Chapter 15

When Seka had first seen the walls of the city that he had been brought to he had thought he had never seen anything as huge as that in all his life before but the last years the city had shrunk quite a bit. The city was really nothing compared to mother earth herself and Gods had he missed her. The streets in the city were narrow and smelly and full of rubbish and waste, nothing like the paths of the forests. The several story buildings seemed to lean over you as if they were to fall on you and crush you, nothing like the high trees that seemed so safe. No, nothing like this in the city. The gardens at the Medora Villa were big but nothing like these open fields and he could see the sky again and the stars. Somehow the sky never seemed as infinitely big and the stars never shone as brightly when you were trapped inside those city walls. And there were not people everywhere here. No risk bumping in to anyone… He was so happy at first to get out into the countryside again that not even the thought of what would happen to him in a few months when they returned could make him down. And things were so different here at the estate that he felt transported to a whole new world. He had helped his master unpack and then he asked where to go to work but Lord Medora had only laughed. You absolutely want to, then fine by me, he had said, I don’t care what you do. He had not believed it until his master, quite annoyed, had explained it to him in words a four-year-old could have understood. No, he did not have to do any work at all if he didn’t want to. No he did not have to lift a finger. There was plenty of slaves in the house and all his master really demanded of him was that he looked pretty and spread his legs when he was told to. As long as he did that and behaved he was free to spend his time here as he pleased. Within reasonable limits of course. Limits meaning he was not allowed to stray too long from the estate and had to obey any order not contradicting his master’s. Though no one apart from his master and his son ever gave him any so life suddenly turned into something much less tiring. He had suddenly time for him self and to be lazy and he spent the most of it strolling around in the nearby stretch of woods trying his best to stay within shouting range. And he wore pretty clothes all the time now, not that he gave a shit about the silk and the soft embroidered linen and the tassels and the long trailing sleeves that told anyone seeing him that he did no work… but it was nice being clean. Though he really wished his master would not constantly force him to wear this much jewelry. His earlobes were often tender and itchy from the weight of obsidian pendants or heavy silver rings and he didn’t like that delicate clinking noise he was always making moving around generated by bracelets and anklets. All his instincts told him to move about silently in the woods but Medora had effectively made sure everybody would hear him coming. The lord might as well have put a bell around his neck like a goat. Seka thought that maybe Medora liked the sound. Sometimes he was made to wear nothing but a thin belly chain attending his master and the chain had hundreds of small charms attached to it. And they resounded at the slightest move he made and was chinking and jingling and rustling in a singing rhythm as he was being fucked… Seka hated it. Though nobody in the house seemed to mind hearing him coming. He couldn’t believe how well they treated him here. At first it had seemed as if the slaves of the house avoided him but after a while they shyly started to near him and he understood eventually that they were not hostile at all. Of course, he was not brought here as a prisoner this time. He was not brought to the kitchens to work this time. They saw him arrive as the only slave in their master's attendance and look at his hair and look at his nice clothes and look at that filigree necklace and the pearls in his ears. They hadn’t seen an ordinary slave arrive. It still amazed him and he treaded suspiciously among them but relaxed as the weeks passed. Seemed like they really did consider him an equal. Even the country squire and his family who ran and maintained the estate for the rich lord and the other free people here treated him nicely if with a somewhat reserved suspicion. A male sex toy looking like a boy with the hair and jewels of a woman not being something that this vicinity was swarming of. Yes, indeed everything was nice here. His master fucked him more than ever though but that was not so hard on him now that he was used to it and he didn’t have to work so much. And he also enjoyed the fact that Azrel fucked him less. Azrel really seemed to like the country life. He had a good time with a gang of shabby looking boys from the nearby village and apparently they raced horses, fished in the streams and tried to lure the girls of the village into the bushes. Seka really didn’t see much of the young master the first weeks here and he prayed at first that he had grown tired of him all together. Though Azrel always sent for him sooner or later so it seemed he hadn’t. There was a twinge of envy in his