Legend of Zelda 1. Chapter 1

The sun had become his sworn enemy. It sat high overhead, a brazen, burning, beacon of gold in the afternoon sky; cooking the earth, simmering the horizon, baking the sands, and slowly but surely draining the life from him. Wherever he looked, whatever direction, he could see the heat lifting from the earth in distorted waves, as if the land had become one, giant, frying pan, and now his fate was to be slowly cooked upon it. On the western horizon, sand dunes rolled on for an eternity in undulating, golden, waves. To the East, a flat stretch of valley that ended in a rise of spired mountain peaks, a thousand meters separating him and them with nothing but sand and more sand along the way. Behind him, the sandstorm he'd fled from raged on, swallowing the world up in its wrath and fury and leaving only one option: forward, always forward.

Link mustered what strength he could to dig his heels into Epona's sides. His steed was carrying him along, but just barely, and he knew it wouldn't be long before his weight grew too much for her and he would have to dismount. He'd already shed every last saddle bag he'd brought, and not long after, the saddle itself. He'd also removed his tunic and his boots, stripping down to nothing but his breeches and a thin blanket he'd tied around his shoulders and hooded himself with to guard from the sun's might, but even with all that lost encumbrance, he still felt Epona's strength waning with every step forward she took.

_The shield, _he thought, glancing back at the last two things he had left. _And the sword. They have to go. Have to__… __lose weight. _If he discarded them though… and came upon something dangerous… well, it was as good as discarding his life there and then. It was a decision, however, he'd have to make sooner rather than later. For Epona's sake if nothing else.

His hand fell to her mane and stroked up and down, letting the soft hair slip in and out of his fingers before moving aside to the shorter bristles sprouting from her shoulder blades and giving a squeeze. "It's going to be… alright, Epona," he croaked from a throat that had turned to sand paper, from lips that had dried and cracked over so many times they no longer felt like his own. He squinted into the horizon and watched the heat lift shimmering claws of death out of the sand in wavy lines. Overhead, vultures were swarming the skies: hungry, waiting. "It's… going to be… alright," he repeated, though whether telling his steed or himself then… he could not say.

If only the storm hadn't come. If only it hadn't gotten them all twisted around. If only he'd brought more water. If… if… if.

Slowly, he leaned forward and laid his head against Epona's mane. Her hair was so soft on his cheek, it felt like a pillow. The notion sent a faint smile tugging at the corners of his chapped lips. His eyelids felt as if they were made of steel. He needed to shut them to preserve energy. And it was hot; so hot. If only he could rest for a while. Rest and regain his strength. Some stronger part of him left alive inside the burning shell of his body told him 'No', but before long, his eyes fell shut anyway. Epona's steps were slow but steady, and each hoof that plotted into the sand send a gentle tremor up against his cheek and temple. The sensation was relaxing; the most relaxing thing in the world.

And not longer after, he drifted into a deep, deep, sleep.

* * *

At some point his eyes opened, though how much time had passed since they'd closed he did not know. He was laying in the sand. It was incredibly hot against his bare back. He groaned and pulled his legs up and it cooked the soles of his bare feet just the same as his back. He tried to rise to escape the heat, but their was no strength in him still and he had to resolve to simply lying there being cooked. He squinted and made his head turn. Epona was there, waiting at his side, chasing off the occasional vulture that strayed too close to him.

_Good girl, _he thought, closed his eyes, and drifted again before long.

* * *

When his eyes opened next, he found a woman's face filling his vision. Link groaned and meekly lifted a hand to test the reality of the image, but a strong grip took him by the wrist and forced his hand back to his side.

"He's alive," the face said.

Link's vision blurred, focused, blurred again, and finally righted itself long enough for him to see the face clearly. It was most certainly a woman's. She had dark, auburn, hair tied into a what looked like a very tight ponytail behind her head and bronze skin that looked as golden and smooth as the sand itself. Her nose, mouth, and jaw were concealed beneath a veil of plum-colored silk, and when she talked, Link could see little tufts of air puffing the fabric up and down over the contours of her lips. Her ears were pointed, like his own, and a thin, silver, crown ran the length of her brow; a bright, yellow, gem adorned in its center. There was a choker around her neck of a similar plum color, but anything lower he could not muster the strength to lift his head and see.

"_Who__…__?_" He croaked, and ran out of energy before he could say any more.

"Water," the woman commanded; her voice as austere as her hairdo.

A moment later a skin of water was coming dangling up over his lips and Link's entire body came alive with desperation. A new strength filled him just enough to purse his lips and lean in to accept the skin's nozzle. Water—wonderful, pure, fresh, delicious, crisp, water—filled his mouth, his throat, his belly. He drank as much as a man could without breathing, pulled away to catch his wind, and went back for more. Immediately he could feel his energy returning to him. He'd never thought in a millions years something as simple as a drink of water could so profoundly affect his entire body, his entire mind: he was coming back to life.

The woman pulled the canteen from his lips and let the last bit trickle over his brow and into his hair and down across his neck and chest. It felt absolutely wonderful, and Link lied back against the sand, taking in the immense pleasure of it as his strength came slowly galloping back to him.

"Epona," he said from a throat that felt in ten times better condition than it had a moment before. "My horse. My horses needs water, too."

"Your horse has been taken care of," the woman said; her silky mask puffing up and down as she talked. "We Gerudo treat our horses very well."

_Gerudo__… _the name was familiar, but Link was still far too exhausted to stress his mind and think any further on it. "Thank you," he said. "Thank you. What is your name?"

"That sword and shield," the woman began, ignoring his question, her dark eyes boring down and sweeping him over from head-to-toe with what might have been scrutinization. "They are yours?"

Link swallowed. He nodded.

The woman returned the gesture. "And how do you feel?"

"Better," Link answered at once. "I was… going to die. You saved my life. I feel my strength returning to me by the second. Epona and I… we were caught in the sandstorm and-"

"_Aveil!_" The woman shouted back over her shoulder, again ignoring Link entirely. "Bring me rope. Lots of it."

"Rope?" Link echoed, finding the woman's request utterly perplexing. "What do you need rope for?"

"Silence," she commanded in that same, strict, tone she'd used to fetch him water.

Suddenly, Link didn't feel comfortable lying on his back below the woman any longer. He made to get his elbows under him and stand and-

-the woman pinned him back against the sand with her elbow. He tried to move it aside, but her strength was deceptive for someone so ostensibly thin. His eyes moved to the copper arms poking out from the silk blouse wrapping her chest and found them toned and rippling with muscle as they worked to hold him in place. He tried again to lift himself, but she denied him by simply reapplying the pressure more firmly.

"What are you doing?" Link asked.

"Tying you up," she told him as a rope was passed her way from another bronze-skinned woman; this one in red silks instead of plum ones.

"Tying me..? Why?" Link asked. "You saved my life. I swear I won't try to-"

"_Silence,_" she demanded, and her elbow dug deeper into his chest until it a bolt of pain coursed through it. "Telma! Fetch me a gag to silence him while I bind him."

And without further hesitation, the woman looped a coil of rope up, took his hands by the wrists, and slipped it over them. Link tried pulling away, but his strength had not returned yet in its entirety, and the woman worked quick and efficient anyway. Before he'd even had time to protest, his hands were bound before him so tightly he couldn't imagine freeing himself from the restraints without aid. With his hands secure, the woman eased up on his chest, took him by the back of the neck, and flipped him onto his stomach. The sand chewed at his bare abdomen with its scorching teeth, but Link only felt the ropes then; wrapping his arms down against his torso from his shoulders to his elbows to his waist. When she'd finished on his upper body, he felt her take hold of his feet and force them together to bind him at the ankles before moving up to fasten ropes above and below his knees.

All the while, Link was helpless but to lie there and allow the woman to have her way with him, twisting him one way to secure a rope one moment, maneuvering him another to cinch a tie the next, rolling him side to side to fasten her work and tuck away any loose ends the binds had left, and with every tug of every knot, Link felt his freedom vanishing further and further into nonexistence.

When it was finished, and Link was bound up so tightly he couldn't move a muscle besides slightly jerking his shoulders up and down and kicking his feet about a little below the ropes around his ankles, the woman sat him up and squared his shoulders before her own.

Link's strength was nearly all back to him then—not like it mattered in his prison of ropes—and with it came a fresh surge of anger. "Why are you doing this to me!?" He asked, a bit louder than he'd intended. "Why did you tie me up like this? I've done nothing to any of you! Do you hear me? I haven't-"

"The gag," the woman calmly requested, and a white knotted kerchief was placed in her open palm at once. She leaned forth and tucked the thick knot between Link's lips and teeth before he could voice another word of protest. She took up the loose ends and joined them around at the back of his head before tying them off, sealing the gag tightly in place.

"_Grmmph!_" Link grunted, biting angrily down on the knot wedged between his teeth and jerking against the ropes that bound him. "_Mmf! Ermph!_"

The woman's dark eyes held his own, and though he couldn't see her mouth beneath the silk mask tied over it, he could see the smile in her eyes. "This one has quite a bit of fight in him when he's not dying of thirst," she said, her tone growing playful and almost sardonic now that he was utterly helpless and no longer a threat. "A good catch."

From over her shoulder, more women came, _all _women, and they were all dressed in similar attire too. Wavy, loose, blouses of varying colors draped around thin, but muscular, frames. Toned and copper or bronze abdomens below. Baggy pants fasted to their narrow waists with wide, black, belts. Some wore boots with pointed toes, others strappy silver sandals, others black flats. Each of the half-dozen or so also wore jeweled necklaces around their throats and rings around their fingers above wrist guards or bracelets. All of their lower faces were concealed under silk veils, but each had pointed ears and dark eyeliner rimming green or brown eyes and red hair in varying shades; some light as if kissed by sun; some dark as if bathed in shadow.

And most importantly: every one of the women was staring down at him with the same, hungry, playful, look etched into the features of what was visible of their faces.

"He's cute," one of them said.

The others looked to her briefly before tittering and snickering beneath their masks.

"Such fair skin too," another added, stepping a bit closer to prod at his side with the toe of her boot.

"And all tied up nice and tight," said a third as she knelt in the sand near his chest and cocked her head as she studied him.

"What should we do with this poor, helpless, young man whose fallen into our possession, Jolene?" Another asked.

The woman with the plum-colored mask who had bound him up in the first place was apparently named Jolene, as she was the woman who answered the question after a short laugh. "Get him on the back of a saddle, girls." Her eyes held his and a mischievous twinkle played within. "We're taking this one home."

With a gag in his mouth and enough ropes around his arms and legs to ensure he was powerless over his own limbs, there was not much Link could do to try and stop the women from taking him. They had an easy enough time hoisting his weight up to spread out evenly between them; one women cradling his feet under her arm, another wrapping her own arms around his chest, and two more on either of his sides to help balance him out. They giggled and conversed casually with one another as they lugged him to the back of a horse, worked him up over the saddle, and bound him down to the creature on his stomach so that he was essentially hogtied to the back of the horse.

One of the women stepped before him and lowered to his eyeline. There was a curiosity housed in her eyes as her hand reached for his cheek and stroked it with the back of her knuckles. Link grumbled and mumbled into his gag, shaking his head from side-to-side as if it could actually loosen the women's prodding fingers from his cheek. She snickered and stepped away after tormenting him for a few more seconds.

Not longer after he was tied down to the horse, the group of women's leader, Jolene, dug her sandaled foot into a stirrup and swung up onto the steed's saddle. Link chewed his gag and glared up at her the best he could as she turned back to him and said, "Your horse has been taken back to our village. We will treat her good… if you behave yourself. Don't make this trip harder on my own horse than it has to and she'll be well fed tonight. Understand?"

Link glowered.

"Make a noise if you understand me."

He held her eyes, hating her, wanting with everything in him to refuse her request, but the woman only stared and stared. "_Mmf!_" Link grunted, finally succumbing to her demand, eager to be rid of her baleful eyes.

"Good," she said, and he could see that smile playing at her cheekbones again. "_We ride!_" She shouted, and the pack of women spurred into action at her command, digging their heels into their steeds in unison, sending up a cloud of sand as they all moved forward as one.

* * *

The ride hogtied atop the back of the horse was bumpy, uncomfortable, and at times even painful, but at least it was brief. Link had to keep his eyes shut for most of the ride to keep the sand out of them, but it wasn't as if there much to see _except_ sand anyway, and when the horse's hooves finally slowed their beating against the earth and Link was able to pry his lids to cracks one more, he could see they had crested a large dune that sloped down into a valley, and at the valley's heart, a village of brown stones and tents and carpets and palm trees and a central fountain had been erected. "_Hya_!" Jolene shouted and spurred her horse forth to begin the long descent into the valley.

When the slope ended, and their traversal leveled out again, Link hoisted his head up to watch the approaching village grow out of the horizon. He saw, with a surge of incredulity, that even _more _women were emerging from their erected tents and out of a three-story fortress of stone at the village's rear to come and greet the six returning to them. He could not be sure, but he thought there might be as many as two _dozen _of the women in total. Their eyes landed quickly on him, narrowing shrewdly or blossoming with curiosity as he was hauled forward in his hogtie.

Jolene led their group through a narrow channel of tents and carpets to the foot of a stone oval at the village's center, where—somehow—a fountain was geysering over with clean and clear lapis water; its crowning ornament a sculpture of the sun intertwined with a crescent moon.

When the woman finally pulled up on the reins of her steed and brought them to a halt, Link craned his neck around, taking in as much of his surroundings as he could. He could see the golden dunes mounding up all around them on the horizon, as if the sand had swallowed them into the belly of the desert. Wherever the land had leveled out, however, the women had raised and architected varying structures. He spotted tents and huts and brick buildings of a dozen different sizes and shapes. There was a rack of spears and leather-banded shields in the center of a pair of flanking brown tents beside the fountain. Lined below the hulking stone fortress at the village's rear were the stables and pens, filled with the women's horses and a few pigs. Looming behind them, backdropped against the canvas of pale blue sky, the fortress watched over the scene like an ancient and vigilant protector. Link narrowed his eyes into the shadowed windows peeking out from the three stories, but spotted—thankfully-no one stirring within.

And sprouting up intermittently from the sands all around them were palm trees, but how exactly any life managed to grow so far out here in the barren lands of the desert, Link did not know.

"Well, look here! What have you brought us back this time, Jo?" A barefoot women in loose-fitting cream trousers asked, emerging from a nearby tent and sauntering up close to the horse with her eyes locked on Link's own. To his relief, she wore no mask like the riders, and so Link found an amused smile playing at her full lips. "A man?"

"Not just a man," Jolene explained with a hint of pride in her voice. She swung down from the horse and strolled up to lay her hand on Link's bare shoulder, as if displaying a prize. She hooked her index finger under her mask and slipped it down around her neck to reveal the same, cruelly delighted, smile and fix it upon him. "But the best kind of man."

The cream-trousered woman laughed. "The best kind of man? What kind of man is that, Jo?"

"Why, a bound and _gagged _one!"

A smattering of laughter moved through the quickly-forming crowd around the horses. Link surveyed the small village clearing as it filled in more and more, and feared his original calculation of two dozen women might have been painfully undercounted. They were coming from _every_where; every tent, every building, every lane, they were padding forth to stare at him with interest and curiosity.

A youthful woman with hazel eyes and big, silver, hoops hanging from her pointed ears peeked around her friend's shoulder and grinned. "My my my, look at this… what's his name?"

"We never got his name," one of the riders explained as she dismounted. "Jo tied that gag in his mouth so quickly, we barely heard him talk at all."

One of the village girls asked: "What are we going to do with him?"

Another questioned: "Can we keep him?"

"We're not going to let him escape like the others, right Jo?"

"Yeah. Not like those others. If we're going to keep him, we have to keep him locked up tight."

"Oh, yes, and guarded!"

"Right! Guarded! We'll keep him locked away and tied up tight and guarded at all times."

"I'll guard him."

"I want to guard him!"

"Me too!"

"I want to be his guard! It was my idea!"

"Would all of you just shut up!" Jolene snapped, and her commanding voice quieted the crowd down fast. "There's plenty of time to talk about what we're going to do with our captive, but for now, get him off the back of that horse. I figure we'll tie him up out here by the fountain so anyone who wants to get a look at him can." She faced Link and cupped his chin in her hand. "And you… you just keep quiet and behave yourself… or you _will _be punished."

Link bit his gag and glared, but stayed silent and did not struggle. He had no idea what the woman was capable of, and didn't feel like pressing his luck.

A few of the women gathered together to remove him from the horse and return him to their hands. They cradled him between them like before and hauled him to a big, red and gold, carpet that had clearly been hand-knotted and was trimmed with silver fray and elaborate decorations around its perimeter splayed out before the fountain and shaded by a nearby palm tree. The girls lowered him onto his butt before sliding him back against a wooden stake, pinning him up against it, and pulling out lengths of rope to tie him up to it. They looped the ropes around and around until he was tightly bound to the stake, then they took him by the feet and pulled until his legs were stretched out as far as they could go and tethered his ankles to another stake. When they finished, he was seated on the carpet beneath the shade with his feet at one end and his body at the other. He looked from girl to girl, desperate to find _some_one with a trace of sympathy for his situation.

"His eyes are so pretty," one of the girls hovering over him with her hands on her hips said.

