Sleeping Beast Ch. 01

"Of course. I beg your pardon for not offering sooner." Argus opened the door, then walked at her side.

Only a few torches were lit, but Trinity could see that the stone corridor was very wide and its ceilings high. It was chilly, but not drafty, she noted. From what she'd seen, the castle seemed to be in good repair. Her chamber was sparsely furnished, but everything in it was of the highest quality. The bed was tall and hung with silks and velvets, and the few other pieces of furniture were massive, gilded and bedecked within an inch of their lives. Every wall she'd seen was hung with tapestries and drapes. Apparently the treasure of Zamok Denova was no fairy tale.

The second, shorter corridor they trod ended in a door that seemed laughably small for such a grand space, though it would have been unremarkable elsewhere. Lifting the latch, Argus shouldered it open and stepped back for Trinity to pass. They were in a long, low-ceilinged room that was much warmer than her own, and Trinity yawned immediately. The heat was a relief after days of traveling and sleeping outdoors. On the other hand, it smelled like a swamp.

The door thudded closed and Trinity followed Argus along the outside wall to the hearth, where a dark-haired man sat with his face turned toward the fire, stirring something.

"Talgut--"

The man's head snapped around as though he'd been startled, though they hadn't been quiet. Wiping his hands on his shirt-front, he stood.

"Troitsa, this is my friend Talgut."

Trinity was surprised to see he wasn't Russian; his skin was even darker than her own. At a guess, the man was Kazakh, or maybe even Bashkir, like herself, and she'd expected Argus to introduce him as a cook or steward, not a friend.

Talgut bowed over her hand as she darted a glance at Argus. Neither spoke. She was too tired for pleasantries.

She lowered her hand and looked to Argus. "You said I could have something to eat?"

"Of course, dyevushka." Argus practically leapt for the nearest cupboard, producing a stoneware bowl he handed off to Talgut. "I should warn you... Talgut and I take turns cooking, and we are in no way expert or even competent."

Talgut snorted in agreement as he ladled something into the bowl.

Argus seated her at the dark, heavy wooden table with a spoon, a roll, and a huge tankard of ale.

Trinity peered at the surface of the greasy, green, lumpy liquid in the bowl, which was obviously the source of the swamp-like odor permeating the room. If she tasted it, she'd be forced to eat more, no matter how bad the taste, no matter how ill she felt, because she simply couldn't be that rude.

Trinity lay the spoon down and picked up the roll, which was hard as a rock, but a regular rock, not a swamp rock. She soaked it in her ale until it softened, and bit off a hunk. She could feel them watching her, but she didn't look up. She wasn't concerned with anyone's delicate sensibilities in that regard. They can hint all they like, she thought, I'll be damned if I'll service his monster of a brother, then make bread and bishbarmak for the lot of them.

--o----O----o--

For the first time since recovering from the abortion, Trinity slept late the following day.

After straightening her clothing as best she could, she made her way to the kitchen, which was again warm, but blessedly free of its swampy stench. No one was there. Trinity poked around until she found some dried apples and a tin of the rock-hard rolls, then rested on the warm hearth eating and sipping a mug of water dipped from a bucket near the back door. She was tempted to peek out, but she recalled the wolves snarling and the men's dying screams as she was snatched from her fireside slumber.

As she finished her water, the door flew open, banging against the stone wall. Argus charged through, stopping in his tracks when he saw her, and they stared at one another.

Trinity bit back an exasperated sigh. He must think she was an imbecile. She lowered her eyes and suddenly stopped chewing. She took a small sip of water, swallowed the mouthful of bread, and asked, "How many women? How many times have you done this?"

Argus flushed as he passed, trying to look less guilty and more casual on his way to the cupboard. "I don't know. Many years."

"How many?"

"Many," he repeated, seating himself at the table with his own drink.

She didn't ask again.

After she'd finished her breakfast, Argus showed her around Zamok Denova. The castle was enormous, with multiple balconies and galleries on the second level, and two stone towers guarding the corners not perched on the edge of the precipice. From the top of the western tower, he pointed out a river winding through the valley toward a town they couldn't see, and the trail through the pass below, where she'd been travelling the previous day.

