Kratoklus stopped to withdraw his hooked sword from the back of the Cretan, who it turned out had been the polite mannered one that was going to forgo the rape of Selene.
“You know Kres, I’ve killed enough Cretan archers this year to wipe Poseidon’s ass with. Why don’t they stay home?”
“Because they are not great-minded thinkers like Kratoklus the Wise.”
“Funny Kres. You know I’m gonna fuck your mother when we get home.”
“Again! Are you blind boy?”
Good Lord please deliver me from these brutes.
Kratoklus then stopped before Sebastian, who was a head shorter and half as wide and pointed ahead. “Are those your folks Sa…?”
Kresion cut in, “Forget it dummy, you’ll never be able to invert the vowels—get the dust out of his way, you’re wider than an oak.”
Sebastian was then treated to a welcome but uncomfortable sight. Aristotle and Arlene were standing aside with Xenophile while Polos and Polymara hurled stones at two older slaves who were huddled in a fetal position. Polos’ missiles, coming from his sling as they did, carried quite some velocity. Old Cyno was repeatedly smashing the head of a smaller slave into the hard-packed roadbed. And, Selene shaped like a goddess and covered in oil and dust and blood, stood above the largest youngest slave and repeatedly slammed her shin bone into his face while he tried to rise. When the man begged for mercy she responded be slamming her heel into his mouth.
They obviously molested her after the Bilge Rats left her in the dust.
Kratoklus was beside himself with admiration. “Look at the ass on that, and a fighter too!”
Kresion was circumspect. “Look knucklehead Menander gets first pick of the plunder. You know that. Keep your skirt down.”
“Sure thing Kres. A fellow can help a girl out though.”
With those words the tree-trunk of a man, who made Doryklus seem wiry, and somehow had the foot speed of Polos, approached the enraged woman and patted her gently on her posterior. “Hey battle nymph, try this.”
To everyone’s shock the warrior handed Selene his dripping man-cleaver and patted her on the ass again, for which Kresion admonished him. “Hey knucklehead, two pats is taking liberties with the prize.”
Much to Sebastian’s disgust Selene then chopped the pleading slave in the neck, but failed to take off the head. Kratoklus, like an encouraging brother, offered a technical point made with the hand, directing her to try another cut on one of the stoning victims, who immediately began to shriek and squirm, which caused her to miss her mark and take off the chin.
Kratoklus, ever helpful, pinned the slave’s chest to the ground with his sandaled foot and the head rolled off with the next stroke. The bloodthirsty idiot Spartan then patted her on the back and pointed out the next victim, who, though half stoned to death, somehow found the means to leap to his feet and make a run for it. Kratoklus ran him down within a few steps and dragged him back to kneel, head hung low before his executioner. With a few instructions by way of hand motions—which seemed how this beast communicated best—Selene finally made a clean head-severing stroke.
As the neck gushed blood into the road, Selene began to sob and the massive Spartan hugged her and let her cry on his shoulder. Kresion was critical of his younger companion. “Get that blade out of her hand before Menander gets here you idiot. She’s a noncombatant for Zeus’s sake.”
A deep articulate voice with a hard military edge came from just behind Sebastian, and his blood froze in his veins even as Kresion straightened up like a brother caught filching extra beer from the vats by the Abbott himself—and so I earned my passage to the New World—“No file-leader, a prize more like. She is the very image of Artemis.”
There is something grasping and iron about his voice. He will never give up, and he lusts for her like Samson for Delilah.
Oh, we are saved and lost all in one fateful stroke!
His voice ground on, “All captives and plunder to my tent…”
The voice droned off as the tall—very tall—man brushed past them and approached Selene. She stood defiantly beneath him, seemingly now sick to death of men. Her heart raced by the motion of her chest. The tall man held his helmet out for Kratoklus to take and looked into her eyes as he held the point of her chin.
They seem taken with one another.
After her treatment he would appear to be the Savior himself.
The Spartan commander bent and retrieved an object from the dust—a body-scraper—and gently began to clean the woman, who was panting from her exertions. Men were now coming from behind and herding them into an orderly little file at the command of Kresion.
They were soon in file and moving off at a slow measured pace while a boy, who appeared from nowhere, provided a cadence with a double flute.
All the while Menander, enchanted by Selene, remained behind cleaning her in his splendid battle armor and cloak. Sebastian was just beginning to fall into an idle; appreciating this poignant moment as a just answering of his prayers by a benevolent All Mighty when little Polymara, walking between himself and Arlene, slapped the massive Kratoklus on his plank-like behind. Kratoklus, who had been staring longingly back at the woman who had temporarily been his to savor, then turned and glared down at the little uncouth waif.
She responded in keeping with her wretched and debased upbringing. “You red-cloak-wearing skull-fuckers are some real man-butchers. A girl likes that. I know it’s a shit deal, the boss taking her like that. But I’m a virgin, and you can have me as soon as I bleed. I might even end up with big tits someday—if you feed me enough that is.”
The man grunted in consternation, looking with apparent confusion at her unformed body. Arlene patted her on the head and “shushed” her.
I knew that little pest was trouble. We should have let the uncouth beastie stay curled up in her potter’s den!
The men seemed to like her though, because they all jeered at Kratoklus, who smiled in an awkward fashion and moved away from her, rubbing the sting from his butt.
We are now out of the cauldron and smoldering in the coals below.