"So blue," another added.

"Like the sky."

"Or the ocean."

"Alright, enough," Jolene interjected. "Leave him there for the others to come see while we eat. _And to the rest of you,_" she shouted, cupping her hands around her mouth to carry her voice extra far around the village. "_No one is to remove the prisoner__'__s ropes or gag. He__'__s to remain still and silent_. _No exceptions._" Her eyes narrowed shrewdly onto a few women in the crowd. "_And you cannot _touch_ him either._"

A chorus of disappointed groans moved through the girls and Link's brow lifted almost involuntarily as they pressed the circle in a bit tighter on his position to voice complaint.

"No fair, Jo!"

"That's cruel!"

"You can't put him on display like that and expect us to behave ourselves!"

"Let us touch him a little, maybe."

"Yes, just a little!"

"Just a taste!"

Jolene rolled her eyes. She sneered and pursed her lips as her gaze shifted with annoyance back towards Link and looked him over. "You can… touch his arms or his calves or his feet. Nothing else. Do you hear me, girls? _Nothing _else."

A smattering of agreement made its way through the crowd and Jolene looked satisfied enough with the response. She nodded, cast one last baleful flick of her eyes in Link's direction, and led her group of riders off towards a large tent erected at the base of the slope they'd ridden down.

The riders vanished into the shade of the tent, and the women began coming forth at once.

The first two practically toppled over one another as they dipped beneath the overhanging canvas and fell to their knees atop the carpet on either side of Link's outstretched legs. Link flicked his eyes cautiously between the two of them. He writhed a bit against the stake and frowned as they stared. The ropes were so tight around his body, though, he couldn't move more than an inch in any direction, and settled down at once to conserve energy.

"_Mrhmfr!_" He mumbled into his gag, working his jaw around, trying desperately to get them to let him speak. "_Hrmf! Grm mmrmf mmrf mmmph!_"

"He's the cutest one yet," one of the girls said as her eyes widened on his own. She had light hair and bright green eyes and like a few others, wore no mask on her face. She was biting at her lip as she looked Link over from his feet to his legs to his body and, finally, to stare at his face again.

"All men can be handsome or cute with gags in their mouths," the other girl—this one with a high bun of dark hair over her head and purple eyeshadow—added. "Just remember, he might be like our last slave we had for awhile. Sweet as honeyed wine when he couldn't talk, but when the gag came out… he was a terribly cruel thing."

_Slave. _Link couldn't help but focus on that word. It sent his stomach into knots and all of a sudden, his ropes felt tighter than they had the entire time he'd been wearing them.

"This one has soft and gentle eyes, though. Blue like water. And long lashes, like a woman's. Maybe… maybe he has the caring heart of a woman as well."

"Ha. Like Jo's heart?"

Both girls snickered.

"Well, no. Not like _that_."

A silence fell between them, and both girls took the opportunity to begin looking him over again. The one with the bright green eyes stuck her hand out tentatively for his shin and, after a moment's hesitation as her gaze flicked between his face and his legs, laid it gently just below his knee. Her fingers were surprisingly soft as they trickled up and down his leg twice before curving down around his ankle bone, and cupping one of his feet. She grinned and dragged her nails up along the arch of his bare foot.

"_Mmf!_" Link grunted, involuntarily spasming a bit and shaking his head. He tried tucking his legs in, but the ropes kept him where he was.

The other girl tittered and reached for his arm. She took hold of him just around the shoulder and began stroking the bare flesh there down to the elbow. "Don't torture the poor thing, Kotake," she cooed. "At least… not yet. We don't want him to hate us before he loves us, after all."

The bright-eyed girl—Kotake, apparently—bit at her lip again and fixed her eyes wildly on Link's. "Do you like to be teased and tortured, mystery man?"

Link frowned. He debated not even bothering to reply to such an asinine question, but decided against it and simply shook his head.

"Ooooh, no?" Kotake cooed and raised her brow in what might have been mock sympathy. "That's too bad." She grinned. "For you."

"Oh, stop Kotake, you're scaring him," the other woman interjected.

"I don't have to stop, Gale!" Kotake whined. "Jo said! She said we could touch his arms and feet if we wanted, and I want to _tickle_ them!" She giggled. "I want to torturehim a little. It's been so _long_ since we've had a proper slave." Her eyes narrowed. "Especially one as cute as him…"

"Stop hogging him you two!" A voice protested from the crowed behind them. "You've had enough! Give the rest of us a chance to seem him up close!"

Kotake grimaced and rolled her eyes before fixing them on Link again. "Looks like your safe… for now, handsome." She winked, bit at her lip, and was practically dragged off by her friend when her hand reached for his face.

More women came and went in small groups then, but thankfully none were as… 'adventurous' as the Kotake woman. They all touched and groped and rubbed at his arms and legs and feet, but the most daring any of the others got was to 'accidentally' slip her fingers over his shoulder to briefly touch his bare chest. They talked to each other and sometimes to him as well, as if he weren't tightly gagged and unable to respond in the slightest. They laughed and joked and whispered suggestive things as their fingers trickled along his flesh, but after ten groupings of girls or so, his visitors finally began tapering off; though, all around the village, Link spotted the women's eyes persistently finding their way back to him, like moths drawn to flame. They stared hungrily and eagerly, but kept their distance as they chewed their bottom lips, and coiled strands of auburn hair around their copper fingertips, and burrowed little trenches in the sand underfoot with their toes, and slid their slender fingers along their bare midriffs.

All in all, the girls looked more ready to descend upon him then the vultures in the desert had.

As the sun was finally sinking below the western sand dunes, sending radiant red light clawing down into village between the crests and mounds, Jolene and her riders emerged from the big tent again and traipsed back through the camp to clutter around Link. The rest of the girls in the village kept their distance, but watched with profound interest stirring in their amorous eyes.

Jolene stood looming over him a moment with her hands planted atop her hips, as if to assert her dominance. Link stared right back at her, but tied down, half-naked, and gagged, he felt he was returning none of the power Jolene was exuding over him. She crouched, lowering herself to the line of his eyes. Her head cocked ever-so-slightly on its side as she spoke. "Listen to me, prisoner. We've captured and subdued you. For all intents and purposes… you belong to us. But the Gerudo are prideful, and we will not accept your enslavement so easily." She leaned a bit closer and unsheathed a dagger to dangle before his eyes. "I'm going to remove your binds now, and then you and I are going to spar. No weapons. If you can hold my shoulders to the sand for three heartbeats… you'll be free to go."

A chorus of jeers and groans erupted from the crowd of girls around them.

Jolene held a fist skywards to silence them. "_However_… if you cannot… and you submit to me… you become the property of my girls and I. You become a Gerudo slave."

The women cheered and clapped then, their previous dissatisfaction forgotten in an instant.

Jolene smirked. "Well, what say you to that?"

She reached around the back of his head and untied his gag. When the knot came away from between his teeth, Link licked his lips and nodded his head. What other choice did he have then but to accept? "Alright… I'll spar."

Without another word, her dagger slipped between his wrists and sliced upwards, and just like that his hands were freed. She cut the ropes binding his torso before moving to his legs and slicing apart all the ropes there as well. Link reached back and took the stake he'd been bound to for support to lift himself to his feet. He could feel the girl's eyes, if possible, even _more _intently watching him then. When his legs were under him and supporting his weight again (though not without a bit of wobble first since he hadn't used them in so long) Link felt better than he had since the sandstorm had gotten him all twisted around and sent him right into the waiting arms of these Gerudo women in the first place. He stretched his arms over his head, noting the way the girls' eyes hungrily swept across his bare chest and stomach as he did so, and stepped off the carpet and onto the sand.

Jolene was waiting there across a little clearing. The other Gerudo had circled in to form a sort of 'combat pit' between them, and stood staring with their arms folded across their chests, as if judging the battle… or, perhaps, just judging him. Jolene slipped out of her sandals and stepped barefoot into the center of the circle. She tightened her ponytail and smirked. "Come then, slave. Come and be dominated by your master."

Link retained his composure. "Rules?"

Jolene shook her head. "None. Simply pin me down… if you can."

Link squinted, wary of some trick or deceit.

The woman rolled her eyes. "Fine, slave," she said, lowering slowly to plant her knees in the sand. "I will kneel before you. There. Are you still so afraid? Am I still so imposing?"

A few of the girls on the perimeter chortled into their hands. Most simply watched with rapt attention.

"Come, slave. I'm on my knees," Jolene repeated.

Link took a cautious step forward-

-and Jolene scooped a handful of sand and flung it into his face. Link shielded his eyes and squeezed them shut to protect himself, but could not stop the attack entirely from working its way under his eyelids. He grunted and stepped back, swatting blindly before him, but the next attack did not come from his front: it came from his side. Jolene must have maneuvered around him right after the sand throw, for he felt her shoulder spear his ribs and drive him to the ground. He landed hard on his arm and received a mouthful of sand, but before he could so much as process that, Jolene's thin, sinewy, body was climbing up onto his chest to mount him. Link roared and bucked his hips, sending her weight off balance and providing him just enough time to squirm out from under one of her knees and take hold of her arm. He wrenched it back and heard her yelp, but her free hand took a fistful of his hair and forced his head down to the sand again. Link twisted to his side to escape her, but she moved to counter his momentum with her own, and the two came locked briefly in a battle of pure strength.

If, perhaps, Link hadn't nearly died of thirst not an hour earlier and hadn't then spent the following hour wrapped head to toe in ropes, he might have overpowered her. But, alas, that was not the case, and Jolene managed to work him back down to the sand, take hold of his arm at the wrist, and twist it back, flipping him onto his side and locking his torso down with her knee. She wrenched back his arm and Link shouted in pain. She laid her foot across his cheek and pressed his face down into the sands so that every breath Link drew, he received at least a partial lung-full of sand as well.

"_Submit, slave!_" Jolene snapped.

"_Argh!_" Link roared, trying desperately to break free from the hold.

The woman's foot pressed harder on his cheek, her heel driving painfully against his jawline. His arm was yanked back further and further. It was hard to breath with all the sand in his mouth, but it was also impossible not to with all the _pain _being driven into his shoulder.

"_Submit!_"

Link squeezed his eyes as hard as he could to fight through the pain. He was grounding his teeth so hard, he felt they might shatter. But he would not submit. _Could _not. Instead, he let his entire body go limp just long enough for the woman to ease up a bit on her hold, then threw his weight to his side with everything in him. Jolene was caught unaware, and went tumbling down to the sand. Link wasted no time and scrambled up on top of her, ignoring the pain in his shoulder blade. He mounted her as she tried to rise and shoved her back to the sand, leaning forth to set all his weight over her.

The woman had anticipated the attack, however, and tucked her knees up between them before unfolding them again and jutting her feet up and out to either side of Link's head. Her legs back behind him, and she immediately pinched her thighs together, capturing Link's neck between them and squeezing.

Link felt his air choked off at once. His hands clawed for her inner thighs to pry them apart, but her leg muscles were strong and brawny, and Link needed the oxygen they were denying him badly.

He fell to his knees.

"_Submit!_" The woman growled, her face as red as the setting sun behind her.

If Link could have spoken, he would have said 'No', but he could not talk, for he was falling again down that slippery slope of unconsciousness, and into a deep and dark chasm of blackness.


	2. Chapter 2

The crack of thunder stirred him from his sleep; the pale flash of lightning that followed pulled him from it entirely. Link lifted his head, and from the slitted cracks of his eyelids he saw an oblong strip of velvety night sky across a small room; a window, he ascertained upon further examination, cut from the massive brown stones that were toppled up on top of one another, building walls around him. He looked to his left, his right, and found nothing but more stone wrapping the perimeter. A low-hung ceiling stretched overhead, cracks in its belly, spiderwebs in its corners. At the far end of the room, the only other distinguishing features to join the strip of missing stone that acted as a window were a pair of ensconced torches flanking a solitary door of iron bars. Their warm light flickered and sent shadows dancing onto the walls as a cool night breeze swept in from the window.

The breeze carried through the room and reached Link, but when he made to wrap his arms to his body and shield himself from its cold kiss, he found he had no such control. His wrists were locked in irons and pulled up over his head, joined together and affixed to the ceiling with a short length of chain that provided little slack and kept him locked in place. Because of the height his captors had strung his wrists up, he had little balance on the balls and heels of his feet, and that was made an even more arduous task than it should've been, as his ankles were locked together in fetters as well. There was something heavy around his neck too, but he could not see what. And his mouth had been gagged again; the knot of a tick cloth bulged between his teeth and the cloth itself wrapped his lower face, pressing tightly into his cheeks and the back of his head. He bit down on it and pulled a bit at his manacled hands, but found only the defiant, oppressive, sound of the chains clinking against themselves in answer.

Before he even had time to ruminate on his unfortunate situation, the sound of faint voices floating near from beyond the iron bars that served as his prison's doorway caught his ear and focused his sight their way. Upon the narrow sliver of hall he could see beyond, shadows came flickering forth, cluttered together and moving just ahead of the soft voices. A moment later, the women followed their shadows forth; though the shadows passed _through _the bars of his cell door; the women had to unlock it to gain entrance.

There were three of them in total, each with the bronze skin and thin frames that defined the Gerudo women. They came with wool cloaks over their shoulders—fitting attire for the chillier atmosphere of the desert at night—but wore garb similar to those he'd seen yesterday. Their lower faces were masked in silk veils, loose shirts that exposed their toned bellies hugged their chests, and baggy trousers blossomed from their belted hips. They moved across the prison, their sandaled feet kicking playfully at the patches of sand that had been, Link assumed, splashed about the stone floor to bring a bit of the desert inside, and each of their dark eyes were narrowed on his own beneath their jeweled headbands.

Two of the women pulled up a few feet short of his position and Link could hear their soft giggles drifting mellifluously from beneath their masks. The third pressed forward between the others' shoulders and stepped right up to him till the toes of her sandals pressed against his own feet. Link glared into the woman's almond eyes, flicked across her sharp features and high-set cheekbones, to her auburn hair tied back in a strict ponytail that swayed as she cocked her head and sent her _own _eyes trailing across his body. When they found his again, she reached for her silk veil and wrestled it down around her neck to fix him with full lips twisted at the corners into a mischievous smirk. The tip of a tongue, pink and moist, slipped from between those lips and ran briefly over them before sliding back into her mouth.

"You're act of defiance today has polarized our camp, slave," the woman said; her voice accented with the harsh Gerudo tongue, but her tone somewhat playful. Link watched her lips as they formed words. It was hard not to: they were pretty. "You did not defeat Jolene in combat… but neither did you submit," she went on. "You refused - refused right into unconsciousness." Her hand reached for his cheek and Link jerked his head away, but the act only broadened her smile and she reached out again, quicker, and took firm hold of his chin to keep him in place. "Now we have you as a captive… and half of us think you a slave, myself included. You may not have spoken your submission, but… your mind gave us what your tongue would not."

"Slave," one of the girls flanking beyond her shoulder taunted.

"Slave," the other echoed. "Our captive and our slave. Nothing more."

Some of the almond-eyed woman's mirth left her smile then as her gaze bore up into his. "But there are those of us in the camp who refuse to enslave you unless you speak your submission aloud. They want you to spar with Jo again… and again… and again. They'd have you sparring with her _forever_ until either you defeated her or you begged for her mercy." The woman's eyes moved briefly back over her shoulder to her 'guards' or whatever they were, and her mischievous smirk returned. "But some of us girls aren't so naive as our sisters. We know there are… _other _ways to break a man than combat."

"Defiant little man-slave," one of the guards muttered.

The other added, "Needs to learn his place among us Gerudo."

"Beneath our feet."

"Worshipping the ground we walk on."

"My name is Aveil, man-slave," their leader said, firming her hold on his chin so his eyes were forced to her own. "I am going to be your master for awhile. If you understand, nod your head."

Link glared.

Aveil's tongue ran her bottom lip again, her head cocked slightly on its side. "Your anger excites me, slave, but I am not a Gerudo who is known for her patience. I'll ask again, and it would be wise of you to answer me this time." She leaned forth till her narrow nose was pressed to the tip of his. He could smell her copper skin. It smelled clean and fragrant. "I am your _master,_" she growled. "Do you _understand_?"

Link didn't fear the woman. He'd faced far worse in his travels and lived to tell the tale… but he gave her what she wanted all the same, to calm her a bit if nothing else. He nodded.

"Good." Some of the fire left her eyes then as they fell slowly to his lips. "I'm going to remove your gag now, but do not take that as an invitation to start running that pretty mouth of yours. We've had you gagged for a reason, slave: you have no privilege here to speak without being spoken to. You are a man, and men should be silent unless called on to entertain their masters. Start talking or, Goddesses forbid, shouting, and I'll fix the gag right back on you, twice as tight. Do you understand?"

Link ground his teeth into the cloth wedged between them. He, begrudgingly, gave his acquiescence.

Aveil nodded, reached around for the back of his head, and Link felt her slender fingers working at the gag's knot there. When it loosened, she reached for the knot between his lips and, slowly, worked it free.

"You-_mmf!_" Link began, but the woman's hand came down immediately over his mouth, clamping firmly and shutting him up.

"I told you not to talk," she warned. "I meant it. Do it again… and I might consider cutting out your tongue."

