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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Warrior's Captive: I, Briseis

  Copyright ã 2004 Jackie Rose

  ISBN: 1-55410-145-X

  Cover art and design by Martine Jardin

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by eXtasy Books, a division of Zumaya Publications, 2004

  Look for us online at:

  www.zumayapublications.com

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  Dedication :

  To my husband David, for his boundless patience and knowledge in answering a barrage of questions like, “When was leather invented?” and “Did women go shopping during the Bronze Age?”

  Part I: Achilles, My Lord

  Chapter One

  Golden-haired invaders had stormed in from the sea. In every town they entered, they stole cattle, sheep, grain, weapons and the other things they needed, to fight this war that had lasted ten years and still showed no sign of ending. Those provisions included women like me, for the warriors’ recreation.

  Now I stood in one of the log houses they had built beside their ships, a stolen girl dressed in looted finery, waiting for one of their leaders to claim me. Flickering in the log walls, the torches showed me that the room contained a wooden bed with thick purple blanket above an even more luxuriant leopard rug. Both lay beneath an elaborately carved suit of bronze armor suspended from the wall. The sight left no doubt as to my purpose there: I was to share the bed with the armor’s owner.

  Well, what of it? I asked myself defiantly. I surely had nothing to be ashamed of, as I firmly assured myself. Getting some of their food was what mattered now, no matter where it came from. Even if the invaders freed me, I saw no hope of finding it for myself.

  Food was real: bread, cheese, fruit, wine. The pirates had taken it all away from us, piled high in their wooden carts and chariots, so they were the only ones who could give some back to me. Captivity was just a word, like marriage, and it could hardly be any more degrading.

  Whatever my captor did to me, it could not be any worse than serving my lawful husband, who had paid my father four oxen for me. And now I had been marked for the most famous pirate prince. My parents could not have imagined such a dubious honor for me, I reflected bitterly, or they would have made the old man pay a higher bride price. My mother would certainly not have been so eager to convince me that four oxen was far better than they had hoped.

  The bonds that held my wrists before me were real enough, too. But they were supple willow, which did not cut or burn. Even better, my hands were still free enough to scratch my nose when it itched and even to wipe my tears away, when, despite my best intentions, a few appeared in my eyes.

  I had closed my eyes often enough to avoid seeing my husband’s old flesh shaking above me. Then I had pressed my eyes even tighter shut until he finished. I had shut my ears as well, so that I would not hear his complaining about my failure to give him a child in these eight years. Now I could keep both eyes and ears closed again, as the price of my survival.

  I did not think of praying to my goddess. She had not saved me from that marriage, despite my frantic pleas, and I did not think she would do any better now.

  Instead, I would rely on my own rule: Don’t look, don’t think, don’t care about it. Hadn’t that been the law of my life ever since my parents sold me? I had gotten plenty of practice in keeping my eyes and ears shut tight. My heart was shut just as carefully, during those eight years that were as gray as my husband’s face, as gray as his few strands of hair, as gray as death.

  So I waited for the battle to end for the night, as it always did, when my new lord and master would come for me. At this point, I only hoped he would do so quickly and get it over with. I was so tired of standing here waiting, in a few more moments I would have fallen down on the bed, pulled the blanket over me and let him do whatever he wanted to while I was fast asleep. No doubt I would have done so already if the evening chill had not kept me awake. They had captured me in the heat of the day and their maids had dressed me accordingly in a blue cotton gown, so sheer it was almost transparent.

  Given the choice, I would rather have gone with the young soldier who had saved me from my burning house that morning. Instead, he had sent me to his prince, who, I was sure, would never be a great enough hero to risk his own life in the flames.

  My eyes opened wide as the log door swung open, letting in the wind, which carried a young god with it. He swept into the dimly torchlit room, so gloriously, radiantly, arrogantly alive that he seemed to wear the sun. It had warmed his fair skin to a deep bronze, beneath the lion’s mane of copper-gold hair that fell to his shoulders and framed a square jaw that tapered to a perfectly rounded chin.

  He was faintly scented with licorice from the fennel water he soaked in after one of his pirate raids. It made me ashamed of the heavy perfumed oil that the women had poured over my shoulders, so I would please him.

  The bards had praised him too highly, I had thought before, when they visited our town singing about the men whom the war was making famous. Now I felt that they had not said enough. They had called him magnificent, but he was beyond even that. The very sight of him summoned me to be as great as he was.

  For one thing, there was his hair. Listening to the bards, I had pictured as brown streaked with gold. I was stunned to see, instead, that startling red-gold mane.

  And concerned as they were with battles, the bards had not even mentioned his faint, fleeting smile. Once he smiled at me that way, nothing existed except for the wonderful fact that he was there, and I, by some great good fortune, was there with him. His bright blue eyes caught and held mine, telling me that I was the only thing in his world at that moment, as he was the only thing in mine. The last dreary eight years of my life vanished like a shadow in their light. The light was as real as food and drink, and now I needed it just as desperately.

