Spoils of War: Spoils of War, #1

By Kari Gregg

Enslaved during the invasion of the rival King of Herra, Micah cut off his emotions and adapted to his new life in servitude. Xerxes, the Herran King, abuses his captive to keep the neighboring kingdom of Alekia under his yoke, but after Micah nearly dies when plague sweeps Herra, the Alekian King sends Eli to bring his beloved son home. Conditioned by his slavery, unable to cope with his freedom, Micah seeks to please the new master he's found in Eli throughout their harrowing journey to a homeland he no longer remembers. Eli protects the young man and introduces Micah to the pleasures denied him as a prisoner.

Will Micah accept his noble birthright when they reach Alekia, and more importantly, can he accept Eli as the devoted slave his father has given him rather than the master he's come to love?

WARNING: This book contains graphic sex and violent content.

NOTE: This is a previously published work. 

23,276 Words

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kari Gregg
• Release date: Jan 14, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386378891

Book preview

SPOILS OF WAR

Kari Gregg

Copyright © 2017 by Kari Gregg

Editor: Kierstin Cherry

Cover art © 2016 Winterheart Design, winterheart.com

First Printing, 2010

Second Edition, 2014

All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Warning: This book contains strong language, sexually explicit situations, and may be considered offensive to some readers. This book is for adults only.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Disclaimer

Spoils of War

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Epilogue

Enslaved during the invasion of the rival King of Herra, Micah cut off his emotions and adapted to his new life in servitude. Xerxes, the Herran King, abuses his captive to keep the neighboring kingdom of Alekia under his yoke, but after Micah nearly dies when plague sweeps Herra, the Alekian King sends Eli to bring his beloved son home. Conditioned by his slavery, unable to cope with his freedom, Micah seeks to please the new master he's found in Eli throughout their harrowing journey to a homeland he no longer remembers. Eli protects the young man and introduces Micah to the pleasures denied him as a prisoner.

Will Micah accept his noble birthright when they reach Alekia, and more importantly, can he accept Eli as the devoted slave his father has given him rather than the master he's come to love?

WARNING: This book contains graphic sex and violent content.

NOTE: This is a previously published work.

23,276 Words

Chapter One

Herra invaded in my seventh summer, but the machinery of war didn’t reach me until the sun had cycled through another year. When the clash of metal and shouting drew near, my mother hid me inside a trunk in our rooms. She warned me to be brave. No matter what I saw or heard, I must be quiet.

Bowing to the thread of fear in her voice as much as to her command, I obeyed. My lips pressed stubbornly shut I was as silent as her dead, blank eyes after the soldiers discovered her.

Swords dripping crimson, the men dragged me from my hiding place. Numb with shock, I didn’t fight them. They hit me anyway. They bound my wrists and ankles with shackles weighed down by heavy chains, and pushed me from my rooms, through the stronghold, and into the outer courtyards where I hadn’t been permitted to play since the previous spring. The stench of smoke, sweat, and death stung my eyes.

A narrow corridor opened among the gathered warriors, and a shove between my shoulders propelled me forward. The men, easily twice as tall as me and enormous with muscle earned in battle, laughed when I stumbled. They jeered and spit on me. A wooden staff emerged from the crowd and struck me. I fell to the dirt, wetness trickling at my temple to smear the grime on my cheek into warm mud. Vision blurred and ears ringing, I would’ve lain there, my grief cocooning me from the pain of the blows, if a fist hadn’t bunched my tunic and yanked me upright.

Soldiers marched me through the gates and into the enemy encampment, to an enormous tent at its center. I didn’t understand Herran then, the guttural sounds and abrupt syllables as foreign to me as the abuses I’d suffered. But I didn’t need to understand the words. The triumphant hate of my captors required no translation.

I was conquered. Despised and debased. I hadn’t yet learned my place.

They stripped me by cutting my clothes from my body. They razed our stronghold until not one stone lay on another. Soldiers soaked the rubble in pitch so it’d burn. Then they salted the fields. They made me watch, naked, trembling, and kneeling at the invading general’s feet.

I didn’t cry.

Indeed, I never voluntarily uttered another sound again.

Victory complete, the massive army turned back to Herra.

I was separated from the other noblemen’s sons. They were no less prisoners than I. Any fool could see that, but the other boys were given food, tutors to educate them in the manners and customs of the Herran people, carts to ride in.

I was given work and the whip.

I served the general. I fetched his meals, dressed him, mended his clothing, and warmed his water for bathing. If I pleased him, he fed me. Mostly, he beat me and laughed when his men pointed to fresh bruises every sunrise. My bones and muscles shrieked during the endless marches. My soft feet throbbed with each torturous step, but my master ordered me close to his side, wrenching me up on his horse only when I could no longer keep pace.

By the time the towering ziggurat of their heathen god darkened the distant horizon, my mind had shut down.

Upon reaching the city, my master presented me as a gift to his king. A dizzying mixture of terror and hope squeezed the air from my chest. The ruler of Herra did not appear many summers older than me. He wasn’t full grown, not yet a man.

I was disabused of any foolish notion that my new master’s youth might offer mercy, though, when he sent me to work in the kitchens. As a slave.

I was prodded awake before dawn to fetch wood for the fires and cookstoves. I was responsible for maintaining those fires throughout the day as well as heating water for scrubbing soiled crockery. Had I been fed and trained properly, my bulk would have rivaled that of the soldiers who’d captured me, but my masters allowed me only a miserly chunk of bread each day. Though surrounded by food, I didn’t try to steal more. My first night in the kitchens, a fellow slave was caught pilfering meat from the slop buckets. They cut off his hand. I would’ve stolen something—anything—to end the misery of starvation if that boy had bled to death, but, no...he survived.

As did I.

Whether I wanted it or nay.

I spoke to no one, and no one was permitted to speak to me except to issue orders I was to obey. The other slaves bedded down in quarters next to the kitchens where we worked, but not I. Shivering and naked, I slept shackled to the stone hearth of the kitchen until my eighteenth summer, when the Herrans considered me a man.

On the night declared as my eighteen birthday, the king raped me. I had no tears left in me by then, so I suffered the king’s touch in silence. When he’d finished with me, he returned me to the kitchens. From that point on I was passed among the freemen, who were my masters, as both slave and whore.

It was my life. I knew nothing else.

Plague swept Herra that year, creeping into Xerxes’s palace to fell men far stronger and mightier than me. Isolated in my kitchen