Caralissa, queen of Orencia, moved through the enemy encampment like a shadow, her lithe body concealed in garments of black leather, the breeches and vest of a man, her green eyes the only light as she darted from tree to tree. What arrogant fools these barbarians were! A mile into her territory and still they’d posted not a single sentry. Not that it would have mattered, for the moon goddess was on her side, conspiring to conceal her silvery rays behind a bank of clouds until the crucial moment when she must enter the warlord’s tent.
Caralissa’s heart pounded in her chest as she crouched, now at the flap of it. Even here there were no guards. Drawing from her belt the dagger she slipped through the narrow opening, silent as night. She saw him at once, his body framed by moonlight. Varik, chieftain of the Rashal hordes laying on his back, unclothed, a single layer of fur his only protection from the cold ground. The weight of sleep lay heavily upon his bronzed form, the nudity of him barely concealed by a second fur bunched at his waist. The man was larger than she expected, more formidable. Wasting no time she knelt beside him, hoisting the knife overhead, the pearl handle clutched tightly in both hands.
Caralissa had never killed anyone before, and she knew she must not allow herself to see this man as human if she were to complete her mission. She must ignore the mane of black hair spilling over his shoulders, the sculpted chest, the softly breathing lips, the hands large and capable of wielding a heavy sword or axe. It was said the Rashal chieftain could fell a tree, or a company of soldiers in a single swipe.
The moment is now, she thought, now or never. Taking aim above his heart she uttered a final prayer to the goddess, then fell forward against him with all her woman’s strength. Eyes clamped tightly shut, teeth clenched she braced herself for the collision of razor-sharp steel on flesh and bone.
It was a collision that never came.
Caralissa cried out in shock as the knife suddenly recoiled and flew from her fingers. There was a flash of pain and then she felt herself hurtling backwards till it was her lying upon the furs and not him. Opening her eyes, blinking in the misty half-light, she saw him: Varik the Invincible, awake, his body lying across hers, his left hand pinning her wrists together above her head, his right clenching the intended murder weapon, the dagger of state her father had left her upon his deathbed.
He regarded her in silence, appraising, evaluating.
‘When you seek to kill a man,’ Varik told her at last, his voice calm and clear, as though delivering a lesson to a student, ‘you must cut across the jugular like so, while holding back the head thusly.’
Pressing the knife to his thickly sinewed neck, arching it towards the ceiling, he offered her a simple demonstration. This accomplished he thrust the dagger into the ground beside him, sinking it to the hilt with an easy thrust.
‘Now perhaps you would be so kind as to tell me why you have invaded my tent,’ he suggested, fixing her with his deep blue eyes.
Caralissa returned the gaze, unflinching. ‘I will,’ she replied, determined to avoid staring at even a part of his magnificent body. ‘As soon as you explain to me why you have invaded my country.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Your country? I was not aware kingdoms in this region of the world were being handed out to comely wenches. If memory serves, we invade a place called Orencia in the morning, the king of which goes by the name of Lysanis. Of course we have invaded three kingdoms in this valley already this week, so I may well be confused.’
Caralissa pushed out her chin in fury. This Varik was not only a cruel warlord he was an egotistical blowhard to boot. Besides, he was starting to hurt her, with his muscled chest pressing down on her ribcage and his fingers squeezing her wrists. ‘King Lysanis was my father. He has passed from this world and now I, Caralissa, am queen.’
‘Queen, you say?’ Varik released her, sitting upright so he was on his knees, straddling her midsection, his thighs on either side of hers. ‘That is most interesting. You do realise, do you not, Queen Caralissa, that despite your rank you are now my prisoner. My slave, if I so choose.’
Caralissa felt the swell of him against the crotch of her leather breeches, her hunter’s garb. ‘I demand to be treated as a man,’ she declared, attempting to extract herself from under him using her elbows on the soft furs.
Varik pinned her in place, exercising only the slightest tension to his thickly corded legs against her hips. ‘I see,’ he nodded, folding his arms across his chest, obscuring for the moment his dark brown nipples and hairless pectorals. ‘Well, I suppose we could torture you and have you impaled upon a spike as we would any ordinary assassin.’
Caralissa felt the blood drain from her face. ‘Good,’ she bluffed. ‘The sooner the better.’
‘Of course, there is an alternative,’ he continued, his eyes studying her intently, his emotions unreadable.
‘An alternative?’ she asked, trying not to sound desperate as she sought to settle herself beneath him in a manner that was dignified and befitting a monarch.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘An alternative, because you are a female we could treat you as such, making the sentence for your crime entirely different.’
‘Different?’ She frowned, giving a slight pout to her naturally full lips. ‘And just out of curiosity, what would that sentence be - for a female, that is?’
He shrugged. ‘Not impalement or torture, certainly. As a mere female, more than likely, you would simply be spanked.’
Caralissa laughed without humour. Though her long, fiery red tresses were currently tied back in a ponytail, and though her body was sheathed in acutely non-feminine clothes, she knew herself to be naturally beautiful, the desire of many a thwarted suitor. As for Varik’s so-called sentence, it was a thinly disguised pretext to lay with her, nothing more. ‘You would spank me for attempting to kill you? With such deterrents I am surprised you do not have would-be assassins lined up at your door.’
‘Am I to assume, then, that you consider the prospect of my hand disciplining your bare buttocks as pleasurable?’
Caralissa regarded him with blatant disgust, even as she fought to keep at bay the strangely troubling image of herself naked before him, helpless under his power. ‘Don’t flatter yourself. I merely meant that if it were known in Orencia how lightly you punish, there would be thousands of women eager to attempt to finish you off.’
Varik pursed his lips. ‘That is a possibility I hadn’t considered. Tell me, are all the female killers in Orencia as eager to crawl onto my furs as you?’
Caralissa reddened at the implication. ‘I shall see you dead,’ she vowed, her eyes narrowing. ‘I shall watch the jackals pick over your bones as I host a celebration for the thousands upon thousands of innocent people who have lost everything to your demon hordes and who even now suffer in anguish under your despotic rule! As for your insulting and demeaning punishment, I tell you as a “mere female” that you may take it and thrust it to the bottom of your scabbard!’
Varik shrugged. ‘As I said, the choice was yours. I was merely trying to be agreeable.’
‘Agreeable?’ she cried. ‘Well if that isn’t rich, coming from a man who has to sit upon a woman to get her attention!’
‘I take it a spanking is not to your liking. I could, as an alternative, give you a kiss.’
She screwed up her face in contempt. ‘A kiss?’ she mocked. ‘Are you simpleminded as well as brutal and evil? Do you think we are courting now?’
‘That is my offer, take it or leave it. One kiss as punishment and then, if you choose, you may go home.’
‘That’s it? No strings attached?’
‘None,’ he agreed. ‘However, I must warn you, I am a very effective kisser.’
She bucked her hips, making a futile attempt to escape. ‘At kissing pigs, maybe, but not women. Let go of me!’ she cried. ‘Who are you, anyway? You don’t even talk like a barbarian.’
‘My brother was raised in a city. He taught me their ways. I shall now kiss you. Resist me if you are able.’
Caralissa’s expression dripped venom. ‘Good luck, barbarian. You will find it easier to seduce a rock than to...’
Varik moved like lightning, employing the same power as when she’d tried to plunge the dagger into his chest. This time it was her lips he wanted and when she tried to squash them shut, like a flattened strawberry, he reached out instead with his hand, placing it full upon her left breast. The caress was firm, pervasive, even through the thick leather. Opening her mouth in shocked protest Caralissa found it quickly filled with the man’s tongue, deep and probing. All along her body she felt him; too late now she realised the folly of wearing the lace-up leather vest and pants with no undergarments.