heart though as he saw Azrel leave with the loud boys to all their little adventures. He would have loved to ride a horse too and snare a rabbit roasting it over open fire in a glade somewhere… Though he supposed all these clinking trinkets would scare the animals away and it would not do to soil such expensive outfits. It was weird how all this luxury kept him shackled as well as any restraints. He would learn to feel ashamed about his relatively small complaints though as he slowly discovered there were those living on the estate who would have been happy if their only complaint had been earrings that were too heavy and an occasional sore ass hole. It shocked him to meet the worker slaves. He had never seen people living in such a complete and utter hopeless and miserable state. They where chased out of their crowded and draughty sleeping places at the brake of dawn and toiled miserably without no end until it got too dark to see a thing. None of them had any meat to their bones, looking starved and scabby. There was no life to their eyes. Even the youngest children had dead eyes and there was no old at all among them. He understood soon that it was because no one lived long enough to be old here. They dragged their sorry shapes across the outer yard on their way to the fields like a row of living dead and hardly seemed to have strength to even react as the overseers lashed them for dragging their feet. For several weeks he saw them only now and then from afar but one day a few of them had walked right pass him and then the impossible had happened. They had walked too near to be able to pretend they hadn’t seen him and so they had halted and turned towards him. And there had been about ten of them, starved ragged wrecks that maybe once had been women and men but that was now only beasts of burden. And he had wondered if any of them might have been war prisoners too and if any of them might even be a fellow countryman. But he had felt too awkward to ask and then they had all bowed to him… Yes, they had all bowed deeply and respectfully, not one of them meeting his eyes and he couldn’t believe it was happening. They must be mistaken. Couldn’t they see he was just a whore? And he thought while he stood there blushing with shame that these men and women were slowly fading, being bereft of any value as human beings. And they worked themselves to an untimely death to feed and clothe and keep a roof over the heads of free and rich men and women that had not done a day’s worth of decent work in all their life. And their spoiled slaves. Of which he was one. Yes, spoiled he was, well clothed and well fed and no work anymore… And these people bowed to him? He had felt sick. He had wanted to tell them then that they had made a mistake. That he was not free, that he was not better than they were, that he was much worse than them in any way possible. That he did not deserve they showed him such respect. That the embroidered shirt he wore and the pendants weighting down his ears meant nothing. That he was as much a slave as they were. But he could think of nothing to say and finally their cowering at his feet made him so uncomfortable that he just turned and ran off. A few days later when Azrel had taken him to bed at night and had been in a good mood Seka had carefully related this episode assuring him that he had not said or done anything to make them act like that. Azrel had laughed and told him there was no mistake. The worker slaves knew who he was. But those slaves were so lowly ranked that they were required to bow even to someone like him. Seka should just tell him if they didn’t, Azrel had said, and they would be whipped well for it. That had made him feel even more awful and he avoided every place and every situation where he might run into the worker slaves thinking that if someone ever bowed to him again he would throw up. >>> * <<< When Azrel was not off to socialize with the young village thugs. And when he was not spending time with his father or did a bit of a more well mannered socializing with the well brought up sons of the house he was sometimes amused at having Seka at his heels around the estate. Seka felt as much as a lap dog as ever at that but could not refrain from enjoying it at the same time. Especially when he could go with him down to the stables. He had tried to go there before on his own but the men working there seemed annoyed at having that "woman-like thing" around so he had avoided it. They showed nothing when he came with Azrel though. And Seka loved the horses and there was one in particular that he couldn’t help dreaming about. It was a young black mare and she was the most beautiful most perfect horse he had ever seen. >>> * <<< "You like her?" Azrel asked and smiled a little at Seka affectionately stroking the muzzle of the sleek black horse. "She’s very pretty." Seka admitted dreamily. "Maybe I’d let you ride her?" Azrel still smiled and Seka looked up with a glimmer of interest in his eyes. "You… you would?" Azrel stopped smiling. "No of course not, are you crazy?" "Oh…" He should have known, it was just a taunting joke. He didn’t even have the strength to care right