Her hand pulled free at once, almost daring him to test her patience, but Link only stared into her almond eyes and resolved to remain silent. That seemed to appease the woman, and her hands lifted for his cheeks again. Her fingers slid along his skin, over his ears, and back to run trails in his hair. The lines of the woman's face tightened, and her eyelids fell amorously to half mast as she leaned in closer and stared at his lips. Link tried pulling away, but her hands clamped on the back of his head and held him still as she pounced - her mouth covering his own, warm and moist and full, and she immediately sucked at his bottom lip and nuzzled her nose up against his cheek. Link writhed in place, but his manacled hands and fettered feet made sure his squirming didn't get him far. The woman kissed as if she were a predator and he was her prey, and she had to keep aggressively offensive to conquer him. With each jerk away from her, Aveil moved to counter and kept at his lips with her own.

When she finally pulled away to give them both a chance to catch their wind, she swiped at her lips and heaved heavy breaths, and her hands left the back of his head to run down her own bare arms and belly as she stared at him. "I've wanted a taste of you since we came across your handsome half-naked body lying in our desert, slave," she admitted, a hungry twinkle in her eyes. "You taste… sweet."

"I want a taste of his sweetness, Aveil," one of her guards said, pushing in to loom over the woman's shoulder and sweep her eyes across Link.

"Yes. Let _us_ have a taste, Aveil," said the other as she joined near, filling Link's vision entirely then with the three Gerudo women swarming around him in a tight circle.

"But I am a selfish woman, girls," Aveil told them without removing that penetrating stare of hers from Link's eyes. "I want this man-slave all to myself. I want him kept him in a little cage inside my tent. I want him to massage my back after a hard day's riding and wash the sand and dirt from my feet. I want him to feed me grapes and brush my hair and sing me songs when I desire them." Her hands reached forward and her slender fingers landed delicately on his bare chest, trailed down to trickle over his nipples, slid against the grooves of his muscled abdomen, and slipped into the waistband of his breeches. "And I want him and his manhood to satisfy my needs whenever they need satisfying." A bit deeper into his pants her hands went. "What say you to that, slave? Will you be my property?" Deeper. "Submit yourself to me?"

Link's skin began to run hot and itchy, his breath growing a bit shallow in his chest. Involuntarily, and as angry as it made him, he felt himself stiffen between his legs as her fingers grazed his inner thighs.

The other girls moved to his sides and then their hands were in his hair and their faces were pressing in closely to his own. He felt their warm breath on his ears, and their lips pecked every-so-slightly at his neck.

Before him, Aveil lowered herself to her knees and glanced mischievously to his eyes before returning her focus south and taking hold of his breeches at the waistband.

"Don't," Link muttered, though his throat had suddenly run as dry as the desert.

"Shhhh," Aveil hushed him and yanked his last bit of clothing down to his ankles in one fell sweep. By then, Link had grown hard enough to feel his cock swaying with the momentum of its own sudden freedom from his breeches. The wind was cool on it, but his flesh was heated with desire.

"Oh my," Aveil cooed, a flush of color coming to her bronze cheeks as she stared at his manhood.

The other Gerudo women leaned forward to survey him as well.

"He is like one of our horses outside in the stables," the girl on his right whispered excitedly.

"Yes," the girl on his left added. "This one will make a fine slave and a proper… satisfier."

They both giggled and snickered and went back to kissing at his neck and running their hands over his chest and stomach.

"What do you want me to do with this big thing down here, slave?" Aveil asked him, and when she talked, she moved her mouth just before the tip of his cock, so that with every word she spoke, a puff of warm air trickled against it.

Link grit his teeth and glowered down at the kneeling woman.

"You wouldn't think it, but us Gerudo women know plenty of ways to pleasure a man, slave," Aveil continued, her lips still sending her breath to play against his erection. "We can be good to our little man-slave… if he submits himself to us."

"Good to our slave," one of the girls echoed.

And the other added, "Good to him and his good to his _man_hood too."

They giggled.

Aveil leaned just a bit closer to his stiffness and ran her tongue across her bottom lip. "Beg me, slave," she commanded. "Submit to us Gerudo women and beg me to take your cock in my mouth. Isn't that what you want?"

"You do want it, don't you?"

"Want us to pleasure you?"

"Want us to _enslave _you?"

Aveil pursed her lips and lifted her hands to hover just around the shaft of his erection. They lingered their, fingers writhing, eager to take hold of him and have their way. "Well? Do you submit to us?"

Link closed his eyes. He could hear his heart trying to hammer out of his chest. Sweat dripped from the itchy leather that his skin had become. His breathing came in strange patterns. His body, unfortunately, belonged to the Gerudo then… but his mind was still his own. He shook his head. "No. I don't submit. And I… I don't want this. _Any _of this." He opened his eyes and stared down into Aveil's. "I _want_… to go free."

All at once, Aveil's entire facade melted away, and the only thing left staring up at Link on her knees before him was a furious, indignant, woman who'd been denied her victory.

"I told you, fool-of-a-girl," a husky voice came from the opposite end of the room.

Link lifted his head to see the Gerudo women's leader, Jolene, leaned against the window ledge with her arms folded nonchalantly across her chest. He hadn't even noticed her enter the room.

"_Jo_!" Aveil wailed. "I needed just a few more minutes with the prisoner and I could have-"

"Oh, hold your tongue, girl, and save us both the time," Jo interjected with a roll of her eyes. "I told you this one wouldn't be broken so easily. It doesn't matter if I give you the rest of the _night _to try and pry a submission out of him, you won't get it." The Gerudo leader's eyes narrowed maliciously on Aveil's. "Maybe you're just not pretty enough for him, sweetheart."

Aveil's face reddened with what might have been anger or chagrin; Link could not tell. She barred her teeth and clambered up off her knees to spin on Jolene, but when she looked ready to shout her protest, the Gerudo leader lifted a hand to halt her.

"Enough, Aveil. I gave you your chance. Now go back to camp and cool yourself down before I lock _you _up in chains for the night, too."

Aveil pouted. "But's it's not fair to-"

"_Aveil_!" Jolene snapped, and her strict tone shut the other woman up fast.

Aveil looked briefly back at Link, pouting like a spoiled child who was being sent to their room, and then stormed across the cell, passing Jolene without so much as a glance, and disappeared into the hall outside.

"Are you other two waiting for a scolding as well, or can you figure out what to do without it?" Jo questioned of the remained Gerudo girls.

They were quick to drop their eyes to their feet and shuffle out of the room after Aveil, muttering apologies to Jolene as they passed her.

When they were alone, Jo fixed her eyes on Link and shook her head in what might have been amusement. "I knew you wouldn't fall for that little game of theirs. I knew it, and yet I let them take their shot." She lifted from the window's ledge and sauntered across the cell with her arms folded over her chest and her ponytail bobbing along behind her head. "Do you know why, prisoner?"

Link was still settling himself, returning his breathing to normal, stilling his pounding heart. He shook his head.

"I let them try to satiate them for a little while," Jolene explained, coming to a slow halt in front of Link's locked-up position. "You see, my girls and I are a subversive and unruly bunch, prisoner. We broke off from our main pack a few months ago and came out here," she lifted her hands to the walls and looked back towards the window peeking out into the desert night, "to live free and on our own. I led them girls from our old camp, and I led them _well_. It's why they listen to me and why they respect me." She stepped closer and hooked her index finger up under Link's chin to hold the line of his eyes with her own. "But listen to me now, prisoner, I can only wrangle the obedience from them for short periods of time. They'll stay away from you because I tell them to… for now. But their hunger for you and… for _this_," she reached down for his cock, held it a moment, and then casually lifted his breeches and tucked it back inside them, "that hunger of theirs can't be so easily tamed. They want you. And they'll have you before long."

Link swallowed into his dry throat. "Then let me go."

Jolene smiled patronizingly. "The only way you're leaving this camp, prisoner, is by defeating me in combat. And you'll get your chance at _that_, rest assured. Tomorrow at high noon. But listen to my words… if you refuse to submit again, you'll only be dragged back in here and locked up nice and tight and helpless. My girls… they might stay away for a little while. But should this drag on another night after that? Or a night after _that_?" She shook her head. "They're going to take you, prisoner… _all _of you. Do you understand me?"

Link stared.

Jolene held his stare. "If you submit to me tomorrow in front of all my girls… I will promise you decent treatment as my slave. You'll rub my back and feet when I desire it and you'll tend to my horse and you'll make my dinners. On the occasion, I might require you to ride out with me and hunt. Doesn't sound so bad, does it? But if you_ don__'__t_ submit yourself to me?" She gestured back over her shoulder. "My girls are going to get awfully restless, and I won't be able to offer my… _protection_. Do you understand?"

"If I defeat you tomorrow, you'll really let me go?" Link asked.

Jolene squinted. "You won't defeat me, prisoner. Don't make me send you unconscious again. Submit…. submit, and this will work out for you better than any other way it possibly could. _Don__'__t_… and the vultures will descend upon you before long."

The two stared quietly into each other's eyes. A cool breeze trickled through the far wall's opening.

"We'll see what happens tomorrow, I suppose," Link told her.

Jolene nodded. "Suppose we will."

She retied the gag into his mouth and checked his chains before leaving him. At the cell door, she pulled a cup of water from an alcove and doused the torch flames, sending the room into darkness. When the bars of his prison slammed shut, Link's gaze drifted out into the canvas of indigo sky above the rolling shadowed hills that was the desert at night. He watched the stars awhile, wondering when he'd ride free beneath them again atop Epona.

Before long, his chin lowered to his chest, and he slept.

He dreamed of a pack of vultures with colorful silk veils around their beaks, circling him, watching… and waiting.


	3. Chapter 3

They came for him at dawn. The barred door of his cell threw back on its rusted hinges and clattered against the stone wall as the entranceway filled with four Gerudo woman: none of which Link had come across before. They were each garbed similarly in a fall of dark, crimson, silks and knee-high boots, and they housed matching steely expressions in their hawkish eyes as they marched across the room to encircle him. Link's eyes drifted from woman to woman, but these four were well-disciplined, and did not seem to carry the same amorous hunger for him that he'd found in so many of the other Gerudo. They only quietly and diligently went about their work, removing the shackles from his hands and feet, holding him firmly between the four of them long enough to rebind his wrists behind his back with a length of rope, and then marching him back across the room at once without a word spoken to exit the cell.

Link went without protest. It felt good to have his arms down against his sides again. They'd kept them strung up above his head over night, and the sensation of his blood finally filling his hands and forearms again was not an unpleasant one. He worked his fingers in and out of fists, feeling the strength slowing returning to them as the girls marched him down a long and narrow corridor, around a twist of serpentine stairs that carried them to a lower floor, and beneath an arched passageway. Link's bare feet moved off of cool stone and onto blistering hot sand, and the Sun's full might came beating down upon his chest and shoulders and arms a moment later, for they had moved him outside once again.

The desert's morning air was dry but crisp, and Link closed his eyes and welcomed it as a soft breeze carried down into the valley from the western dunes. The women's hands came tighter of his arms then, and they pressed in a bit closer to his sides, guarding him more stringently now that the open sky was overhead and the distant call of freedom that was the horizon was the only thing wrapping around him instead of the oppressive stone walls of his cell. Link glanced to his two guards, but they only jerked at his arms and got him moving forward again.

Their procession weaved in and out of tents and pavilions, briskly pacing forward to the center of the village. Link kept a vigilant eye on the shadowed alcoves beneath canopy and stone that fell ubiquitously around them, but found none of the baleful or curious eyes he'd been expecting watching back. In fact, the deeper they travelled towards the big sand clearing before the village's central fountain, it seemed more and more as if the whole village had been up and abandoned, and he and his four guards were the only ones left behind. As they cornered the staked ties of a large drab pavilion, however, the frenetic din of shouts and laughs and clapping began swelling up from the village silence, and shortly after, they treaded along a cobblestone walkway that dipped beneath a trio of arching stones and spilled them out to the combat pit, where the entire village had gathered.

The Gerudo women were bunched up tight along the pit's perimeter, shoulder-to-shoulder, and they were hooting and hollering and shaking fists up over their auburn heads of hair as they watched something intently within the circle between them. When Link's guards led him to the back of a line of ponytailed women, he craned his neck to peer over their shoulders and get a glimpse himself.

Inside, two women were wrestling one another atop the desert carpet of golden sands. One was more muscled than most of the other Gerudo, and wore indigo trousers and a matching blouse. She—despite her clear physical superiority to her opponent—was on her back, having her face filled with handfuls of sand by the other Gerudo, who Link recognized immediately. The thin and wiry woman mounted atop her fallen opponent was Kotake. Link knew at once when he saw a flash of her wild, bright-green, eyes beneath the loose fall of her stringy hair that walked the thin line between red and orange, and remembered her inane question from the previous day: '_Do you like to be teased and tortured, mystery man?__'__. _Link's fists curled a bit tighter at the small of his back upon remembrance of her menacing voice speaking into his mind.

The woman fought as wildly as her eyes shone, scrambling about on her hands and knees in the sand every time her opponent attempted to utilize her superior strength advantage. Kotake backstepped a swing, ducked another, and flashed a broad, toothy, grin as she leaped over her foe's attempt to wrap up her legs and worked her way behind the indigo woman's stout figure. She screeched through clenched teeth like some primitive beast and leaped for the woman's turned back. When she got hold of it, Kotake wrapped her wiry arms and legs around the woman's torso and squeezed her tight back against her own body. The indigo woman winced and made to grab handfuls of her hair. Kotake wrenched her head back to avoid it, but the woman's weight went with her, and the two rolled back into the sand, landed atop one another, and each quickly scrambled to regain superior position over the other.

It was Kotake who came up with it, taking a fistful of her opponent's hair and dragging her head down to the ground before saddling up atop her again and forcing her face into the sand. The indigo woman's arms flailed out to her sides and her legs kicked, but the struggling only seemed to awaken some violent delight in Kotake as her vibrant green eyes blossomed to saucers and she threw her head back to howl shrill laughter into the pale morning sky. The indigo woman, perhaps running out of breath with her nose and mouth filling with sand, opened her fist to a slap and began beating it against the ground in submission.

Kotake giggled, clapped, and leaped off her fallen opponent to raise her arms triumphantly to the crowd. A smattering of mixed cheers and groans ran through the Gerudo, and Link saw a great number of transactions start up at once; little ruby jewels and silver necklaces and skins of wine being passed from (he presumed) those who had placed their bets on the indigo woman to those who'd placed them on Kotake. Kotake's grin ran from pointed ear to pointed ear as she skipped around the pit's perimeter, sticking her tongue out at the losers and winking at the winners. When her eyes found Link, though, she halted in place immediately.

"_Slave_!" She cheered, and sent every pair of Gerudo eyes his way. "I've missed you! And I've heard so much about you and your… _big _secret." Her gaze lowered to his breeches and she bit at her bottom lip.

The Gerudo women's previous woes of defeat or triumphs of victory were forgotten at once, and every one of them came crowding in around him, whispering and tittering with whoever was beside them as they pointed and surveyed him up and down. A few drew too close, one even daring so much as to reach for the drawstring of his breeches' waistband, but his crimson guards were quick to keep the wandering women at bay, despite their groans and reproachful looks. He spotted Aveil near the back of the crowd, her arms folded defiantly across her chest, her lips still pouting in that spoiled-child expression she'd been wearing when he'd seen her last: being ordered from his dungeon cell the night before.

Kotake came shouldering through the girls at the front of the line and fixed her wild eyes on Link before jabbing a finger in his direction. "_You__'__ve _got something to show us girls, slave, and we want to _see _it_!_"

"Keep your distance, Crazy-Kotake," one of his crimson guards muttered balefully, shifting to her front foot in the sand to better shield him from the grinning hyena-of-a-woman staring at him. "_This_ prize is not yours. He belongs to Jo until he submits."

"_He _might belong to Jolene and her little code of honor," Kotake countered, planting her fists on her hips at either side of the toned bare belly below her silks. "But that mighty serpent we've heard so much about that lurks below his breeches should be _ours_!" Her grin widened as she swept her eyes across the crowd. "Right, girls!?"

Some laughed, some agreed, and some… some only bit at their lips and stared at Link as if he were nothing more than a meal waiting to be devoured.

Kotake threw her head back in laughter and tried slipping through the guards to reach for Link's waist, but the crimson twins shouldered together and blocked her grasping hand's path. Kotake recoiled and fixed them with a frown. "He's _our _slave!" She whined. "And we want those cute little breeches of his _off_!"

A guard began: "Jo says-"

Kotake rolled her eyes and interjected. "Oh, give it a rest, ladies! 'Jo says' this, and 'Jo says' that. Don't you girls every think for yours_elves_?"

"Jo _also _says you need remember your place, Kotake," a voice came from the rear of the crowd, and a channel opened at once to cut a path for their leader, Jolene, to come sauntering up to the group gathered at the combat pit's outer rim.

Kotake's defiant demeanor melted away at once, and even _she _seemed to shrink away and grow timid as Jolene stepped before her and fixed her with her dark eyes. Kotake tried slipping back into the crowd, but Jo snatched her by the wrist and kept her in place.

"Wild child," Jo began, sweeping a scrutinizing look over the girl. "As wild as one of our horses, I'd say. Tell me, Kotake, do you need to be saddled, bridled, and locked in a stable like the rest of our wild beasts? Hm?"

