Proval and Lianna walked into the centaur camp weary and covered with the dirt and dust of travel. They had been running for more than two weeks; Lianna had lost track of how long exactly. At first not one of the centaur’s took notice of one of their missing members returning. Proval could easily pass as one of the many in the herd because he was a centaur, tall and strong, his equine hindquarters a brilliant glossy mahogany brown matching the more human-like hair that fell from his head. He was bare-chested, as was the custom of his race, except for the harness that crisscrossed his muscular torso. He only wore the harness to make it easier for Lianna to ride on his back.
The moment he was recognized, a shout of celebration when up and several of his comrades embraced him. In all the commotion Lianna slid from her mate’s back and took a few steps back, away from the crowd of centaurs. She pressed her back up against one of the canvas tents that formed the bulk of the camp and stood there nervously, wearing only the leather collar around her neck, the cuffs around her ankles and wrists, and the scrap of cloth tied around her hips, hiding her sex from view. Her prominent breasts were on display and she was considered a beautiful woman among humans, but here in the centaur camp and covered in dirt and dust, she was barely noticed.
Just days before she had been a slave in Duke Nuekome’s harem, a performer trained to be fucked by one of the other slaves, Proval the centaur. They were such a great hit doing their sexual performances in the Duke’s hall that he had them taken on a tour so more could enjoy the show. Proval and Lianna had taken the opportunity to escape when they weren’t watched and Proval took them to his home. It had been years since he had been home. The celebration of his return from slavery showed that.
“And you brought a wife home with you!” declared one of the biggest centaur’s with shock of black hair. More cheers went up among the centaurs. Lianna wondered why they didn’t automatically conclude that she was a slave. Up until she escaped she had been a slave and, oddly, in her mind she still was a slave but without an owner. While being owned by Duke Nuekome she had quickly become accustomed to being a slave. It wasn’t a bad life. She had no freedom, but she had food, something that had always been in short supply while she was growing up, and a safe place to sleep, also something rare in her childhood home. Most importantly she had pleasure. Being fucked on a regular basis by Proval was the best part of being a slave.
The other centaur’s directed their eyes to the human in their midst. Lianna suddenly felt uncomfortable being so closely scrutinized but resisted the temptation to hide her breasts and tug her loincloth into place, making sure it hide her pussy. These were instincts she thought she had overcome while serving Nuekome. Apparently among centaur’s the reflex actions readily returned.
“Yes,” Proval grunted. “She’s mine.” There was a deep pause in the celebration. “She’s more attractive when she’s not so filthy from the road.”
“I’d fuck her right here and now,” a burly chested centaur cried. His declaration was followed by laughter among the others. “Can I have her?” he asked Proval.
Before Lianna’s lover could answer the big, dark-haired centaur spoke. “My nephew returns from slavery with but one possession, a wife, and you want to take that from him.”
“Yes!” the second centaur declared with a laugh which was joined by most of the crowd.
“You don’t want her now,” Proval’s uncle said reasonably. “She’s too filthy and tired. We’ll clean her up and hold a true celebration with her tomorrow!”
Cheers followed that decision and before Lianna could sort anything else out she found herself being dragged away by one of the younger centaurs. “Put her in my tent,” the uncle called. “She’ll be safe enough there for the night.”
Lianna was pulled away by the young centaur and the last glimpse she caught of Proval was his emptying a wineskin into his mouth. Some of the red liquid was running down his face and chest.
After a quick trip through the maze-like layout of the camp’s tents, she was thrust inside one that was painted with strange designs on the tan cloth. “Wash her and get her ready,” the centaur grunted and then turned tail and trotted away. Because they were built for centaurs the tents were huge, taller than any room Lianna had ever been inside. The light was dim but once her eyes adjusted she saw two figures approaching her. She expected them to be centaurs, but they were human. They were women.
“Hello,” she said brightly, trying to make friends with them. Being captives of the centaur’s couldn’t be any worse than being a slave of the duke.
The first woman to approach her lashed out with her hand, slapping Lianna across the face. Lianna gasped, felt the stinging pain lance across her cheek, and collapsed to her knees.
“Shut up,” the woman spat at her. “You’re nothing. You’re less than nothing. You’re a slave.”
Lianna looked up at the woman who hit her. She had long red hair that surrounded her face, half obscuring her visage making her look all the more fierce. Next to her meekly stood the second woman who had her brown hair. Both were naked but their bodies were decorated with tattoos and piercings, both of which made Lianna shudder.
“Shouldn’t we do as Hervar said?” the brunette asked uneasily.
“She can wash herself,” the redhead responded.
“She won’t know what to do, Miri.”
That caused Miri to whirl around on her companion and slap her as well. The brunette’s head snapped to the side, but she managed to stay on her feet. “Then why don’t you show her, Ruta!” Miri screamed in her face before stalking back to a corner of the tent and throwing herself on a woven rug. She picked up a bowl of food and resumed eating, glaring at the two women she had slapped.
“Don’t mind her,” Ruta said, helping Lianna to her feet and gently pulling her out of the test. Lianna went along with the slightly built woman because she didn’t know what else to do. Outside in the fading sunlight of the late afternoon Lianna saw that what she had first taken for tattoos was mostly just body paint on Ruta’s skin. “She’s angry because she’s ugly.” A little smirk pulled at her lips as she drew Lianna along.
Unlike her, Ruta didn’t have a collar around her neck and cuffs on her limbs, but the tattoos marked her as property of a centaur. Lianna had heard of the practice before, and Proval had told her all about it, but she still couldn’t believe that any human would allow her body to be marked permanently in such a fashion. It seemed barbaric, but then again, of course it was. It was done by centaurs who all but owned the women. Proval told her the human women who lived with the centaurs were called wives, but they were slaves in all but name.