now, just looked away, taking his hands off the horse and stepped back. Azrel felt a pang of sympathy at the slave’s obvious disappointment and utter resignation that made him want to explain his words. "Look, there’s no way you could handle a horse like this. She’s just barely broken in and the feistiest little devil, a horse like this demands a real horseman… You want to ride a horse? We’ll get you a calmer one, all right? We’ll get you one of the horses for the ladies and…" Seka looked up in a sudden flare of defiance and fisted his hands clutched tense to his sides. "I’m not a damn woman!" He snarled and before Azrel had any time to react and before he himself had any time to consider the consequences of what he was actually doing, he had taken a leap towards the black horse and jumped on her back in one sleek motion. He took hold of the mane and with a kick at her flanks he got her moving in the fraction of a second. He got the horse in a gallop and headed straight towards the fence at the other side of the corral. Azrel was stunned and numbed by his action and looking at the careening horse going against the fence he just braced himself to witness catastrophe. And inside he saw his father’s wrath, as he had to tell him that both his price horse and that favorite catamite of his were lying in the corral with broken necks. He was pretty sure of that outcome. Thinking that what he saw was Seka holding on for dear life on a wildly bolting horse. His jaw fell open though when the horse sailed over the fence, steered in a perfect high jump over it and then Seka galloped away over the courtyard and out onto the field in front the main house leading down to the lake. Azrel was still too stunned to say or do anything. Was he just stealing that horse and running away in front of his very eyes? Azrel could just not believe a slave would even dare to think such a thing, much less doing it. It seemed Seka wasn't though. He motioned the prancing horse to a smooth halt somewhere at the middle of the field, showing that the perfect high jump was indeed no coincidence. "What is this?" Azrel suddenly heard a grumbling voice behind him. Lord Medora had walked up to him and was looking at the same thing he was. "You let Seka take that horse out? Barebacked?" His father was not amused and Azrel gulped. "Certainly did not. He just took her… just took her and jumped the fence and… I told him he couldn’t ride her. He just went crazy or something…" Lord Medora shook his head. "Yes, I saw him jumping the fence from the window…" It was like neither one of them could find the words to describe such a preposterous deed right now, they fell silent and just watched. Seka obviously mastered the animal perfectly. One could not be mistaken about the joy he felt riding her. He steered her back and forth over the length of the field, motioned her into a slow trot, then into a gallop again and made her jump a fallen tree-trunk a few times… And all the time he sat on her back as if he had been glued on to it or as if he had been a creature with a man’s upper body and the four legs of a horse. It was amazing to watch how well he worked the animal, making her follow his wishes with the pressure of his legs only it seemed since the horse had no bridle on and he held on to her only with one hand clutched in her mane. "Quite a sight…" his father commented, "best damn horseman I’ve seen in a long time… who would have known? I’m impressed, really… and I’m going to kill him when he gets back here." Seka seemed to have been totally caught up in what he was doing for a while and hadn’t even noticed his master joining his son at the corral. He didn’t see them standing there, arms crossed over their chests, stern look on their faces patiently waiting for him to stop playing. Though when it seemed he had played enough and steered the black horse toward the corral again he did see them and it seemed to dawn on him what he had done. He halted the horse a few yards before them and looked about to turn and break away but then sighed resigned and jumped off the horse. And as Azrel on his father’s sign ran to retrieve her Seka just fell at his knees in front his master and waited for the inevitable. It came fast enough. Medora grabbed him by the hair and jerked him to his feet in a way that made him wince with pain and fear. He didn’t voice a single sound of protest or begged or pleaded though as he walked him off. He didn’t dare, whatever the punishment would be he would not up it by doing such a stupid thing as to open his mouth right now. Long before they reached the destination he regretted his spontaneous act about a thousand times over. It had felt wonderful riding that amazing horse, sure, but it wasn’t worth it. Definitely not worth it he realized, as he understood that Lord Medora dragged him towards a shed he knew was used to punish the worker slaves. Slaves were whipped in there. Whipped for real. Heavy, braided leather slicing through human flesh in there, slicing up deep gorges that laid your ribs free, blows that could easily kill the weaker ones and if they didn’t, made you wish they had. He had not witnessed any floggings. Nothing