Pointlessly then, with no power to back them, she put her hands to his chest. She intended to push him away, but all that came from her body was a moan of protest, small and weak emanating from somewhere in the back of her throat. For agonising minutes he worked her mouth and lips, as though she were a forgotten lover or a complicated puzzle from some ancient land to be solved. At one moment gentle, the next brutal, he plucked her senses, her emotions, her memories, systematically, mercilessly.
Piece by piece she felt her body betray her; her arms snaking round his shoulders, her fingers seeking and barely reaching across the broadness of his back, legs spacing themselves in subtle unwitting invitation, breasts straining at leather, pressing to his chest, neck arching, slim and delicately submissive, belly heating, softening, boiling in unknown anticipation. Lungs and nostrils sucking at the scents, the signatories of potent maleness, the musk of his skin, the complex aroma of hair, reeking of smoke and sky and the almost imperceptible odour of victory.
On and on it went - an onslaught, an unspeakable invasion - until finally, eyes shut, muscles collapsing, Caralissa was left no choice but to yield, inviting him as he plumbed from her depths untold secrets, untold possibilities.
‘That is enough,’ said Varik, removing himself from her lips. ‘I am satisfied now.’
She watched in disbelief as he rose to his feet, walked a short distance to the centre of the bare tent and sat down in a cross-legged position.
‘What are you doing?’ she demanded, her voice uncomfortably shrill as she sat up on her elbows, still breathing heavily.
‘I am meditating,’ he told her, reopening his closed eyes, betraying slight annoyance.
‘But - but what about me?’ she stammered.
‘What about you? Your punishment is done. You may go home.’
Caralissa blinked in confusion. ‘Home? But the kiss - I mean, I thought...’
‘You thought what?’ he asked as her sentence trailed off into nothingness.
She lowered her eyes, felt the heat rush to her cheeks. ‘I thought you enjoyed kissing me,’ she said softly.
‘I was punishing you,’ he shrugged. ‘What was there to enjoy?’
Caralissa felt the bile rise to her throat. ‘Bastard,’ she hissed. ‘You miserable, cruel bastard.’
The knife was within arm’s reach. Freeing it from the ground she charged at him, giving little thought to the wisdom of her actions. Varik diverted her easily, landing her on her stomach painfully. Without pausing for breath she picked the weapon up again and stumbled towards him. This time he stood. With a single motion he snapped the blade from the handle and put her on her back, her neck beneath the crush of his heel.
‘I think I shall have to impale you after all,’ he decided, towering over her, her life hanging in the balance of his whims.
‘I choose another kiss!’ she exclaimed, reciting the words as though she were countering some move of his in a game of skill.
Varik removed his foot. ‘I do not think so. You are male after all; I see this now. I shall summon my guards and we will be done with this. It will take but a short while to fashion a suitable pole for your impalement. I hope you have not eaten recently, because it will make a bit of a mess.’
Caralissa’s pulse quickened. The brute was calling her bluff. ‘But you said yourself, I was sweetly breasted,’ she reminded him, choosing for the moment to remain at his feet in the dirt rather than antagonise him by rising. ‘That is not the quality of a man.’
He shook his head as he reached for the hollowed animal horn that hung from a rope upon one of the four wooden poles, the ones which held the four corners of his squared tent. ‘There is no point to your words. I should have gathered from your clothes that you are not the sort of woman who desires a man. Perhaps you are of the Mirax,’ he speculated, referring to the mythical race of forest dwellers said to possess androgynous body parts.
‘No!’ she protested, sitting up so she could reach for the tie of the strung leather that bound the slick vest across her bosom. ‘I have the breasts of a woman, see?’ she declared, having parted the halves of the material.
Varik beheld Caralissa’s outthrust chest, the twin globes, firm and shapely. They shook visibly from her breathing, which was shallow and irregular.
‘A woman’s nipples should respond to a man,’ he observed, bestowing an idle glance at her before putting the horn to his lips. ‘Yours do not. You may wish to cover your ears. The sound is rather loud. Remind me, before your impalement, to allow you to evacuate your bladder. It will simplify matters.’
‘Varik, please!’ she cried, leaping to her feet, her hands at her nipples. ‘Mine do respond, see?’
Caralissa manipulated the rosy pink nubs furiously, her hopes momentarily raised as she saw him lower the horn to his side to observe her. Somewhere in the back of her mind a voice was telling her that he was tricking her, using her own emotions against her to force her self-abasement by terrifying her with images of torture, but she couldn’t think quite so clearly - not now, not with her loins still heated and her mind awash in a thousand competing thoughts and fears.
‘You see?’ she whispered, lowering her hands, revealing the evidence of her work. ‘They are much bigger now. I am told they are one of my best features. A man I know has written poems about them, in fact.’
Varik was silently staring and for a moment she entertained the wild hope that she might yet seduce him, bring him to his knees, or even to his back. Would she have the courage, then, to strike him, not with the broken dagger, but with his own sword, the one that rested in its leather scabbard in the corner next to the dragon-painted shield and the axe, the sword that was nearly her height and probably half her weight as well?
‘You have proven nothing; those breeches are not those of a woman,’ he told her, drawing a deep breath for the horn. ‘Who knows what they might conceal?’
‘Oh no,’ she insisted. ‘These were specially made, for my - my mission. I wear dresses at home. Men seek what lies beneath them, though none has yet proven worthy. Please, don’t blow the horn! Let me show you more.’
She was at his arm, pulling with all her might to prevent his touching the thing to his lips, and yet she could not move him a millimetre. The horn was midway now, between his scantily clad midsection and his strong lips. Keeping one hand on him she clawed desperately at the opening to her trousers with the other.
‘See?’ she said, skinning the material down to her knees, revealing her bare sex, a triangle of fine red fleece every bit as vibrant as that on her head. ‘I’m not a Mirax!’
Varik frowned, looking the part of a man whose patience was being sorely tried. ‘What are you telling me, then? Do you wish to be treated as a human female or as a male?’
‘Female,’ she heard herself say, her mind racing at the various implications, complicated and dark. ‘I - I wish to be treated as a female.’
Varik looked her up and down, assessing her in her fevered state of half undress. She blushed, her skin flush and damp with sweat.
‘Very well then. Strip off your clothing, female. All of it.’
Caralissa removed her boots and pants, slipped off the open vest. Was it her imagination, or was there a certain edge in Varik’s voice now, something subtle but hinting of a distinct change in their relationship? Back straight, arms at her sides, her every nerve on high alert, she stood before him anticipating the worst.
Saying nothing he looked at her, making her wait. In Caralissa’s mind the seconds passed like hours, each one a blow to her shattered nerves. If only the light were a little better, so she could read his expression more fully. Then again, even close up this particular man was a mystery. Why was he unlike all the others - the boys and men who panted after her in the court of her father, buffoons and charlatans, a thousand times her inferior, a million miles behind the pace of her racing thoughts?
‘Well?’ she blurted at last, unable to bear the tension. ‘What do you expect me to do?’
‘You may kiss me,’ he offered. ‘If you wish.’
She stiffened. ‘And if I do not wish to kiss you?’
‘Then it will show me that you are a man who wishes to be flogged and burnt with pokers and then impaled.’
Caralissa went to him at once. Avoiding body contact as much as possible she leaned in, intending to plant on his cheek a single peck. Somehow, however, it was his lips she encountered once more, the rim of his dangerous mouth. Her cry of foul play was dissolved as Varik possessed her anew, regaining all his previous ground and more.
‘You have twice more tried to kill me,’ he said, pushing her away at last, his hands gripping her forearms, her toes barely grazing the ground. ‘What should be done about this, female?’
The mention of her gender sent a chill down her spine. Between her legs she was wet now. ‘I should be punished,’ she managed weakly, the words emanating from stabbing breaths. ‘I should be punished by you - by your hand.’
Caralissa shuddered as Varik placed his palm on her buttock, casually, yet with obvious possessiveness. ‘With this hand?’ he asked.
‘Yes...’ she replied, drawing the word into several syllables.
