*warning- violence, rape, slavery, torture*

The next morning before dawn Olrhee was taken away, while Dracna was taken to the yard to sweep the stones. Pick up feces from horses and auroch. Haul bags or roll barrels from carts to the lower part of the house via a different big door with several humans wearing slave collars and rusty orange clothes. Dracna remained naked. It was a Ghenid insult and mark of poverty. The human overseer kept her in chains and beat her with a crop for being slow. After sunrise they were given water and hard flatbread. Dracna’s smaller than those of the humans.  Attempting to take one from another slave got her more beatings with the crop. 

After the rest they are taken to clean out the pens, hers and another set on the other side of the barn-divided from her part by a stone wall. Sweep them out. Throw down a bag of straw. Pour out the chamber buckets, straining out piss into a barrel and dumping the feces into another. They were wetted with buckets of water, soaped and rinsed. Then returned to their cells.

Olrhee was back, smelling faintly of flowers and eating her bread and bowl of stew. Dracna has a small bowl of stew in her cell.  

“You what work?” she asked the Bahku.  

Silence.

“What work?”

Olrhee turned her back to Dracna and curled on the straw bag that was the only bed or cushion. 

Dracna ate and lay on the floor, soon asleep.

The next day was much as the previous. Clean the yard, sweep and unload a wagon. Periodic whippings. Flatcakes. The later morning she was taken to several half barrels with ribbed boards set in them and baskets of clothes. The collar neck chain was connected to a large iron ring set in the stone. “Wash them!”  Commanded the overseer.

Dracna snarled.  “No.”

“You will wash them!”

“Slave work!”

 “You are a slave. Do it!” He emphasized his command with the crop, beating her already bruised body for her resistance. Then he made a small frightened human male slave show her washing the clothes and other fabrics. He jumped if she moved and watched from the corner of his eye constantly. She mostly stayed silently squatting. The others got food and water, but not Dracna.  This was typical of how one treated the captive from raids, the slave or khaengsua (Underfoot ghost, dirt). She would endure. The overseer sent one of the slaves to the house.

“You want better?  Earn it.” 

She still refused.

The slave sent to the house returned with several Bugbears and Gazakral.

Dracna’s ears raised and she shouted at the other Ghenid.  “You forget city dweller! We of the tribes are strong and hard! All you can do is make me lose value and live.  Kill me and I am a ghost with a chain on you. Enough to come back and place more” 

Gazakral simply said ”The wheel”.

Two Bugbears strode to the gatehouse where a large wooden wheel, roughly two meters across, leaned against the wall.  Rings were set in it. The guards grabbed it and rolled it to the wash area. Gazakral’ commanded “Stay.”  and the Soul Chains on her throbbed, locking her in place for a moment. The Bugbears put a bag over her head, a cord around her throat. She tried to rear back and smash her head into them. The cord tightened. She fought, but they held her arms and legs forcing her down, gasping for breath with the burning bite of the cord. Her vision flickered, her pulse like thunder in her ears, her lungs burning. Gazakral’s chains worked with his command to “Stop fighting”,  leaving her momentarily inactive. She was barely aware of her body being dragged to the wheel.  Arms and legs spread wide and cinched to it. One leg and one arm still in the shackles, beyond the leather binding her to rings on the wheel.  The cord came away as a new collar closed on her neck with rings on each side locking her to the wheel.

Gazakral’s voice from beyond the bag still covering her head.  “You must work off the bond to be freed. Resist and it gets longer and harder. Obey and it goes easier. I’ll let you think about that.”

The sunlight beat down on her and the air in the bag was close and hot. She panted. She strained against the frame of the wheel.  And again against touches and forced matings and the betrayal of her body’s response to it, leaving her torn, bleeding and bruised. More humiliation as only the weakest female, alone without family or ghosts, might be treated so.  Ghenid knew not all things the body did followed one's will.  They shook that off best they could and continued on.  Weakness of the flesh. She had pissed herself and shit as well. She felt the flying and buzzing insects landing and crawling over her. Her world was pain, the bag, hate and revenge. 

The heat of the day passed in a haze and she felt the sun go down. Her throat and mouth were dry. She was tough. The grandmothers demanded strength of every member of the tribes and the weak died.  The smooth skin city dwellers had said she had to work to pay the fines and debt.  She had to collect the coins. How could she do this?  For revenge she could submit for however long it took to get free of the manacles and irons.  But nothing could remove the shit sorcerer’s Aedoteerua. Those chains were eternal.  If she lived and got away she could make them smaller against a higher number of new chains she held on to. hers, weakening their hold. He was smart, she had to admit that. She made a new plan based on her known strengths and skills against the unknown city ways and Gazakral’s dominion. And she could use the oldest childhood tricks, trading to set her chains on others. Listen before speaking and watching before acting, as she was taught in the tribes.  She had thought she understood things well enough.  Obviously that had been wrong. 

It rained in the night. She sucked at the water through the bag and tried to turn her head to breathe. She was wet, chilled and thirsty. Hungry too. Gazakral kept her underfed. The wet bag made it harder to breathe. She dared not sleep. Couldn’t with the shivering. The angry heat of her stomach wasn't enough to keep the rest of her warm. Bugs crawled in her fur. Her body ached from the position she was locked in and the abuse of the last few days. She was not ready to be an eternal ghost. Not yet. She had a treasure to gain first.