could have made him go down there voluntarily to see such a thing. But he had heard the screams. Screams like the screams he’d heard when the poor prisoners at the war camp had been taken away to be executed. Screams like he himself had uttered seeing that scaffold. So, this was it, he was going to be whipped… He honestly didn’t know if he hoped he would survive it or if he hoped he wouldn’t. In the meantime Azrel had got the horse back in the corral and now came running after them soon catching up with them. He was tugging at his father’s sleeve and tried to make him stop. "Don’t do it papa, you’re going to kill him!" Medora didn’t answer and just shrugged his hands off of his arm. Azrel tried again. "Papa please, he can’t take a flogging, he’s too damn small…" Medora halted then for a moment and turned toward his son without letting go off the painful hold of Seka’s hair. "It’s not your business what I do to him. Go back!" Azrel let go of his father’s sleeve and looked him in the eyes, he saw nothing else then hardness in them and knew he was dead serious. He shrugged then and gave Seka a look that seemed to say: I’m sorry, I tried… >>> * <<< He had really not intended to be defiant but as his master kicked open the door to the shack he couldn’t help panicking and trying to get away. Medora simply encircled his waist, lifted him up and literally threw him inside. He landed hard on his back on the straw covered dirt floor and cowered into a whimpering nothing as his master leaned over him, cold rage in his whole demeanor. Seka had expected to be ordered to undress and he did not plan to hesitate this time in obeying that order but Medora seemed too angry to even yell orders at him. He grabbed at the back of Seka’s shirt and forcefully tore it in half. Seka jerked violently gasping in shock and fear at his master’s pulling at his clothes. And suddenly he was naked and Medora wasn’t there and he just slumped on the floor shaking and breathing heavily. Medora returned soon enough though, snapping pieces of leather thongs in his face and it finally got him begging shamelessly. He pleaded for mercy, begged him crawling on his knees, begged for forgiveness, promised he would never do anything like that ever again. Medora simply grabbed a hold of his neck and shoved a piece of his torn shirt into his mouth silencing him effectively. "Now if you want to beg," he growled, "you had better consider every word worth it because I will give you one lash for every sound you make, beside the ones I plan to give you already. Do you understand?" He pulled the fabric out again and Seka hardly dared snivel for fear of adding on to his punishment. Medora tied his ankles together, hard. His wrists were next. He was too tightly restrained then to walk but it didn’t seem to matter. Medora grabbed the end of the thong binding his wrists and dragged him over the floor to the middle of the shed. A thick wooden pillar held the roof up; several hooks on it showed it had another purpose as well. Medora lifted him up and hung his hands on one of the hooks. It was high enough to leave his feet dangling. Seka began to sob hysterically as his chest and face got smeared with something dark and sticky and he realized it was blood. Someone had been whipped here recently and been whipped so severely that the pole was drenched in the poor victim’s blood. There seemed no doubt it would soon be mixed with his own. "Didn’t I just tell you to shut up?" Medora hissed in his ear. "Now be quiet and look here!" Medora grabbed a hold of his hair and turned his head to the side. "You see that fence pole? Watch it, don’t take your eyes off it, that’s an order, do you understand?" He nodded unable to answer. There was a few fence poles in a heap on the floor, one of them was upraised against the plank wall. He didn’t understand a thing, it was just an ordinary fence pole carved crudely from wood, about as long as himself and about as thick as his wrist. But he stared transfixed at it. There was no order he wouldn’t have obeyed to the letter right now, not one. Medora went to pick a whip down from the wall and placed himself a few yards away from the fence pole. With a loud crack the whip cut the air before its tip hit the pole… and broke it in half. It was like the two pieces of the pole fell to the ground in slow motion. Seka felt his head spinning, there was a ringing in his ears and a cold churn in his stomach. He knew he was either going to faint or lose control of all his bodily functions any minute now. He just slumped bonelessly in his bonds as Medora walked up to him and draped the hard braided leather of the whip over his shoulder. He would lose it, any second; he could feel it. He would either shit himself or piss himself or throw up or all of it. It didn’t matter. If his master used that whip he would die. It had cut the fence pole in two that easily… it would break every bone in his body as if it was splinter wood… Seemed Medora saw it too that he was about to lose it and maybe he just didn’t want a mess? He pulled the whip away and stepped close laying a calming hand on Seka’s shoulder and sooth-talked him into a state somewhat