"N-No…" Kotake muttered, staring down at the sand as if it had suddenly become the most interesting thing in Hyrule.

"No? Hm?" Jo cupped her chin and lifted the younger Gerudo's eyeline to her own. "Are you going to behave then?"

Kotake swallowed, stared, nodded.

Jolene seemed satisfied enough with the silent response. "Good girl. Now go back to your tent. You're not allowed to watch the sparring match this morning. A wild thing like you doesn't need anymore excitement in her life."

Kotake's face scrunched up indignantly. "But that's not _fair, _Jo! I-"

"Fair?" Jolene cut her off, leaning a bit closer to loom over the shorter woman and cock her head on its side.

The courage ran from the other Gerudo's visage, and she simply pressed her lips together and lowered her eyes. "Yes, Jolene. I'll got back to my tent."

"Go then, and stop wasting my time."

Jo released her, and Kotake begrudgingly shouldered past the crimson guard, shooting them vengeful eyes and Link himself a brief, but menacing, look as well before disappearing into the crowd. When she'd gone, Jolene had the clearing to herself, and she used the opportunity to look over the crowd shaking her head.

"You were well-behaved girls once, ladies," she told them in her loud and commanding voice. "And now I got fetch you one, little, man and you've all turned bestial. And what was this I heard about a 'mighty serpent' in his breeches?" She lifted a brow and looked for reply, but none in the crowd dared give it. She chortled. "Cowards. Now… I wonder who could've started such a dirty, dirty, rumor like that one."

Past the first few lines of the Gerudo crowd, Link could see the apprehension tightening the lines of Aveil's face. The woman shrunk away and began moving for the back of the group, but Jolene spun on her at once and angled a long, slender, finger her way.

"Aveil! Where do you think _you__'__re _going?"

Aveil froze, swallowed, and eyed the other girls around her as if searching for aid. None came, however, and she was left in a slightly smaller clearing as Jo neared and the rest gave them a wide berth.

Jo sauntered up to her, slipped around her shoulder, and when Aveil made to turn and follow, grasped her by the upper arm and kept her facing forward. Aveil's discomfort was clear enough on her face as she shifted her feet around in the sand and chewed on her bottom lip. Over her shoulder, Jolene's muscled arms came draping around her torso and pulled the woman tight against her.

"Kotake is as wild as a horse," Jo said, pressing her lips close to the other woman's pointed ear; her breath stirring the big golden hoop-earring that dangled there. "And _you_… you, Aveil, are nothing but a little whore, aren't you?"

Aveil's mouth fell agape and her copper cheeks reddened with chagrin, but she spoke no protest as Jolene's hands slipped down to run fingers across her belly, and just like that Link believed he understood why the Gerudo leader didn't seem to care for him, nor house the same hunger for his body as the rest: he didn't think Jolene would take a liking to _any_ man, for the tall women seemed to have other… preferences.

"Skinny little whore, that's what you are, Aveil," Jo told her. Her hands lifted to the woman's silk blouse and played at the dangling strings there keeping it in place. "You all want to see our new prisoner's manhood, is that it?"

A chorus of muttering moved through the crowd, but no one solitary reply could be ascertained from within.

"That's what you want, girls, don't play the fool with me," Jolene told them. "But I ask you: wouldn't it be unfair to make our prisoner display himself without proper… _excitement _to prepare for such a showing?" Jolene pinched at Aveil's blouse strings and gently tugged. The woman's breasts came a bit fuller against the silk that covered them, but Jo did not remove the top completely.

"Jo, please," Aveil whispered. It looked to be requiring quite a bit of effort for her to keep her hands down at her sides as the Gerudo leader toyed with her.

"Please?" Jo echoed cruelly and tugged at the strings a bit more. The bands of azure silk reaching up around Aveil's neck came loose, and had Jo not wrapped an arm around her chest at that exact moment, would have fell away completely and exposed her bare breasts to the entire camp. "Please, _what_, Aveil? Isn't this what you want? To excite the prisoner? To get his blood all hot and itchy so that he comes and scratches your _own _dirty little itch?"

Aveil squirmed a bit, but again remained silent. Jolene's cruel smirk widened as she nuzzled at the woman's neck.

A thought came upon Link. He shifted his gaze from the strange scene before him to the crimson guards at his flanks. They were watching Jo and Aveil intently, as was most of the camp. Link look further beyond them, to the thinned-out section of crowd just beyond the guards and a few stray women, to the rows of tents and pavilions and stone structures sprawling out over the village that, if he were to reach them, could be lost within their labyrinthine channels in but a few moments. He twisted his bound hands back and forth a few times behind his back, testing his binds, wondering how he might loose them if he _were _to elude the Gerudo crowd. His teeth sunk into the knot of his gag almost involuntarily. The odds were so low… but the drive to be free and to at least _attempt _an escape was so high… Could he make it to Epona, perhaps? Would she be able to bite his ropes and free him? And what if he were caught? What would be the consequences?

Questions circled and cycled through his mind, but his window of opportunity was rapidly closing, and the time to think was over: the time to _act _had come. He glanced once more back at Jolene and Aveil—the former now running her long hands up the latter's increasingly uncomfortable face—and made his decision.

He threw his weight sideways. The guard at his shoulder was took unawares by the blow, and went fumbling back over her own two feet to plop onto her ass in the sands. Link was already turned and making his move by then, but he felt the other guard's hand just brush against his bare arm in attempt to recapture him as he pushed off his heel and went barreling into the crowd. A few Gerudo women's mouth's fell open in his path, a few more went wide-eyed and threw their arms up defensively, and a small number of them even moved to close off the lanes and trap him, but Link was moving fast then, and there weren't enough to keep him contained. He shouldered through the frail blockade of the Gerudo's interlaced arms and breached the outer rim of the crowd. There was shouting and hollering swelling up from his rear then, but Link had no intentions of sticking around to see whom was doing all the protesting: he dug his heels into the sand and cut a hard line for the tents.

The din of shouting followed tightly behind him as he slid to a knee rounding the corner of the first tent in a long row. He made himself stand, found his balance, and sprinted halfway down the channel of sand before cutting hard to his right and slipping between another two. He moved into an adjacent row, cornered it, dashed down a few tents, sidled over into another row, did it all again. He could hear the women coming, some grunting and growling like ferocious beasts, some cheering as if they were enjoying the hunt, and some calling out orders to others to fan the perimeter, spread out, recapture the 'slave'. Link hadn't eaten in over a day and his legs were a bit stiff from misuse, but his adrenaline was pumping and his heart was racing, and there was no way he was going to slow down and allow himself to fall back into the Gerudo's hands.

He pushed on, digging his bare feet into the sand harder and harder as he went, wishing he had the use of his arms to balance his weight. He found a low-hanging barracks across a lane of tents built up of old chipped bricks and drab canvas, and shuffled around the side of it as soon as he'd closed the gap. He shuffled back between the rear of the building and the shoulder-high wall that ran the village's perimeter, and then—and only then—allowed himself a brief respite to catch his wind and collect himself.

As he heaved and panted and took in what little of the surroundings he could wedged between the barracks and the wall, he could hear voices coming and going past his position, just beyond the edge of the building. He jerked at his bound wrists and tried rubbing them against a ridge of jagged rock lining the stone at his side, but couldn't get a proper angle for the dull thing to start fraying the ropes proper. At his feet, a sand scarab came crawling out from a web of cracks at the walls base, and Link kicked it aside when it neared. He lifted his eyes to the pale stretch of cloudless sky watching over the village and focused his thoughts. Where could he go? How could he free himself?

It was those thoughts he was ruminating on when a stir of movement in his periphery snapped his head to the narrow crevice at the end of the barracks-wall wedge he was hiding in. There, the brutish woman in indigo silks he'd seen wrestling earlier filled the gap and lowered her head to fix her eyes greedily on him. Her hands reached before her, her thick fingers wiggled, she stepped forward.

Link spun around and made for the opposite side of the barracks. He'd gotten four steps before he felt the woman's hands scraping down his bare back and looking to wrangle up his bound wrists. Link ground his teeth against his gag and yanked away, and behind him, the woman roared and yelped. When he reached the end of the wall, he turned back only long enough to see her splayed out on her belly, glaring up at him furiously.

"_Here!_" She bellowed into her indigo mask. "_The prisoner is here! HERE!_"

Thankfully, Link wouldn't be 'there' for long. He ran.

Back into the village he went, just in time to see a trio of women sprinting down the near lane of tents for his position. He cut hard back towards the wall and darted alongside it, hoping they hadn't seen which way he went. He followed the wall down, passing a myriad of carpets and tents and structures, until he found the thing's corner, where a large pavilion had been erected, and sat looming over the rest of the village. He considered it only long enough to hear the shrill wailing of one of his pursuers closing in on him before he ducked below the front flaps of the thing.

Inside, the atmosphere was shadowed and cool, and his feet thanked him at once to be free from the hot sands outside. Without torch or window, however, it was also dark, and Link's eyes had not yet adjusted from the harsh illumination of the desert sun. He stumbled blindly a few steps forward and found carpeting underfoot. A few more steps and he could see he was in some sort of meeting hall (emptied, thankfully) with long benches stretching out over a plush carpet and apexing at a wooden podium on a dais. He hurried down the middle of the benches and reached the podium just as a chorus of angry voices came grunting and growling outside the pavilion's entrance. Link made for the very rear of the interior, dropped to lay on his back atop the ground, and rolled out to slip beneath the crevice where the pavilion's canvas met the sand.

Back outside he came rolling, clambering arduously up to his feet immediately. He swept his eyes across the surroundings, looking to plot his next route of escape, when he found what he _should _have been looking for the whole time: the stables. He hurried to them at once, casting a flick of his eyes warily around for any predatory Gerudo, but thankfully found none.

Epona wasn't hard to spot. She was bigger than the mares and coursers the Gerudo women kept by a good foot or so, and her pretty mane of stark white hair cut through even the darkest shadows of the stables overhang. Link went to her, and Epona's big eyes found him at once and sent the horse whinnying and clopping her hooves down to beat at the stone floor of her prison. And it _was _a prison, Link saw. The stable looked custom built, with a large, barred, door bolted shut before it; a black circle peeking out of the thing, waiting for a key to release it. He grunted and stomped his own foot to join in with Epona's frustration. There was nothing he could do without the key.

He lifted his eyes to her own and held them. Epona whinnied again and shook out her mane, but Link couldn't even offer so much as a comforting or reassuring word with the gag still tightly wedged in his mouth. He did what he had to: pried his gaze from her and sent it out to search for some other plan elsewhere.

From the direction of the pavilion, the shouting was nearing. Link shied away from it and made to run the opposite direction, but had only gotten two steps before hearing _more _shouting closing in from that way too. He bit his gag in frustration at his poor luck and looked for another route.

It was then that he saw her. Just down the nearest row of tents, peeking out from one of the smaller ones with her hand lifted and gesturing him near; and her bight green eyes fixed on him and making her look just as wild and mad as ever.

"_Come slave!_" Kotake whisper-shouted. "_Come to me! Hurry!_"

Link weighed his options, but it wasn't long before the voices on either side came pressing down just around the corners of the pavilion and the wall. With little other choice, he went.

Kotake's grin widened as he approached, and when Link was in grabbing range, she did just that. Her hands darted forward and wrapped his arms, yanking him under the flaps of her tent just as Link heard the shouting close on the stables position behind him.

He landed on his side atop a carpet within the dimness of the tent. At either end, the slits from the flaps allowed thin trails of sunlight inside, but little else. Link worked himself up onto one knee and made to stand, but Kotake's hand took him by the shoulder and forced him down to the carpet again.

"_Grmf!_" Link grunted as she held him in place.

"Shhh, slave," Kotake hushed him with a finger stretched before her thin lips. "They'll _hear _you. I have to keep you safe. Keep you… hidden!"

"_Mmmph!_" Link mumbled, trying to twist around and show her his bound hands. If she wanted to 'help', that was the one thing she could do to accomplish it.

"What? Untie you?"

"_Mmm._" Link nodded vehemently.

Kotake chewed her lip and twirled a strand of her stringy orange hair around her finger. "Hmm… nope." And with that declaration made, she fished out a thin white blanket from a trunk beside her cot and tossed it over him. Link only had enough time to shout a few muffled protests, though, before he felt her tucking the blanket all around him, twisting him side to side to wrap him up entirely, and before long, he was practically cocooned in the thing. Kotake tightened him in it somehow even further, constricting his arms down to his sides and his legs and feet tightly together. Link grunted against his gag and writhed about, but he could not budge an inch.

Then he heard the woman's voice come softly against his ear as her hands stilled him. "Quiet now, my slave. There are mean, mean, girls looking for you out there. You'll be better off here, stashed beneath my cot until they think you've escaped."

"_Mmmmmm!_" Link could only answer in the darkness of his cocoon.

"And when they _do _think you've run off…" Kotake continued, and Link could practically hear the smile on her face. "Then you and I will have some _fun, _slave!"

She laughed her mad laugh and Link felt her lips press to his cocooned brow and kiss before she reminded him once more of the dangers of being caught, and then he heard her hurry out of the tent, presumably to help 'look for him' with the others.

Link squirmed a bit in the blanket and considered trying to make some noise, but as he thought on it, he realized there was no one he could bring to his aid anyway, and so resolved to lie still, collect his thoughts, and figure a way out of this mess he'd found himself in. And after all, escaping _one _Gerudo had to be easier than escaping a whole village…

…he hoped.


	4. Chapter 4

Link had lost track of time. It was an easy thing to do considering he'd been tightly wrapped from head-to-toe in a blanket and stashed away in a tent beneath a cot, but the disorientation of not knowing if it were midday or dusk still perturbed him. He squirmed from time to time, testing the cocoon of a blanket Kotake had left him in, but her wrapping had been solid, and he believed she must have further secured him with ties at his ankles and shoulders, for he could not find an edge to begin working himself free from at all. Beyond the thin layer of blanket around his ears, he could hear the other Gerudo moving outside Kotake's tent occasionally. The brief sound of their voices in passing carried a tense tone that made it seem like the whole camp was on edge, and though he couldn't say for sure, Link figured Jolene was the one responsible for that. She did not seem like the kind of woman to take an 'escapee' lightly, and would almost certainly stop at nothing until he'd been recaptured.

_If only she knew I__'__ve already _been _recaptured, _Link mused, writhing against his cocoon. _And by one of her own girls at that._

It was a long while in that sweaty blanket before his kidnapper's voice returned to him. "_Slave,_" Kotake whispered near to his head, and Link felt her hands fall atop the curve of his hip and shoulder to tug him forward. "_I think it__'__s safe now, slave. I__'__m going to unwrap you. You behave yourself, though. There is danger all around us.__"_ She worked him forward again, rolling him slowly atop the sands and blanket, and Link could only assume she was removing him from beneath her cot. After a few more rolls, he felt fingers prying their way inside his cocoon, and in another moment - he was freed.

Well, _partially_ freed. The blanket fell away and Link was left sitting on the floor of Kotake's tent, his hands still bound tightly behind his back with ropes, his mouth still gagged with a knotted bandana, but at least he was out of the hot wrappings of the blanket. He surveyed his surrounding immediately. Beyond the flaps at either end of the tent, he could see the sun was nearly fallen below the dunes again, and the soft purple haze of twilight had settled down over the desert village, leaking pastel streaks of fuchsia through the narrow slits between the flaps. It illuminated Kotake's sparse furnishings: a cot and the trunk at its foot atop a plush carpet with frilled trim, and a solitary table with an unlit candle resting atop it near the cot's head.

Link turned his gaze on Kotake herself kneeling beside him, and found (with a stirring of unease) the girl smiling at him; her vibrant green eyes twinkling with mad delight. Her hair was let down, falling in wavy, orange-red, strands to drape her bare shoulders. She was garbed in amber silks that hugged tightly at her chest and puffy white trousers that ended just below her knees, where her high, pointed-toed, boots took over. Her hands were clasped together eagerly before her; her top teeth nibbled at her bottom lip.

Link stared at her a moment, unsure of what to do. He twisted at the ropes locked around his wrists and wished she'd just take the annoying things off of him already. He had been kept in bondage by the Gerudo since they'd first come upon him, and was growing increasingly tired of it.

"Jo's very angry with you, my slave," Kotake finally spoke into the quietness of the tent. "She doesn't like losing, and by slipping away from her so easily today, you _won_. You defeated her."

Link chewed his gag. It certainly didn't _taste _like victory.

"Though… without _me_ you probably would have been captured again pretty quickly, huh?" Kotake asked with a mischievous smirk tugging at the corner of her thin lips. "I guess that makes me your savior." The smirk widened. "Oh, and I brought you something, my slave. Look here. For you."

From beside her bent knees folded atop the carpet, the girl lifted a silver platter and swung it out between them. Rolling around on the polished surface of its face was the most delicious, juicy-looking, fruit Link had ever seen: apples and pears and plums and cherries.

"_Mmm,_" he involuntarily mumbled against his gag upon eyeing the things. He had not eaten in over a day's time, and the sight of a meal so near to him—near enough to smellthe fruit's sweetness wafting on the gentle current breezing through the tent—had awoken every last bit of his hunger in one fell sweep. His eyes moved from the fruit to Kotake's and silently pleaded.

