Matters of the heart

"Ye gods!" you cry shrilly. "How is he alive? IS he still alive?!"

There in your dear friend's hand is exactly what she'd claimed and nothing less - a crimson lump, covered in a sheen of blood, that rhythmically pulsated in her gentle grip. Cadh visibly reacted when Marzena closed her fingers around it to show it to you, making a **** sound and getting weak in the knees.

"Feh... silly lasses... what're ye tittering about, over there?" Ross asks, still blissfully unaware of his captain's predicament. And as for he who is caught in the horns of that predicament, he doesn't dare speak a word.

Marzena waggles her eyebrows mischievously. Despite yourself, you can't help but be more than a little horrified and frightened of your friend. "I am rather proud of myself having pulled it off, Zoe! Or pulled it out, rather!" She snickers at her own joke. "Cadh here promised ME he could 'pull it out' too and didn't even try when the, uh, time came. Worse luck for him that I, for one, keep my promises!"

"Aaaach!" Ross makes a bemused grunt and then shakes his head, laughing softly. "Ye Captain's a man's man, and that's the truth. Good on 'm for not letting a lass push him around like I did. But what was all that 'alive' talk about?" It seems like Ross had been intentionally tuning out you and Marzena's conversation for a while there but still picked up enough to make him a bit suspicious, especially since he'd already had a taste of what Marzena could do. You surmise that it is only his boorish lack of imagination that prevents him from reading between the lines of what the two of you were saying and being appropriately horrified.

All this time, Marzena has been walking closer. Swiftly, she stows the still-beating heart back under her hat and Cadh's expression shifts ever-so-slightly towards a state of relief. "Oh, you know - just us wenches comparing our performance, who got the wildest with her man and all that! Maybe I'll show you the same... exotic technique that brought your lead man to his second 'joy' in a single session."

You look down. Ross, waking from his afterglow-basking, looks a bit confused still. "God but ye folk have a daft way of talking."

Marzena just dismisses him with a little wave of her hand though. "Ahhh, all the more reason to let my lovely new 'master' Cadh explain, right? Aside from the all-important task of discussing who was the more satisfying lover, me or Zoe, I think Caddy here had some, y'know, strategy things to discuss with you."

"Ohhh... aye, so it is." Ross nodded, finally finishing re-dressing himself (which really shouldn't have taken so long, considering how very little these men wore to begin with). "'Ave a moment?" he asked as he came up to Cadh - who, for his part, looks rather **** to speak with his subordinate and shoots Marzena a nervous look before forcing himself to smile.

Conferring with your foremost witch on your way back to the main troop column (goodness knows she'd earned such prominence, now!), you speak with quieter, more circumspect tones than before. "Why didn't you ever tell me you could do that? More to the point, did *I* ever tell *you* that you could do that?" you say, giving Marzena a poke in the chest through the fabric of her short blue dress (which she'd avoided getting dirty and rumpled in such environs by making love to her partner in a standing position only).

"Sorry, did you say something?" Marzena makes a show out of cupping one of her ears, and runs a tongue over those thin lips the gods had made for smirking. "All I could hear was 'Oh Gods Marzena, you're so great, thank you so much for saving us from those underdressed barbarians before they **** us to marry them or cook us or both, I'm soooo jealous that you have a talent for magic and I don't'... was that what you'd said?"

"You are incorrigible." you respond, trying and failing to keep yourself from smiling. "Ok, yes, well done. So is he... under your spell now? You didn't answer my earlier questions, you know. Is he still alive? How does it work?"

Your dark-haired, dark-hearted friend looks at you and flutters her shadowed eyelids at you as if you were asking a stupid question. "It's pretty intuitive, Zoe, I didn't think it needed explaining. I've got his heart, he needs his heart to live, ergo he needs to do what I say." She pauses, then cocks her head to the side and gives you a conciliatory pout. "Okay, okay, maaaybe there are a couple details I should inform you of... like that the spell will kill him eventually unless I reverse it, or that demons can use his body as a vessel freely now. I wouldn't worry about that too much though, they're not as common out in the world as all the paranoid peasants tend to think. Now let me think if there are any actual downsides... ah! Well, I did have to expend all of my energy, so I won't be casting anything else for a while. Not that I'll need to though, right? Checkmate!"

"But you can't just have him... surrender to us!" you say, wagging your finger back at her. "The rest of the swordsmen would mutiny! They were planning on getting paid a rich reward by Aldergrove, right? We need to bring them right before the walls of Undrek before we make our move, so we can have the support we need!"

"Zoe," Marzena sputters and rolls her eyes, still giving you that infuriatingly condescending look, "look at the position the two of us have gotten into on the very first morning, being the prisoners of these guys! What about Hannah and all the other girls? The men are going to be all over them like ants on a crumb cake if they set up camp for a second night with us all in their possession. We've got their leader, why can't I just have him release us all from our binds and distract the men while you, me, and the other witches sneak off and make back for Undrek?"