less filled with mortal dread. "Calm down boy, I’m not going to use it… there, there… just wanted you to realize that you had better think about what you’re doing hereafter. Now, relax…" he stroke his back, "I still like you boy, I don’t want you dead, I don’t want to destroy this lovely skin of yours and you know that, don’t you? Don’t let it get to your head Seka, don’t think for a second you can do things like that and get away with it. I won’t use the whip… this time. But the next time you show us disrespect or disobey us I will maybe have tired of fucking you slave and then I might not care how scarred you’d be or even if you live or die. Do you understand what I am saying?" Seka could still not gather enough to answer, only nodded fervently. Medora left him again and when he returned this time he held a wicker cane. Seka closed his eyes and tensed up as he heard it whistling through the air and he didn’t even tried to be brave about it but screamed himself hoarse as his master let the cane lick his ass and thighs in a never ending regular rhythm. He’d never felt such pain in all his life before and his whole body was a flame of pain, a world of pain… not a single thought in his mind that wasn’t pain. And he didn’t even notice when Lord Medora finally stopped caning him because the strokes had been laid on his backside in such a speed that his body still registered the strokes long after they had ceased. He trembled and shook and ground his snotty teary face in the blood staining the pole and wished to die, still… As his master asked him if he was grateful he said he was and he really, really meant it. >>> * <<< He peeked from under his hair and saw that it was Azrel’s shadow that had descended over him. He pretended he had not seen him though. He was lying flat on his belly on a blanket on the bank of the small creek that flowed through the backyard of the estate and maybe Azrel would leave if he thought he was asleep? He really did want nothing else than to be left alone. To rest and heal in peace. No such luck though. Azrel came around the other side and simply sank down cross-legged into the soft grass. Seka was cursing inside of him, willing the tall boy to just go away and leave him the hell alone. He really wished he could just tell him to fuck off. However, that was just not an option. He tried harder in feigning sleep but it seemed not to fool Azrel or more likely, he didn’t care. "You asleep?" Azrel reached a hand out and stroke black tresses out of his face. Seka sighed "No Master Azrel… I’m not…" He admitted detachedly. "You in much pain?" Now that was a subject he did not want to discuss at all. He didn’t answer and looked the other way. "I asked… does it hurt?" Azrel repeated and sounded friendly enough. "Yes!" He snapped then and couldn’t hide the bitterness. Azrel seemed to draw back a bit at the poison in his voice. "You know what Seka? You’re rude… simply rude!" Seka answered that in a meek voice but with the same bitterness still at the edges of it. "Then punish me… It’s your right!" Unexpectedly Azrel laughed. "Having had that tongue of yours in my groin it’s hard to believe it’s so sharp… You had better watch it or some day Papa will cut it out." Seka turned then and almost looked Azrel in the eye. "I would never dare talking back to your father young Master." He knew it would annoy Azrel but he seemed to be in too good a mood today to let such things get to him. He seemed also intent on getting back to the subject of Seka’s injuries. "Seriously. How bad is it? Let me take a look!" Seka’s eyes grew wide. "No… please no. It’s nothing, really…" Azrel smiled mischievously. "Just let me look at it for goodness sake. Be still!" The last sounded enough like an order for Seka to freeze after having started to move away. Azrel reached for him as he was talking and resigned he sank down again and let Azrel gently ease the trousers over his hips. Azrel winced as he did so. "Oh my… looks like this must hurt a whole lot…" It did, it really did. Still he was lucky Seka knew that. Real damn lucky. Azrel had been happy too that his father had not whipped him after all but seeing this he understood why he had nevertheless told him to not use Seka for at least a couple of weeks. He stared at the sight. Seemed a mere spank was not as lenient as it sounded. Seka’s ass was so red it was literally glowing and his former flawless, soft, smooth skin had cracked open in several places. The areas that had not been beaten into sores were so blistered it was hard to distinguish it as human skin. The rest was black, blue, green and yellow in different shades. Everything was swollen and it seemed like it would hurt him just looking at it. It was painfully clear why he had walked around very slowly and gingerly the last two days and why he was lying on his stomach now. "That’s… Oh my… I guess you won’t be riding any horses in quite some time… guess we are not going to ride you in quite some time…" The last was said with a bit of disappointment. "Seriously though… where on earth have you learn horses so well? I mean, you rode her so well, really. I have to give you that." Seka listened, amazed, at the