His expression prompted a look of pure delight onto the Gerudo girl's face as she stared in her wild way back at him. "You're hungry, slave."

It wasn't really a question, but he nodded all the same.

"You… desire this?" She lifted the tray higher to force it into his line of sight.

His stomach growled. He nodded again, this time more ardently to emphasize his hunger.

Kotake lifted her chin and poked at his chest. "And what would you _do_ to satisfy that desire, my slave, hmm?"

_A game, _Link realized, thinking himself a fool for ever believing it was anything else in the first place. His urge to fill his belly had nulled his mind. Of _course _it was a game. The girl was only wielding her power over him for her own delight. He sighed and pried his eyes from the fruit.

"Oh, no, my slave! Don't be sad!" Kotake cooed, crawling on her knees to press herself closer to him. "I won't torture you much longer! I only want to ensure that when I remove that muzzle from your mouth, I have your obedience, and you won't shout and get us _both _in trouble."

Link returned his eyes to hers, searching the wild things for some trace of sincerity. She was a hard one to read, but with little options left to him, he simply conceded to her request and obediently nodded his head again.

"You'll keep nice and quiet for me, my slave?" She crawled a bit closer and looked him over. "Well… I suppose I'll just have to trust you then, won't I? Come. Let me put you on the cot."

With that, Kotake lifted to her feet and hooked her hands under Link's arms without waiting for his consent. She pulled, and Link had no choice but to rise on shaky legs and, briefly, stand beside her before her hands were on his shoulders and shoving him back down, this time to land with a soft thud against the springy mattress of her cot. Kotake worked her hands over his sides to situate him laying flat on his back before moving to the foot of the bed and pulling two lengths of silk from the trunk there. When she moved to bind one of Link's ankles with the silk, he pulled his leg away and grunted his protest.

"Only a precaution, slave," Kotake explained, firmly taking him by the ankle again and forcing his foot down to the corner of the bed before looping it in silks and tethering it to the cot's underside. "I can't have you getting any ideas about running off on me now, can I?" She secured one foot, moved to the other, did the same. When it was done, Link's legs were spread and stretched to the ends of the bed with little to no slack to maneuver them.

Kotake looked him over and rubbed her fingers together before a little excited squeal escaped her throat. "Never thought I'd have a big, strong, handsome man like you all tied up in my tent like this, my slave." She stared at his body a moment longer before taking the candle by its holder, slipping outside, and returning a moment later with the thing's wick aflame. She carried it carefully forth to set back on the table, the flames sending the shadow of her tangle of hair dancing wildly on the tent behind her. Then she hastily slipped back to the side of the bed and perched herself on its edge to loom over him.

Link squirmed a bit uncomfortably beneath her penetrating stare, but what else could he do? He was too tightly bound up then to hide from the piercing green daggers of her eyes.

"I'm going to take your gag off now," Kotake explained. "You remember though, slave, if we were to be caught in here, _this_," she lifted the platter of fruit, "would go away without one tasty bite landing in your cute little belly." Her eyes flicked to his stomach and her hand reached out to quickly brush her fingertips along it. Link squirmed and Kotake giggled, but left it alone to reach for his head instead.

She untied his gag. When her fingers worked the big knot out from between his teeth, he stretched his jaw about, thankful for the freedom to do so, and licked at his lips. "Water?" He asked.

"Of course." She reached for a canteen beside the cot and brought it up between them to twist the cap off. When it was done, she leaned in over him, the springs of the mattress groaning in protest beneath her weight, and laid the steel rim of the nozzle on his bottom lip. Link lifted his head as best he could and Kotake poured the drink into his waiting mouth.

He nearly choked when the wine came bitter and dry against his tongue, but Kotake held his chin and kept pouring, and Link had no choice but to drink. When she finally halted her assault on his mouth, he'd been forced to drink down nearly half the canteen, and had scarlet trails of fine wine dribbling down over his chin and neck and collarbone.

He caught his breath and glared up at her. "That's not _water_!"

"Shhhh," she hushed him with a finger to her lips. "I could not fetch you water, my slave. I did the best I could." She moved the finger from her lips to her cheek and twirled a rogue strand of hair there. "Did you like it?"

"It's _wine_."

"I know. Did you like it?"

Link held the girl's waiting eyes, doing his best to contain his anger. "What are you going to do with me?"

She giggled. "Feed you, of course. Here." She plucked the big, juicy, apple from the tray and dangled it before his lips. "Open wide now, slave."

"Link."

She raised a brow. "Hm?"

"My name. It's Link. I don't particularly care for being called 'slave' by everyone."

"_Link_?" She echoed, a smile spreading across her face. "What a pretty name. Mine is Kotake."

"Untie me, Kotake," he told her at once. "Untie my hands. Please."

"I'm not going to untie you, slave, er, uh, _Link_. I won't. You can't be trusted, and I want to have some fun with you anyway."

"This is a crime against Hylian law," he explained. "You've kidnapped me and now you're holding me against my-"

Kotake's giggling cut him short. "Oh, poor Link! Silly thing. You're in the desert now, handsome, and the Gerudo don't _live _by Hylian rules, we live by _Gerudo _rules."

Link narrowed his eyes on hers. "And what are those?"

Kotake's brow scrunched up pensively a moment before she offered a nonchalant shrug of her shoulders. "I'm not really sure. _I _don't really follow those either." She laughed.

"Listen, you- _armph!_" His voice was muffled as Kotake shoved the apple between his teeth. He was angry only a moment till the freshness of its skin pressed against his tongue, and the sweet juice of its core trickled free as his teeth sunk deeper in. He bit, the tent filling with a satisfying _crunch_, and the first swallow of the fruit was about the best thing he'd ever had. He wasted no time in leaning in for another bite.

"Is it good?" The girl asked, watching him devour the apple with a satisfied little grin.

Link was too busy eating to speak. He flicked his eyes to hers, nodded, and went back to the apple immediately.

Kotake quietly watched him eat for awhile, and when the fruit had been stripped to its core, she took the pit away and tossed it to the plate before lifting the canteen at her feet again and brining it to his lips.

"To wash your food down with," she explained.

"No," Link managed to protest before she shoved the nozzle between his lips anyway and tipped the wine back down his throat. It was dry and bitter, but somehow delicious all the same, and as he was forced to drink, his throat and chest and belly were filled with the a warm tingling. That time, Kotake didn't pull the canteen away until he'd emptied the thing entirely.

"See how good I treat my slave, Link?" She asked. "See how nice I can be?"

He closed his eyes and opened them again, and the interior of the tent wobbled a bit. He had to squint to focus his vision on the Gerudo girl hovering over him to ask her again, "Will you untie me now?"

"No," she answered plainly enough, and instead of untying him, set the fruit platter and empty canteen aside to pull the boots off her feet one by one. When she finished, she crawled barefoot onto the cot herself and swung one knee over Link's hips to lower herself atop his waist, straddling him like a horse.

"What are you doing?" He asked, but the room wobbled again a bit before he finished (the wine's work, undoubtedly) and had to close his eyes to still it.

"Just sitting here," Kotake answered. She shifted her weight a bit, and Link felt her bottom slide against his crotch. "Why, Mr. Link? What would you _like _me to be doing?"

He knew what she wanted to hear. He didn't give it to her. "What I _want _you to be doing…" He opened his eyes. "Is untying my hands and feet."

The Gerudo girl rolled her eyes. "Goddesses, you are a stubborn one, slave. If you ask me to untie you again…" She pursed her lips and glanced around the tent. "Ah! I'll take that pear and shove it so deep in your pretty mouth you won't be able to talk anymore. Is that what you want, Link? For me to shut you up with that pear? Hmm?"

"No."

"Good. Then no more talk about being untied. Relax yourself. And be _quiet_." Her hands fell down between her straddling thighs and landed softly atop his stomach. She spread her fingers wide as she ran them up along his sides to squeeze and pinch and rub at the flesh of his chest and arms. "Such soft and fair skin you have, Link," she said; her voice quieting; her tone growing amorous. "Muscles, too." She groped for his biceps and shoulders, moved up to his neck and chin. She leaned close.

"What are you doing…?" He asked.

"Shhhh," she whispered, laying a finger gently over his lips. Her rear shifted again, and Link felt himself stiffen when her ass cheeks pressed against his crotch. She began undulating her hips back and forth, slowly, and with each movement, her ass rubbed against his cock, working it stiffer and stiffer, despite Link's frustration.

"Stop," he told her, closing his eyes and feeling the wine send the cot spinning a bit below them.

"Stop what?" She asked. "I'm just sitting here." Her ass cheeks came down on either side of his erection, wedging the swollen mound growing from his breeches between them. Kotake's brow lifted. "Ooo! So you _are _a man after all, Mr. Link. Your excitement feels… _large_." She giggled.

"I don't want this," he protested.

"You might not," she admitted, "but what's between your legs certainly does."

"Let me go."

Kotake sighed, looking him over as she kept working her ass over his crotch. "Tell me, do you have some girl waiting for you back in Hyrule, Link? Some nice, fair-skinned, Hylian girl with perky little tits and pretty blue eyes like yours? Hmm?"

Only one face came to his mind's eyes: a pretty blonde princess in a castle, of whom which a simple forest-born like himself could only dream of someday obtaining. He forced the image from his mind and shook his head. "No. No girl."

"Aww, no?" Kotake cooed. "Poor Mr. Link. All alone." She eyed him a moment as a grin slowly creeped up her cheek. "Link… have you never been with a woman?"

"I…"

"Oh, you poor boy." She laughed, angled her arms around to her backside, and worked at something there.

A moment later, the amber silks around her chest fell away, and Link was left staring up at her bare breasts hovering over him; smooth and soft-looking, with light brown skin and lighter nipples that were just a bit swollen with excitement themselves. Kotake swayed her hips side-to-side and sent her tits shaking for him. Link grew so stiff then, his breeches began to feel more like a prison than an article of clothing.

"Do you think I'm pretty?" Kotake asked.

Link swallowed. His throat felt dry. His heart was coming in irregular intervals in his chest.

"Link?" She called to him, lowering her hands to his stomach again and playing with the drawstring of his breeches. "I asked you if you thought I was pretty."

"I… yes," he admitted. He didn't _want _to, but it came slipping from his tongue anyway. Truthfully, she was pretty enough before, but since she'd started rubbing against him—and _particularly _after she'd removed her silks—he was finding her more and more irresistible by the second. _The wine, _an inner voice reminded him. _It is the wine. She forced it upon you to lower your inhibitions. _He ruminated on that thought a moment, but Kotake was subtly grinding herself against him again, and his own voice of reason began to sound less reasonable and more annoying with every passing moment.

"You're pressing into me, Link," Kotake told him. "It must be quite uncomfortable down there. Do you want me to remove your breeches?"

He opened his mouth; closed it again quickly. He didn't trust his words. They might betray him. For once, he wished the gag was back in his mouth.

"Mr. Link?"

He shook his head.

"Aww. Don't you want to be comfortable, though?" When he didn't answer, she chewed her lip and came crawling forward, planting her arms down on the mattress at either side of his neck. "Link?" She pressed close enough for the erect nipples of her bare breasts to fall against his own chest. Her breath played against his neck, his chin, his lips. "Don't you think I'm pretty?" He had no choice then but to look into her eyes—those wild, vibrant, green things that were peaking out from beneath her half-mast lids—and stare back at her. "Don't you want to make love to me?"

"I…" The room spun from the wine. His seems of his breeches felt ready to split. Her skin looked so soft. So ready to be kissed and tasted.

"_Kotake_," a harsh voice bore into the tent from outside the flaps.

Kotake muttered a curse and reached up to clamp a hand tightly down over Link's mouth at once to keep him silent. "_What_!?" The girl growled, clearly frustrated at the interruption.

"Jo's guard just came for Aveil," the other Gerudo answered, staying—thankfully—beyond the tent flap.

Kotake's expression was hard to read above him. She narrowed her eyes into the sand and furrowed her brow. "They took Aveil?"

"Yes. I'm just letting you know because that little run-in you had with Jo earlier today… Kotake, they might come for you next."

"I see… Thanks for the warning then, Telma."

Silence was the reply, and Link figured the other Gerudo had left. Kotake, clearly, felt the same, as she released his mouth from beneath her hand and stood off the cot to pace atop her plush carpet, her brow drawn pensively, her hands working against one another, her breasts swaying.

"What's happened?" Link asked, still trying to slow his heartbeat and wait out the uncomfortableness in his breeches. "What did that women mean 'they might come for you next'?"

Kotake's eyes flicked to his, held, moved back to the sands. She paced a few more times before reaching for the fruit platter, snatching up the plum, and taking a big bite.

Link had no idea what was happening, but he was able to focus his thoughts enough to see the opportunity in it. "Look… if you untie me, I can take you with me when I escape. If you're in trouble… I can get you out of here. My horse, Epona, we can-"

Kotake's mirthless laughter cut him off. "You're a fool, Mr. Link, if you think you can get away from Jolene. She's not the type of woman to let people just walk away."

"But yesterday," he began, "I heard you say they were other slaves here. Slaves that escaped!"

"Jo _says_ they escaped," the girl admitted. "But… most of the older Gerudo don't buy it. They know what's really going on here."

"_What_!?" Link pleaded. "Tell me! Maybe… maybe I can help you."

Kotake fixed a patronizing smile on him before sauntering back to the cot and lowering herself to perch on its edge. "You're a sweet thing, Link, but only _I_ can help myself now. Jolene… she takes us girls… takes us and sometimes we don't come back. She's been doing it since she led us away from our main camp a few months ago. She likes to capture a man, bring him into the village, get us girls all riled up by parading him around half-naked in front of us, and then deny him to us and punish us for ever desiring him in the first place. Then a few girls get brought up to Jolene's room… and then the man 'disappears'." Her eyes trailed off to stare at nothing.

"What does Jolene do with them?" Link asked.

"The girls? Has her way with them. She's like that. Has no taste for a man, but _starve _for a woman. The slaves?" She shrugged. "Who can say for sure but Jolene herself."

Link twisted at the ropes binding his wrists. "Kotake… you have to untie me now."

Her eyes found his again. "I can't."

"You _can_! Just… just cut me free!"

She chewed her lip, seeming to consider the notion a moment before telling him, "No, Mr. Link. You're safer here for now. I've got to… go gather some information." She reached for the gag lying beside his head and readied its knot for his mouth again.

"You don't have to gag me," he told her.

"I don't think I trust you quite that well yet, Link," she replied, leaned in, and kissed him.

Her lips were soft and warm against his own, and Link's eyes shut involuntarily as she pressed against him. When she pulled the kiss away, he opened his eyes just in time to see her wedging the gag back into his mouth. "_Mmmmph!_"

"Stay quiet in here," she told him, "and you'll be alright. I'll be back."

And with that, she lifted to her feet and slipped outside, leaving Link bound down to the cot, immobile, helpless, silent, and wondering just what sort of danger was lurking in the shadows of the Gerudo village… and when, exactly, it might come for him.


	5. Chapter 5

Another desert storm was brewing beyond the thin walls of the tent, and each time a faint rumble of distant thunder growled in the sky, Link seized the opportunity to throw his weight sideways and try to break his binds. The silk bands wrapping his ankles and securing his legs to the foot of Kotake's cot did not look especially sturdy, and as the storm drew closer to the village—its thunder increasing in volume and decreasing in time between intervals with every mighty roar—Link began to see the binds wear. When a particularly loud boom shook the earth just beyond the tent, Link heaved himself off the cot with everything he had, the silks _snapped _crisply, and then he was free; tumbling down to roll to a halt atop the plush carpeting that lined the tent's interior.

Of course, like most of his bouts of 'freedom' had been since being captured by the Gerudo, he was only partially free. His hands were still bound at the wrists behind him, but Link wasted no time looking for an amends to that problem at once. He clambered to his feet and crossed the tent to Kotake's trunk, the broken silk bands around his ankles trailing behind him like streamers. When he reached it, he lowered back to a knee and twisted his body around to get his fingers under the thing's latch, popping it and throwing it back the best he could with his arms at such an odd angle. The lid rolled over on its hinges and rested against the foot of the cot, exposing the shadowed interior filled with whatever mad things Kotake might keep stored within.

Link turned back to narrow his eyes into the darkness, but found nothing useful on the surface level of its contents. There was some more silk, a few loose pairs of trousers, silver sandals, leather bracers, a stack of empty skins, a handle-

-Link halted the sweep of his eyes at once and squinted down at the thing. It _was _a handle; just sitting there, poking out from between two blouses like a wooden finger angling up to point in his face, mocking his lack of freedom. Link worked himself around again and dipped backwards to lower his bound hands into the trunk. After a few moments, his grasping fingers found the handle and closed tightly around it, and Link stood to work the thing around to the side of his stomach for a better look.

_Finally, _he thought upon glimpsing what resided at its head, _a spot of _good _luck._

It was a little handheld mirror; an oval of reflective glass nestled between a bronze bezel littered with sapphire gems. And it was _exactly _what he'd needed to find. His heartbeat climbing with the thrill of potential freedom (_actual _freedom this time), Link hurried back down beside the trunk and angled the mirror's face just above the jutting, sharp, corner of the wood. He lifted his eyes skywards, as if he could watch the stormy skies brewing beyond the opaque tent's ceiling, and waited. After only a handful of breaths, the thunder came growling across the desert again, and Link hammered the mirror down against the trunk's edge.