"Because then we'd be right back where we started!" you shoot back, giving her yet another poke (brushing against one of her small breasts this time - rather by accident). "And Mace will have even more mercenaries showing up, soon enough! Why can't those girls just... bear things out for a day or two while the column marches up to Undrek, thinking we're still their captives and ready to deliver the city's treasury to them? You and I have certainly done our share, haven't we?"

"Booo!" Marzena gives you a surprisingly hard sock in the arm, making you cry out with shock (she doesn't seem to notice and just goes on talking. "What are you thinking? You can't go back on your word like that, Zoe! You made a deal with those girls that if they agreed to fight for you with their magic - and they did! - then you wouldn't pimp them out anymore."

You are a bit perplexed to see her taking a stand on this - defensively, you cross your hands over your chest, tugging your filthy, rumpled dress a bit further back into place. "You mean... you're..." you begin.

Before you can get very far Marzena cuts you off, shrugging as she speaks. "Listen, it's fine with ME, Zoe, you know that. I'm happy to fuck a different fellow every week, it comes natural to me. Hee, ah, 'comes'... ahem, anyway. But those ones who came with us, well, most of them really AREN'T. That's why they volunteered to come out here on the fields of battle and risk getting chopped up or burnt up or worse. But if having to bend over for 'guests' to have their way with them in the Crooked Tower was already far from ideal for them, having that great mob of unwashed ramblers roughing them up and passing them around all night would be a hundred times worse. You can't do that to them, Zoe, I won't stand for it. Believe me - I'm as surprised as you to hear myself taking a stand AGAINST wanton fucking - but here we are, aye?"

"You must think of the whole of Undrek!" you plead with her, still scandalized to have her going against your will like this. "The freedom of my people! The throne my mother entrusted me with! The refuge of the Crooked Tower, too! It'll all be brought down if Count Mace and his allies have their way, and we need these... these.... whatever you called them on our side, if we hope to have a chance at victory!"

There's a tense, uncomfortable silence before Marzena gets a really serious look on her face - which, knowing her, means she's about to throw out a crude joke or three to cut down on the tension.

"It seems to me," Marzena folds her arms up against her chest, draws herself to her full height, and looks suddenly very satisfied with herself, "that the honorable thing to do, Countess Zoe, would be to fuck all one hundred-odd mercenaries yourself, to fulfill your oaths to vassals and subjects alike?"

"So," you say, with a small, dark smile of your own, "you said you have no magic left for the next few days, yes? So there would be nothing allowing you to defend yourself if I were to do THIS??!" You punctuate your words with a sudden lunge and a forceful pinch of her left cheek.

"OWCH!" She squeals, genuinely surprised, giving a handful of your long (now, rather frizzled) blonde hair a hard yank. "Leggo! Leggo or I'm taking this and selling it to the nearest wig merchant!"

"I've seen some of the things YOU get up to!" you bark at her, doubling down in your not-entirely-playful **** and trying to hook your leg around hers to trip her. "YOU ought to be the one getting herself buried under a sweaty pile of foreigners, it wouldn't be the first time!" But once again, Marzena shows that she's concealing a surprising degree of strength in that tall, curvy frame of hers, and she turns it around on you and sends you toppling to the ground. Losing your grip on your cheek and groping for anything you can get, your hand snags the hemline of her dress, and there's a loud rip, right where it had been hastily stitched up after last night...

Wincing and patting your poor head where that damned witch just yanked a clump of your hair your, you look up to her, gasp, and give a bitter laugh. Marzena looks confused for half a moment, then glances down and sees the whole front of her dress has been torn open and crosses her arms over her chest.

"Look at those little mosquito bites!" you say with an arrogant sneer. "Tissue padding out your chest, Marzena? For shame! Now I know why you always want to fuck your guests without getting undressed first. Nothing to do with your manacles, is it?" You had gotten a quick glance at Marzena semi-topless for the first time last night - and you'd assumed she had been trying to hide her chest with her hands on account of genuinely wanting to keep Ross off of her. Now, you realize, she might've been less concerned with hiding her perky-yet-undeniably-modest breasts from YOU, not from the man trying to suck on them.

"Look who's talking!" Marzena says, actually blushing for the first time in you're not sure how long. "I've overheard many a lewd discussion in the Tower, and I'll tell you, Zoe, not a one of them has been impressed with the 'tracts of land' that the County of Undrek can claim!"

Rising to a sitting position, you put your hands on your hips and raise your nose into the air. "I," you begin proudly, projecting your voice as mother always taught you, "am a fine and delicate porcelain doll that any eligible bachelor of the land would be glad to have decorating his mantelpiece, IF I were available as a commodity like every other noblewoman in Itheria! That is a very different thing from having the figure of a teenage boy with round hips and a cunt!" You were just being uncharitable now - the truth was, even with the truth of her modest endowment laid bare, Marzena was one of the most beautiful women in the Tower. Indeed, you'd never once had the occasion to needle her over any aspect of her appearance, which is why you take such relish in being able to do so now.

