Escape From the Drow

That evening Maxi drew inside the cave that Trieste had set up as her headquarters, Trieste sprung on him from behind, knocked him down and skilfully disarmed him. Trieste turned him around, and he noticed that his commander was naked. Her body was lithe and muscular, her firm breasts and hard nipples thrust out as though in greeting. Maxi was instantly aroused.

Like all male officers in the army, Maxi had been allowed to take his pick of the temple girls so that their offspring would be tough as well as ruthless and cunning. He was also allowed to take his pleasure with prisoner slaves he had captured in his many conquests. In this way he was more privileged than most drow men, who never get to have sex with a woman. But Maxi had never felt such arousal as he did staring up at Trieste's naked body. Trieste had removed his clothes by now, and had pinned him down, sitting on top of him. Maxi's member sat up straight and pulsating, and so hard it hurt. Seized with passion he grabbed at Trieste's thick bush, now glistening with liquid. Trieste groaned and guided his hand.

Trieste was wet and gushing and her clitoris was standing out, hard against his fingers. Maxi tried to struggle free, but Trieste had his arms and legs pinned. Suddenly she moved her thighs and thrust herself onto his erect penis.

Maxi winced and prepared himself, knowing that this part always hurt. But not this time. Trieste was so well lubricated that her parts glided down his shaft with no resistance, and Maxi bellowed with pleasure, not pain. He saw Trieste's face next to his own, twisted in passion as he supposed his own must be, and Trieste's pubic mound was pumping juices that tricked down his thigh.

Trieste knew what she was doing. She kept just enough pressure to pleasure Maxi almost beyond endurance, but not enough to make him come. The two bodies glistened with sweat and sexual juices, and started to move faster, screaming and groaning. The sight of Trieste's face above him, so obviously enjoying his manhood was a new experience, and transported Maxi to fresh ecstasies. Until, with screams and cries that could be heard around the camp, they came together in a massive orgasm that shook their bodies and caused them to claw at each others' faces.

"You fuck like a man," said Maxi, with rare insight. Trieste laughed, pulled Maxi closer to her, and playfully bit him on the neck until she drew blood.

#

The raid the next day was a success. Trieste had divided her forces into three parts, each attacking from a different direction, with the archers and sorcerers providing covering fire. As expected, it turned out that what was supposed to be a large farming village was a small city, guarded not with a peasant army but professional soldiers, half-orc mercenaries and a few southern mountain men, who appeared as impervious to pain as the drow women. Losses in the drow army were therefore heavier than expected, and Maxi noticed that none of the remaining priestesses had survived. But the prospect of loot and pillage cheered up the conquering army and their spirits lifted for the first time since the raiding party set out.

Maxi and Trieste made passionate love every evening on their return and for many months afterwards. Their relationship became an open secret and was resented by many in the priesthood, who looked upon any sexual enjoyment with suspicion. However, although Trieste had many enemies in the hierarchy she also had powerful allies. So overall Maxi's semi-clandestine relationship did his military career more good than harm.

The couple continued their lovemaking at Trieste's quarters, where Maxi first met Trieste's teenage daughter Jade. Jade had the same lithe body as Trieste, with the same sensuous way of walking, plus a freshness of youth that Trieste lacked. Nevertheless, Maxi knew that his career would go nowhere fast if he so much as looked longingly at his commander's daughter. So he sublimated any feelings for the daughter into aggressive passion toward the mother, causing her to comment that Maxi was the best lover she had had since Jade's father.

After his experiences with Trieste, Maxi lost interest in other women. Monogamy was not encouraged among drow male warriors, and Trieste would not have objected if Maxi had wanted to take some pleasure elsewhere. But acolytes and prisoners no longer held any attraction for him. The bored resignation of the former and the cringing fear of the latter were no substitute for the tireless passion of his warrior love.

Maxi started to refuse his rights of conquest, causing some sneers and whisperings, though most o the time his relationship with Trieste and his obvious prowess in battle prevented official censure. Until one day when he had angrily pulled one of his sergeants off a prisoner he had just captured. Maxi didn't know quite why he did it, but the combination of the sergeant's sadistic whooping and the prisoner's frightened whimpering made him see red, and he slammed the sergeant against the wall, breaking his collar bone.