‘You choose the disgrace of a girl’s chastisement over the honourable death bestowed an assassin?’
‘I do,’ she confessed, her voice an intimate waft of air onto his chest. It wasn’t just the horror of death that motivated her - she needed his hand, hard, firm, punishing. ‘I choose to be treated as a girl.’
‘As a naughty girl,’ he corrected. ‘One who, while she could be of no actual threat to a man on account of her being a mere female, has nevertheless annoyed him and shown him disrespect.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, allowing her attempted act of noble sacrifice for her country to be trivialised, feeling the flood of shame, delicious and hot between her legs as she formulated the words. ‘I am a naughty girl. Please, Varik, please punish me.’
Varik’s hand cracked loudly upon her firm posterior and Caralissa cried out, clutching him in wide-eyed wonder. ‘Again,’ she heard herself say.
‘Not like this. Your punishment will occur on the furs, across my lap. But first you must relieve the pressure, so I can concentrate properly on your sentence.’
‘The pressure?’ she repeated numbly.
‘Between my legs,’ he said. ‘Must you be taught everything from scratch?’
Caralissa swallowed hard. Of course she felt it, the man’s sword, his natural one, swollen and hard, pressing against her thighs. But how was she to ‘relieve’ it exactly? ‘Varik, there is something I must tell you. I have never before - never before...’
‘By the gods,’ he grumbled. ‘Are you a virgin?’
‘Yes,’ she admitted, eyes downcast, never imagining such could be a deficit in a man’s eyes.
‘No matter,’ he shrugged. ‘It will only make punishing you more fun. For now, however, I shall make use of another part of your anatomy. At least that way I shall be freed of your incessant chattering for a time.’
Caralissa felt the words hit her like a brick. Her mouth. He was referring to her mouth. Did he intend to put his manhood down her throat? Was such a thing possible?
‘Will you - I mean how will I...?’ she began foolishly, only to find herself trailing off as Varik’s hands found her shoulders, sending electric charges down her spine as he pushed her firmly downward till she was on her knees.
‘There will be a discharge,’ he explained. ‘I am told it is without flavour, though there may be a large amount. When it begins swallow hard, several times in succession and you will have no problems. I will not expect you to take the length of me this first time, though I expect diligence, and over the course of time, improvement.’
Caralissa’s mouth hung open as she beheld the thick rod, inches from her face, bulbous and pulsing, its base crowned with twin sacs, flesh coloured. Improvement, he’d said, over the course of time. Which meant she would do this again, perhaps many times. Her heart thudded in her chest. Did he intend to keep her then, as prisoner, or even as - perish the thought - a slave? He’d said it was his right. If he wished to exercise it, who would stop him come the morrow when he swept aside the pathetic ranks of weaklings who made up her army?
She clenched her fists, imagining for herself the split second luxury of resistance. If only she were a man. If only her father were alive, in his prime, the Lion of Orencia, he and his stalwart guard, the last of the true men of her nation. Then this story would have a different ending.
‘Use your tongue on it, as if it were a sweet meat,’ he counselled.
A sweet meat her eye! Tentatively, demonstrating duress, she dabbed at the extremities, determined to tinge her obedience with a healthy dose of disgust. If he were any kind of gentleman he would become so ashamed by her performance that he would have no choice but to put a stop to it.
‘Not that way, Little Flame. Like this.’
Little Flame? What sort of a name was that?
Varik guided her head, his hand on the back of her neck, moving her into place. Caralissa gagged.
‘Mmm, better,’ he said, the head of his cock having pressed itself halfway. ‘Now use your tongue. Good. You are a natural. Perhaps I should offer your services to my men. What do you think? We would have to have raffles, of course, choosing representatives from each company. Five hundred or so in all. It would only be right. Rashal men share everything, you know.’
‘I hate you,’ she gurgled onto his shaft, the words dissipating in the warm pool of spittle surging between her cheeks. ‘I hate you.’
Varik sighed, running a hand over the top of her head, stroking her like a dog. Humiliated, naked and on her knees, Queen Caralissa continued her ministrations. Apparently her protests meant nothing, nor did her rights as a free sovereign.
Very well, she thought, let me bide my time. He must sleep eventually. Then I will finish what I came here to do.
‘Pay attention now, Little Flame,’ he lectured. ‘It will be soon. In my homeland a man’s semen is revered. Were a slave to fail to retrieve every drop of her master’s emission, she would be whipped.’
Caralissa longed to spit out the foul liquid when it came. In his face, in fact, which was where he deserved it. But she dared not, for there was a whip in this very tent. She’d seen it upon her entry, and thought with disgust that such a man as this would probably use it on his lovers. A lover. Is that what she was? Hardly! Unbidden her hand strayed between her thighs. The way he was controlling her, thwarting her will was making her twitch inside, inviting her to release. Would Varik whip her? He’d yet to even spank her, though he said he would.
‘Do not touch yourself, Little Flame,’ Varik chastised, pushing her shoulders back so she could no longer reach. Her back bowed, her neck exposed and arched, Caralissa received the promised flood. Varik’s emission was warm, palpable, slightly salty. Outraged, infuriated, aroused beyond belief, she swallowed, repeating the motion over and over till he subsided.
‘Go now to the furs,’ he instructed, lifting her limp body till he made eye contact. ‘Approach them on all fours. Kiss them with your lips but do not go onto them without permission. Do you understand, girl?’
Mouth open in rapt amazement, Caralissa nodded.
‘Good,’ he said, setting her down on the ground like a pet. ‘Go then.’
Once again he delivered a stinging blow across her buttocks and once again she inferred it was something mild, a mere foretaste of what was to come. The journey to Varik’s furs seemed to last forever, each impression of her palms and knees in the dirt being a new lesson in subjugation. Never did she imagine such a thing even for her own servants, or even for the girls in the pleasure houses where she sometimes observed, gaining entry by disguising herself as a man. Certainly the girls who served the exclusively male clientele there were slaves, being frequently made to serve their bodies along with the beverages they brought, but there’d been rules, floors upon which to walk and dance, and clothes, skimpy but real which they were allowed to wear.
How many nights she’d thrilled to the pleasure-house scenes, hiding behind her moustache, watching in rapt fascination each and every detail of the girls’ ordeals as they submitted to the gropes, eventually letting themselves be led to the back rooms.
Afterwards, Caralissa’s morbid appetite for vicarious female degradation sated, she’d sneak back across the moat into the castle. Her miserable elder sister, Romila, chewed her out for this on many occasions, but their father never said a word. He’d thought it amusing, even courageous on her part. It was always that way with her father, which is likely why, upon his death he’d passed over Romila, leaving Caralissa the throne.
The furs were soft upon her lips. What new sensations for her this night! The lips and shaft of a barbarian and harsh animal furs all upon her mouth in one short time span. Lowering her head she reached back to unbind her hair, allowing it to cascade over her face to the ground. She needed to think. She was unravelling, threatening to burst apart at the seams.
Her mission, she must remember her mission. What means would she use to dispose of him, then? It was a few hours at most till dawn to complete the deed and flee from the camp, returning victorious to her cheering subjects, proving herself thereby the best, the wisest of rulers. There was a sword here, and an axe. Could she lift them?
Caralissa gasped, her thoughts shattering as she felt the soft fur on her fingertips. She was touching them by mistake! As if from a hot fire she pulled them back to the ground so that she might be fully in accord with Varik’s will. The action shamed her at once, for it was that of a captive girl, a mere slave.
And what if she were? said a voice deep in her head - the implications enflaming her between her clenched thighs. What if she were Varik’s slave already?
She shuddered as he moved by her, his calf muscle brushing her leg. Looking up, through the tangle of her hair, she watched as he knelt in the middle of the furs upon one knee. ‘Come here,’ he commanded, slapping his palm upon his thigh. ‘Lay yourself across me here.’
