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Sunk in the night, Andromache sits on the chill marble paving of the portico, her hands bound with her own veil, her hair stripped of its beads and laces, her under-dress the only garment left to her as the breezes blow cool and smoky. She sits with head bowed, hair flowing down around her shoulders and arms, just another piece of plunder piled outside. Some of the other women huddle and whisper when the guards have paced past, but Andromache sits apart where she’d been left, misfortune surrounding her like a stench.
Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, left her here at sunset. He’d returned from murdering her son to drag her from her inmost chamber, his broad hand encircling her upper arm as he hauled her along as if she weighed nothing. Almost impossibly tall and broad, he looks like a Titan from the age of myth, like King Priam’s stories of the pirate Hercules, like a flame-haired version of his father, but for his smooth young face, calm as a sated lion’s, lovely as a child’s. Wearing that mien, he pushed her to the wall as she shrieked and wriggled, transported by grieving rage, and when she clawed him he struck her across the face so hard her head spun, his calm look never changing.
“You are mine now,” he told her, simply, dragging her veil from her head, binding her wrists together, rending her outer dress from her shoulders and ripping open her girdle. The palace rang with screams and groans and shouts, and Neoptolemus’ boar-tusk corselet shifted around him as he dragged Andromache onwards. A little ways down the hall was the room for washing and dressing, a heavy table in its midst, and he pushed her in there.
Once more, Andromache struggled, tried to fight, cried out, “No!” She was wife of Hector, the greatest warrior of Troy —
Neoptolemus tossed her over the table like a toy, her front slamming down onto its broad bronze surface as she tried to catch herself with bound hands and shrieked, “No, don’t touch me!”. He didn’t bother arguing with her. He didn’t need to. One hand splayed across her upper back, he shoved up her dress with the other, his fingers skimming her buttock even as she struggled and wailed. One bronze-greaved leg shoved between hers, knocking her knees apart, and his pressing hand slid to grip her waist, his long thick fingers dug into her hair as he pushed hard and blunt against her, twitching his hips to nock himself, practiced beyond his few years.
And then he drove up into her, brutally hilting himself, shoving her up onto her toes as he seared his way within her, as she arched her back and screamed. He plunged within her again and again, knocking out her breath, straining her sinews, breaking her open, battering her beyond herself. Andromache lay over the table, writhing around Neoptolemus, tears streaming from her eyes to soak her cheek and gown as he pulled on her hair and pounded into her. He began to huff and her wails sank to sobs as if her very voice had been shoved up out of her, and how she burned around him, how she throbbed, the sinews pulled aching-tight within her.
He groaned over her, into her, his shudders shaking her all through, and in that moment, as she felt his spurts against her womb, as she cramped around him pulsing within her, she remembered. Hector was gone from her into death, and their little son taken from her by the very warrior using her in this moment, and all of Troy fallen to be trampled into the dust. She was no longer any man’s wife, reduced now to this boy’s slave.
Something within her shattered, and her eyes burned like her battered passage. Neoptolemus sighed, breath brushing her neck, then hauled himself out of her as abruptly as he’d shoved in. As Andromache gasped, he raked his hand through her hair, strands twinging and snapping, the embroidered bands and strings of beads breaking and falling, bouncing onto the table and to the floor.
“No more jewels for you,” he puffed, salt rising from his heated skin as he gripped her shoulder and hair and dragged her back off the table, against his body massive as a wall. “Not unless I give them to you. You are mine now, Andromache, Man’s Honor. My slave. My pleasure.”
Pressed to him, she had no choice but to breathe him in, salt and musk and the metallic edges of blood. Head hanging, hair tumbling down around her, she just shuddered, aching in her cunt and in her heart, and she didn’t say yes, but neither could she say him no.
Now she sits amidst the gathering winds, the deepening night, her mind as empty and howling as the air whirling around her. The nervously twittering women fall silent as heavy bare feet plod across the portico. Andromache doesn’t look up.
She can already recognize Neoptolemus’s broad hand when it closes around her wrist above the binding veil, as the other wraps around her shoulder and he pulls her to her feet. He strokes roughly over her head, gathering her hair into his fist, and pulls his sword with the other.
The huddled women smother gasps. Perhaps he’s weary of her already. In this moment, her family all dead and her life stripped away, Andromache would not say him nay.
He pushes the sword up, sawing it through her hair from her nape upwards, as it falls whispering down her shoulders and around her feet. Her long hair, which Hector had used to comb for her, which she had carefully oiled and arranged with strings of beads and bands and ribbons, now falling away from her. One more loss hollowing out her heart.