It shattered, filling the tent with the shrill shriek of cracking glass that was (Link hoped) somewhat masked by the thunder. When he turned back to glimpse his work, he saw the mirror was whole no longer, and a smattering of its pieces were splayed out at the base of the trunk. Many were too small to be of any use to him, but there was one jagged shard that had broken into a perfectly-sized triangle for use, and Link snatched it up, carefully, to start the arduous task of freeing himself.

He kept near to the tent flaps as he worked the shard back and forth over the outer layers of his wrist's binds, keeping a vigilant eye on the village. It was full night by then, though, and the only sounds drifting through the darkness of the tents and pavilions was the rumble of thunder creeping over the souther dunes, and the occasional whinnying and neighing from the nearby stables. Link shouldered his way out between the flaps to briefly scan the lane of tents up and down, but the intermittent torches only revealed so much in the tight proximity of their orange-red glow here and there, and so Link saw mostly shadows and little else.

Twice he cut his fingers on the glass, growing overly anxious to be free and pinching at the shard a bit too tightly for a better grip, but before long he felt a trickle of frayed ropes brush against his forearms, and shortly after _that_ the binds started to give some slack. He worked his glass, up and down, back and forth, careful, always careful, and soon enough the ropes gave up their hold on him, fell away to the carpet, and left Link one-hundred-percent free at last.

He stood straight, pulled his hands out before him, and stared at the things as if he'd never seen them before. His wrists were a little red, the skin chaffed from the tight ropes that had been encircling them for so long, but they were _his _and they were free to act under his own willpower once again, and the feeling was wonderful.

After he'd pulled the gag from his mouth and discarded the damp thing atop Kotake's cot, Link rubbed at the soreness of his wrists and moved back to the tent flap to peek into the dark desert again. His plan had only been plotted out to his escape from his binds and no further, so for awhile, Link only stood, teetering on his heels, staring into the shadowed night, wondering if the Gerudo were light sleepers, or if they were still on the hunt for him, keeping watch from some high outposts on the village's perimeter. A light trickle of rain began to beat down on the camp, bringing the night alive with the soft chattering of raindrops on tents.

_The key,_ Link realized when his eyes found the stable's overhang poking up from the sea of tents at the village's outer rim. _I need that stable key to free Epona and be rid of this place entirely. _Of course, he knew at once there was only one person who would likely have that key he so desperately needed, and his eyes lifted to the wall of brown stone looming up over the village at its rear. Link, of course, couldn't be sure the Gerudo leader, Jolene, resided within the stone monstrosity at all, but when he glimpsed the twin glow of ensconced torches at the very top level, wedged between two thick walls and a narrow strip of window, he just _knew _it had to be where she laid her head at night. _Jolene sees herself as a Queen of these women, _he thought. _What better __'__royal__' __quarters than up there?_

"Mr. Link!?"

Link spun around. At the opposite end of the tent, Kotake had returned; her vibrant green eyes widened to saucers as they moved from Link to the cot, to his discarded binds and her open trunk, and finally back to him. Her mouth gaped.

Link took a step towards her.

"Come closer and I'll scream," she warned with a frown. "And we Gerudo have sharp ears. The whole village will come crashing down on top of you in _seconds_."

Link swallowed, unsure of how to proceed.

"You are a _bad _captive, Mr. Link!" Kotake scolded him. "Everything I did for you and this is how you repay me? Trying to escape!? Bad slave! Bad! Now you lie down on your belly so I can put you back in your ropes!"

"I'm not doing that, Kotake," he explained calmly. "I have to escape this village. I _have _to. Can't you understand that?"

"I said _down_!" She commanded, extending a finger to point at the carpet.

"No."

"Mr. Link…" She growled, her teeth barred, her cheeks reddening with anger. "I treated you nice. I fed you and brought you wine and kissed you! Now you obey me! You obey Kotake right _now_!"

Link knew the answer he had to give, and in what tone he had to give it to accomplish what he thought he might be able to accomplish. "No," he told her as casually as he could with a shrug of his shoulders, despite his heart drumming rapidly in his chest.

Kotake roared her frustration and pounced—exactly as Link was hoping she would—but when her 'surprise' attack reached him, Link had already prepared to counter it. He caught the girl's wild-swinging fists looking to batter down over his head and wrenched them aside to take her body's weight and momentum against his own. When he had her, he hooked her side and flipped her down to the cot, where she landed with a soft thud atop her hip. Link pressed down on her at once, flipping her over to her stomach and reaching around to clamp a hand over her mouth just as it was opening wide for a scream.

"_Mmmmmmph!_" Kotake roared against his hand, squirming and writhing furiously beneath him.

"Shh!" Link pleaded, shifting his weight to counter the girl's attempts to escape him every time she bucked her hips or thrashed her legs. Kotake clearly had no intentions of being shushed, however, and went right on shouting and screaming muffled protests into his hand. Link squeezed her mouth closed tighter and held her in place beneath him till she settled, which took far longer than he'd hoped. "Calm down. It's over. I'm not your captive anymore."

He could feel Kotake's nose blasting warm air against his hand as she writhed again and muttered some unintelligible threat into his palm.

"I need the key to the stables, Kotake," Link told her. "I'm assuming Jolene has it. Am I right?"

Her reply was to try and bite his hand, but Link shifted it a bit and clamped her lips together again before she could.

"Please. Just nod your head if I'm right. Does Jolene have the stable key?"

Kotake was still a moment, seeming to refuse him answer more out of some stubborn desire to not admit defeat than to guard the truth. Link waited patiently, keeping her pinned down to the cot and listening intently for movement beyond the tent to see if the girl's noise had stirred any nearby Gerudo. After a long and silent moment, Kotake grunted, jerked one last time, and finally nodded her head.

"And Jolene… where does she reside in the village? Is she in that big stone building?"

Kotake hesitated again, but with no clear way to escape Link's pin, the fight was slowly being drained from her. After a—thankfully much shorter—pause, she nodded.

"Alright. Then that's where I'm headed." He glanced around the tent. "I'm going to have to tie you up now."

"_Mrf!_" Kotake protested into his hand and did her best to shake her head. She launched into a long series of mumbles, her lips squirming and twisting beneath his palm with every attempted word.

Link frowned. Clearly, she wanted to say something, but could he risk her shouting? After a moment's debate, he sighed and told her, "Alright, listen: I'll let you talk, but if you scream…"

Kotake desperately shook her head, trying to crane her neck back around to fix him with her eyes. Slowly, Link freed her mouth, but kept his hand hovering only an inch or so from it, ready to clamp down in a moment's notice.

"If you leave me here all bound up like some tamed beast," Kotake began, her voice quiet but laced with an acidic tone, "it would be as good as killing me. When word reached Jolene that one her Gerudo had been defeated and humiliated by a _man_…" She shook her head. "She'd take my life for it."

Link's frown deepened. "That's ridiculous."

"Maybe to a nice, proper, Hylian like you, Mr. Link, but we Gerudo are a prideful people, and Jolene is a cruel mistress."

"Then why do you all follow her?"

"The Gerudo follow strength," Kotake explained, "and there are few stronger than Jolene." She squirmed a bit. "Now you let me up, Mr. Link. You let me up right now!"

He took a moment to collect his thoughts. "I can take you with me."

Kotake's laugh was sardonic and brief. "Kidnap me you mean. And where would you take me, Mr. Link? Where would you stash me? You Hylians have always looked down on the Gerudo because of… _him_. No! I won't be your prisoner! I won't!"

She was growing loud again, and Link felt it was time to move. He looked behind him and found the gag he'd been wearing laying down near Kotake's knees. He snatched it up, shook it out long, and brought it to his other hand. Kotake's eyes found the muzzle when it neared, but by then it was too late, and when she opened her mouth to protest, Link wedged the knotted center between her teeth and brought the ends around to tie tightly under her fall of wavy, auburn, hair. He fetched two of the broken bands of silk as Kotake thrashed and mumbled beneath him and quickly wrenched her arms behind her back to bind at the wrists before moving down and tying up her bare ankles.

When he finished, he rose to look her over. Kotake writhed about on the cot, but the binds on her hands and feet were solid, and after a few moments of struggling, she lay defeated, glaring up at him, nostrils flaring, her hands balled to fists at the small of her back.

"Now I can leave you here, or I can take you with me. The choice is yours."

"_Grrmmm_," she growled into her gag.

"Alright. Then goodbye, Kotake," he said, turned, and peeled back the tent flap to head into the night.

"_Mmf!_" She grunted after him.

He turned back. "Yes?"

The girl's eyes shifted from side to side. She chewed the knot of her gag. Her chest heaved in a greatly exaggerated sigh. She looked to him and, begrudgingly, offered a nod of her head.

"You want me to take you with me?"

She rolled her eyes, glared, nodded again.

He crossed to the cot and pointed a finger in her face. "If you start trying to get noisy under that gag, I'll leave you hogtied in the sands for either the Gerudo to find you, or a scorpion or some other desert creature. Understood?"

"_Ermf!_" She grunted, her frustrated impatience showing in the red glow of her cheeks and the scowl wrinkling her brow.

Without further hesitation, Link leaned down, worked the girl's body up beside his head and neck, and hoisted her up as he stood. She fell to limply drape across his shoulder, her bound legs and feet dangling before him, her upper body and head swaying behind him as he turned. He carried her to the tent flaps, stole a quick peek outside to assure it was clear, and headed out.

The sky outside was a clear and inky black canvas, dappled only with a stray storm cloud here and there and a smattering of starlight. The rain had thankfully stayed at a light drizzle, though it was enough to turn the sands a bit slick underfoot. Link moved slow and cautious, breathing deep of the damp night air and enjoying the occasional gust of cool breeze, rolling down from the northern dunes that mounded up around the valley the Gerudo village was wedged in. Kotake kept quiet enough atop his shoulder as he carried her between tents, stopped, surveyed their surroundings, and moved on. She let out an occasional grunt or groan as his momentum jerked her about, but was otherwise silent. The camp, likewise, was eerily quiet. As Link moved from one shadowed nook to another, he saw nothing and no one, and it awakened a caution in him for some sort of trap.

The stables rose in a line of wooden logs nestled against the village wall, and Link took the long way around to get there; moving in the shadow of the large pavilion that had been erected near to it. When his feet left the sands and found the cool stone walkway that trimmed the stalls, he saw Epona's head turn and her big, dark, eyes found his immediately.

"Shhh, girl," he whispered, stepping slowly forward to inch along the line of stables.

Epona neighed and clopped her hooves, but did both relatively quietly, and when Link turned to see if she'd aroused any suspicious Gerudo their way, found nothing. He returned his eyes to his horse and smiled. "It's alright," he told her, reaching his free hand through the locked bars of her stable to brush at her mane. "You'll be out of there soon."

Epona lowered her head and closed her eyes and allowed Link to stroke at her mane.

His gaze lowered to the big round hole set in the barred door of her stable. He narrowed his eyes on it, then lifted them up higher to peer over the top of the village wall. The big stone building was looming in wait; the faint glow of torchlight still bathing the third floor in its orange warmth. _Somewhere up there is the key, _he thought. _…__and Jolene._

Kotake shifted a bit on his shoulder, reminding him she was up there, and Link realized if he were going to infiltrate the Gerudo base, he'd need to stash her somewhere. His eyes scanned the immediate area and found the stable shed set a bit further down along the village wall. He reached for Epona's mane once more, offered a few parting words of comfort, and headed for the small wooden shack.

The shed door was unlocked, and when Link nudged it open, it creaked on rusted hinges all the way back to thud against the wall. He glanced around the village to see if the noise had stirred anyone, and after a few tense but uneventful moments, decided it hadn't and headed inside. The interior was stuffy and the quarters tight and confined, but that was just the sort of place Link was looking for. He carried Kotake to the very back of the room, laid her on her belly in the sands, and fetched a saddle strap from a dusty shelf beside them to bind her hands to her feet; hogtying her and assuring she wouldn't squirm off and cause him any trouble.

Kotake growled into her gag and jerked at her new bind, but Link simply laid a hand on her shoulder as he had on Epona's mane and told her, "Just lay there and be quiet, and you have my word I'll return for you when I retrieve that stable key."

Kotake squinted and balled her hands to fists, but made no attempt at a verbal reply.

Link nodded, headed back outside, and gently closed the shed door behind him; getting one last glimpse of moonlight painting a harsh, silver, streak across Kotake's indignant face before she was lost to the shadows and sealed up inside.

He turned to face the night and the Gerudo base. He had no sword, no shield, no true idea of what was awaiting him within, he'd had only an apple and a skin of wine in his belly in the last day's time, and his muscles were sore from misuse after being bound up so tightly and for so long at Jolene's hands. Yet he was not worried. In fact: he was oddly calm, and as he marched down the length of the village wall, hidden in shadow, eyes locked intrepidly on the mountain of stone awaiting him, Link was taken by a surge of excitement and hope.

For before long, he would be atop Epona again, riding with the desert wind in his hair, free from Jolene and her Gerudo girls once and for all, and it was with that stirring of hope he made for their base with.


	6. Chapter 6

There were sentries posted at the entranceway, two big brutish women with olive skin and plum silks and curved scimitars hanging from their hips in scabbards. They were still as stone, one hand resting casually on the hilt of their blades, the other laid atop the handle of a short whip protruding from their waistbands on the opposed side. Above their veils, their eyes were dark and cautious and alert, and when the desert winds came rolling down off the dunes, their ponytails swayed in the breeze, taking on the appearance of crimson sand snakes coiling around the backs of their heads.

Link watched them from the shadowed nook of the wall that ran the base's perimeter. They didn't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon, though, and it wasn't long before he realized he'd have to find another way inside. He slipped back around the wall's dull edge of stacked stone and flattened himself against it as he pressed downwards two dozen feet, to a place where the wall's top dipped a bit, worn by wind and weather, and pulled a large cask up to stand upon and climb over. He hoisted himself up high enough to peek over, made sure the area was clear, and jerked his legs up behind him. He leaped the wall and came down softly on the balls of his feet on the other side, sticking low to the sands and casting a wary eye back towards the sentries. They hadn't moved an inch, and Link wasted no time crossing the gap to the three-story tower of stone, passing in and out of the silver strips of moonlight that painted the path as he went.

There were big, carved, windows dotting the building's perimeter every few feet intermittently. When Link lifted on the tips of his toes, he could just peek inside and see dark halls and dark rooms and dark chambers, little else. There were no torches ensconced down on the ground level of the base, and so when Link jumped for the edge, found it, and pulled himself up to worm inside, he did so stealthily and bathed in shadow.

The interior was notably cooler, both the soft breeze wafting through the halls, and the hard, cold, stone underfoot. Link lifted to a crouch and squinted down either end of the hall he'd ended up in, looking for some hint of passage to carry him higher. The darkness, though, was near suffocating, and only drips of moonlight came here and there from a slitted window or a cracked wall. Link ruminated on the paths a moment, chose one, and began stalking his way froward, keeping low and pressed to the wall, ready in a moment's notice to lay himself flat and disappear.

The first hall ended, another began. It was just as long and just as dark, and Link traveled it with just as much caution. He could hear faint noises stirring from beyond the thick walls of the base as he moved; wind scraping along the outside, an occasional cough or mutter from a Gerudo, the now-fading distant rumble of the passing storm. Otherwise: silence. He padded to the end of the second hall, where a twist took him around a long bend and into a third.

At the end of that, he found the coil of serpentine stairs tunneling up around the corner of the base he'd been marched down the previous day. They were crooked, haggard, things, and he spotted a beady-eyed rat scuttling from place to place at their foot. He stepped over it, took the waist-high barrier of stone in hand, and slowly made his ascent, keeping his eyes held up on the next floor as he went.

It was there he found his first spot of trouble. After a small, windowless, room, he came upon a long chamber, lit by dual torches on either end, that stretched nearly the entire length of the base, and was divided at its center only by a ridge of stone poking up from the floor and hanging down from the ceiling. Marching through it with disciplined strides of their sandaled feet were two Gerudo in pale yellow masks. They clutched six-foot-tall spears in hand, and—like the two at the entranceway—Link could see the leather-banded handles of whips poking out of their waistbands. He flattened himself to the edge of the doorway and watched them march, but there was little to see: they did not break stride, did not talk, did not do a thing, really, besides patrol and patrol some more. That was not good. He searched briefly for some other path that could perhaps lead around the two, but found none. The only way forward, it seemed… was through them.

With no other choice, he stepped into the room. If they shouted to alert the others, he'd simply make a dash for the opposite end and figure out someway to get the stable key from Jolene on the third floor as quickly as he could.

But when one of the guards saw him, her eyes narrowing maliciously over her long pointed nose and yellow mask, she did not shout or yell or call for aid, only turned back to her twin, reached for the woman's arm, and tapped. The other Gerudo looked backed casually, found Link standing before them at the end of the room, and turned to join her sister. Link looked between the two of them, uncertain of what they meant to do. Then, they looked to one another, nodded, and began spreading out on his flanks, spears flattened out defensively before their chests.