Trinity didn't bother asking if the men she'd been with were dead. "Did the wolves eat the horses, too?"

Argus turned his head to stare. She really was remarkable. "Why are you not distraught?"

She leaned on a parapet. "My people were hard-working, stoic--" She lifted a shoulder. "--and I've learned that no number of tears will alter my future."

Argus stared out over the treetops. "Your people?"

"Bashkir."

"Nomads?"

"Yes."

Ah, he thought. That explained much: her coloring, her circumstances and, not least, her attitude. The nomadic Bashkir people had been fighting for their rights since the Mongol Empire broke up five hundred years earlier, but without land, the Bashkirs also lacked wealth and power. The Russians and Cossacks were slowly killing them off. Her family had probably gotten caught up in one of the serial revolutions.

Talgut never talked about his past, but Argus suspected something similar might have befallen him: Nivid had found him in the taiga below when Talgut was little more than a boy. He was starving, half-clothed, and he'd been treed by Nivid's wolves. He hadn't spoken for well over a year after Nivid pulled him screaming from the forest.

Changing the topic, Argus pointed to movement at the far edge of the meadow. "The pale wolf is not of my brother's pack, though she runs with it most of the time."

Trinity leaned over the parapet, but saw nothing, and decided to forgo asking Argus if, by "pale," he meant "white." She'd already learned the old man's tales were true: she didn't need a wolf to con firm it.

--o----O----o--

Back in her room, Trinity discovered Talgut or someone else had half-filled a wooden tub with hot water for her to bathe in. A plate of cheese and dried meat and a tankard of ale waited on the table by "her" hearth.

She stood staring at the mirrored black surface of her bathwater for a full minute. This had to be the strangest situation anyone had ever been in. She'd been taken captive, but was being treated like an honored guest. She was used to being the person who heated the water and carried the buckets, not the one being served.

After her noontime meal, Argus came to see her. It was a long moment before she called for him to enter. When he did, he saw that the young woman was fretting against the far wall, as he'd expected her to do the night before. His stomach tensed and he hurried to reassure her. "He won't come here, Troitsa-- I... this is your room. I will take you to him. You--"

Argus wanted to tell her she was safe here, but that wasn't really true, was it? Her room might be a sanctuary of sorts, but she was by no means out of danger. She'd been stolen from slavery, but cast in yet another unsavory role, as the plaything of a monster. Safety was nowhere in sight for their young captive.

He pushed the thought aside and deposited the basket he was carrying on the table by the hearth. He'd found it was best to get through the next part as quickly as possible, and to ignore whatever embarrassment the woman displayed.

He held up a goatskin bag with a long wooden nozzle. "Do you know what this is?"

Trinity blushed, looking away from him and nodding.

"Good. You'll have to use it before I come back. Then--"

Next, he lifted a small brown vial from the basket.

"--this is lavender oil. You should oil your bottom and your quim. The more you use, the more comfortable you will be, and it would be better if you brought yourself pleasure before I come to fetch you."

She hung her head, her hair covering her face.

"Troitsa?"

She couldn't look up.

He approached her slowly, not wanting to frighten her, though a voice in the back of his head laughed riotously at such a noble display of concern for the woman he was preparing to sacrifice.

She didn't back away, but she kept her head down.

Argus lifted the curtain of silky brown hair and bent sideways to see her face.

"Troi?" He didn't notice he'd used the fond, diminutive form of her name.

She flicked a glance at him that was gone as soon as it landed, and his stomach fell.

"You've never touched yourself?"

She shook her head decisively, not moving otherwise.

Argus had a bad feeling about this one. He told himself not to do it, not to open his mouth.

"Troitsa, can you look at me?"

She took a deep breath and lifted her head.

He brushed the hair away from her face as he met her eyes, his brow wrinkling.

He shouldn't ask. Just give her the oil, show her the robe, and go. He should definitely not ask.

"Troitsa, do you know what I mean by pleasure?"

She stood silently looking up at him for a long while before she answered, her eyes serious. When she finally spoke, her answer was oblique. "I know that men find pleasure in my body."

She didn't blush this time. Her embarrassment seemed to have faded.

"You've never enjoyed yourself with a man, or alone? Or with another woman?"