  I held out my hands, never doubting that he would cut the bonds that held them. He did so, smiling, with one swift stroke of his dagger. As we both knew, I could not have been bound to him any more surely if I had been covered with chains.

  Some of you, I am sure, believe that I should have resisted him, if only for a few days or hours at least, out of modesty. If you had ever seen him, you would know how foolish that idea was. In the first place, my head barely reached his chest and my arms looked like willow twigs beside his, which more resembled twin oak trees. In the second place, we were surrounded by his loyal soldiers who would have enforced his right to have me and who, as I have said before, controlled every scrap of food. But even beyond these very practical reasons, the truth was that no woman could have looked at him even once and felt anything but gratitude that he had chosen her.

  And I had even more reason than most to be grateful. With incredulous delight, I realized that I had seen this face and form before. He was my fierce young rescuer from this morning, the one who had saved me from my burning house at the risk of his own life. He had shown
such great courage in doing it, he had won even my neighbors’ applause. A fearsome plumed helmet had hidden half of his face then, but he was even more impressive, more princely, now. Instead of his heavy armor he wore a shirt made of white Egyptian cotton, the same costly material as my own new sky-blue gown, which was like wearing a sheer spun cloud. In this simple garment, bound with a plain leather belt, he was every inch a prince, and he showed a prince’s courtesy to me.

  “Did they tell you why you were brought to me?” he asked.

  “The woman named Iphis said that you were taking me into your care and wished to greet me personally. I knew what your greeting would be.”

  He laughed at that, and I could not help smiling in reply.

  “Are you afraid?” he asked.

  “Only that I will not please you, my lord.”

  He smiled again, more broadly this time. “It is for me to please you,” he retorted.

  Looking down modestly, I saw his spear growing great and hard beneath his tunic. Soon it was as large as an infant’s arm with a clenched fist at the end. At last I was frightened then, wondering how my little sheath could contain it.

  My fear grew as he fell across me, lifting my skirt to my waist while he pushed me gently backward onto the bed. His gentleness did little to reassure me. Surely he must split me open with that mighty weapon.

  “You are still afraid of me,” he said, with a teasing smile.

  “Not of you, my lord,” I assured him. “But only of your spear, because I am too small to hold it.”

  “You will not be,” he assured me, in a tone that told me he had often had cause to overcome this fear before. “Did you know that I studied to be a physician? I know the secret place on a woman’s body that she does not know herself.”

  His great hand spread the lips beneath my waist, so gently that I felt only a trembling of desire. It made me eager to receive his mighty weapon, even if in the very next moment it tore me apart.

  “Now, now, please!” I begged him.

  “No, not yet,” he ordered. “I have more to do before you will be fully ready for me.”

  As I wondered what he could possibly mean, he showed me. Between my lower lips, he gently caressed a tiny spot I had not even known to be there. Now I was writhing, moaning, begging wildly, “Now, please, now!”

  My sheath was eager to greet him as he pressed inside. Sweet, warm lightning struck me, as though he had been the young war god he seemed, hurling his thunderbolts deep into me. He filled me up with that great spear as well as he had fought my Trojan countrymen: savage power combined with easy grace. His massive body would have crushed me, if he had not supported his weight on his arms.

  “Don’t stop, don’t stop!” I commanded him, harshly enough to match every harsh thrust. “Don’t stop!” I commanded, with my hands barely reaching around his shoulders. They felt as big as tree trunks under my fingers.

  His upper arms closed around my shoulders as his hands caressed my hair. His arms and hands were sunburned to the line where his breastplate had protected them, and I felt their heat against me. Now I was glad for the cool evening, which kept his heat from consuming me.

  Then suddenly, for a moment, I fell silently cold, as though a shadow had passed over the sun. This man was a stranger, an enemy. What was I doing in his bed, embracing him with such rapture?

  Feeling me freeze in his arms, he thrust even harder.

  “Do you like it, girl?” he demanded, almost with a sneer, joining each word to a savage spear thrust. “Do you like it, like it, like it?”

  “Oh, yes, yes, yes,” I gasped.

  “And are you afraid now?”

  The only answer I could make was, “Don’t stop, don’t stop!”

  And I, who had always shut my eyes tight to avoid seeing my husband finish as he made those sounds, opened my eyes wide. The terrible pirate prince looked as innocent as a child as he finished. Even more incredibly, I was finishing with him, trembling violently in his arms while he convulsed in mine. Then I was wiping away my tears of happiness.

  As he collapsed into my arms, I could barely manage to stammer, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” he replied, with a startled laugh. Then he rolled off me to his side, propping up his cheek with his hand as he fixed me again with his bright blue gaze. He squinted down to study me in the flickering light cast by the torches on the timber walls.