Caralissa crawled to him, painfully aware that by doing so of her own free will she was revealing herself to be not a queen, but a common slut. Varik lifted his arm so she could put herself into position. He made her slide to and fro several times, in ever finer increments till she lay exactly as he wished: her sex pressing directly onto his solid thigh muscles. Almost immediately she began to seep her fragrant juices onto him. When she tried to move to her knees he pushed her back up so that she was forced into the shape of a bridge, her feet and hands bracing her on the furs.
‘Widen your legs,’ he said, using his hand to induce her to spread herself. ‘Good,’ he praised, finding access to her wet opening, manipulating her clitoris till she whimpered. ‘Now we are ready to begin.’
Caralissa clawed at the ground. The magical fingers were gone and she was alone. ‘Varik, please don’t stop. I’m so close.’
‘I want you to count for me, Little Flame. Can you do this?’
‘Yes, Varik,’ she panted, having no choice but to find her pleasure in obeying him, in responding to his condescension.
Varik patted her twice, cupping her cheeks. Caralissa had never been spanked, never even been touched by her father or her nannies. Alinor, the young man who wrote so eloquently of her nipples, also composed verses on corporal punishment and on a few occasions he’d let her spank him as ‘punishment’ for his naughty words. But that was as far as her experience went.
It was, of course, no preparation whatsoever for the barbarian’s treatment of her.
Caralissa cried out with the first blow, the tears coming quickly to her eyes. Varik’s hand burned and it sent spasms up and down her body. The worst part, the really terrible thing, was that she couldn’t move, Varik having pinned her across his knee to prevent any escape. It was going to continue, on and on, as long as he wished.
‘You did not count, Little Flame. We must begin again.’
Varik’s second blow was as evil as the first. She swore she would die, that she would never make it beyond three. ‘One!’ she called out hastily, nearly missing the count a second time.
Two more blows followed and then she was begging, pleading for him to stop, promising him anything, anything at all for him to let her go.
‘Be careful what you wish for,’ Varik said, as if thinking out loud.
Caralissa didn’t have long till she understood what he’d meant. For in place of his firm spanks he now re-substituted the grinding of his fingers against her sex. Biting her lip and balling her fists, Caralissa was in no time begging again, this time for sexual release.
‘No,’ Varik said. ‘I do not give you permission to climax.’
Sweat beaded on her forehead. He was holding her back, as if on invisible chains, preventing her from reaching the point of orgasm. ‘I - I cannot bear this!’ she wailed as he worked her, stripping bare her nerves and laying her open as if she were a lute to be stroked, string by string. ‘Please, warrior, I beg mercy!’
‘I will stop,’ he informed her. ‘But the alternative is spanking. One or the other. You choose.’
Caralissa groaned, knowing herself defeated, utterly outwitted. ‘All right, all right,’ she cried a moment later. ‘Spank me again, only take your hand from me!’
She missed the count, which meant they would have to start again from one. The pain flared more quickly this time, and after the second she was forced to ask Varik to resume his caresses. She assumed he would have to ease up on account of her being so super heated, but it turned out there were more tricks up his sleeve. Using only the surface of his fingernail, he brought her back from her stupor, managing to rekindle the throbbing ache without pushing her over the edge to release.
With all her might, sweat-soaked, confused and wild-eyed, Caralissa convulsed against his hand, her motions careening her from Varik’s fingertip down to his knee and back up again. On and on, and still no relief.
‘Please,’ she croaked, fearing she might soon lose her voice or her sanity. ‘Spank me.’
Caralissa yielded to his blows, her body limp. In a ghostly voice she called the count. After three smacks he stooped his head to hear her faint request for yet another switch, to a renewed round of touching to her neglected loins. Sliding his hand over her burning cheeks he resumed his possession of her sex. This time she wailed, her very sensations of pain and pleasure having been undone, confused inexorably. ‘No more,’ she gasped, her head tossing to and fro, her lean body like a sinew, a wire stretched to breaking point. ‘Please, my lord, no more.’
Too late, Caralissa caught herself, the word ‘lord’ slipping from her mouth unbidden, a confession extracted under torture. Bracing herself she awaited the storm - whether from herself or him or both, she did not know.
‘It is time for you to answer some questions, my Little Flame,’ he told her, his hand on her back, soothing, reassuring.
‘I will not betray my people,’ Caralissa countered in a raspy voice, her cheek pressed to the dirt, her damp forehead sticky with dust. ‘You can’t turn my body against me.’
Varik trailed a finger up the inside of her parted thighs, stopping short of the simmering volcano of her sex but still close enough to wrench from her a new round of spasms. ‘Why did you come here alone?’ he asked.
‘I didn’t - trust - anyone else,’ she spit through clenched teeth. ‘So I did - everything - myself.’
‘That was unwise,’ Varik told her, eliciting a moan as he ran the palm of his hand across her stretched calves. ‘Considering that a man came to us earlier today to inform us there would be an assassin sent from the castle.’
‘Then you knew!’ she exclaimed. ‘And yet you posted no guards?’
‘Death comes when it wills,’ Varik reasoned. ‘We do not frighten it off with our preparations. Senelek, my brother pleaded with me, but I gave him direct orders to drink extra wine to facilitate sleep. I did the same. In addition, I relieved the regular bodyguards and removed Ahzur, my tiger, for the night. I did not even allow prayers. A man must meet his own fate, without fear.’
‘Are you mad?’ she asked, trying to block the sensation of his knee as it shifted in such a way as to create friction just beneath her breasts.
Varik laughed. ‘I have been accused of such. Though if anything, I would say I am not insane but merely bored. There is in my life no challenge left. Perhaps that is why you are here, Little Flame. I have one more question for you then we shall try something new. If you were given the chance, would you lay for my entire army to save your kingdom?’
‘The question is not fair. Nor is any other when the person being asked lies unclothed across your knee.’
He patted her glowing cheeks, inducing a mild wince. ‘Well said, Little Flame. Now you may kneel upon my bed furs.’
Caralissa lifted her head, doing her best to extract herself from the man’s lap. Varik was cool, calm and collected, not to mention dazzlingly gorgeous. It was probably the effect of her captivity and his powerful domination of her will, but she was strangely attracted to him in a way not even Alinor the poet had been able to invoke in her.
‘I need to be relieved again,’ he explained, lying upon his back, revealing a second erection every bit as vigorous as the first. ‘I would like you to use your hand this time, though when it is time to finish, I will have your mouth again.’
‘You are a beast,’ Caralissa told him. ‘An animal, with not a shred of respect or honour for a lady.’
He looked up at her where she knelt. ‘It is your heated sex which speaks so harshly, on account of your heavy need,’ he explained, running a hand against the lips of her nether opening, inducing a new round of shudders. ‘Serve me now and well, and perhaps we shall allow you an orgasm.’
‘How magnanimous,’ she said bitterly, lowering her head to his crotch. ‘I don’t know how I’ll repay you.’
Varik seized her hair, preventing further downward motion. ‘Begin this time at my feet,’ he ordered. ‘Work your way up, using your tongue and lips and fingertips.’
Caralissa did as she was told, grateful not to have to make eye contact for the moment. If she were not careful she would wind up being impaled yet. Her progress proved to be surprisingly slow, especially as he made her begin over two times, on account of what he felt were half-hearted efforts, hardly worthy of comparison with the services of his slaves in the homeland of his people.
Which, incidentally, was precisely where she wished he would return at this very moment, he and his infernal barbarian army. Let him have the rest of the world - why did he have to trouble her little kingdom?
‘Do not be discouraged,’ he told her, as if somehow it bothered her that she’d no idea what she was doing. ‘You are inexperienced and lacking in incentive. Tomorrow we shall undertake some training exercises and you shall see the difference.’
Caralissa clenched her thighs. No man would ever train her, despite the yearning induced by the very word. She would sooner find herself a pole and conduct her own impalement. ‘Tomorrow you will be occupied,’ she informed him. ‘Fighting my army.’
