Conanne: Handmaiden of Death by jay.palin

A Short Story by J.K. Ermon (jokermon)

This is a work of erotic fantasy fiction for the entertainment of adults only. Everything in this story is imaginary and is not meant to represent any real-life people, events, or medical conditions. It contains explicit futanari content. If that's not your thing, or if reading this type of material is unlawful where you reside, don't read it. All characters in sexual situations are 18 years of age or older, even if it seems otherwise for dramatic or narrative purposes. Please enjoy this story responsibly and do not repost without permission. This story is copyright©2024 J.K. Ermon.

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When the mail-shirted guards dragged Andrego the merchant from the dungeons beneath the Aquilonian palace, he was certain they were about to summarily behead him.

Instead, they put a coarse hempen sack over his head and dragged him through a disorienting succession of corridors and staircases. When they removed the sack, to his surprise, he found himself in a luxurious bedchamber.

He gaped around. Scantily-clad serving girls were filling an ornate bronze tub with steaming-hot water. A great canopied four-poster bed dominated an entire wall. Tapestries and silks hung everywhere and the floors were polished Nemedian marble rather than rush-strewn flagstones. A glass-enclosed balcony flooded the room with late afternoon sun. It flared on a dozen shiny surfaces.

Daylight, he thought, tearing up at the brightness.Never thought I'd see that again.

"Time to get cleaned up, traitor," the senior guard spat. He waved toward the tub. "The Queen shall decide your fate presently."

Hope rekindled in his heart.So I'm not dead yet.

"This room will be watched," the sentry went on. "Any misbehavior and you die." From his savage tone the merchant could tell the man was hoping Andrego would give him an excuse to do just that.

"In the meantime, remedy your foul stench."

With that, the guards left. Andrego made a rude gesture at the closed door. His nose wrinkled as he caught a whiff of himself and sighed. The guard wasn't wrong. His once-rich robes were ripped and filthy from his capture and subsequent jailing; his corpulent body reeked of dried sweat and mortal terror. He hadn't had a chance for a proper wash since his apprehension. The Black Dragons caught him fleeing the country in an empty transport barrel used for pungent spices and he had been in the dungeons at least a week. Long enough, at any rate, for the scented hair oil he favored to turn rancid.

He stripped naked and climbed into the tub. He was a grossly fat man and at thirty-six, the youngest member of Aquilonia's mercantile guild.

And one of the wealthiest, he thought with a flash of his old pride. He settled into the hot water with a sigh of relief.At least until I lost everything.

The veiled and silk-clad serving girls silently collected his soiled clothes. All but one of them left. She was a particularly bosomy wench with long braided black hair and a narrow-waisted, wide-hipped figure. She knelt next to the tub and laid out a tray of exotic soaps and unguents. Apparently, she was to be his bather.

Her eyes were all that was visible of her face, and she kept them demurely downcast, but Andrego still couldn't help catching an arresting gleam of cobalt blue. Much of her skin was exposed, and it was tanned and smooth and beautiful, but also, intriguingly, covered with many well-healed scars. Her abbreviated camisole top left her belly bare and revealed a mountainous amount of cleavage. For the first time in weeks, Andrego felt stirrings of a manly nature.

Might as well make the best of things, he thought.

He reached out a chubby hand and cupped one of those fine, full breasts. She slapped his hand away with astonishing strength. He gave her a wounded look. She pointed meaningfully at the door through which the guards went. The warning was clear. He was to behave or else. Grumbling, he settled back in the water.

Without a word, she picked up a long-handled bath brush and proceeded to scrub him clean with great efficiency. She was liberal with her use of the soap and wasn't gentle. Andrego winced several times as she scoured out his many folds and crevices a little too vigorously. She brusquely dunked his head to she could lather up his thick brown hair and then dunked it again to rinse it.

"Easy, bitch," he sputtered.

To his shock, she rapped him on the head with her bath brush.

"Is that any way to address your queen, Andrego?"

Her voice was throaty, melodious and reproachful. He recognized it instantly.

"Your majesty," he gasped. He quailed in the tub, splashing water onto the floor. There was really no way to withdraw further.

The woman undid her veil and pulled it aside, revealing the striking countenance of Queen Conanne, ruler of Aquilonia. She perched on the side of the tub and crossed her legs fetchingly.

"I'm told you led Prospero's boys on quite the merry chase," she remarked. "You move fast for a fat man."

