Split up your forces

Having made your decision, you raise your right hand into the air and almost instantly draw the group of men and women who are following you to a halt, with you taking three more long strides before turning around to face them.

“Who here has any experience in dealing with horses?” You ask, just as it dawns on you that there’s almost thirty men following you, meaning that your numbers have more than doubled since you left the tower.

You also note that Zanya is standing right behind Maluba’s left shoulder, and the curvaceous beauty offers you a naughty grin as her delicate fingers grasp hold of the thin tongue of cloth which stretches up over her right breast onto her shoulder and tugs it aside far enough for you to see the nipple which crowns the magnificent orb.

Spotting how you’re looking past her shoulder, Maluba turns her head to look at Zanya and then smiles as she faces you again.

About ten hands have shot up in response to your question, and you pick out about six of those, hoping that they won’t figure out why you won’t select all of the men who raised their hands.

“Sarge, take four more men and help these six pick out a couple of wagons from that stable over there,” you order your second-in-command, who continues to act as though its perfectly natural that you’re the one giving him orders, rather than the other way around, “then head for down this street towards the Old Bridge, it should be straight ahead.”

“Right,” Sarge nods, saying nothing of the fact that you’re merely guessing about the way to the river, silently joining you in hoping that you’ll all end up in roughly the same place as long as you follow the same road.

“The rest of us will push on and find some nice loot that you can pick up once you get there,” you increase the volume of your voice so that your men can overhear you.

“But you’ll take the whores along?” Sarge asks with a grin, and you suddenly realize that the leather-clad teen is looking at him while the two of you talk.

“You can take your girl,” you inform him, “but not more than that. I want you rejoining us soon rather than later.”

Conscious of the fact that you’re becoming increasingly **** the longer you stay still in the middle of the street, Sarge hurries to pick out four men and then he, his teenage girl and the ten men move towards the stable, with the lissom beauty looking quite out of place as she moves alongside all those grim-looking soldiers.

You, the women and the sixteen or seventeen men who remain are soon on the move again, with the majority of the pleasure slaves moving in the middle of the street, surrounded on all sides by the soldiers, though its more for their protection rather than to stop them from attempting to flee, as they all seem intelligent enough to know that their fate will be better if they stay with you and your men than if they were to flee and end up in the hands of someone else, which is really the only thing that could occur while the city is falling to the invading horde that you’re part of.

It isn’t long until the houses which you’re passing becomes bigger and more elaborately ornamented, with gardens and walls separating them from the streets while the houses closer to the walls were built in a more utilitarian style and with their front-doors pretty much right next to the street, and the way in which the pavement is no longer littered with trash also suggests to you that you’re now coming closer to the really rich part of Athenapolis. And that means two things: firstly, that you should start looking for a particularly promising mansion to storm into, and secondly, that the chance of mercenaries lying in wait to ambush you and your small **** is going up with each step forwards that you take.