He wipes his sword on his tunic’s hem and sheathes it, and turns, wordlessly pulling her along like a trundle-toy on a string. She stumbles after as he leads her away from her home this last decade and more, from the royal house she married into, from the life she has led, as the moon shines down on them all. Andromache doesn’t look up.
Soon enough Neoptolemus stuffs her into a tent, the material surprisingly coarse for a prince, her weaver’s eye can’t help noting even as the rest of her stiffens in terror. The floor is cloth at least, softened with a pallet. Her head brushes the slanted roof, and he crouches to fit as he pulls the cloth from around her wrists, pressing dents into her skin. “Remember that if you kill me, you will belong to the whole Greek army,” he says coolly, “and my friends will make sure every last man has his turn upon you.”
Andromache has no fit words for reply. Her hands fall useless at her sides, his big young eyes glint in the night. Her cheek still aches from where he struck her earlier. It isn’t until he reaches for her shoulders that her tongue unsticks “Please… Sir,” she starts, to this massive stripling whose toy she now is, “please let me take off my dress, it’s my only one left.”
“I want you naked,” he says, letting her go to unfasten his belt. Andromache strips herself with shaking hands, folding her dress and dropping it in the corner, as he pulls off his tunic and drops his straining breechclout and she sees now in the dimness what she’s already felt. At least he chose her, she thinks as she stares at his rampant phallos. Inflicting that on a virgin would have just been unkind.
She almost laughs, and almost weeps, and as he kneels he grabs her wrists and hauls her to him, pushing her onto her back with his broad body, tucking thick thighs either side of her hips, looking down at her with those big eyes in that smooth young face.
Leaning on his shield arm, Neoptolemus strokes his sword hand through Andromache’s shorn hair, down her temple and cheek, wrapping it around her throat, sliding a finger in the notch. She realizes he’s examining her, and shudders, clutching the cloth beneath her to help herself stay still as he slides thick fingers over her collarbones and then cups one breast, thumbing her nipple so it twinges. “I’ve never had a woman of my own before,” he murmurs, as if to himself. “Just servants and slaves and captives of common sport. But now you belong to me and I can do as I like with you.” His hand tightens around her breast, until her flesh achingly bulges between his fingers, until she’s gasping through her nose, lips pressed together.
He lets go, only to squeeze the other breast even more roughly. “No milk,” he says sadly as he eases off and she pants through her nose, her chest heaving. “I shall have to get you with child as soon as I may.”
“Please, Sir,” Andromache gasps out, as his roaming hand skims the curve of her belly. “Please be gentle with me.”
“Why?” Is his mild, chilling response, as he pushes his hand between her legs. “Part your thighs.” She obeys, clenching her teeth and squeezing her eyes shut as he pushes her open with those long blunt fingers. “I chose you specially because you’re the most beautiful mother to hand. I didn’t want to deal with a virgin.”
Neoptolemus lifts one massive leg, then the other, pushing them between hers, settling his hand to her hip. “You bore the pangs of childbirth, I know you can bear me. I can ride you as hard as I like.”
Her clenched eyes prickle with tears of terror as he drags that heavy phallos down her belly, over her mound, pushing himself into position. “Go ahead and weep,” he says with horrifying gentleness. “I like it,” as he pushes into her. She’s sore from before and every hairsbreadth of her passage lights up with searing pain as he bears down on her with the strength of his thighs, in and in and in as she clenches her fingers and teeth tight, struggling to endure.
He grips her knees, pushing them back, tilting her hips up to his as he pulls back and slams in and the wave of pain arches her neck, the cry puffs from her mouth. He speeds up, pounding into her over and over, her whole body shaking with his thrusts, her breasts bouncing and aching, her cunt glowing with agony as he huffs over her and thrusts into her. Hector used to talk softly to her as he moved within her, and she shouldn’t think of him now most of all, but he did, he did, she used to enjoy this with him, she would be wet for him and they would slide together so sweetly…
Andromache begins to sob, and Neoptolemus grunts like a pleased swine, and pushes her knees back further till the joins of her hips ache, bracketing the pain he’s pounding into her. He groans, sweat dripping to splash on her face and throat, thrusting and thrusting through his spurts, only slowing to a stop afterwards. And then he slumps full length upon her, like she’s a cushion, crushing all the breath out of her so she can only shudder with airless sobs.
“Mmm,” he hums at length, as Andromache shudders in despair beneath him, around him. He pulls back from her on a sticky wet sound, as she wonders how much of that is seed and how much blood, and finally drops himself on his back beside her, letting her breathe. Her whole body curls away from him as she wraps around herself and aches and weeps.
And then he says, “Stimulate me.” And all Andromache can do is sob in disbelief.
“What more would you have from me?” She asks bitterly, heedlessly, and this giant boy just lays his hand on her side and rolls her towards him, grips a massive fistful of her hair and pulls her so close their noses touch.