Varik took her hand and placed it upon his throbbing shaft. ‘And you too will be occupied pleasuring me with your body.’
‘Why do you not take me?’ she demanded, stroking him lightly, ‘and get it over with?’
‘I shall not force from you anything you will not give me, Little Flame. When it is time you will come to me yourself, begging for a cock between your legs, mine or the lowest ranking of my soldiers. It will matter not so great will be your need to be possessed.’
Caralissa spat at him, full in the face.
‘There will be punishment for that,’ he told her. ‘Tomorrow. In the meantime, you will clean me with your tongue.’
Caralissa gave no argument. In order to clean his cheek fully she needed to move herself to several angles, all of which compelled her to compress her breasts against various parts of his hard flesh. His skin was smooth under her subjugated tongue. He smelled of scented leather, tinged with honey.
Varik remained expressionless as she carried out her punishment duty. Her readiness for breeching was painfully apparent, she feared, by her colouring and her odour, it would have taken an imbecile not to see she was begging to be taken, having insulted him so that he might be roused to overpower her.
‘That is enough,’ he told her. ‘It is time to prepare yourself for my second emission.’
She dropped her head efficiently to his lap, drawing him in with a single caress, soft and wet. For some reason, in the midst of all of the confusion and anguish, this one act, servile and perverted as it was, was beginning to make sense to her. It was almost as if it gave her an anchor, a sense of being and purpose. Gingerly now, reverently, she accepted him, allowing him to move her head to suit him as he settled himself in deep, groaning from the contact, from the sweet urgent sucking. When he filled her at last, rewarding her with a load nearly as thick and full as the first, she let loose with a new trickling of tears though this time she understood not from whence they came. For it was not exactly sadness she felt.
‘Lie beside me, Little Flame,’ he said when he was satisfied.
Slowly, painfully, on pins and needles, Caralissa lowered her fevered body. She desired neither contact nor comfort, but he was insistent, his large hand cradling her belly.
‘Put your hands above your head,’ he instructed, ‘palms up.’
The position was one of helplessness, but also one of extreme feminine beauty. She’d seen the dancers conclude their performances this way, in the pleasure-houses.
‘Do not fight me,’ Varik said, as his hand began its inevitable journey southward. ‘If you surrender completely to me you shall find your bliss.’
Caralissa arched her back, instantly transformed into a wanton she-beast. His hand poised, Varik held her at the brink.
‘So long as you are with me, Caralissa,’ he whispered, warming her with the sound of her name on his lips. ‘You belong to me. As do your orgasms. When I choose to pluck one from you, as I do now, it is for my joy not yours. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, though at the moment she knew nothing except the razor-edge of need, the precipice of desire over which she yearned to plummet. ‘I am yours.’
Varik finished her off, neither one of them troubled over the possibility of the perfidy of her statement. In this context, in the middle of this darkened mystical night, she was his and whatever the light of day might bring she would bear his brand upon her heart forever because of it. Caralissa was sure her screams of pleasure, her pent-up passion would awaken his soldiers, perhaps even the spirits of the dead inhabiting the nearby villages.
In the end, however, no one came upon them and the moment remained private. A tableau made of two souls. The barbarian overlord, insatiable and pining for risk and the virgin queen teetering on the edge of fatal submission; the pair of them together for an uncertain number of nows, moments to be counted and allocated, their nature as yet un-revealed.
Shivering and naked Caralissa sank back into the exigencies of the hour; a thousand forgotten worries jockeying themselves for position, the chief among them being escape, revenge and mayhem, in that order.
‘We will rest now,’ he said imperiously as he rose to his feet to fetch a cord of leather.
‘This is for your protection,’ Varik explained, winding the cord about her wrist, knotting it firmly. ‘If you manage to run from me, which you no doubt will do after I fall asleep, you are liable to fall afoul of my archers, or else stumble into the tiger pit. This way we shall both sleep well and awaken fresh in the morning.’
Caralissa watched in disbelief as he wound the free end round his fist, securing her as though on a leash. He offered for her to remain on the furs at his side, but she refused, preferring the honesty of the cold autumn ground to the embrace of a despicable coward and bully. Taking full advantage of her lead, stretching it to its maximum, she found a spot for herself a foot away from him.
She watched in fury as he began to snore happily, his skin toasty warm in the furs. The sword, she thought, why can’t I reach the sword? Teeth chattering, miserable and cold, she tried to think of tomorrow and the freedom she would win as her troops discovered her absence and began their bold assault on the Rashal encampment.
Bold assault. Who was she kidding? The Orencian military was a shambles, a joke, thanks to Romila’s meddling and that of Telos, her foppish idiotic lover whom she kept trying to foist into high places. Telos was more intent on breeching Caralissa’s defences than those of any enemy, real or imagined.
A pitiful sound escaped her lips. She couldn’t endure the ground. It wasn’t fair, wasn’t right. Intently, Caralissa watched the sex-sated barbarian, waiting for signs of deep sleep.
When at last he seemed fully removed from reality, unable to witness her shameful surrender, she crawled stealthily to the furs, thrusting her tired, nerve-wracked body under the warm material. She would remain there a few moments only, she promised herself, and then she’d return to the ground, to the dignity of her self-imposed exile, away from his arrogant male beauty and his smug snores.
She was counting down the seconds, halfway to the sixty she’d allotted herself, when it hit her. Fatigue, overwhelming and irresistible. Unconsciousness was overtaking her, the closest thing to death one may know on this side of the grave and every bit as powerful. Still muttering a tiny oath to the goddess, she fell then into sleep, deep and dreamless, full of every good hope.
Hope for the morrow, hope for Orencia. Hope for a miracle. And for revenge.
Caralissa awoke with a heavy weight across her chest. She dreamed it was a tree, downed in a powerful storm, but when the rasping blow of air came to her ears, tickling her to consciousness, the memories flooded back. It was Varik, on his back, his head next to hers, his oversized arm draped insolently across her breasts, the hand trailing down with disgusting familiarity to the bridge of her thighs.
Insolent pig! Somehow she’d fallen asleep on his furs and now he was holding her, like he owned her. Trembling ever so slightly Caralissa relived the orgasm, the overwhelming flood and degradation. She was sore. Her thighs, her buttocks beneath her, even her jaws ached. He’d been a beast, treating her like a domestic animal, a mere slave. In Orencia if a man were to even think such things with regard to her royal person, let alone attempt them, he would be put to death. Merely to gaze admiringly at the red-haired queen from afar was a delight many of her citizens would savour for a lifetime, a privilege not to be abused.
Varik mumbled something and moved against her. How she hated the man! By the goddess, why was this happening to her? She had prayed, taken augers and even consulted the high priest to insure the success of her journey; what more could she have done? Caralissa drew a troubled breath, giving herself a moment to absorb it all - the terrible calamity of her failed mission, Varik’s surprise capture of her, his degrading ‘punishments’ and worst of all, the prospect of a new day dawning with her as a prisoner in the camp of a powerful enemy.
Very slowly and carefully, using her free hand, Caralissa tried to extract herself from under her sleeping tormentor. His breathing was undeservedly easy, like a baby’s. Hopefully he would not rouse himself seemingly from the dead, leaping upon her a second time, terrifying her nearly to the point of ghost-hood. Squirming on her tender buttocks she began to slide away from him, inch by inch. Like an avalanche his flesh seemed to follow, re-pinning her with each motion. The arm. She needed to move the damned arm. It may as well have been a tree trunk, just as she dreamed, for all its lifeless weight.
There! She was almost free. Now to release her other hand, the one he was still lying on. But wait - why was it stuck like that?
The cord! She forgot about the cord. Flexing her unseen hand, which was obscured beneath him, she realised to her horror it was still there, unbreakable. The miserable piece of leather he’d dared to impose on her flesh. Sick with rage she replayed his words in her mind.