"Your majesty," he said again, this time in barely a wheeze, "your...your pardon..."

Suddenly there was a dagger in her hands. He had no idea where it came from, it was just instantly at his throat. He didn't even have time to flinch. His pronounced double chin wobbled.

"Mypardon, Andrego, is not something I grant to those who take food from the mouths of my troops. A procurement contract is a sacred trust."

"I...I assure your majesty..."

"We seized your assets. Imagine my surprise to find everything was under lien to Irumi the Shemite."

He winced and closed his eyes.

She slapped his fat cheek with the flat of the blade. "Explain yourself."

He sighed and sagged into the deep and comforting tub. "I had...a series of misfortunes, my Queen. Ships sunk, caravans waylaid, warehouse fires...Irumi loaned me enough to remain solvent. But the interest was outrageous. I had to...be inventive just to stay afloat."

"Inventive? You padded sacks of meal with gravel pouches when the quartermaster weighed them. You overbilled us by a third, at least."

"I only did enough to keep a roof over my head, your majesty."

Conanne raised an eyebrow. "A walled estate in the merchants' quarter with a palatial residence? Quite a nice roof, indeed."

Then she looked thoughtful. "Subotai said we might never have gotten suspicious had you not bolted in the middle of the night. What happened?"

Conanne had made her old Hyrkanian comrade of the Kerlait tribe minister of trade. "It takes a thief to catch one," she had said of her decision.

Andrego gulped. "Last week Irumi showed up in person. He offered to clear my debt if I began giving him...information."

"What kind of information?"

"Information about the Aquilonian army, your majesty. Troop strength, movements, offensive capabilities. Where they would be and when."

Conanne grew very still. The dagger pressed dangerously into the side of Andrego's neck, almost hard enough to draw blood. Sweat beaded on the merchant's brow.

Then man began talking fast, almost in a babble: "I refused, of course! Then he told me he knew how I'd been cheating you. He described it perfectly. He knew everything! He told me if I didn't tell him what he wanted to know, he'd make sure you knew, too. So I told him I would do it, I would get him the information, but that I needed a few days to get it."

Another nudge from the knife. "And did you?"

"Of course not! I ran that night! I grabbed a sack of Turanian diamonds and lit out for Zingara."

Conanne looked scandalized. "You left your family behind?"

Now Andrego grew very still.

"One of the ships that sank," he said quietly, "was carrying my wife and sons."

The pressure from the dagger relented. Conanne sat back and studied him.

"I hadn't been informed."

"I chose not to make it public knowledge." He swallowed roughly. "I had been hoping...that news of survivors might yet reach Tarantia."

He took a shaky breath, lifted his head and looked Conanne in the eye.

"Is it your majesty's will that I die?"

He asked it plainly and with dignity. Conanne's lips twitched.

"That has yet to be decided." She leaned forward. "Is the Shemite still here? In Tarantia?"

Andrego nodded. "He said he had business at the docks. But I don't know where he is, exactly."

Conanne gave him a hard, assessing look that somehow made the fat merchant feel even more naked than he was. Whatever she saw seemed to satisfy her. She slid to her feet and strode to the door.

Andrego couldn't help noticing she moved with the grace of a panther. The sinuous flow of her legs and hips sent another perverse flicker through him.

The Cimmerian wasn't tall, but she was strong and buxom, full of the uncanny vitality of her kind. She was a dickgirl, known as ak'vinruhkin the barbarous tongue of the North. She possessed a strange aberration that only appeared a few times in every generation. Thek'vinruhkwere born girls, normal in every respect, at least until mid-to-late adolescence. Then - and always on a birthday morning - they would wake up with a male organ of breathtaking size. It would appear out of nowhere, overnight.

All of their female parts would still be present. They could impregnate women, but were themselves barren.

They were venerated in Cimmerian culture. They were possessed of unnatural strength and rumored to have mystical perception and other abilities. Typically, they became witch-doctors, prophetesses or war leaders. It was unheard-of for one to be seen beyond the borders of Cimmeria. Conanne's remarkable life, however, had been built upon the principle of confounding expectations.

She opened the door a crack and spoke quietly to the soldiers outside. To his surprise, Andrego heard the clump of heavy boots walking away. Then she closed the door and returned. He noted she did not lock it.

Watching her approach, the bulge in the silks draped about her loins became apparent. He swallowed again. Oddly, his tremor of arousal didn't diminish. The queen had an aura of sensuality that was as unmistakable as it was potent.