"What the hell are you doing, captain!" yelled Maxi's commanding officer, who had just come in.

Maxi thought quickly. "He wasn't showing his superior officer the proper respect, sir. I should have had first go".

"Fair enough," said the general, and kicked the prostrate sergeant in the groin. As the general showed no sign of leaving, Maxi had no choice but to mount the prisoner and do his business, while trying all the time not to throw up. But from then on, Maxi stayed faithful to Trieste, except for the occasional pleasures he had with Jade in his fantasies.

Trieste had made Maxi promise to look after her daughter if she was killed. But during the raid that took her life, Maxi was away fighting. By the time he returned, Jade was already in captivity, and Maxi's influence had waned. Having no famous patron to accelerate his career, Maxi had to rely on talent, which fortunately he still had. But talent alone would not get Jade back, and the best Maxi could do was to call in a favour owed by a senior priestess he had once saved in battle, and get Jade transferred from house slavery to a less onerous temple slave position. He also had a word with some of the subordinate officers supervising the temple slaves, and such was Maxi's reputation for ferociousness that Jade was largely left unmolested by the male overseers. But then Maxi was promoted, and called away again to command a distant outpost. He lost all contact with Jade for the next two years.

But now, this little spoiled brat priestess cub was pointing and leering, and Maxi knew two things. Firstly, this was definitely Trieste's daughter, and secondly that there was nothing he could do to prevent her messy death at his own hands.

Chapter 3 -- Freda's story

The prisoners waited for several hours. It appeared that they had accepted Jade as one of themselves; or at least as a fellow sufferer, and one who shared a common objective.

It was an unpleasant time for everyone. The two halflings took their turns relieving the dwarf on guard; both in turn practising the same concentrated self disciplined focus. The uninjured off-duty fighters slept fitfully, their hands grasped around the drow daggers and short swords they had won in conquest. They were ready to leap up at a moments notice if the guard gave any warning. Jade and the injured dwarf did not sleep at all. The pain was still too intense. Instead they slumped against the wall, both stoically suppressing their groans to impress each other, and took some distraction in listening to Freda, the hairy female dwarf, who seemed particularly willing to make friends.

"You poor thing," she had said after hearing Jade's story, "you have come through far worse trials than I have, at least in the physical sense. Though betrayal also leaves its own residue of pain."

Jade inwardly smiled. Freda at least, was on her side. Now she needed to cement the bond. "Tell me about it," she said softly, then, overcoming her revulsion, she laid her hand on the hairy dwarf woman's arm. To her surprise, the hair was soft like a cat, and not harsh and abrasive as she thought it would be.

Freda, like Jade, was born into a more privileged stratum of her society. Her father was an artisan in one of the bigger mines. His job was to shape the gold and jewels found in the mines into beautiful objects that could be sold for a high price in the lowland cities -- and which would attract the drow raiders like Trieste and her battalion, Jade thought wryly.

"Both my parents wanted me to train for the priesthood," Freda continued. "Since I showed a talent for abstract thinking, and often spent long periods in prayer and meditation. The priesthood however is a male preserve, and as a woman I had to overcome several obstacles before they could accept me."

Jade was gobsmacked. "The priesthood accepts men? But we all know that only the female has the necessary spiritual insight to commune with the gods." And then Jade paused. Here she was, defending the priestesses, a pampered group she despised. What's more, this dwarf, who she was beginning to trust, was a member of this group. Jade's head started to throb, and not from the pain of the beating.

Freda smiled. "Yes, we all know that drow society is dominated by the female. Why else would your god be a Spider, the creature that represents the worst aspects of satiated femininity, devouring her mate to provide food for her children. Naturally they would use that excuse. Dwarfen society has men at its apex, so our excuse is that only men have the logical mind to comprehend the Divine. All our gods are male, representing the physical strength and rough male prowess necessary for us to toil in the mines."

"So why did you want to follow them?" asked Jade.

