A Warrior's Redemption (The Warrior Kind) (50 page)

It would be unwise to doubt what he was saying no matter how unbelievable it seemed, because she’d already seen the unbelievable take place before. She remembered full well what had happened in the arena at Santarus.

She decided to test out the waters a bit, “Good tidings?”

“Yes, tomorrow you will be set free from the bondage that has oppressed you your whole life.”

“Set free?”
Krista asked, as tears flowed down her cheeks.

She wanted to ask, ‘Are you sure?’ but that wasn’t the thing to say. But not be
ing able to put off confirming what he had just said at least a little she asked, “Really?”

She was going to make the messenger angry she just knew it, but all he did was smile warmly again at her and nod his head in confirmation.

Not being able to help it she asked, “Why?”

“Don’t you want to be free Krista? Haven’t you prayed for this to happen?”

“Yes, but I didn’t think the Creator was listening to me.”

“The Creator is always listening Krista. He has never ceased from caring for your plight. He mourns every tear that’s fall
ing off your face even now.”

Krista couldn’t take anymore, as sudden belief in the Creator as never before coursed through her. She fell forward onto her face and cried completely overcome by what was happening.

The Creator had heard her cry for help. The Creator was going to set her free. The Creator loved even a slave like her enough to send an angel with a message of promise just for her.

“Thank You! Thank You!” Krista said over and over, as she felt faith come into her and change her as it washed away the layers of bitterness from her life.

She saw her life, as if through a fast moving lens and as bad as it had been, now all she could see was how she had been kept all along the way by a Divine hand and how it had never been as bad as it could have been.

“I love you God!” Krista whispered against the floor, as she felt peace begin to take away all of her fears.

“Come here dear one.” The messenger said, as he pulled her up to lean against him putting an arm around her consol
ingly.

Gradually she calmed down and the messenger asked, “Ready for tomorrow?”

“Yes!” Krista said firmly.

“Good! Now I must leave you, but
do not fear as the message I have been sent to deliv
er to you will even so come to pass.”

The messenger rose up off the floor and headed toward the door.

“Wait! You haven’t told me what will happen tomorrow!” Krista cried out half starting to her feet to follow after the messenger.

He turned towards her, “Only have faith and you will see all that the Creator has said will come to pass. You will have freedom and joy added to you tomorrow in over flowing abundance.”

The angel turned once more and walked through the door of the cell. Krista got up shakily to her feet and moved to the door and touched it. The door was very real and yet the messenger had simply walked through it!

She went back to where she had been sit
ting and drawing her knees up she hugged them to herself as her mind relived everything the messenger had said over and over again. Tomorrow she would be free.

Not only free, but full of joy too.
She could never have asked for more and she closed her eyes in contented peace and rested in anticipation of the f
uture to come.

The rosy red color wouldn’t leave her cheeks, as Krista viewed herself in the mirror of the prep room. Several older women had just finished preparing her for presentation to the buyers. Soon she would be sent to the stage and she felt her resolve of faith falter some at the prospect of having to face what was to come. She had worn skimpy outfits before when she had been in service to Sebastian, but nothing like this!

A tiny bit of green linen supported her breasts, but there was more exposed than was covered! She was all but naked except for a slip of silk fabric that hung across the front of her thighs and a slip of fabric behind her that failed to completely cover her bottom.

Her hips and the sides of her cheeks were clearly visible. She knew she was regarded as a beautiful woman, but this outfit left little to be discovered or imagined at. It was humiliating!

Why did she have to go through this further humiliation before she could be free? She bit her lip and tried to hold on to the hope that the messenger’s words had brought her, but it was hard and she fought against the tears that threatened to fall. She would not show any weakness to the mongering crowd she could hear jabbering on in the market room beyond the thin walls of the room. The door of the room opened, they had come for her.

The boards of the stage that her bare feet traveled across had been worn smooth by the countless poor souls who had been led across them before her. Stillness had fallen over the formerly mad atmosphere of the place.

The stage was well lit in the otherwise seedy and rundown building. She was led to the center of the stage and the
iron anklet around her left ankle was securely fastened to a ring set into the floor of the stage. She was alone on the stage now except for the auctioneer off to her left.

The stillness was shattered as several hundred buyers erupted into applause at the exquisite offering before them. All manner of things were being said and Krista ignored the chattering of the lecherous buyers as best as she could, but it was hard to remain calm with what the rabid crowd was planning for her, sounding so loudly in her ears.

Inside she felt like a poor defenseless little rabbit surrounded by a pack of ravenous wolves, and to some extent that was exactly what she was in this moment.

The auctioneer ambled over cockily towards her. “I know. I know. It is not often an event as it should be to see such a rare exotic flower such as this portrayed before you, as an item of sale. So as this is the case I know that none of you will want to miss a chance at bidding on the exotic creation standing before you, as the chance might never come again to purchase such a rare girl as this for your collection!”

The auctioneer had a cane in his hand. It was a firan cane. He swished it about menacingly, when he wasn’t using it as a pointer. How ironic thought Krista to herself remembering the many beatings she had taken with those cursed switches in her youth in the firan cane fields as a field slave.

The firan cane switch reached out toward her and lifted the back slip of fabric up exposing her rear to the crowd behind, who erupted in applause once more. Krista’s face flushed red at the further embarrassment and it was all she could do to keep from turning and grabbing the cane and ramming it up the auctioneer’s bottom in payback. But she stayed still under great force of effort and endured the moment of humiliation as best as she could. It would do her no good to resist.

The auctioneer put a hand to his ear and cupped it as if he hadn’t heard the uproar of the crowd, “What, still haven’t seen enough?”

Before Krista could expect what was coming, the cane was withdrawn and smacked sharply across her lower back. She jumped from the sudden pain of the cane’s strike and one of her breasts popped out of the inadequate covering of her chest.