“I would have you stroke me to hardness so I can enjoy you again,” he says, then tilts her head and licks the tears from her cheek. She gasps, somehow managing to find some fury within her weary heart, and he wraps his other broad hand around her wrist, pushing down on her hand until her fist flattens against the thick muscle of his side. “If I kiss you, will you bite me?” Neoptolemus asks, his breath brushing over her hot wet face.
“I want to,” Andromache answers, beaten down to bare honesty, and he presses his smile to her cheek. And then grips her shoulders and pushes her flat again, crouching up over her like a lion over his prey. “I’ve changed my mind,” he announces, as he straddles her chest. “Open your mouth.”
“Please,” Andromache gasps, but her arms are pinned by his thighs, she can’t do anything as he grips her head in both hands and presses her face towards his already half-filled phallos. She's utterly helpless. But all he can do is brush her lips with the broad head, and after a moment he lets her go.
It’s not a reprieve. He climbs over her, kneeling behind her head, and grabs her hair again, pulling her up to him now upside down. Andromache shuts her mouth firmly, hands rising to shove at him, and he effortlessly rolls her to her belly and pushes her arms behind her to bind her hands again with what must be her dropped veil. “Please stop,” she takes the moment to beg. “Please let me use my hands on you, please don’t make me—“
Neoptolemus rolls her to her back, pinches her nose with one hand and guides his phallos into her mouth with the other, and she can taste herself on him and the bitterness of his seed. He grips her nape and drags her up, pressing her head backwards between his thighs as he fills her mouth with his phallos, hardening and lengthening moment by moment, his eggs smothering her nose so she can get no air.
And he pushes in further, impossibly further into her throat, as she kicks and struggles, as he laughs, a delighted child, and begins to fuck her face like he did her cunt, slamming against her stretched lips and aching nose over and over, shoving into her throat, choking away all her air. A drowning roar rises in Andromache’s ears as she struggles, her throat invaded again and again, deeper every thrust, as his eggs slap her face and his phallos pummels her mouth and spit runs from its corners, as she gags and welters in airlessness. He’s saying something, she doesn’t know what, she doesn’t care as her body fights towards life, as he batters into her throat over and over.
And then he pulls out and whirls her around. Her front lands on cloth, she heaves and gasps and he shoves her thighs beneath her and shoves himself back inside her and she screams from the bottom of her aching lungs and he just laughs. “You’re marvelous,” she hears him say as she shudders around another pounding, this time from behind so his thighs slap against hers like a beating, as he reaches beneath her to grip her breasts searingly hard and drag her all the more roughly onto his battering ram. “So marvelous, so beautiful, so pleasurable. And you belong to me.”
Gasping, sobbing, overwhelmed, Andromache goes limp as Neoptolemus uses her and uses her and uses her, every thrust more painful than the last, her breasts throbbing in his hard hands, her whole body bouncing to his pleasure. He invades and conquers her and all she can do is choke up sob after sob, tears running from her eyes, her useless hands twisting in the ruined veil.
When he empties himself into her this time he cries out too, triumphantly as as rooster, and falls forward onto her like a wall collapsing, draping his whole heavy body over hers, his chin atop her head, his leg slung across her thighs, his phallos still wedged into her sore, sore cunt as it slowly, slowly softens. He pulls the veil from around her wrists again and she presses her hands to her face and weeps and weeps as he skims his hands over her shaking body, aimlessly squeezing handfuls of her flesh.
“Tomorrow you will wear my cloak as a dress, and proper rope around your wrists until you learn not to fight me,” he says, as if to a horse or a hound. “Tomorrow we set sail for my home. I look forward to the journey now that I have you to pleasure me whenever I like.” All she can do as these words fall on her is weep. “I’m going to enjoy you thoroughly, my new-caught Andromache…”
Neoptolemus’s calm voice fades out into heavy regular breathing, and eventually Andromache’s tears run dry, though her body heaves with sobs for a long while afterwards, pressed between his weight and the thin pallet over hard ground. He nestles his face into the shorn tumble of her hair, his thigh pressed up behind her aching legs, and she thinks about his intent, calm, smooth face. So Andromache always envisioned Medusa when the bards sang tales of monsters and heroes, face calm and lovely below her crown of writhing snakes.
Back when she sat beside Hector in a lighted hall, and their son wandered at will charming the whole court, and the Achaeans sat uselessly on the beach. As long ago as a handful of days.
Now the hall will be burned, and Hector and Astyanax are dead, and the immortal Gods have not seen fit to be nearly so kind to Andromache, who lies aching within and without, under her new master’s heavy smooth arm, her heart turned to stone.