"A good question" Freda whispered. "Perhaps I wanted to embrace the feminine in the divine plan. Only then could we come to terms with the terrible prejudices of our society and its unfair repression of most of the male population."

"Of the males?" cried Jade. "But you told me that men were at the top of your race."

"It is so," replied Freda. "But these are not the men that have to serve. They are kings and princes, owners and overseers, hard, cold and dangerous, not the workers in the mines or the army. I had to overcome sneering, jokes and downright pig headedness to gain my place in the priesthood, but I count myself lucky I did not have to work in the mines until I was crippled, or become a mercenary like Bill and Garrett here, forever fighting other's wars, revenging insults that were not made to me, and which I don't even understand, and gaining wealth and position that I will never see. For the dwarfen armies that fought your mother," - and here Jade looked away in embarrassment, surprised that Freda knew her secret - " are only recruited from the males. Surely the people we expect to fight and die for us are the most exploited of all."

"Yet it is men bringing it on themselves!" replied Jade. "They deserve what they get."

"You think so?" said Freda. "I don't hate men like you seem to. But is it any different in your society? Your rulers are women. But you are a woman, Jade. What have your rulers done for you? Or for your mother? I was the presiding priest in the battle that claimed your mother's life. I said my prayers over her, and over her followers, though most of the bodies on both sides were so mangled that we could not recognise the marks of rank. I supervised the burial of over fifty male dwarfs, and about two hundred female drow, with a few males scattered among them. Then I blessed them, and prayed for their safe journey through the afterlife."

"You pray for your enemies?," cried Jade. "Whatever for?"

"Many have asked that question," replied Freda, "including some from my race. But an enemy could just as easily be an ally, if only the circumstances were different. If your mother had not died, and you had not been forced into slavery, it is likely you would be our deadly enemy. Yet we are on the same side, at least for the present. And once our enemies are dead, they are enemies no longer. Does it not make sense to pray for them?"

Jade thought of the priestly hate sessions in her own settlement, where the High Priestess would preside over a ritualistic humiliation protocol for the fallen, often climaxing in an orgiastic frenzy of scratching, biting, kicking and trampling of the enemy bodies. As a temple slave Jade had been called upon to provide musical accompaniment for these events. She plied a melody that would inflame passions, and loosen inhibitions like a laxative loosens the bowels, so that common people would forget themselves in a torrent of diarrhoea-like hate. As an artist, Jade prided herself on her ability to play on her audience, while still somewhat despising them for being taken in by it.

Freda's way may have something in it, she thought, then pushed it from her mind. The furry bitch is a sentimental fool. If we didn't hate our enemies we wouldn't fight so hard.

Freda stared at her intently. "You think I am naive," she said, and Jade blushed at how easily her thoughts could be read by the dwarf. "Yet never forget it was I who persuaded the others to spare your life. And I could say something else about your mother."

"Yes," Jade replied with some anticipation.

"She was murdered."

"Oh, not directly," said Freda, as Jade blinked in surprise. "But the drow raid on our settlement was a foregone conclusion. We had a regular army in those mines; hard, well-trained fighters like Bill and Garrett, and your leaders must have known it. But I suppose Trieste was a threat to their power. Nothing is as it seems in war, and often our real enemies are the ones wearing the same uniform. After all, they are a bigger threat than our opponents; and because we know them, we hate them more."

Jade was silent for a while. The dwarf had certainly given her something to think about. And if it was true about her mother, then Jade had very good reasons to want revenge on her own people. Though then she wondered why she felt this way. After all, if she had been in the leader's place, she would have done the same thing. And in her times of freedom, she had often beaten slaves herself, so why did she now feel so angry at the way she and her mother had been treated. Jade recognised an unwelcome thought pattern starting to form, and pushed it away.

"Tell me more of your story," she asked instead.

#

"I fell in love with one of my father's apprentices," said Freda. "He was a skilled artisan, and I knew that he was in line to replace my father. My parents approved. I had been brought up with gems and jewels, so he knew that these pretty objects had no fascination to me. Instead he would take us to the woods where we would walk in the cool twilight and rest beside tree lined streams. He would make up poetry about my beauty -- because to hairy dwarfs I am beautiful -- and then he would give me bouquets of wild flowers. Their colours were as deep and as rich as the gems he mined, but they meant more to me; they were from the happy places of our courtship, and they had a smell and texture that the jewels could never have.