They eventually came to the small stream she and Proval had been following through the grasslands for the past week. It was how they had managed to stay alive and find Proval’s family herd. The stream ran into a small pool that had been dug out, presumably by the centaurs, and was used as a makeshift bathing area. Ruta led Lianna into the pool, grabbing some washing supplies stored on a rock as they went in. It was obvious to Lianna that Ruta must have spent a good deal of her life unclothed like her. She wasn’t the least bit ashamed of her naked body. That was a state Lianna and quickly come to enjoy after she had been sold into slavery by her poor family.
“Your designs,” Lianna gasped as the water quickly reached the women’s waists and started washing away the body paint that decorated Ruta.
The girl just laughed away Lianna’s concern. “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “We do the paint over every morning.”
“Oh,” she said softly as Ruta pulled Lianna’s loincloth off her and tossed it to the bank. Lianna would have told her not to bother, she didn’t intend upon wearing it ever again if possible. “They are very pretty.”
Ruta ducked her head as she started scrubbing the dirt away from Lianna’s skin. “Thank you,” she said softly. “They’re done by Miri. It’s her talent. She’s mean and rude, but she’s a talented artist. That’s was Dorrkar keeps her around.” It felt good to be washed by another person and Lianna started to think she was back in the duke’s harem, being tended to by other slaves. She had enjoyed that part of her life. “You’re filthy,” she commented. “How long have you been travelling?”
“Two weeks.”
“I see. Let’s make sure you’re extra clean,” she said, passing the cloth between Lianna’s legs, lightly rubbing her pussy, lingering longer than was strictly necessary, but Lianna didn’t complain.
“Thank you.”
Ruta nodded her head. “You have no tattoos or jewelry?” she asked, mildly surprised. Lianna took a second look at the woman’s body and saw that roughly half her decorations were true tattoos. The absence of most of the body paint revealed that Ruta also had many pieces of fine metal piercing her flesh in the centaur tradition.
“No.”
“I would have thought that Proval would have started your piercing regimen since you are his wife.” Such a thing had never been decided and Lianna wanted to know how the other woman made such a conclusion.
“No. We were slaves of Duke Nuekome. He had no say in this body,” she said indicating herself.
Ruta laughed. “This body,” she repeated with a smile. “Why don’t you say ‘my body’?”
Lianna opened her mouth to answer and found the reply difficult. She had so fully immersed herself into the role of a slave… “I’m a slave. I was a slave. When you’re a slave, your body belongs to your owner and your owner gets to decide what to do with it,” she said, the words coming slowly. “The duke wanted my skin pure and by neck collared. I didn’t have a choice. No slave does. Proval had to wear his harness because he was a slave.”
That made Ruta laugh again. “No he wasn’t.”
“Yes,” Lianna said, her brows furrowing in anger at the silly girl. “Of course he was. He was part of the duke’s circus, just like I was.”
A toss of Ruta’s head dismissed Lianna’s insistence. “He might have been pretending to be a slave, but he was really a spy,” she confided in the woman she was washing. “I know. I overheard Dorrkar speaking with the other members of the war band. He said once Proval returned from his spying the centaurs will make war with the humans once again.”
Lianna didn’t know what to make of that story. It was possible, certainly, but how could a slave be a spy? Maybe it was just a story that Dorrkar was telling to save face among his peers. She certainly didn’t know.
While they were talking Ruta finished washing Lianna and herself. She sluiced water over the Lianna’s blond hair, working a comb through the tangled knots until it hung clean and straight down her back. Lianna returned the favor and the two climbed out of the pool with clean skin. Right away Lianna saw that the tattoos that remained on Ruta’s skin had a similar theme all over, a repeated pattern of flowers that made her look like a walking garden.
“We’ll have to get your collar and cuffs removed. Centaurs don’t like such things on their wives.”
Lianna let her eyes glide over the many bits of metal that had been forced into Ruta’s flesh. She had rings through her nipples and one nostril; there were multiple studs following the outer curve of her ear; she didn’t know exactly what, but something dangled from the woman’s pussy, a little charm hanging between her thighs; a coil of metal was stuck multiple times through her lower lip, and when Ruta saw that Lianna was carefully inspecting her body, she stuck out her tongue showing a thick piece of metal there as well. All of this was in addition to the tattoos on her body and the body paint which was now gone. “This will all happen to you as well,” Ruta said, indicating the many piercings she had.
“Why?” was all Lianna could say. It seemed an especially barbaric practice and it scared her.
“Because as a centaur’s wife, Proval will decorate you as he sees fit,” Ruta said with a shrug. “You don’t have any choice in the matter.”
“Is it to show that they own us? Piercings instead of collars?”
Ruta frowned and shook her head. “No. They don’t own us. They just want to make sure we don’t go back and live with humans again. We’re centaur wives for the rest of our lives.” She gestured to her body again. “With all of this, there’s no way to be accepted back into the human world.” She shrugged and grinned. “Not that I would want to.”
It occurred to her that Ruta didn’t consider herself fully human any longer. She was something else, something she called a centaur’s wife.
“When does it start? When will…when will I be pierced?” Lianna asked with a fearful shiver.
Once more Ruta shrugged. “Whenever Proval wants. He is your husband, is he not?”
“I suppose he is.”
“Then he’ll want to fuck you tonight,” Ruta said with a definitive nod of her head. “Unless he wants to share you with someone else.”