_So it__'__s combat they want, _Link mused, watching their slow approach. He supposed it made sense. If they could defeat and capture him on their own, he'd make quite the prize to Jolene when they returned him to her in ropes or chains. Unarmed and clad only in his breeches, he bent his knees a bit and paced forward to meet them.

The women spread wider on his flanks as they approached so that each was nearly pressed to the walls, and Link could no longer keep his eyes on both of them. They stepped, foot over foot, cautiously pressing in on either of his sides. Link looked from Gerudo to Gerudo, ready to act in a moment's notice. The one on his right halted her approach and looked to her twin. Some tacit conversation passed in their eyes, then she was setting her spear aside and reaching for the whip instead. It came rolling out of its coil in a flash, her bronze wrist snapping so that it lashed as the air and filled the chamber with a sharp _crack. _The spear-wielding Gerudo chuckled beneath her mask and quietly said, "The man-slave needs punishing, Marya. Whip him."

The whip came again, its tip cracking against the stone just beside Link's foot. He shifted back to avoid the blow-

-and the other women charged. Link got turned around enough to intercept some of her force, but not enough. Her shoulder lowered and found his ribs, and the two of them went spilling to the floor. As soon as they collided with the stone, the woman came crawling up over him, her strong hands gripping hard at his flesh as she came, and reached for his face. Link craned his neck to avoid her grasping fingers, spun the two of them sideways, and mounted her waist. He made to pin her arms down and wrestle the spear from her hold, but his vision filled with the whip-bearing Gerudo making a charge of her own. He lifted his eyes just in time to see the whip lashing out for his face. He threw his weight backwards, rolling just out of the attack's range and off the fallen Gerudo's legs.

He sprung to his feet.

The whipper helped the spearer up and they faced him again, frustration darkening what features were visible of their faces. They shared a glance, tightened their fists around their respective weapons, and began slowly pressing in on him once again. Link looked between them, running his fingers together, eager to make a move. The spear-woman feigned a jab, and when Link reacted, the whip-woman cracked her lash down across his back. The braided thong bit hard at his flesh and Link winced and arched his back to stave off the pain. The women, however, took the brief moment of weakness to their advantage, both of them rushing forward to flood his position. Link tried to step back and away, but his wrist was snatched, then his other, then his arms, then the two women were hugging him between them so tightly he could barely breath.

The whip's lash came down around his neck and squeezed as one of the women worked her way around behind him, twisting his wrist and wrenching his arm back with her. The other pinned his chest against her own and made to still his legs and feet by stomping on them. "_Man_-_slave_!" one of them (Link could no longer be sure which) hissed contemptuously and pulled at his hair. Their hands were firm and strong and gripped him everywhere he could be gripped. Link writhed and jerked to free himself, but when he began to overpower them, something struck him hard between the legs, and that took the fight out of him for a time.

They wrestled him down to the floor and pinned him beneath their weight, one sitting atop his chest, the other atop his ankles and calves. "We need to bind him!"

Link had been bound enough, and the thought of being a helpless captive to the Gerudo again, roped and gagged, was enough to awaken a desperate anger in him. With it came strength, and with one mighty heave, he threw the Gerudo woman off his chest, sat up, and shoved the other from his legs. They scrambled on the floor, clambered up to their feet, and charged him to wrangle him back down. Link got his feet under him, stood, watched their approach, waited till they were _just _about to leap for him, and-

-threw himself backwards. The Gerudo's momentum sent them clashing into one another instead in the vacant spot where he'd been standing only moment earlier, their foreheads meeting one another with a hard _smack _that filled the chamber, echoing off the walls. Then their eyes rolled back and they fell to the ground beside one another, unconscious.

Link stood over them a moment, panting a bit to catch his breath. He crouched and checked on them to make sure they were alright, and when he discovered they were, dragged them in turn to the corner of the room and bound them the best he could back-to-back with the long leather lash of the Gerudo whip. When that was finished, he returned to the spot of their scuffle and retrieved the long spear the guard had wielded so effortlessly against him. He hoisted the thing to his chest, bouncing it around a bit in his fingers to get a feel for its weight and balance. The tip was a grafted-on piece of steel, sharpened to a fine point. Link lowered it to the floor, laid his food just at its end, and snapped the thing off at once. He would use the spear to defend himself if need be, but would not risk hurting either himself or the Gerudo any more than necessary. As cruel as the women had been to him, he would not bring himself to their level and return such cruelty.

He left the unconscious women and their chamber, gratefully, behind, finding another twist of stone stairs at the end of the long hall in an adjacent room, which he took immediately. They wound their way up in a long coil and deposited him into another room, unlit, and ending in a big barred door with a locked handle. Link went to it and, quietly, tested the thing, but it would not budge; he was locked out from proceeding any further.

He spun back and surveyed the room. It was unfurnished, and only the dark arch that led back to the stairs and a solitary window, narrow and high, was set against the near wall, allowing a slit of cool moonlight to lay a silver stripe on the floor. Link went to it. He ran his hand along the jagged line of its jamb, eyeing the gap and figuring it was just wide enough for him to sip between. He laid a foot on the sill and climbed up and in, shifting sideways to sidle himself closer to the edge, and to the outer night waiting beyond.

The window ended, and the desert began. Standing at its edge, Link could see the entirety of the Gerudo camp sprawled out in its sea of brown tents and lavish carpets and big, silk, pavilions. He could see the stables where Epona was waiting and the little shed where he'd stashed Kotake. He saw the undulating dunes rolling around the valley in long, gold-brown, waves. And he saw the night sky, looming up over the desert in a vast black stretch, dappled with the shining white pinpoints of distant stars.

He looked down to where his toes were hanging over the window's edge and saw a thin ridge protruding from the base's outer wall. Link leaned out a bit to survey it and saw it was just what he needed. The ridge worked its way all the way down the length of the room's exterior before ending abruptly at the foot of another window's base, long and narrow like the one he stood in then, and knew that would be the only way forward. He pulled a breath to still his nerves, glanced briefly out into the desert, and slipped around the window's edge to lay his feet sideways on the ridge and flatten his belly to the wall, his face turned so that his cheek was pressed almost completely to the stone as he tucked the broken spear into the band of his breeches at his back.

It was like that he moved forward, slowly, down the length of the wall, keeping his hands brushing softly against the stone to guide him, his steps light on the balls of his feet, and his eyes narrowed intently on his destination. If they strayed and glimpsed the plummet he might take if he misstepped and fell… his head might spin with disorientation, and then he'd _really_ be in trouble.

When his fingers found the new window's jamb and he pulled his feet up and into its base, he let out the long breath that he'd, apparently, been holding for the duration of the risky trip, and felt the tension slip from his posture like a heavy suit of armor. He shuffled through the window and into the locked-off room…

…and found a Gerudo guard with her back turned to him immediately, standing just below the window's sill. Link had no time to think, no time to plan, only time to act. He hopped to the floor, closed in tight on her, reached one hand around to clamp her mouth and keep her quiet, and set the other down in a focused pinch on the tender spot where her slim neck met her shoulder. It was an old technique, and one he was not quite as adept at as he would have liked, but it worked all the same. The woman's back stiffened, she grunted against his hand, but then she went abruptly limp and fell unconscious. Link caught her, taking her under the arms and guiding her gently to the floor before laying her on her side.

"…_you!?_"

Link's head jerked up. Across the narrow room, at the very back in a wash of shadows, a Gerudo was locked up in chains. She was bound the same way he'd been in his brief stay in the tower: her hands strung up in manacles high above her head, stretched so far she could only barely wobble on the tips of her toes to keep balance. He rose and darted to her to silence her before she could alert any others, and when he'd crossed the gap and gotten a hold of her mouth under his palm, the wide-set almond eyes and sharp cheekbones and auburn ponytail revealed the woman to be the Gerudo who'd come to his cell and… _toyed_ with him his first night in captivity.

"Aveil," he muttered quietly.

The Gerudo's eyes narrowed, though her expression was hard to read in the darkness of the cell and with her lower face hidden beneath his hand. He held her eyes a moment before glancing around the rest of the room. It was as barren as the rest of the tower, and only the sleeping guard accompanied them. Two barred and locked doors flanked the sides, nothing else. When he returned his eyes to Aveil's, the question arose: _Why is she locked up?. _He wanted to ask her that very question, but didn't trust the woman enough to unleash her mouth. He could feel her lips squirming about beneath his hand, but she was keeping quiet as she stared at him.

"If I release your mouth…"

Aveil nodded immediately, one step ahead of his proposition.

Link eyed her shrewdly a moment before sighing and slowly removing the hand silencing her.

"You don't have to kill me," Aveil whispered as soon as she could, a tense urgency in her tone. "_Please_."

"Kill you? I'm not here to kill you."

Her brow wrinkled, as if his claim was absurd. "…then what are you going to do with me?"

Link looked up at her hands, back to the sleeping guard, and finally into her eyes. "I'll free you if you swear you won't cause me anymore trouble."

Her frown deepened. "…what game is this?"

"No game."

"But… you are a man."

"I am."

"And as a man, you have the savage, violent, heart of a beast… Jolene says the only thing your kind desires is war and women," her look grew apprehensive, "…and sometimes both at the same time."

Link frowned. "I'm sure Jolene does say that." He nodded back to the sleeping guard. "Does she have the key to free you?"

Aveil hesitated, as if suspecting some trap.

Link sighed. "Listen, I'm not going to hurt you. I don't know why you're locked up in here like this, but if you help me, I will gladly free you and we can _both_ be rid of this place. Alright?"

"You lie," Aveil whispered, trying to step away from him but ending up only teetering on the tips of her toes and swinging a bit in her chains. "You're playing some cruel game like I played with you, and when you've had your fun, you're going to kill me."

Now they were going in circles, and there was no time to waste, and so Link shook his head and turned back to the guard. He lowered himself to a knee and patted down her trousers and waistband till he felt a hard circle at her hip. He fished it out: an iron ring with a half-dozen keys jingling from its rim. Link smiled, nodded, and returned to Aveil. "Are one of these the stable key?"

She recoiled from him again fearfully before hesitatingly offering a shake of her head. "…no."

"Are you lying?"

"Jolene has the stable key. Only Jo. She's no fool."

Link nodded. "I'm going to remove your chains now. Please, Aveil, don't fight me. My name is Link, alright? I didn't ask to get caught up in any of this. It was _you _all who bound me, gagged me, _kidnapped_ me, not the other way around. Help me. Help me, and you have my word I'll help you as much as I can in return." He waited for some sort of reply. When one did not come, he simply sighed and reached up to loose her manacled wrists.

They came free after plugging the third key on the ring inside the lock, and all at once, Aveil came sagging down to fall into his arms. He took her, she was thinner than most of the other Gerudo and light as a feather, but when her weight came against him and he reached for her back, she winced and sucked air through grit teeth. Link frowned, confused, and craned his neck over her shoulder to see what had happened. There, running up and down here mostly-bare back were dark red stripes.

"You've been whipped?"

Aveil was still limp in his arms. "…yes."

"Why?"

"…for insubordination… and for being a whore…"

Link grimaced. He was despising this Jolene woman more and more. "Can you walk?"

She hesitated before replying, "…no."

Her voice was so small and fragile then, Link could hardly believe it was the same woman speaking to him that had come to his cell that first night of his captivity. The confident, cruel, thing she'd been had all but vanished, like a poorly upheld facade, and only a frightened, wounded, woman remained where the warrior had been. Link took her weight against him, scooped his arm under her knees, and lifted her up to his chest.

"What are you doing with me?" She asked, staring fearfully up at him from her position cradled in his arms.

"Rescuing you."

That mistrustful look wrinkled her comely features again. "But… _why_?"

Link considered his words a moment before answering, "Jolene did not lie to you entirely, Aveil. There _are_ men who are savage beasts who want nothing more than to conquer other men in battle and women in the bedroom." He held her eyes. "But not all men."

She stared at him for a long bout of silence then before asking, "Is your name really Link?"

"Yes."

"…then you have my thanks, Link."

He nodded. "Is that next room Jolene's?"

"Yes, but she is not alone. She sleeps with her crimson guard."

"The stable key?"

"It will be close to her, but _where_ exactly, I cannot say."

"Alright. And what do I do with you?"

Aveil stared. "You've… captured me." She lowered her eyes and shifted a bit awkwardly in his arms. "…by Gerudo law, I am yours."

He nearly told her how foolish that was, that she was free and that no one should ever 'belong' to another, but held his tongue, and instead said, "Alright. Then you have to do what I say?"

Again, Aveil shifted a bit, a strange look coming across her face that seemed both excited and afraid. "Yes."

"Then keep quiet. I'm going to leave you by the door while I get that stable key. Only call out if you see someone coming. Understand?"

She nodded, but when he made to move and set his plan into action, her hand reached for his face and pulled his eyes back to hers. "Since I'm yours now, you can command me to do what you want." She swallowed, casting her look briefly down across his bare chest before returning it to his eyes. "If you told me to kiss you… I would have to obey."

"I'm _telling _you to be quiet for now. That's all."

Aveil nodded, but the disappointment was evident in her eyes.

Link ignored it. He had to: there was work to be done. He carried Aveil to the barred door leading deeper into the tower's center, lowered her to the floor, and carefully propped her up against the wall, taking his time to ensure her wounded back did not scrape the stone or come against it too roughly. Aveil, again, looked upon him with a strange expression as he tended to her, and when he made to lift himself away, her hands came up weakly for his chest again, as if to pull him in for a kiss, but Link acted as if he hadn't seen the gesture, and simply stood and moved for the door.

He got the key right on the second one he tried, and just like that the iron door was swinging back on its hinges to clear the way forward. Link stepped slowly inside, narrowing his eyes into the shadowed strips of darkness that lay heavy over the room between the windows. Where the rest of the tower had been drab and unfurnished, here it was decorated with lavish, plush, carpets from end to end, and golden trinkets and swords inlaid with gems and a colorful assortment of silk drapes and sheets hung from the walls. And in the center of it all, a massive bed was sprawled out against the room's rear. As Link approached, he could see bare legs and feet poking out from blankets, arms and hands with rings on the fingers swinging from the edges, and closer still he could see mounds of bare breasts rolling in shadow near the bed's top, like those undulating dunes of desert sand outside.

He moved closer, counting off at least three Gerudo atop the mattress as he neared. Two of them had crimson bands of silks around their throats, and the third, sandwiched between them with her arms wrapped around their shoulders, had the long, hooked, nose that was Jolene's most distinguishing feature.

Beside the bed, a little wooden table stood with an unlit lantern atop its lacquered surface, and a row of scabbards and belts leaned up against its side. Link stalked towards the thing, keeping one eye carefully trained on the trio of sleeping women beside it. As soon as he reached the table, he rummaged around its edges and its top, searching for the stable key, but when he found nothing, and was preparing to move to the other side of the bed, something shining in a strip of moonlight caught his eye.

There, lying between the twin mounds of Jolene's bare breasts, the stable key hung from a little silver chain around her neck. _Of course it does, _Link thought bitterly. _She knew I would never escape the desert without horse. She knew I would have to return for that key. _He watched the thing rise and fall with her breath, wondering if he could remove it without disturbing her or her two paramours resting in her arms.

Sound came at his rear. Link spun, alert, made to grab the spear he'd tucked into his waistband-

-then the women tackled him. He saw only a flash of crimson silks and dark hair before they were atop him, spearing him in the belly and chest and taking hold of his arms as they went barreling backwards. A din of chaos erupted in the chamber then. Both Link and his surprise attackers went splaying out onto the bed, rousing and waking the sleeping Gerudo already atop it. He heard Jolene's strident voice cutting over all the others shouts, though, and before long, the sleeping Gerudo had recovered, and even more hands were adding their numbers to the task of restraining him. Link's legs got tangled up in the bed's covers, making it nearly impossible to roll free or make a run for it, and there were Gerudo women everywhere around him by then anyway, toppling over him, grabbing for his wrists and arms and neck, some of them bare-chested, their breasts swinging wildly above him in the shadows of the night. Someone slipped and fell from the bed. Someone else cursed. Someone threw her weight atop him to pin him down and ended up banging her head off another's knee. It was utter chaos, but then one, tall, figure rose above all the others and pounced for him.

Jolene came down on Link's chest and unsheathed a dagger from some clandestine scabbard beneath her trousers. She pressed the blade to his throat and barred her teeth. "_Don__'__t move_!"

The blade bit softly at his skin. Link stopped moving.

The victory was in Jolene's eyes long before the smirk rose up her face. "Our bothersome prisoner returns to us, girls," she said with a bark of sardonic laughter. "And is our prisoner once again."

Link glared up at the woman.

Jolene's smirk only broadened. "You know the routine, ladies. Bind him and gag his mouth."

They did. With Link pinned beneath Jolene and her dagger to his throat, there was little he could do to resist as the women first bound his feet up at the ankles, then his knees, then all worked together to secure him and roll him over when Jolene moved aside and get his hands bound up tight behind his back. They finished subduing him by looping a big, thick, cloth around his mouth and tying it firmly in place.

When he was rolled over on the bed to lie on his back once more, it was Aveil whose eyes he found first as she loomed him. _Thanks for the warning, _he thought bitterly.