enthusiasm in the boy’s voice. He had never intended to voluntarily share anything of his past free life with anyone here but Azrel’s obvious interest made him forget that decision. "My father was a horse breeder," he said slowly, "I rode a horse before I could walk. He knew anything there was to know of horses and everything I know, he taught me." Azrel looked surprised. "You had a father?" He asked. Seka just looked at him. What kind of stupid comment was that? Some of the contempt he felt at that question probably showed in his voice. "Well I wasn’t hatched out of an egg, you know." Azrel frowned. "You had better start watching your manners slave," he said coldly, "you know that wasn’t what I meant. Papa said you are an orphan." Seka backed at the irritation in Azrel’s voice then. He really didn’t want any more punishments. "I…I’m sorry Master… Yes, I’m an orphan, my parents died… a long time ago…" Azrel was silent for a while. Seka had had parents? Of course he knew he had had a mother and a father. He was not, as he had put it, "hatched out of an egg", but it was quite another thing to learn he had had a family… parents. Slaves didn’t have parents or families; they were bred! Seka had had a family though, a real family. "They died at the same time?" Azrel asked carefully, expecting the slave to close in on himself at this question and not planning on pressing the subject if he did. But surprisingly enough he answered. "Yes… as did my two younger brothers and my older sister…" He choked out on his words and turned his face away. Azrel said nothing but leaned over him and very carefully pulled the trousers back on. For some reason it didn’t feel appropriate to speak of things like this while making him bare his ass to him. Azrel felt strange on the whole. He felt sorry for him, really felt for him. And he felt strangely happy that Seka had actually confided in him. Both feelings surprised him since they shouldn’t occur at all when dealing with slaves. But things were different with Seka he thought. Not because of the fact that he used to have sex with him. Sex is an intimacy of the body but doesn’t necessarily have to be an intimacy of the mind. No, he thought it was maybe because of that fact that Seka in a moment of defiance had made very clear to him. That he actually had been just as free as Azrel was for more years than he had lived. In his innermost Azrel knew that and knew too that it was wrong enslaving him in the first place. What if an army from Seka’s land had invaded their land and brought him into slavery? How would that have made him feel? It wasn’t fair. He knew that. But even though he rarely admitted those thoughts even to him self it made him look differently at Seka. Maybe he didn’t treat him that much differently but he felt differently about him. He chose his words and tone of voice carefully then, wanting to assure him he really was not out to mock him in any way or that he would in any way betray the confidence shown. "I’m… sorry, really… What happened?" Seka was silent for a long time but then he started talking with his face still hidden in his arms. His voice was calm now and somewhat detached but it was pretty obvious the memories still hurt. "It was a fire… a big fire… it broke out at night… none of them stood a chance… they all died in their sleep… and the house burned down and the stables and all the horses… a hundred and sixty nine horses… all perished…" Azrel was stunned for several reasons. That was really an awful thing to have happen. And Seka’s father had been a horse breeder with a stock of 169 horses? Seka’s family had maybe not been wealthy. His father had said it had been a small and insignificant village, but they had sure not been poor either. "How come you survived?" Silence again, Azrel thought he wouldn’t answer that one but finally he did. "I wasn’t there… I went visit a friend and it got late… so I slept over… and while I was sleeping in perfect safety in my friend’s bed… my whole life literally turned to ashes at the other side of the village…" A chill went up Azrel’s back. For a second he thought he knew what that must have felt like. For a second he knew exactly what he would have felt if his home had burnt down and his wonderful mother and his pretty sister and his adorable little brother and his strong and admired father all had perished with it. "How old were you?" Azrel asked just to have something to say. Another question seemed best; there was no way to comment on such a tragedy anyway. "I was eight…" There was silence again for a painfully long time. Azrel couldn’t stand it, had to break it. "I’m sorry…" he repeated. Seka’s answer came fast this time, fast and cold. "I’m not… not anymore. In a way they were lucky… They didn’t have to see the war. The fire was an accident, no one to blame. You grieved but there were no one to hate… Would have been worse seeing them slaughtered in the war. Better my mother and sister died unknowingly in their sleep than being raped by soldiers who ended the act by putting their swords in and ripping them open…" He had turned now and noticed Azrel’s stunned look with a sort of glee. "I saw things like that