Ladies, you want to hear what Vessa the Valorous has been up to? Come a little closer, and I'll tell you. I'll warn you, my name gives me a little too much credit—I'm not what you'd call a charitable gal. But I've gone and done something good, something truly good, and I'm going to tell you about it.
It all started with a captive I met in a mercenary camp in the borderlands. She was a pitiable little thing, standing there in the middle of the soldiers' mess tent, her hands tied to one of the rafters, high above her head. She was tanned and a little bit muscular, clearly a peasant girl, but damned if she wasn't a pretty one! That hair spilled over head like a waterfall of copper, those lips were parted as if she was ready to apologize for something, and those sweet sapphire eyes said, 'help me' and 'fuck me' at the same time. Her body was ripe for it, too.
I could tell because she wasn't wearing a stitch.
Not that any of the soldiers appreciated that. They must have had all the pussy they could handle already, because even though she was stark naked, her sex was completely untouched. They'd had something else in mind when they'd strung her up. A little sign around her neck read, 'fresh milk.' Every so often, one of those filthy grunts would walk up to her, squeeze her nipple until she yelped, and out came her milk, into the grunt's waiting goblet.
'Magic,' I thought. They must have been using magic to get her boobs to swell up like that, and more magic to get her to make enough milk for everyone.
I made my entrance.
The mercenaries sized me up, with the men paying special attention. Clearly, they wanted to string me up right next to her, make my boobs all big and milky and then squeeze my nipples dry. But when you live the wild life, you learn to tell who can handle herself and who can't just by looking at them. And when they saw me, they saw light leather armor polished to a sheen, a scimitar and buckler hanging ready at my hips and my curly black hair pulled into a fighter's bun. They saw my head high and a smile on my lips, daring them to try me. They knew better. They knew I'd be more of a fight than I was worth.
So they let me walk in. I swayed my hips a little, just to show off, and leaned on the wooden counter the cook had set up. The mean-looking woman behind the counter glared at me.
I pointed to the girl strung up in the middle. "That's a pretty little nothing you've got there," I said. "Where'd you find her?"
"She was a pilgrim," said the mercenary behind me.
I turned.
"Was wantin' to get across the Six-Day River, up north," he went on. "Said she'd pay us if we took her across."
"And we did," chimed in the female fighter next to him. "But look at her. Who could let a little treat like that go?"
"Well," I said, "what do you say we find out? How much would you sell her for?"
The slave girl's rope shook as she perked up. Suddenly, those help-me eyes were the size of lemons. Her pretty little mouth hung wide open.
"Would eighty copper rings buy her?" I asked.
"No less than a hundred," said a battered old soldier who I guessed was the leader. "She is more than a dish-cleaner."
"How about a hundred and five to own her?"
The slave girl gasped. The poor little peasant probably hadn't seen that much money in her life.
"Not enough."
The slave sagged in her bonds and moaned as if all was lost.
"A hundred ten?" I asked. Now I was on shaky ground. A few of the warriors looked like they were changing their minds about attacking me. They knew that if they tried it, I'd bring down one or two of them with me. But that's not such a bad trade when your victim has a hundred and ten spare copper rings in her pouch.
"135," said the old wolf.
"Done," I said. "She's mine."
And that was final. All the tension eased out of the room. The strung-up girl sighed and squeezed her eyes shut. She tilted back her head, and I could even see her start to tear up. She wasn't going to miss being a milking slave.
After handing over the money, I untied her wrists, and she fell over my shoulder. I propped her up and helped her take her first, exhausted few steps outside.
"You saved me," said the girl. "Thank you."
"Hold off on thanking me 'till we're out of the woods," I warned her. "I bought you, fair and square, but they're gonna be mighty mad when they find out their treasury's missing a hundred and fifty copper rings. Let's skip town before they put it together, yeah?"
* * *
The girl wasn't in bad shape, considering where I'd found her. Her nipples were sore from being pinched, especially the left one, and her boobs were swollen something fierce, but as the magic wore off, she went down to normal size. A little less than normal size, for that matter, not that I have a problem with that. She told me her name, Iktria. I could have called her Doe-eyes or Sapphire or any of a hundred other names I'd come up with, but Iktria would be fine too.
Getting away from the mercenaries was the easy part. When we really put distance between us and those brigands, that was the hard part. We had to make tracks south across hilly country. It was hotter than a witch's frying pan, and as far as you could see in any direction, there was nothing but scratchy grass, as dry and yellow as kindling. No trees, no rivers and no people. Worst part was, we spent half our time laboring up some gods-damned hill, and the other half we struggled down the other side, trying not to pitch onto our faces. We ran my waterskins empty in a day, and the food didn't last much longer.
"How much farther is it?" I complained. "I thought we were close to the sea, this far south."
"We are," said Iktria. "That's why it is so hot."
"For how hot it is, there'd better be an iceberg and a tavern pretty soon. That would make up for all this trudging."
"These are the disputed lands. No one can be here."
"No foolin'. How far until we're in civilized territory again?"
"I don't know."