‘This is for your protection,’ he’d told her, his voice oozing paternalistic smugness. ‘So we will both awaken fresh in the morning.’
Caralissa decided his death would be slow. And there would be torture, both of a conventional kind and a more intimate, sexual kind. Idly she scanned the interior of Varik’s tent, looking for suitable weapons. The enclosure was square, made of thick orange-red material held aloft by poles, one at each corner, with a large opening in the roof. It was a barbarian structure, of course, unfit for civilised persons. There wasn’t even any proper furniture, only these furs, and in the corner a sort of high wooden stool on which was placed a helmet, badly dented with a plume of black feathers. How charming.
Then there was the sword, the one she saw last night, huge and deadly, the scabbard inscribed with symbols, presumably from his nonsensical language. And don’t forget the axe and bits of armour hung from the poles, a chest plate, knee protectors and things she couldn’t even identify.
For a wardrobe he boasted several tunics that were flung over the top of a spear, which in turn was thrust into the ground at an angle. She made a sarcastic mental note to consult the man’s decorator to help her at the castle. That is, if she ever got back there again. Food. She needed food. Was there something to eat, amidst the small wooden boxes, carved and decorated, or perhaps in the woollen sacks lying hither and thither across the trampled ground, the grass, largely ruined now - her grass, the grass of her fathers?
The sword. She must find a way to levitate it to her, dangling it in mid-air above them, and then release it so it fell between them, cutting the cord. And then she’d use it on him to...
Caralissa froze her thoughts. There was a low growl, very faint, to her right. And eyes; she sensed eyes. Slowly, very slowly she turned. The huge cat was sitting on its haunches, watching her. The tail was flicking, almost as if it were a household pet, one of the small furry things that were forever under foot at home. Except this feline looked to weigh hundreds of pounds. Its paws alone were the size of saucers.
The thing blinked, as if deciding on its course of action. Caralissa glared at it, mesmerised. Its fur was the colour of black pearl, mixed with irregular cloud-like patches of grey and white. The teeth were large and curved, spectacularly white. Whiskers bristled along either side of its pink nostrils. Its muscles were lean and with a single swipe of its claws, she was quite certain the creature could end her life or Varik’s.
She should scream, and yet any sudden noise might set it off. Caralissa gasped. The cat was getting up on its feet, moving silently on the pads. No wonder she didn’t hear it come in; it was quiet as a mouse. By the goddess, it was coming straight for them!
‘Varik,’ she whispered, her voice a study of compressed intensity. ‘Wake up. There’s a wild animal.’
He muttered something, shifting so that his hand clamped her breast.
‘Wake up, you fool! We’re going to be mauled!’
‘Why do you disturb my sleep, woman?’ he enquired, his face nuzzled at her shoulder, his eyes as yet unopened.
Caralissa exhaled, put her hand to her face. It was too late. The creature was upon them. The last thing she saw was the paw, coming straight at her, pressing down towards her bare, unprotected flesh.
‘Ahzur, stop that nonsense...’ Varik grumbled.
Caralissa opened her eyes. The animal was leaning across her, ignoring her as it licked Varik’s face and head, slobbering him noisily with its huge sandpaper tongue. The drool fell in droplets, pebble-sized upon her head.
‘Varik!’ she screamed, anger replacing mortal terror. ‘Get this filthy creature off me!’
The Rashal warlord sat up, his hair hanging about him in tangles. ‘Can a man get no sleep in his own tent?’
Caralissa was on her feet, tugging at the tether which bound them wrist-to-wrist. If need be she would tear his arm off and hers to get to the sword or the tent flap, whichever came first.
‘Ahzur,’ Varik barked, seeing the purpose of her action. ‘Lah-ka.’
The cat lowered its head, gingerly taking the cord between its teeth. With a single bite, neat and clean, the tensely drawn leather was severed. Caralissa fell on her behind. Recovering almost immediately she rose again, running for the sword.
‘The water jug is to the left,’ he said. ‘You can fill it at the stream.’
Intrigued as always by his audacity, she gave pause. ‘Excuse me?’
Varik was on his back once more, the cat lying beside him, occupying her place. ‘You will fetch water for my breakfast, using the jug,’ he said, as though it were something patently obvious.
Caralissa’s mouth hung open. ‘You’re not serious?’
‘I am. And if I were you I would hurry. With each passing minute more soldiers awaken. They should know to leave you be, but there are one or two bad apples in every barbarian horde, as you can imagine.’
She regarded him, sprawled in his insolent nudity. Her mind turning like lightning she considered her options. She could fight him on the matter, but that would likely wind her up over his lap once more, or else slobbering over one of his incessant erections. Alternatively she might simply try to kill him, though the odds of disabling the combined weight of the man and his beast were not good. Or she could take the bucket and run. In broad daylight this would be no easy matter, but if she were to be killed - which she would be inevitably - better to have it come at the hands of some unknown swordsman or archer than from this conceited, ignorant chieftain.
‘I have no clothes to wear,’ she said, deciding it would be inconvenient to attempt escape in the nude.
‘You may borrow one of my tunics.’
She was able to pull one down from the spear. It hung to mid-thigh and when cinched with one of the leather cords that seemed to exist in endless supply, Caralissa was able to make a feasible garment for herself. It was tight at her waist and cut low at the neck, which meant it revealed a substantial percent of her charms. It might come in handy, she thought, for enacting help in getting out of the camp.
She would have liked to have her boots, but when she went to put them on she saw they were wet and gnarled, presumably from Ahzur, who may well have come in and out several times while they slept. Oh well, a barefoot escape it would have to be.
‘Hurry back, Little Flame,’ he called out to her as she left the tent. ‘When you return I will begin your training.’
‘Oh goodie,’ she snapped sarcastically, knowing full well that once she was out of the man’s tent she would never see his face again.
Caralissa blinked, her eyes temporarily dazzled by the morning sun. As her vision adjusted she saw she was being watched, this time by men not beasts. There were a dozen or more warriors, standing in small groups, some shirtless, others with vests of mail or chest armour. All of them wore boots and breeches and were huge like Varik, though their eyes seemed colder, unforgiving. Their conversations halted as they beheld the scantily clad beauty, the shapely redhead lithely emerging from the chieftain’s tent.
Clutching her water bucket, keeping her eyes to herself, she began to walk. There were footsteps behind her and a pair of warriors trailing her to the left. She would go directly to the stream, she decided, saving her escape for later. Caralissa knew the way, having ridden horses often in this area as a child. The Rashal had greatly transformed it, felling trees, erecting barricades and raising huge tents at regular intervals along the nearby hillsides. Closer to the stream she saw rows of wooden machines, siege engines - catapults and battering rams - neatly arrayed, already facing their target - the walls of her faraway castle.
More and more warriors joined the excursion, following her as if in a parade. Others merely watched her pass as they leaned upon spears or swords. In a clearing to the left some hundred or so men partook in exercise, vigorously clashing their steel, their rounded brightly-coloured shields lying in stacks on the ground as they ran at one another, bare-chested and fearsome. There were patrols too, soldiers in helmets, holding thick chains at the end of which tromped proud, long-toothed black and grey tigers, cousins, no doubt of Ahzur.
It was clear to Caralissa as she made her survey of the Rashal camp that what Varik said was true: he had deliberately lowered precautions to allow the rumoured assassin free access. Much as she hated to burst her own pride, it was obvious that were these men even mildly vigilant last night, she would already be arrayed upon one of the sharp poles which pierced the ground at regular intervals, their tops tufted with Rashal flags, crisply flapping in the morning breeze.
So she had been betrayed; just as Varik said while simultaneously spanking and fondling her, driving her mad with desire, imposing on her the unbearable mix of pleasure and pain. Who could it have been, though? Only the royal council knew of her actions, and these were rock steady old men, the most loyal servants of her father.