happen with my own two eyes," he said grimly, "I am glad they are dead so it didn’t happen to them." "And I am glad that my father died so that he didn’t have to be beheaded like most of the survivors were or that he had to perish in the salt-mines. And I can’t begin to express how happy I am that my kid brothers died so that they weren’t "saved" by men with urges like your father… I thank the gods now for that accident so that if my parents had survived the war they would not have to see what became of me. They were proud of me you know… I was the one who learned about the business best. I was made for it, father said. I would have been the one to take it over, the whole farm, the horses, the family name… Well, the accident turned me into a homeless beggar but that was nobody’s fault, I still had honor… but now… I’ve become a slave and a whore and I hope there isn’t an afterlife so that my father can’t look down and see me now…" Again stunned silence on Azrel’s part. After what seemed an eternity he hawked and hemmed and spoke again though. "Is it really that bad? To be here… to be owned… by us?" Seka sighed. "No." He admitted softly. He guessed he could have faired much worse in that war. He could have died, should have. He could have ended up in the mines. He could have ended up with a man who was much worse than Lord Medora was. He wasn’t mean to him really. And especially being out here at the country estate life was not so bad. No Lady Erennis here to insist he working his fingers to the bones. Lord Medora didn’t care if he didn’t do anything useful…. Well, outside of his bed anyway. As long as he didn’t do stupid things as stealing horses right under their noses and thus earning himself punishments like this he was quite well off these days… as far as outer things go. His innermost was quite another thing. How could he ever explain to this boy about the shame and the loss of pride? Azrel would of course have felt the same if it had happened to him but it appeared as if he could still not see why a slave should bother with such feelings. "So…" Azrel said in a tone of voice clearly indicating that he was about to change the subject completely. "Have you any more talents you’ve been keeping from us?" Seka probably looked as puzzled as he felt. "Talents Master?" Azrel grinned. "Yes, any other skills than excellent horsemanship?" Seka peered suspiciously at him. Was he taunting him? No, maybe not. "Well…" he began "I’m pretty good with the bow…" Azrel raised an eyebrow at him. "You can use a bow? Where have you… Never mind. I guess it isn’t stranger than with the horses. What the hell, tell me anyway." Seka raised himself on the elbows. This was beginning to resemblance an ordinary talk between two youths about subjects that would in general interest young men. He couldn’t help feeling drawn into it. "A few of the farmers took me in…" he started to explain, "I lived a year here and a year there, worked as a field-hand or took care of their horses or whatever odd jobs they had. They gave me food and shelter, I never saw any money… the cheap bastards… Well, come spring and summer there’s really no need for any extra hands on a farm and by then I was usually fed up with their company. I would go out into the woods and stay as long as I could. Until I knew they wouldn’t let me in for the winter if I didn’t come back to help with harvest and slaughter and all such late summer and fall work. But up till then I roamed the forests as I pleased…" He silenced a longing expression in his whole demeanor. "I had to eat right? When I was out there. So I learned to hunt. I can track any animal… I can shoot a bird in its flight…" He silenced again looking at Azrel as if challenging him to believe this. Azrel just grinned but it was like he smiled so widely to hide how very stunned he was made to feel yet again and that he actually was impressed. "Is that so?" He said as if Seka had been a small child bragging about something that he couldn’t possibly know anything about. But he didn’t really doubt his words. Seka had obviously not lied about the horses why would he lie about this? And why would it be so strange? That a man born a slave should master such things would be really strange yes, but Seka was not so that he knew things slaves normally didn’t shouldn’t be such a surprise to him. Maybe it was more like it baffled him that Seka knew such things being the way he was regardless of him being a slave or not. He was so small and so… woman-like. Azrel had to blink at the inner sight of that delicate little man putting an arrow in a deer and then gutting and skinning it. It struck him that he really didn’t see Seka as much as a slave as he in fact saw him as a sort of woman. No matter how manly he might behave his looks spoke against it. "All right," he finally said, "just wanted to know. And just so that you know, weapons like that are strictly off limit for such as you. Don’t even think it. Taking a horse for a ride is one thing but…" Azrel actually shuddered, "that would mean your death you hear?" Seka nodded seriously in response. He understood as much.

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