She gasped and her hands flew up to push her breast back in, but they were smacked down viciously by the cane. The crowd erupted again and the auctioneer pranced off towards the edge of the stage.

“Who will give me two thousand tarsas?”

Hands shot up everywhere. Krista’s gaze remained downcast and she couldn’t help the single tear that traced down her face. An
ger began to burn hotly inside of her and she brushed the tear away with an angry gesture.

Throwing her head back she raised her hands and pushed her breast back in to place. Meeting the auctioneer’s gaze she dared him to come closer and make something of it, but he wisely stayed away.

The bidding went higher and higher as Krista silently begged within her soul for her promised freedom and joy to hurry up so that she could leave this awful place and the even worse assortment of human trash that gestured and called
out to her crudely. She scanned the crowd gathered in the slave au
ction house, where would her freedom come from in such a place as this? Her gaze slipped over the hungry eyes of the soulless mongrels that inhabited the place looking for a po
tential savior in their masses.

She had all but given up hope of finding any such savior, when something prompted her to look back over a section again that she had just scanned through. Something caught her eye in the back of the room.

The something she had more sensed then seen was a man, who was standing in the shadows at the back of the room. He was a warrior by his build and the stance of his outline in the shadows, and somehow she knew who it was. Being honest with herself she admitted that it had been him and him alone that she had searched the crowd in search of a savior for.

He had come back for her! Fresh tears ran down her cheeks, but they weren’t tears of embarrassment. If the people in this place found out who he was they would rip him apart and yet he had risked just that to come for her. She continued to stare intently with her heart in her eyes at the shadowy out
line of the man in the shadows praying that he would step forward and buy her.

The auctioneer began to wind down his sales spiel as Krista had already brought more than any slave girl had in a very long time.

“I have a bid of five thousand tarsas for the beautiful slave standing behind me. Going once?”

Krista stepped forward toward the man in the shadows at the back of the crowd as far as her short ankle chain would allow her and lifted her hand and pointed at the man in the shadows.

“Going twice?”

The muttering of the crowd must have alerted the auctioneer as to there being something going on behind him, as he turned to view what was going on. His gaze followed the direction of Krista’s pointing finger.

The shadowy figure of a man was striding down through the crowd toward the stage. The crowd parted before him somehow sensing that his bark would drown out any strangled yelp they could ever make. His face was still covered by the hooded cape he wore, but the meaning of his six raised fingers was clear.

The auctioneer was so excited that he about stumbled over the edge of the stage. Catching himself he called out loudly “I have six thousand tarsas for the beautiful slave before us!”

The wealthy buyer from one of the southern seacoast cities, who had offered the previous offer of five thousand tarsas raised his hand again angrily.

“I have seven thousand tarsas! Do I hear an answer from the mysterious gentleman to my right?”

The hand lifted again and the auctioneer almost beside himself screamed out, “I have a bid of eight thousand tarsas!”

The wealthy buyer from the south looked absolutely apoplectic, but he raised his hand again; though he looked noticeably reluctant to do so.

“I have nine thousand tarsas!”

The crowd’s attention had been going back and forth between the two and now it returned to the mystery man, who flipped back his hood as he arrived at the base of the slave auction stage.

Looking up into her scared eyes Roric winked at her! Krista almost moaned in frustration at him. How could he wink at a time like this! It was an unimaginable fortune of money to be paid for a slave girl no matter how pretty she was.

Krista’s hands were clenched at her sides in tight fists and her insides were tied up in knots of tension as she waited to see what Roric would do. The crowd was silent as the handsome stranger reached inside his cape and withdrew a hefty looking black velvet bag. Undoing the pull cord he stepped close to the stage and sprayed the contents of the bag out across the stage in the auctioneer’s direction.

Exquisitely cut gems of every imaginable color spilled out onto the smooth wooden floor of the stage. The gems caught and reflected the light as they tumbled over and around Krista’s bare feet.

Krista’s mouth fell open in complete shock as her stunned gaze lifted from the glittering jewels to Roric’s face. He had just spilled out a king’s ran
som onto the stage.

The auctioneer choked out, “The bidding is closed! Release the girl to her new master and may he be well pleased with his expensive purchase here today!” The auctioneer then commenced to fall to his knees and help pick up the gems that were scattered all across the stage.

A guard rushed forward and unlocked the iron manacle around Krista’s ankle as pandemonium reined in the auction house. Krista walked to the edge of the stage and would have jumped into Roric’s’ arms, but his big hands came up and closed around her narrow waist and lifted her down.

As her feet touched the floor her arms wrapped around Roric and she buried her face against his chest soaking in the comfort of his familiar smell and the radiant warmth of his body, even as his powerful arms closed around her tightly.

She felt him kiss the top of her head and she leaned against the security of his chest finding a place of peace from the humiliation she had been made to suffer. She grew aware that he was talking to her. She reluctantly dropped her arms from around him and stepped back as far as his arms still around her would allow.

“Honey let’s get out of this hell hole!”

She nodded her head vigorously and he turned to make a way through the crowd that had gathered as spectators to watch a show that illustrated a concept and a range of emotion that was completely foreign to them.

There was one thing she had to do first though.

“Roric.”

He turned back to her questioningly. Krista knelt down onto her knees before him and extended her hand up to him with her palm up in a sign of submission.

“Master I promise to never run away from you ever again! I swear it! I will serve you all of my days faithfully! My body is yours to enjoy as you wish and my heart will be obedient to every word you say, but my spirit I give to the Creator, who has used you, my master, to save me from the darkness of these people and the hell that resides within them. My Creator has given me a better master in you than I could have ever wished for, but one thing I beg of you master is that you would never allow me to be parted from you again, because I love you with all of my heart!”