She sat on the lip of the tub again and looked down at him affably. "So, why did you run?" she asked him.

He blinked. "Your majesty?"

"You could have just given him the information. You had access. Subotai might never have discovered you'd been fiddling with the grain sacks."

His mouth dropped open. "I couldn't betray my country, your majesty!"

"You had already defrauded the royal bursary," she pointed out drily.

"That was different," he spluttered. "Everybodydoes that."

An eyebrow lifted. "Everybody?"

Andrego backtracked. "Perhaps an overstatement. More accurate to say it's not unknown for accounting errors to happen."

Conanne closed her eyes. "Crom almighty, but you mercantile guilders give me a headache. Give me a score of picts to fight unarmed any day."

Just then the oaken door to the bedchamber burst open. Two leather-armored thugs wearing the livery of palace guardsmen leapt into the room. They were grubby, unshaven and ill-favored. Imposters. They were followed by a gaunt, swarthy, hawk-faced man in black Shemitish robes surmounted by a jeweled turban.

"Irumi!" yelped Andrego. "How did you get in here?"

"Easier than you think," purred the Shemite.

Conanne's back was to the door. She dropped to her knees and swiftly re-hid her face behind her veil. She buried her face in her hands.

"Oh no," she wailed in a squeaky voice completely unlike her own. "We shall surely be slain!"

"You shall not be slain, shapely one," said the Shemite, casting an appreciative eye over her form. "For you shall fetch a handsome price on the slave blocks of Dan-Markah." His hatchet-face swung to glare at Andrego. "But this fat fool shall have no such kind fate."

The black-robed man drew a broad-bladed scimitar from its ornate scabbard on his hip. He raised it high and rushed toward the tub.

Andrego grabbed a stoppered crystal vial off Conanne's tray of toiletries. He recognized the bottle -- it was that same expensive Ophirian hair oil he himself favored. He flung it at at Irumi's feet. He had no idea where the impulse to do that came from, had, in fact, no idea what he was doing until the glass had already left his hand. It shattered on the tiles and the Shemite's curly-toed boot slipped in the clear oil.

His attacker's expression vaulted from bloodthirsty eagerness to pure shock in delightful fashion. Irumi's foot flew into the air. His body followed. He described a half-somersault before crashing down on his back.

Conanne leapt to her feet. The two henchmen flanking the door were rushing forward.

The dagger was in her hand again and her arm blurred as she flung it. It flew end-over-end and buried itself in the brain of the one on the left via his eye socket. His head snapped back and blood spurted. He fell backwards as straight as a felled tree. His fellow stopped and stared at him, then at Conanne. His look of surprise matched Irumi's.

Conanne wasn't looking at him. She was already dashing towards the bed, moving with unnerving speed. She reached under it and pulled out her Atlantean broadsword.

Andrego's breath caught. He had only ever seen it from a distance in the throne room, displayed in a place of honor high on the wall behind the royal dais. There was no mistaking its extended hilt, brief crosspiece and elaborate carvings. It flashed blindingly bright in the sunny bedchamber.

She roared a nerve-shattering Cimmerian war cry and the second oaf didn't even have time to get his own blade up. Atlantean steel sliced through his neck like air. His severed head jumped off his shoulders as though propelled by a fountain of blood. His headless, spouting body took two stumbling steps backward and then collapsed beside the other corpse.

"PROSPERO," she bellowed at surprising volume. "GET IN HERE!"

Andrego noticed Irumi was staggering to his feet. Again, he acted without thinking. He grabbed the stout wooden-backed bath brush that had just been between his buttocks and brought it down on Irumi's turbaned head.

He didn't know he had such strength in him. The brush broke over the Shemite's pate and he collapsed onto his face, unconscious.

The sudden quiet was startling. The violence was over as fast as it began, leaving Andrego stunned. He looked at the two gory corpses and felt like vomiting. He overcame it, but then he felt like he might faint. Thankfully, he fought that off as well.

"Well done."

Startled, Andrego looked over to see the barbarian queen regarding him with grudging approval. He noted, somewhat queasily, that she was wiping blood off her sword with a cloth. He did look away when she stooped to wrench her dagger out of the dead man's eyeball.

More soldiers rushed into the room then, led by Prospero. The tall Aquilonian knight's mail shirt and lion's-head tunic were immaculate as always, as were the others. These men were genuine.