"Oh," Marzena said with a little cackle, her sideways glance telling you that she was going to change the subject again, "The Crooked Tower HAS a teenage boy with a cunt and 'tis a matter of public record that I'm a lot more popular than she is. Y'know Juliana? Used to be 'Jules' before I worked a bit of my magic on him so's he could stay in the Crooked Tower instead of getting burnt at the stake and all. Poor lad never quite expected that his little gambit of dressing up as a girl to avoid condemnation to the flames would get carried quite THAT far!"

Your eyebrows shoot up involuntarily. "Good gods! Is that true? I'm... I'm surprised... she? he? ...They weren't among the ones to try and join your little war squad to get out of bed-warming duty. ...Wait a damned moment. Just HOW MANY of these bizarre spells have you been keeping a secret from me, Marzena? And yet you STILL don't have a spell that can give you a decent pair-"

"E-excuse me..." a soft, demure voice comes from over your shoulder, causing you and Marzena to turn and look. There is Hannah again, wringing her hands as usual. She's got about the softest, cutest features you've ever seen on a grown woman, and there's an innocent sparkle in her big blue eyes that commands attention better than a sharp word from the likes of you or Marzena ever could (and the big firm mounds just barely hidden by the plunging neckline of her dress - the envy of many a witch and freewoman alike, you and Marzena included, and more than a handful for anyone smaller than an ogre - drew the eye even more insistently). She has that tragic kind of beauty where, even after three days of marching, rough handling and captivity, the rumpled clothes and smudges only serve to make her cuter. If it hadn't been for you and Marzena spreading rumors about witchcraft and pelvic curses, she'd probably be pinned under some barbarian's sweaty bulk at this very moment with another baker's dozen waiting their turn with cocks in hand.

"I don't mean to interrupt, My Countess... or you, High Sorceress. But I slipped away from the guard because... I had to come find you so that I could apologize..." a tear is running down her cheek. "This..." she sniffles, "this is all my fault, if only I had told Irene the truth... I didn't really like having all those men coming to the tower putting their hands on me but it was still better than life in my father's tavern. I never knew how fortunate I was until now... I had never seen someone violently killed with a weapon before yesterday and I hope never to again!"

Her eyes are welling up with tears, and your snide comments die in your throat. You really do want to just give her a hug and a pat on the cheek, now. Voice quavering, Hannah continues. "So... so since this is all my fault, I was going to say that if anyone ought to be subjected to being cruelly ravished by all those brutes to spare the others, rightfully it ought to be me..."

Before any of you can say anything further, you hear the sounds of a struggle and the beginnings of a shout... a shout that a firm hand immediately muffles. A distinctively male and quite familiar voice, in fact. Turning to look, you and the other two girls see Ross with his arms twisted behind him and an improvised gag quickly being tugged into his mouth by Cadh. Ross regards the three of you with burning anger.

Cadh speaks almost immediately, ignoring you and addressing Marzena. "Mistress - my laddie buck here started asking some very pointed questions, I think he were catching on to what ye were about. He took out his dirk and said he aimed to slay you."

Marzena applauds happily. "Good dog!" Hannah just gapes in confusion. You lean over and whisper in her ear, making Hannah gasp and cringe. "His heart?!" she asks, astonished. "But how is he still alive?"

Cadh regards all of you with the tense glower of a cornered wild animal, giving Hannah an especially dark look. "Damn foolish lass! Why'd you open your fucking mouth?! Cor! Shite! Well, I suppose I'll be havin' to kill him now. Sorry lad." He wraps one of his meaty biceps around Ross's neck and starts to tighten his grip. Ross starts kicking and fighting wildly. You see that wild, wide-eyed, unfocused look in his eyes that you've only ever seen once before - the look of a condemned prisoner who knows he's about to die.

A bit horrified in spite of yourself, you turn to look at Marzena, but she just shrugs and smirks, wordlessly putting it back on you. Hannah, however, is not so quiet. "No!" She falls to her knees and tugs at the hem of your dirty, formerly-white dress. "Countess, please!! No more ****, I beg you! My soul is already condemned to enough eternal torment!"

Perhaps... just perhaps, you shouldn't have assumed Ross was QUITE stupid enough not to add one and one together after hearing you and Marzena talk. And without Ross to back up his authority, the obviously-under-duress Captain Cadh will be that much less convincing to his rowdy mercenaries if he should try to blithely declare they were switching sides and all the captives were to be released. But Marzena was right - after watching Cadh shagging Marzena from behind out in front of everyone there was no way the warriors would keep their hands to themselves a second night in a row. Would submitting Marzena, or Hannah... or yourself... to the kinds of indignities that they had suggested (Marzena in jest, but Hannah quite seriously) really be something you could bring yourself to order? ...at the end of the day, after all, none of those witches you'd ordered out alongside yourself were pure maidens, what was one more night of indignity at your command? But then again, you'd never seen Marzena really adamant about something before, and winced at the thought of alienating your one halfway trustworthy friend in the world...