. But the soldier clearly thought that the whole business was cooked up as an excuse to banish him. The Dragon's Backbone was almost impossible to cross; steep, cold, dangerous and haunted. The army command had gathered his squad for him, soldiers they wanted to banish or punish. Some had clashed with army command, some were drunks or slackers, and others ("such as me", the soldier said) were too close to the captain. But there were friends in the army command, and they had been kitted out very well. None of the soldiers were happy — and some had families, but serving under the golden boy would help make up for it. It was going to be a tough winter — once they were settled in the mountains they would be on station in the extreme cold for the entire winter. It was late summer now, and they were required to be on station until spring, a period of five months.

Well, now I had even more to fear. What kind of desperate expedition was I stuck with?

We travelled all day on the main road, riding hard, without stopping for meals. We were quite a crowd; in addition to eighteen men with horses, we had several huge horses loaded with gear, and an assorted crowd of dogs. The captain had a pet falcon. It spent most of the time in the air, only resting on his shoulder occasionally. The captain spoke only a little to me, he spent most of the time talking to the squad about military matters. For me, it was a day of blissful quietness, and I tried to think as little as possible.

That night, in a small hollow near the road where we camped, I waited for the captain to command me to serve him or some other soldier. But instead I heard him tell one of the soldiers that I was not to be touched until after I was no longer using the seed. I didn't know whether to be relieved or not. The men were watching me and there was no doubt what they wanted. I doubted that the captain would be able to hold them back.

The captain came to me and told me that I would not get seed that night, to use my brew instead. My anger consumed me — he had lied to me. I swore at him; I used all the words I had learnt. But he was unimpressed. He said that I had already missed one night the night I was sentenced, and I could miss another. He said it would do me good. And I would get seed when I needed it, he had not promised me seed every night.

I saw that I had been deceived by the captain; that I would never trust him again. I brewed my drink, and planned to find and use the seed while he slept. I wouldn't be able to sleep till I had the seed. I waited by the fire while the squad prepared to sleep.