"Then I met his parents. I never liked them. They appeared overly friendly, unctuous almost, and I could see them sizing me up, and asking all sorts of questions about my talents and earning prospects. I realise now that his parents were in league with the drow, the despised slave traders that seem, unfortunately, to have become more prolific in recent times.

"One day they asked me if I could conduct a private service for them. Just them and a few friends. Because I was very much in love and wanted the family to favour me, I consented, even though I was not comfortable. My lover was away on a tuition course in a nearby mine, so he would not be attending.

"They showed me into a special room they had prepared for the occasion, at the end of a long tunnel carved into a cave in the hillside. A single candle burned on the altar. And then as I entered the room, I saw five hooded figures step out of the shadows in ambush.

"The drow kidnappers must have been overeager, and that saved me. That and the small lingering mistrust I had felt for the parents, that somehow compelled me not to tell them the whole truth when they quizzed me about my talents. I was open with them about my healing abilities, a mistake as I see now, because this talent was in great demand in the drow slave pits. But I never told them about my combat spell abilities, something all priests of the war gods are taught if they show promise in the healing arts. So when the five slavers rushed me at the altar, with their bolts tipped with sleeping draught, I was able to quickly cast a cutting spell between them and myself, and make a run for it.

"The spell-knives cut them badly, but not fatally, and one of the henchmen was strong enough to fire at me with his crossbow, then drag himself after me. The parents had not been anywhere near my spell, so they started to give chase. I could easily have outrun them in normal circumstances, but a bolt had hit me in the thigh, and I knew that the sleeping poison would soon slow me down. So I turned back and cast a spell of confusing darkness to block the parents, and then ran as fast as I could to the surface, where the light-hating drow would have a disadvantage.

"I managed to struggle up the tunnel, dodging two more bolts from the wounded drow henchmen, then ran to the woods. I had just made it to the thickest part of the forest when sleep overcame me, and I fell unconscious.

"When I regained consciousness my pursuers were nowhere to be seen. But I was lost in the woods and wandered for two days before I found a place I recognised, fortunately close to the mine where my lover was staying. At the time I thought he seemed very surprised to see me, but I put it down to delight, and he certainly made a fuss of me, cooking a lavish meal, and listening intently to everything I told him. He told me that he was shocked his parents had turned out to be such terrible traitors, and seemed so contrite that I believed him when he insisted he knew nothing about it. We made love, first gently, then with a more excited passion, such as I had never seen in him before. Later we drank to our future together. I fell asleep in his arms.

"That was the last pleasant memory I had until I woke up in this place, and realised I had been betrayed by the one I loved most, and what a fool I had been to trust so deeply."

Chapter 4 - Escape

Several more hours passed. Freda stopped talking and sat motionless. The halfling warrior who had wanted to kill Jade lost some of his reticence, and gave Jade some food and drink from the captured overseer, which she accepted gratefully. Then Freda stood up, walked over to Bill the mercenary and laid her hands on him, chanting in a steady yet sonorous voice. Jade recognised it as a priestly spell, yet instead of fear, she felt a strange peaceful sensation. She became so absorbed in the tranquillity of the moment that she did not even notice that Freda was now by her side and laying hands on her forehead. Jade felt a sudden rich warmth, no longer repulsed by the touch of the dwarf. Suddenly her pain vanished.

"A healing spell," explained Freda, seeing her surprise. "Do your priestesses not learn this?" Jade shook her head. No priestess of the Spider Goddess had mastered any healing spell, though the ex-temple slave knew it was not for want of trying. Immense sacrifices of gold, gems and slaves had been dragged to the altar and immolated, and scores of priestesses had mutilated themselves and each other; even cut off fingers and hands, to propitiate the Spider. But all to no avail. The Spider Goddess was generous enough in channelling destructive power; spells to maim, crush and kill, but her voice was silent when it came to the healing arts.