Her eyes widened at that, but she kept her chin up as she shook her head.

Argus sighed, swearing at Nivid in his head.

I told him not to get his own women... she might as well be a virgin.... When Argus or Talgut left the mountains to find a female for Nivid, they looked for a public woman or a doxy. At the very least, they took women who were already experienced. They didn't take unmarried women, or young mothers, and Argus wouldn't have looked twice at a girl as reserved as Troitsa.

He sat heavily on the side of her bed, so they were at eye level. "I can't stop what's going to happen, Troitsa. Nivid won't intentionally hurt you, but he's not gentle, he's not small, and he will use you in every way possible. He doesn't care if you're not prepared.

"On the other hand, he doesn't care if you are prepared. He won't object if someone else has touched you first, so if you want assistance, I will help. I won't remove any of my own clothing-- this would just be for you. I'll let you decide. All right?"

She nodded and lowered her eyes again, so he rose to go. He was almost at the door when she spoke.

"Argus?"

He turned around, and she was blushing again, though she was looking right at him.

"Can you-- that is--" She waved her hand at the basket. "--I know what it is, but I've never-- could you help me with that?"

It took every ounce of willpower he had not to let his reaction show, and he believed he succeeded. "Of course. I'll be back in a moment with some warm water."

Fifty feet down the corridor, he ducked into an alcove, where he collapsed against the wall.

Khristo. The girl had been here less than a day and he was already a mess. What was Nivid thinking when he took her?

He rubbed his face. How the hell--?

It wasn't that he hadn't done it before, it was just... he was having trouble picturing Troitsa-- no, that wasn't it. He was having no trouble whatsoever picturing Troitsa in the position other women had assumed when he was forced to assist them; he was having trouble picturing himself doing it without coming in his pants, or shaking so hard he couldn't get the nozzle anywhere near her ass.

Argus hadn't lusted after any of Nivid's women in a decade or more, but Troi's somber dark eyes and that hair-- like a sheet of silk. Her bravery made her all the more beautiful in his eyes. Khristo, Argus thought again. It almost made him wish she was crying and incoherent.

For a moment, he considered asking Talgut, but dismissed the idea immediately. Troi hadn't asked for Talgut's help, she'd asked for his. With another rough sigh, Argus headed for the kitchen.

--o----O----o--

Trinity decided against agreeing to Argus' proposal. She couldn't imagine enjoying anything now, not even a tall nobleman touching her gently.

She'd heard women talk as though they'd enjoyed the act of a man taking them, but Trinity's body had never given her even a tiny hint that such pleasure was possible. She assumed some women just weren't made that way, and she was one of them.

But then Argus had come to her room with a kettle of warm water, to help her with the clyster, and when she'd laid down on her belly with her hips on a pillow and her bottom in the air, and Argus lifted her robe... well... it felt like he'd flushed her entire body out with warm water-- before he even touched her!

He'd been patient and very kind. He put oil on the nozzle-- she could smell the lavender-- and when he held her cheeks apart, he'd smoothed his oily finger across her rear opening. He'd talked her through relaxing her muscles and he'd stroked her thighs, and the nozzle had slipped in with no discomfort, nothing at all like what she'd experienced at the hands of her former mistress.

As soon as he'd emptied the bag into her bowels, Argus had left her alone with a chamber pot on the floor near her bed, telling her to count to one hundred before using it.

Trinity hadn't been able to count, though. She couldn't concentrate on anything but the flesh between her legs which, after years of bringing her only pain, was now suggesting she might be one of the women who could find pleasure in a man's bed. She was a little bit sorry she hadn't taken Argus up on his offer.

She dried herself, used the oil, then sat on the bed awaiting her fate.

--o----O----o--

END NOTE- This is my first non-human story, though I've had another character on the drawing board for a couple of years now-- still researching that one. (So far, I've awarded myself mini-degrees in anthropology, linguistics, evolutionary physiology-- not sure that's even a thing, and zoology.)

This will probably be 6-8 chapters (which are slightly shorter than usual, I've noticed), and I'm shooting for updates every 2 weeks. Sometimes life gets in the way, but I swear NEVER to leave you hanging. Thank you again for reading and dropping me a note now and then! --Stefanie

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