Chapter 8

Eve looked around the great hall. The once proud clan of raiders was no longer. Their ranks were filled with slave replacements and mostly young men without the seasoning needed to instill terror in the hearts of their intended targets. In fact, several of the crews had some female fighters serving with valor to make up for the shortage of fully trained warriors. Eve considered that she was an exception because she was the daughter of Patrick and rightfully sailed forth on his flagship to seek booty and slaves for the benefit of the clan.

They were down now to only four raiding ships in good enough condition to withstand the rough seas and manage to outrun the slower Englander boats that seldom ventured far from the coastline. Back in the time when Patrick was first taken as a slave and brought to the fortressed village, they were running more than a dozen raiding ships and had several more being built for expansion of the clan's power. The recent bad harvest due to bad weather, the disastrous raid into the Englander North shores that cost them three good ships and almost four score fighters and finally the dreaded illness of the chest that decimated the entire village had all taken their toll.

At the peak of their power, they could field almost two hundred and fifty raiders for seasonal raids. Now, they were lucky to send off three or four ships with only a total of about eighty fighters in all. The village was short on fighters to bring in the needed revenue from the distant shores and excessively heavy with old injured fighters, females beyond birthing age and children much too young to help with either fighting or making new fighters for the clan. The only way they had been able to sustain the erosion was to add the slaves into their midst and hope they would be able to defend themselves and defend the clan and the village.

Callum had done well in protecting Eve's son Patrick and the pretty girl Alicia had obviously been rewarding him with a taste of her pussy in the night because she was already in possession of a swollen belly and a glow that could only come from frequent humping. Alicia's own son named Ragarson in honor of his father was truly vociferous and squalled constantly for more milk from doting wet-nurses who attended to both he and Patrick.

Boroth was frustrated in jumping on Alicia's plump body by the frowning eye of his brother Callum who had taken a rather proprietary claim on Alicia and her pretty backside leaving Boroth with only the appealing shape of Dottie's bottom. The others in the hut watched Boroth mount and sodomize the young captive lad each and every night but kept their opinions hidden for fear of his mighty axe. Dottie kept her gender a secret even from the females because it would change her status in the family. It was far better to be considered a perverted male with a pretty face than just another female captive available for any male of the clan with a need for a hole to fill.

Alicia asked if he minded being a cum-bucket for Boroth but she just laughed and said,

"If he cannot have your flanks, my lady, then I suppose it is better he rides me in the safety of his own home than to be bothering the married women or the other men's female slaves."

That managed to shut Alicia's mouth on that subject because they all depended on Boroth's arm and axe to feed their extended family. Involvement with women from other families or the possibility of paying a big slice of their treasure to buy a female slave from another family would be hard on everyone in their extended family. It would be far better for Boroth to continue to use the available flanks of his boy-slave or to buy the services of one of the discarded females who serviced the randy males for coins at the ale hall.

Dottie dreaded the day that Boroth discovered her to be a female because he would either throw her back into the booty pool of captured females as demanded by clan rules or he would have to buy her servitude with some of his already allocated treasure. As a slave-boy, she was his property and he was required to train her in how to fight and raid for the betterment of the clan and his own family.

She practiced daily with her newly acquired bow that had been taken from an Englander seaman with no need of it any longer since his head had been separated from his body by Boroth on the way back to the ship. She scoured the dense forest to find suitable arrows to match her longbow fitting them with shaved feathers from the remains of bird's fallen prey to the wild beasts of the forest.

Some of the raiders were skilled with a bow but few had her skill with the longbow which was designed for much longer distances of flight requiring accuracy beyond the Norsemen's talents. Boroth thought it all foolishness and he was still dedicated to the "in-fighting" techniques of "Berserker" tactics. The far-reaching bows and the viciously designed traps that shattered the raider's legs with devious efficiency had stealthily dealt the Norse bands heavy losses in recent years.

Eve had taken the changing tactics into consideration in her recent raids but she had not figured out a good counter for them as yet and her losses of men was no better than the other raiding party leaders. For her next raid, she planned to sail past the Englander Island and try her luck on the land of the red-haired maidens. It was true that the booty was less rewarding but the females were generally fair of face and had suitable hips for child-bearing. They needed fertile wombs to replenish their manpower shortage before another generation had passed them by. She was already thinking that her son Patrick would become the rightful heir to the family leadership role and he would need crews of ready fighters to win his battles.

Eve had seen in Dottie the opportunity to change some of their raiding tactics to forestall their losses and add to the firepower they needed to gain time for collection of much-needed booty and slaves for the clan. If they could produce some additional longbows with a supply of arrows they might be able to extend their raiding time to produce better results with a lot less casualties.

When she visited Boroth the following weekend, she told him of her plans and that she required the services of the "young lad" to carry out her plans. The burly fighter was ready to protest because he had become much enthused over his anal exercises with Dottie and was loath to part with his pretty-boy playmate. Eve forestalled his reticence with her promise to serve as his cum-bucket with her mouth and backside for the remainder of the sojourn in their off-season period. She explained that she did not want to become swollen with child at an inopportune time for the new raiding season. The promise of nocturnal rides on her sweating flanks and the lure of raiding the far shores of the red-haired maidens proved a clincher for Boroth and he sealed the deal immediately by mounting her in full view of the pregnant Alicia and the envious Dottie who had become much attuned to the boisterous Norseman's riding style. The others in the family watched with keen interest because Eve's impressive body was at the peak of her strength and glowing with feminine beauty and desirability. Her straining muscles and vocal outbursts made them all look for a partner to satisfy their sudden physical needs.