"Your majesty is unharmed?" he asked with great concern.

"I'm fine, Prospero," Conanne said laconically. "What kept you?"

"A thousand pardons, your majesty," Prospero said with real chagrin. "We had to position ourselves farther away than I would have preferred, to remain unseen. We followed as quickly as we could."

"You knew they were coming?" Andrego asked incredulously.

"Of course," said Conanne. "You were the bait."

"I was..." Andrego slumped back in the bath. The water was getting cool, and the pads of his fingers were getting wrinkly. He was acutely aware that he was naked with nothing but a tubful of soapy water between him and a roomful of armed men. And one extremely dangerous woman.

He cleared his very dry throat and spoke in a brittle voice. "Your Majesty, may I please know what is going on here?"

Conanne's eyes crinkled as she smiled at him. "Subotai discovered a spy in the palace," she explained. "Someone in Irumi's pay. When you disappeared, we allowed the spy to receive information that you had been secretly working for me all along, gathering information about Irumi. Including clues as to who he was working for."

"But...I have no idea who he was working for!"

Conanne nodded towards the inert form of the Shemite. "He didn't know that. We allowed the spy to know you'd be here and under minimal guard. Then we waited to spring the trap." She gave Prospero a baleful look. "Though I wasn't expecting to have to deal with them all single-handed."

Prosperoharrumphedand shifted uncomfortably. "To be fair, your Majesty, we hadn't expected them to appear so quickly." He gave Andrego a distasteful look. "Shall I remove this one?"

"No," she said, and pointed at Irumi. "Thatone. Subotai will have questions for him when he wakes. By Crom, I'm keen to know what he has to say." She gestured towards the two bloody corpses. "Have your men make themselves useful and remove that offal. And mop the floor."

"Mop the floor?" asked Prospero, shocked. "Aquilonian knights?"

"Crom and Mitra!" Conanne swore. "After this botch-up, they're lucky I don't make them do it dressed as Zenobia's handmaidens."

Prospero's lips twitched. He turned and bellowed orders at his men. Irumi and the bodies of his lackeys were unceremoniously hauled away while two knights, looking pale and chastened, fetched a mop and a bucket and cleaned up the blood.

Conanne studied their handiwork with a critical eye. "Good enough," she grunted. "Leave us."

Prospero gave Andrego another suspicious look. "Shall I leave a man posted in the room, my queen?"

"Outside the door," she said firmly. "Good night, Prospero."

He bowed. "Good night, your majesty."

Prospero and his men left.

"May I...get out of this tub, your majesty?" asked Andrego plaintively.

She grinned wolfishly. "No."

With a series of quick and efficient movements, Conanne stripped naked.

Andrego's breath caught again. Her tanned, strong, curvy body shone almost as brightly in the late afternoon light as her steel sword. Her beautiful face was no longer that of a young maiden, but was carved with character and imperious allure. Her eyes were hard as sapphires, while her mouth was full and soft and inviting. Andrego licked his lips and swallowed.

Her penis rose up before his eyes, becoming a fleshy spar as hard and curved and polished as the Shemite's scimitar. It rose from a proud triangle of black curls and was crowned by a broadly-flanged pink bulb. Its slitted eye dripped clear nectar.

She swung a long leg over the lip of the tub and Andrego caught a glimpse of her vulva as her mighty testicles shifted.

So it's true, he thought in a mixture of shock and wonder.The k'vinruhk have all the parts of both menandwomen.

She slipped into the tub with him. Her enormous breasts jostled and jiggled and then stilled as she settled in the water with a sigh of contentment. Her legs coiled companionably around his own. They were smooth and warm and well-muscled.

"Your...majesty?" he asked in a hoarse voice that was almost a squeak.

"I have no idea what it is about slaying fools that makes me so amorous," she remarked. Her erection was so long, its tip broke the surface of the water. She reached down for a cake of soap and began lathering her arms and torso.

"Irumi will be dead by morning," she said in that same conversational tone. "All of your debts to him will be expunged. I'll issue a royal decree if I have to. Your wealth will be restored."

A wild glow of hope blossomed in Andrego's breast. "Your majesty is...too kind."

She cleared her throat. "The crown will, of course, have to seize all that wealth as punishment for robbing us. An example must be set." She smiled at him. "I'm sure you understand."

Conanne: Handmaiden of Death

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