And Romila, of course. She knew as well. Her dark-haired, sullen sister was displeased by her decision to end the impending war in one fell swoop, but could petty jealousy ever lead Romila to endanger her life, not to mention the security of the entire state? No, it wasn’t possible. She was glad, though, that she’d removed the scheming Telos from the castle before she left. The man was a worm, a charlatan, who when not occupied in his pathetic attempts to bed young maidens, was forever finding ways to line his pocket from the royal treasury.
‘You there! Halt!’
A single warrior blocked her path. His chest was mailed in black metal, worn over a tunic, also black. A red raven was painted across the front. Over his shoulders was slung a cape. His hair was tightly bound in a single braid. There was something about him, something different from the rest of the men with their casual stances and their mismatched uniforms.
‘I am going to the stream,’ said Caralissa, answering the unasked question that burned in the man’s narrow eyes. ‘I am to fetch water for Lord Varik.’
The man looked her up and down then addressed something to the entourage that now accompanied her. Several men answered at once in Rashal, their tones indicating lack of knowledge or responsibility. Caralissa held her head proudly as the man approached her, the tips of his boots touching her bare toes. ‘I shall fetch Senelek,’ the man decided, switching back to the language of the Valley, the language she spoke and Varik spoke. Then to the others, raising his arm, he issued an order. At once the others began to disperse.
Caralissa made a mental note to beware of the man in the future, and any others like him, with their distinctive hairstyle and uniform. She met no further trouble on the way to the stream, though when she arrived she saw there was a small group of men there already, laughing and shouting, passing among them a small horn which appeared to contain liquid. Judging by the volume of their conversation, and its boisterousness, it was something alcoholic.
Warily, she made her way to the stream.
‘By the gods,’ slurred one of them, a blond fellow, hair long and stringy. ‘My breakfast has arrived.’
There was raucous laughter. Judging by the thicker accents and halting speech, she gathered these were common soldiers.
‘To Hades with you, Galak,’ roared a bearded man, his hair wild and black, a scar across his right cheek. ‘This is my gift!’
‘For shame,’ chastised a third man, red-haired like her. ‘Can’t you see a lady is present? Forsooth, milady,’ he bowed. ‘What brings you to our fine watery establishment?’
‘I am to fetch water,’ she said. ‘For Lord Varik.’
‘For Varik?’ He slapped his knee. ‘Do you hear that, men? Who but Varik could win himself a trophy before the battle is even begun?’
‘Long live Varik!’ said a man, his voice hoarse from shouting or drinking or both.
‘Aye,’ grumbled a second, raising the horn. ‘To Varik, a chief who knows how to take care of himself first.’
‘To the perks of the chieftainship!’ called another.
‘Varik is waiting for me,’ she told them hastily, not liking the tone of their words.
‘I’ll bet he is,’ called the red-haired man. ‘You hear that, men? I’ll give you three guesses why we aren’t marching yet today. And I’ll wager my share of the next round of spoils we won’t do any marching tomorrow, either! Not once Varik gets his water bucket filled!’
Galak shoved his way forward. ‘I have something for your water bucket,’ he sneered, gesturing rudely to the crotch of his tan britches.
Caralissa stiffened as the bearded man reached across Galak to touch her chin. ‘Who are you, anyway?’ he asked, the smell of his breath making her swoon.
‘I am the queen,’ she said proudly, realising too late the comic nature of her remark in the current circumstances. ‘The queen of Orencia.’
Gales of laughter rose into the sky, mingling with the smoke of the dozens of campfires, rising almost as high as the highest of the white clouds.
‘A queen!’ the man howled. ‘A queen. Shall we kiss her ring?’
‘Let her kiss this,’ Galak said, his attention still fixated on his genitals.
She felt a hand from behind, clenching her buttocks. ‘Not till I’ve had a piece,’ said a new man, his tongue lapping at her ear. ‘It’s been two months since I’ve spiked a wench. I’m ready to explode inside my pants.’
‘It would be a very small explosion,’ observed Garak.
‘We’ll see about that!’ the man fumed, taking Caralissa in his arms. Others quickly joined in, whether to stop or encourage him she wasn’t sure. She was on the verge of going down to the ground beneath the lot of them when a whizzing spear, lofted from the hillside, landed at their feet.
The men looked up, spoiling for a fight. Seeing the small company of black armoured men, however, they quickly reconsidered. Caralissa felt her pulse quicken. Among them was the dark-eyed man, the one from before.
‘What is the meaning of this?’ demanded their spokesman, a sturdy man, his head clean-shaven save for a long black braid rooted at the base of his skull. From the look of him, the black breastplate being trimmed in gold with a fiery yellow dragon at the centre, Caralissa took him for their leader.
The redhead, having been shoved forward by the others, became spokesman for the band of soldiers. ‘Forgive us, Lord Senelek. We were sporting with the girl. A capture of our chieftain, so it seems.’
‘I am queen of this land,’ she offered, deciding to play up her special status. ‘Your chief captured me. And now I must bring him water.’
Senelek examined Caralissa. She felt naked under his gaze, naked and used. Uncharacteristically - and hating herself for her loss of nerve - she lowered her eyes.
‘You are drunk,’ Varik’s brother said, turning back to the redhead.
Immediately the man’s face went pale, as though just realising the severity of his offence. He fell at once to his knees. ‘We heard rumours we would not march today, my lord. Behold the hour,’ he pointed towards the sun. ‘It is already late.’
Senelek thinned his lips. ‘I need no lesson in astronomy.’
‘Forgive me!’ the man wailed, realising his compound error.
Senelek considered the trembling man before finally addressing the assembly. ‘Be gone, the lot of you. Tomorrow when we fight you will all march in the front line.’
‘Yes, Lord Senelek,’ the man cried. ‘We thank you, Lord Senelek.’
The revellers scattered like rats, leaving Caralissa to the sombre company of Varik’s brother and his men.
‘Thank you,’ she said to her rescuer, though secretly she suspected she would have been better off with the drunken braggarts.
Senelek eyed her. ‘I am not fooled by you,’ he told her, his fingers lifting her chin. ‘Not for an instant.’
Caralissa remained painfully still. Where was Varik, she wondered, when she really needed him?
‘How come you to be in this camp?’ Senelek demanded.
She relayed, in unsteady tones the full story of her attempted assassination, the thought of lying to the man being incomprehensible.
Senelek shook his head. ‘You came by sorcery,’ the man corrected. ‘Not by stealth. You are a witch sent to destroy the Rashal. Varik is under your spell, it seems, but I am not. Do not think you will succeed in your plot. I shall defeat you.’
His eyes lingered a moment longer as though deciding something. ‘Take her,’ he ordered two of the men. ‘Back to Varik with her. Let him have his toy. For now.’
Senelek’s words chilled her. Their implications echoed in her mind the whole way back to Varik’s tent. Who was this man, exactly? She’d heard Varik speak of her brother in such reverent tones and yet the man was seething inside with hostility, a fact plainly obvious to Caralissa.
‘You took long with my water,’ Varik complained as she re-entered the tent, the black warriors having left her at the entrance.
‘I was detained,’ she replied, a bit cross.
Varik’s back was to her. He was dressed now, wearing dark trousers, boots and a red tunic, belted with a sash. His arms were crossed as he contemplated a map pinned to the rear of the tent. She recognised it as a representation of the Valley of Seven Kingdoms, of which Orencia was one, and beyond it the Forests of Night, an unexplored territory in which demons were said to dwell, along with invincible man-eating beasts. These would be Varik’s next destination, logically, once he subdued her lands. That is, unless he were growing tired of building an empire. Strange, she thought, that such an idea should cross her mind. Was she capable of reading the man’s thoughts?
‘I encountered Senelek,’ she said, trying to keep her tone neutral.
‘Senelek is my greatest ally,’ Varik told her, as if he could read her mind, too. ‘He has fought beside me since the beginning. From the days when the Rashal were one village, unable to defend even our own hearths.’
‘Why does he wear black, he and his men?’