She heard the changing of guards. The sounds of a wagon rolling into the yard.  The first stirrings of the compound, foot steps, and low voices.  The bag came off her head and she gulped the cool morning air. The human wash boy held a bowl, but she couldn’t reach. He poured small amounts of water in her mouth and let her swallow. “Me you remember. Water to give.” She sniffed trying to catch his scent, aside from the obvious human smell.

“Harron told me to.”

The human left after emptying the bowl. The bag didn’t go back over her head. She watched. Olrhee and several others, humans mostly, and all  in chains, were walked past her. She recognized this. A lesson for them.. This is the price of resistance. She was left shackled to the wheel through the day. The sun peaked from the clouds off and on over the day. A guard or slave woke her when she fell asleep. This was beyond what the tribes did and she recognized the power of this method of breaking.  Another point admitting Gazakral was cunning. As the sun set she was given another bowl of water. She stank from urine and feces, her coat matted from blood and other substances. She was itchy from the bugs. And she watched, her misery keeping her awake. The watch along the wall, just a few guard.  Slaves walked from tasks and back to the barn.  Only five. Several more came and went from the house with baskets of food and buckets of water. A few armed and armored male ghenid who cast glances at her. Gazakral’s warriors. The night passed slowly with her shivering in the cold and the next day was like the last.  At sundown Gazakral and one of the human overseers came with several Bugbears.  He had them undo her neck collar, free her arms and legs. The manacles and irons back. The bugbears grabbed her and dragged her to the barn. One leaning over, his voice a whisper. “See?  I Boss to you now bitch. Should have been good to me!”

“Yes, you right.” she whispered back.  The Bugbear gave a grin showing his jagged teeth.

They left her in her cell.  Water.  Olrhee returned and huddled in the far corner of her cell, arms wrapped around herself. Head down and rocking back and forth. The allium scent of ghenid on her and another smell. Dracna lay on the floor, herself tucked up. She stretched and pushed herself up.

“Him magic you.”

“What?”

“Him magic you.”

“Yes. “ Olrhee’s voice was weak, small.

“Sex?”

“How do you know? Can you smell it?”

“Me him know.  Me Ghenu know. Some smell.”

“I let him.” Olrhee whispered. “Not even the Itch. Not in season.”

Dracna whispered back. “Is Aedoteerua.  Chain. Magic. Stomach heavy make. Him you hurt make.”

“What?”

Dracna licked her finger and made her mark on her arm.

“You, you did that too!”

“Is Ghenu magic.”

“You tricked me, like he said. Used that magic to make me try to escape.” Olrhee’s voice louder, almost growling.

“You want go. Me want go.” Dracna replied

“He says, I can’t trust you.” A whine in Olrhee’s voice.

“What “trust” be?”

“That you will do what you say, that you will be with me and help. Friends.”

“Bata! Stupid. You take. You hold.  You others force do. Know them make take. Try hold.”

“I can’t trust you can I?”

“This trust- only you. Forever. Only Chain make.”

“That's a cold thing. Your kind are monsters.”

“We strong. We hard. We live and dead but ghost always.  Gazakral, me dead make, me ghost. Have him Aedoteera. No run. No hide.  Me ghost attack.   Me live.  He me weak make. Loss use.  Him live make coin. Me weak, less coin.”  

“I guess that makes a kind of sense.”

“I sleep now” Dracna pulled the hay, loose and bagged, to her and fell asleep.

The next morning Olrhee was taken away without her saying anything to Dracna. Dracna got a bowl of soup. They left her for several hours before Bugbears came to take her to the clothes washing place. The overseer had her washed as she was “So dirty that she’d make the clothes dirtier.”  Cold water, rough scrubbing and more cold water.  She let the cold seep into her and settle into her stomach.  They set her to scrubbing, rubbing with her manacled hands until her paws were raw, and beaten when claws damaged the fabrics.  Stew during a break. Then hanging things to dry, her head spinning, barely able to stand and beaten if they got dirty or she bled on them. Dragged back to her cell by Bugbears. She made offers and while licking, sucking and rubbing them, made her Chains while they gloated and talked about how powerful they were as guards. Olrhee didn’t come back to her cell.

The next day it was back to washing.  Gazakral came to them with a human dressed in leather over bright colored shirt. “This one,  a fighter.  Feed her up, eh,  and she’ll put on a good show.”

The human shook his head.  “In that condition? A week or two before it would be more than expensive  fodder.”  They walked away arguing over coin.  Dracna told the wash human to take the hot water barrel stirring job, saying he could go easy and rubbing his shoulder while chanting quietly and making her mark. She got more food that day and again served the Bugbear guards pleasure, while placing her marks.. 

The morning was cleaning the yard, sweeping, scrubbing the stones with a brush.  Another human with Gazakral.  This one in rough fabrics and booted feet.  “ Not my clan, this.  Can’t use her, for much.  Wild barbarian, from the tribes. Uncivilized. Your mistress will understand.” The human nodded.

 The human spoke to her “What is your clan? “ 

“E+ (click)yelfua.”  She thinks he could have just looked at her light brown coat with spots arranged in ring patterns.

“The mistress will want this one.  Have her brought to the house.”