"Oh, it was terrible, Jo," Aveil suddenly sobbed, turning on the Gerudo leader with her hands clasped at her chest. "You were right about… about _everything_! This man told me he was going to kidnap me and beat me and rape me for what we did to him! He… frightened me so dearly, I was afraid to scream when he took me out of my chains." She sobbed again and stepped towards Jolene. "I'm so sorry, Jo."

Jolene draped a long arm over the woman's shoulder and pulled her against her body. "_Shhh_. It's alright now, Aveil. Now you've learned your lesson, haven't you? This is man's nature. He is a beast. A terrible and cruel beast."

"Yes," Aveil croaked, hugging herself tight to Jolene. "Man is what you say. Vile and disgusting and wicked."

"Now you understand why you had to be whipped, don't you?"

"Yes, Jo. To learn. To see the truth. You are wise."

Jolene kissed Aveil's brow. "Yes. I am."

Link had never been so disgusted. He glared at the two of them, angry with Jolene, but outright _furious _with Aveil and her lies. But when Jolene turned a bit so that Aveil's eyes came revealed above her leader's shoulder, he thought he saw something there. Some… strange look Aveil tried passing to him…

But then Jolene released her and it was gone; only the lying, sobbing, girl remaining beside the Gerudo leader.

"Kotake's missing," one of the new crimson guards spoke into the silence.

Jolene turned a malicious look on Link. "Our monstrous captive here probably murdered her and hid her body away."

"Should I remove his gag so we can question him?"

"No," Jolene answered curtly. "Leave that to me. I'll interrogate our prisoner here." She smiled a venomous smile.

Aveil glanced at her leader, but when Jolene looked her way, dropped her eyes and went back to quietly sobbing.

Jolene stepped closer to Link, so that she was towering over him. She cocked her head and planted her hands on her hips. "I should have broken you the day we captured you and brought you here, prisoner. It is not a mistake I intend to make again." She faced the five other Gerudo in the room and said, "Leave us."

And one by one, they did.

Aveil went last, her look lingering on Link just a bit longer than necessary before she turned and traipsed off behind the crimson guard.

When they were alone, Jolene lifted her leg and planted a bare foot atop Link's chest, pushing him down hard against the mattress. "You made a mistake coming back here, prisoner," she growled, leaning to the wall beside the bed to fetch a long leather whip from a mantle. "You would have been better off wandering through the desert. There might've been some mercy out there. But in here?" She smirked, uncoiled the whip, leaned hard onto his chest. "You will receive _none_."


	7. Chapter 7

His new cell was as dark as a desert sky at night. It was little more than a stone box set deep, deep, in the earth beneath the sands; the last, little, room at the end of a long twisting set of stairs that he'd been carried down to from the Gerudo tower's first floor. It would be an insult to basement's to call this new place he was being held captive in a basement, and so Link had come to think of it as a tomb. It was a dark, cramped, tomb, and with every passing moment he spent inside the thing, he felt his hopes of ever seeing the world beyond it fade and falter, until his spirits ran as black as the four tight walls encasing him.

And he hurt; oh, he hurt. Jolene had lashed his chest and back after they'd caught and secured him up in her chambers. She'd uncoiled her whip and turned him about from side to side atop her mattress to snap the braided thong against his bare flesh again and again, each strike coming down with barbed teeth to snap at him, and though she'd never whipped him hard enough to break his skin and bloody her sheets, she was sure to leave big red welts in stripes across every spot of flesh she could. And she had laughed while doing it. Not a joyous laugh, nor truly even a cruel one; just a long series of harsh cackles that assured him she was in absolute control, and he was nothing, no one, powerless.

Now he was here, down in the darkest hole the desert might have. His hands and feet were stretched out as far as they could go, fasted with heavy coils of hempen rope around the wrist and ankle, and secured tightly to the four posts of the thin, stiff, cot they'd laid him atop. When he moved even in the slightest to tug at his binds or try to shift his weight a bit to find a more comfortable position, his wounded back screamed in protest, the swollen lines of his welts catching fire and pleading with him to be still. He obeyed that command easy enough after the first few times, and resolved to lying still and letting himself heal. _If_, of course, Jolene allowed such healing at all before she hauled him back upstairs for another lashing.

She hadn't spoken to him at all while she was whipping him up and down, but she _had _spoken just before her crimson guards had lugged him off to be stashed away down in this new cell. She'd said, "Now I'll bury you beneath the sands, prisoner. Cast your thoughts of freedom aside, for I won't make the same mistake of giving you such lenient captivity again. You're going underground. Maybe I'll bring you back up someday. Or maybe I won't." She'd smiled then, a thin, ugly, thing spreading beneath her big hooked nose. "You can ruminate on that while you're lying alone in the darkness of your own misery."

Link balled his hands to fists, but the heavy coils of rope just below his wrists robbed the gesture of any strength he meant to derive from it. He didn't want to let Jolene's word play in his mind. That would be letting her win. But it wasn't easy. In the dark of his cell, there was not even any sound to accompany his isolation. He was too deep below the surface to hear the winds or the rains or the clasps of distant thunder; too deep to hear even the other Gerudo above, pacing the halls of the tower as he knew they would be. It was only silence beside him, a thick and oppressive silence, so heavily laid around him he felt at times as if he were drowning in it. He thought of Epona and of riding through the dips and peeks of Hyrule's great, green, valleys. He thought, briefly, of the pretty princess he'd glimpsed a few fortunate times in Hyrule's castle. He thought of home, of the forest, of fishing and friends. But in the end, every one of his thoughts turned to rot, for all those things were a thousand leagues away from the darkness of his cell, and he was utterly and truly alone.

He took the thick gag the Gerudo had affixed around his mouth between his teeth and grunted, if nothing else just to hear a bit of sound and stave off that heavy silence. He tugged again at his hands and feet, but the ropes were indifferent to his desperation. They held him tightly in place, keeping him right where he was, reminding him of his total defeat and complete helplessness.

It was like that he lay for a long time, though without any bit of sunlight to help mark its passing, _time _was not something he had a firm grasp on. But at some point, she came.

First he heard the soft scraping of slippered feet moving over stone. In the dark, it had sounded a bit like a snake, hissing and ready to strike, and Link was reminded again of how some of the Gerudo women's hair moved when the wind beckoned; auburn ponytails turning to crimson vipers. But then the light began seeping back into the world, faintly at first, then all at once in a great ball of orange flame. Link squinted outside the barred door of his cell and saw her descending the last bit of stairs to him, her slippered feet, her baggy trousers, her bare midriff, her loose-fit blouse that today was a pretty shade of sapphire blue. Then Aveil's half-masked face came, high-cheekboned and sharp featured, the pretty wells of her almond eyes glistening against her torchlight. She made her way to his cell door, plugged it with a key, then opened it only wide enough to slip her slim frame through before softly pressing it shut behind her once more.

The torch she carried, at first, was blinding to Link's light-deprived eyes, and he had to keep them closed to slits until they adjusted. By the time they had, Aveil had worked the thing into a sconce beside the cell door, and had turned to stand over his cot, her dark eyes sweeping a deep stare over him from head to toe and back. Anger coursed beneath his skin. The last time he'd seen _her_, she'd been lying through her teeth to Jolene about him to save her own skin. Now, though, as he looked upon that same skin, bronze and smooth and soft-looking, it was hard to maintain the anger: she was another person, at least, and the quiet crackle of the torch flames had swallowed up the pool of silence he'd been drowning in.

After a long moment, their eyes locked on one another's the whole time, Aveil softly perched herself beside Link on the bed and looked at his bare chest as she removed the sapphire mask from her lower face. "I am… sorry this has happened to you."

Link frowned. With his gag in, there was little else he could do. He grunted in attempt to communicate that notion.

"There is not much to say to one another, and I would be in grave danger if I were caught down here," Aveil explained, her brow wrinkling sympathetically, "so you will forgive me if I choose to keep your gag in place for the duration of my… visit."

Link narrowed his eyes on the woman's and shook his head.

"They found Kotake," Aveil went on, ignoring his reproachful look. "You stashed her away quite well in the stable shed, but Jolene's guard found her all the same. After they freed her, she swore up and down that you had attacked her in the night, slipped into her tent, overcome her, threatened her with violence, and even slapped her and kicked her to tame her before you bound her up." Aveil looked to her hands and fidgeted with them. "But I knew her words rang false. The same as mine did. Both of us… we were only trying to save ourselves from Jolene's wrath in our confessions." She lifted her eyes back to Links and leaned a bit closer to him. "But I tracked her down after her interrogation was over. I tracked her down and got the truth from her. Kotake is, admittedly, young and reckless, but she is not a very good liar. I pressed her till I had the truth.

"You were kind to her. As you were to me. She admitted that even after you'd overpowered her and had her beneath you and at your whims… still, you were gentle with her and careful with your bindings so as not to harm her. And you offered her what you offered me. To take us away from here. To… to rescue us from Jolene."

Link fidgeted a bit himself, but the ropes tight hold were quick to put an end to that.

Aveil reached a hand to his face and softly cupped his chin and cheek. "It must be true then. You are either Hyrule's greatest liar… or you are a good man, and that is something Jolene has sworn up and down to everyone who would listen is not possible." She swallowed as her eyes moved from his face to his chest to his breeches and back. "I cannot rescue you from this cell right now, Link of Hyrule," she explained. "…but I _can _make you forget you're here… at least for a little while."

Now Link thought he understood the true reason she'd left his gag in place. If he could not speak he could not protest.

Aveil rose from the bed, stepped back a few paces till she was beside the torch and the orange glow was dancing prettily against her bronze skin, and angled her arms back around her chest. A moment later, her silks fell away, and the soft breasts within came free, exposed and bare. Where Kotake's had been small and perky, Aveil's were full and round, the breasts of a woman. Her nipples were little dark circles at their tips, standing just a bit erect. The sight of it alone was enough to send a stir between Link's legs. Then Aveil pried the sandals from her feet in turn till she was standing barefoot and just a bit shorter than she'd been atop the cold stone of his cell. Her hands moved to her waistband and flipped aside the buckles, her thumbs tucked inside. A moment later, she was wiggling her hips as she tugged her trousers down around her ankles. When they pooled there in a white pile, she lifted a foot to kick them aside, and then Aveil stood before him, utterly and completely naked. She was fit and thin, but curved where a woman should be. Both her breasts and her hips were rounded and looked soft and eager to be touched. Between her legs, a finely-groomed strip of pubic hair led down… down…

Link's erection came as hard as stone, making his breeches somehow even more uncomfortable than the fresh wounds still wrapping his back and torso. He closed his eyes and pulled a breath, but Aveil had already worked her desire into his mind's eye, and all he saw in the dark was her naked figure, beckoning him close for a kiss. When he opened his eyes again, she'd moved closer to seat herself beside his waist. Her hand moved from the string of his breeches.

"_Mmm_," Link groaned into the gag, though he wasn't entirely sure what he was trying to communicate then. He _wanted_ the breeches removed. The tightness of them had grown unbearable.

"_Shhhhh_," Aveil hushed him and worked her slender fingers around the string of his breeches till it was coiled before yanking the thing away entirely. Link practically came bursting out of his cloth prison, standing straight up out of the line of his breeches at full erection. Aveil's almond eyes held on his manhood briefly before floating back to his own eyes. A smile came across her face, turning her pretty features prettier and forcing Link to desire after her that much more.

She came crawling up the edge of the bed, her breasts swinging and swaying beneath her with every slow, careful, movement she made. When she was beside him, she folded her knees up beside his chest and sat herself up against him. She lowered her head to his chest, her ponytail coming falling over her shoulder to gently tickle at his bare flesh before her lips found him. They were such warm and soft things, Link could only close his eyes and groan against the gag as she kissed, first at his nipples and the sensitive skin around them, then all over, carefully dappling his bare flesh with her kisses between the red welts Jolene had left. Her hands pressed tenderly against his sides and began rubbing and groping at him as she kissed her way up his chest, his collarbone, his neck. He opened his eyes and, briefly, the two stared in at one another in silence. Then Aveil dug her fingers beneath his gag and pried it out from between his teeth. The moment it was gone, though, she covered his mouth was something new: her own. Their lips met and Link instantly thought, _She tastes as sweet as a peach_, then her tongue was coming, and Link met it with his own.

They stayed like that awhile; Aveil with her hands in his hair, her lips against his own, and her bare breasts pushed up against his chest, the nipples like little stiff dots poking against him when she pressed hard enough; Link with his eyes closed and his heart thumping and his cock throbbing and eager. When Aveil finally pulled away, he instinctively leaned forward to find her lips again and kiss, but his ropes kept him pinned down against the bed, and he could only watch helplessly as those enchanted lips of hers moved further and further away.

"_Aveil,_" he whispered.

"_Shhh,__" _she shushed, reached for his gag, and quickly silenced him with it again. "_You must be quiet, Link. I will take care of you now._"

"_Mmmph,_" Link grunted, gagged and helpless to utter even a single word once more.

Aveil turned herself around, and Link stared at the wonderful, smooth, curves of her ass and thighs as the torchlight flickered against them. Then she was crawling over him, her soft skin brushing against his own and sending eager tingles of sensation through his body with every move. She got herself turned around and to his other side. Her head lowered. Her lips came warm and moist against his abdomen. He felt her tongue slip out to give him a little lick. She moved further down the bed and her hands found his thighs, squeezing and groping and teasing as her kisses ran a trail down further towards the throbbing, eager, mast lifting up from between his legs. Then she was kissing that too, and Link could only press his head back against the cot and bite the gag in his mouth as pleasure overtook him.

Aveil crawled down between his outstretched legs and lowered herself between his knees. Her fingers, slender and gentle, cupped his scrotum and the base of his shaft. Link lifted his head just enough to see Aveil flash a quick grin up towards his face, then the woman was opening her mouth wide, her lips full and pretty and warm and wonderful, and took his cock inside her.

"_Grrrmmm,_" Link moaned against his gag, squeezing his eyes shut once again.

Aveil's mouth was the warmest place he could imagine in that moment, and when her tongue came to slide against the bottom of his cock, up its entire length, then flick and tease at his head before repeating the whole process, Link _did _forget he was in captivity. He forgot he was bound, forgot he was gagged, forgot just about everything in the world. He could only think of Aveil and her almond eyes and her breasts and her mouth; oh, her mouth. It was wrapped so tightly around him then, he had to squeeze his hands to fists to stop himself from spilling his seed.

Aveil removed him from her mouth with a kiss at the very tip of his cock and whispered, "_Do you want to finish in my mouth or between my legs?__"_

He wanted her on top of him, with her breasts looming up where he could see them, and that little strip of pubic hair he'd glimpsed earlier leading down and adjoining them as one between the legs. Of course, the gag prevented him from saying any of that, but whatever Aveil saw in his eyes, she must've understood. She nodded, sat beside him a moment (presumably to let him cool off a bit) then crawled herself back up over his thighs to straddle his waist. He watched her breasts sway as she moved. Aveil smiled again, reached down to take his cock in her hand, then carefully worked him up inside her.

Link had been wrong when he thought Aveil's mouth was the warmest, tightest, place he could imagine. She had found him a place much warmer and much tighter. She slid herself down to take him deep inside her, lowering so far that Link felt her bare ass press against his thighs. Then she came lifting up again, her back arching, her breasts coming full and heaving with a deep breath. Link moaned against his gag again and felt his own hips buck a bit on their own, wanting to enter her as deep as they could. Aveil herself, by then, was beginning to pant a bit heavier, and after a few more bouts of up and down and up and down, their skin growing slick with sweat and sliding against each other with every thrust, she threw her head back and began to grope at her own breasts, pinching and tweaking at her nipples. Link watched, using every bit of willpower he had to keep his seed from spilling, but when Aveil moaned and ran a hand through her hair and reached her other down to claw fingers of passion across his belly, Link could hold back no longer. The muscles of his legs turned to knots as he thrust himself up as high as he could and was overtaken at once with a thousand pleasurable waves all coming for his cock and groin at once. They _were_ truly one then for the moment, for Aveil was allowing herself a few quiet whimpers and moans as she tossed her head back and gaped her mouth and closed her eyes and came and came and came.

* * *

After some time, either a moment or an eternity, Aveil collapsed beside him on the bed and the two laid like that, side by side, for a long time; the cell filling with the echoes of their panting breaths returning the wind to them.

Eventually, Aveil leaned over and kissed him a few times on the brow, the cheek, and what she could find of his lips around the gag. "I knew it," she whispered. "I knew man and woman were meant for this. It is our nature. Jolene… she is nothing but lies. I see that now. How could something that feels so incredible, so _wonderful_, be so wrong?" She held his eyes. "I have to leave you now, Link. I'm sorry. But I promise you I will do what I can to protect you and, soon, rescue you. We are joined now, you and I." She kissed the bridge of his nose. "We belong to one another." She kissed his mouth, right atop the gag. "And I will not let any further harm come to you."

She rose, made for the torch, and dressed herself. When it was done, she looked back to him, noticed his cock lying flaccid outside his breeches, and promptly tucked it back inside before lacing him up again. When her fingers came against him though, Link stiffened a bit, and Aveil looked to him. The thought seemed to cross both their minds: _Again._ But Aveil said, "I have been gone too long already. There will be other times, Link of Hyrule. I promise you that."

Then she took her torch and left, and Link was alone again.

But Aveil had held true to her word: for a time there, a little while at least, Link had been free.


End file.