  “So, girl, what is your name?”

  “I am Briseis, my lord Achilles,” I answered.

  “Well, Briseis,” he said, saying it as 'Brri-SAY-iss', and thus making it sound as magical as Aphrodite’s own name. “It seems we will get along very well.” He traced my chin with his finger as he spoke.

  “I hope so, my lord,” I answered demurely, fighting hard against my desire to seize his fingers and hold them down forever. Instead, my finger, in turn, traced his face, from the square jaw down to the perfectly rounded chin.

  “I like the way you call me your lord,” he told me, staring down at me again. “Your voice is almost a whisper, but it tells me that nothing in the world could make you do it unless you wanted to. It tells me that I have chosen well.”

  “I am glad, my lord,” I said, smiling helplessly back up at him.

  “Let me tell you, I paid well for my choice,” he assured me. “I told Agamemnon that the only prize I wanted was the girl I had saved from the flames. He could keep everything else in all of Lyrnessos. Does that make you proud?”

  He had chosen me for his recreation, and I could imagine no greater honor. I had no need to hesitate this time before I answered him. “Helen herself would be proud to be your slave girl, my lord.”

  To my dismay, I saw that I had not pleased him. Instead, he pulled back from me as though I had slapped his face.

  “That word ‘slave’ is an ugly word, and I don’t like to hear it,” he said. “You were a captive, never a slave. My spear bought you, in battle and bed, not gold coins in the market. The only chains you will ever wear will be fine gold, set with jewels, as my gift to you. I’ve taken so many jeweled golden chains from so many conquered cities, you’ll see that you are better off as my captive than you ever were free.”

  “I know that already, my lord,” I assured him quickly. “I never meant to offend you.”

  “You merely chose the wrong word,” he answered, the anger fading from his voice as he stroked my hair to show I was forgiven. “I am sure you have heard it often enough, although never from me. But you are even more than a captive, you are my geras: my prize, my measure of honor, the living reflection of my glory.”

  It was too great a tribute for me, and I knew, with a sinking heart, I would have to tell him why it was not deserved.

  “I am no fit reflection of your glory,” I told him. “My parents sold me for four oxen, and that was the best they could do, because my mouth is too little, my nose turns up too far, my hair always flies out this way. What’s more, I am three years older than you are. I can’t even weave scenes to show the world your victories, because my people always come out looking like locusts.”

  He sighed as he turned towards me again. “You are beautiful, your hair is beautiful, your parents were fools, I do not care how old you are, and the whole world already knows about my victories,” he said. “You reflect my glory because I see it in your eyes.”

  I knew that, for me, there would never be any higher praise.

  “Now go to sleep,” he added, as he rolled over onto his face. “Tomorrow I will have much hard work to do.”

  I rested my head against his arm, feeling his leg touching mine. Through my drowsy contentment, I felt myself wondering what sort of hard work a pirate prince might be doing. Then it struck me that this was another one of those pleasant terms he used to avoid an ugly one like 'slave'. This time, the pleasant term was 'hard work' and the ugly one was 'killing'.

  And how could there be any ugliness between us? Somehow, through Aphrodite’s own miracle, this splend
id young god had chosen me. More, he had served me, as the men must always serve us in bed, just as he had told me: bowing before us, fearing only that they will fail. Hadn’t that great prophet Tiresias said as much himself? After living as both a man and a woman, he had proclaimed that we enjoyed physical pleasure ten times more than they. Always before, I had wondered how such a great prophet could say such a foolish thing, and I had put it down to men’s vanity. Now I knew for certain that he had told the simple truth.

  What, then, had the great Achilles won by taking me as his prize, except for the chance to be my prize a thousand times more? What was there to resist, except for happiness greater than I had ever dared to hope for?

  Before I drifted into my sweet sleep, I forced myself to stay awake long enough to thank Aphrodite and beg her forgiveness for having doubted her. I saw now that her wisdom had been far greater than my own: She had held off her blessings only long enough to be sure I would be grateful.

  And when had she given any other woman more to be grateful for? Other people had assured me that she had made me in her own image, just as she had made Helen herself. That, I thought, could only have been because they saw some vague resemblance between my goddess’ famous golden tresses and my unruly yellow curls. Now it was unmistakably true.

  She had gone far beyond that, though. Showing her great favor to me, she had made my life into an image of her own.

  Her father had given her to a lame man, the gods’ blacksmith, just as my father had sold me to an old one. At last, her beloved war god had taken her, though, just as mine had taken me. My mind slipped past the rest of the story: how the lame god had taken revenge on them both. Mercifully, I could not have imagined how cruelly he would avenge himself against Achilles and me, in turn.

  Chapter Two

  At dawn, the clattering and shouting in the courtyard awakened me briefly. I heard a young man’s voice above me, asking, “Don’t you want to wake her up before you go, cousin?”