‘Senelek is the Keeper of the Way. He is high priest. He and his men enforce the moral codes. In addition he informs us of the will of the gods. He is stern, but we would not be an empire without him.’
‘My sister is jealous of me, too,’ Caralissa said, not knowing from whence the words came. ‘She wanted to be queen instead of me.’
Varik turned, his face bearing a most peculiar expression. ‘Why do you tell me this?’ he mused. ‘Were you sent to me by gods or by demons? Can you answer me that, Little Flame?’
‘I came of my own accord.’
Varik smiled. ‘We have much in common, you and I. Unlike Senelek, we seek our own ways, not those of gods.’
‘And what is your way, Varik?’
She saw the light in his eyes, suddenly kindled. ‘My way is conquest,’ he said, his face taking on the predatory look she’d seen in Ahzur. ‘I take what I desire. Remove my shirt from your body, Little Flame. I would train you now.’
‘My name is Caralissa,’ she defied, though her fingers were already undoing the makeshift belt at her waist. A mere handful of heart pounding seconds later, she was bared to him.
‘I do not like clothes upon your body,’ he told her, running his fingers through her hair. ‘Were you mine, I would keep you nude at all times.’
Caralissa felt the stirrings, now familiar between her legs. ‘Then I am not yours already?’ she challenged. ‘But last night, I thought?’
‘You think too much, Little Flame. For now, be silent.’ Taking her arms he stretched them, so that she was in the form of a cross. She watched as he took the water from the jug and poured it into a small basin. To this he added an amount of golden liquid, sweetly scented. There was a sponge in the basin and he squeezed it, even as he came to her, to bathe her skin.
Varik’s touch was surprisingly gentle, so much so she could scarce imagine it was these same fingers that pummelled her buttocks and tortured her loins to spasmodic ecstasy just a short few hours ago. Closing her eyes she allowed the sponge to take her. The trickling water, the small circular rubs, all of it was so delicious she wanted it to go on forever. Why could not her servants treat her so well at home? Caralissa blushed as she guessed the answer: it was because none of them were untamed warriors like Varik.
A small sound escaped her lips, one of pleasure and thanks as he brushed her nipples. Rivulets of water ran down her belly, teasing the opening of her still ripe sex. In truth she was still mightily aroused. In a way he was right; she was his Little Flame. Kindled at his touch, fanned by his presence, his arrogance, his intensity.
‘You are dangerous,’ Varik observed as she parted her legs in readiness for the sponge. ‘Were a man not sufficiently strong he might find himself your slave.’
Caralissa glowed beneath the compliment. She’d heard such things about herself, but never from a man such as he. Proudly, almost recklessly, she thrust out her breasts. Every thought was driven from her mind: her mysteriously absent army which she’d expected this morning, the unknown traitor, the tenuous nature of her personal freedoms, none of this mattered. She lived for his words alone, for the feel of him, for his whims, his dreams his ideas.
‘I shall dry you now,’ he told her when the bath was complete. ‘And then I shall bind you in ropes, in a manner sacred to my people. You will then kneel to me, in the way I command. Thus will you be prepared to serve my pleasure.’
Caralissa was floating above herself. As he continued with her, fulfilling the words of his own prophecy, she felt herself in the hands of a god, protected and safe. It was like with her father, when she was very young and he would play with her sometimes, tossing her in the air and catching her. However it was different with him, innocent and pure, not sexual as with Varik.
Patting her skin, almost doting on her, he brought her to a state of warm dryness. Still standing he left her momentarily as he went to one of the wooden boxes in which were contained long coils of rope, brightly coloured and of varying lengths. Choosing a coil of purple, he cinched the ends and made small loops at various places. Caralissa giggled as he worked, for with his intent concentration and stooped shoulders, he resembled more an old woman than a barbarian chieftain.
‘This is Rashal Ka-an,’ he said, holding the snaking, many knotted coil up before her eyes. ‘The Rashal love bond.’
He began at her waist, looping the rope about as a belt. He called it a love bond. Was that what he felt for her, then? Cursing her own girlish naiveté, she braced herself as Varik pulled the long end up under her bottom, slipping it tightly between her thighs. At once she began to spill her juices upon the biting material. The pressure in her front and rear, aimed simultaneously against both passages was an odd, almost overpowering sensation. She was constricted in one sense, closed off to invasion, and yet she was at the same time quite fully possessed.
‘Do not forget, Little Flame, your punishment,’ he whispered, nibbling her ear, the combination of words and touch weakening her knees, cutting at her belly like a hot knife. The punishment. She nearly forgot. He’d said she would be punished for having spit upon him. For a man this would mean death. But for her, a girl, it would be something small and intimate, something designed to humiliate. Something she would no doubt come to crave as much as she hated it.
Varik went to work on her torso. Brooking no obstacles he put her hands atop her head, compelling her to twist her fingers in the damp tendrils of her hair. The rope he wrapped skilfully round her ribs then over and under her breasts, forming an outline. It was tight enough that she felt the constriction and though he neither laid a hand on her nipples nor touched them with the rope, she found herself responding, the nubs being full and ready, just as Varik said they should be on a female.
There was no mistaking the femininity of the ties, the intensely sensual, sexually explicit implications. Rashal Ka’an was designed to blatantly display a woman’s charms, tempting a man to plunder them. She remembered his promise, that he would not enter her unless and until she invited his presence. No, not invited. Begged for it - those were his exact words. Was that to be her punishment, then, to be teased to submission? Caralissa stiffened, trying to keep her guard up. She would not yield to this man, could not yield to him. She would not surrender her liberty.
‘Place your hands behind your back,’ Varik commanded, his presence a constantly shifting distraction, a mountain of potency keeping her constantly off balance.
Caralissa removed her hands from her hair, allowing it to fall about her shoulders and breasts. She was particularly vain about her hair, having been encouraged from an early age to think of it as a divine sign of the red-haired sun goddess, evidence that her life was marked for special beauty, special greatness. Certain popular statues of this goddess, banned in the capital for their overtly sexual connotations, depict her with red pubic hair as well, and so she sometimes thought her untested sex divine too.
Varik took her crossed hands and lifted them so that the flat of each palm was touching the opposite forearm. The resulting tie raised her breasts even higher as she was compelled now to keep her back ramrod straight. Looking down at Varik’s work finished, Caralissa marvelled at the overall effect. Her skin was crisscrossed with purple lines, the pale flesh lovingly displayed and quartered. Every part of her seemed to glow, seemed to call out for a man’s caress, a man’s kiss or - if he were so inclined - a man’s discipline.
‘Come, Little Flame,’ he beckoned, leading her by the arm, steadying her as she tried to walk upon much weakened legs. ‘Come and kneel again upon my furs.’
It was an honour, of course, for a girl to be allowed upon them, though at the moment they were chiefly occupied by Ahzur, who was snoring happily, dreaming no doubt of some animal to hunt.
‘Ahzur,’ Varik said. ‘Ja-ta.’
Caralissa assumed this meant something like ‘shoo’, but the big cat seemed unimpressed. Yawning heavily it sat upright, but did not budge from its spot.
‘Yes,’ Varik said as though the animal were asking a question, ‘you may sniff.’
The cat put its nose to Caralissa’s foot, causing her to recoil. Ahzur looked at her and growled.
‘Do not do that,’ Varik said. ‘He is trying to learn your scent.’
‘Could I not send him a sample of my perfume?’ she asked.
The cat rubbed its nose over her foot then began to lick her ankle. When it moved up her leg she tried again to pull away, but a stern look from Varik was enough to discourage her. The cat’s nose was wet and warm and the whiskers tickled. Without her arms she felt doubly vulnerable. Leaning into Varik, putting her life in his hands, she prayed for the ordeal to end.
‘Oh my,’ she gasped, when it reached the nexus of her legs. ‘Won’t it...?’
The words eluded her, but Varik assured her the cat was only curious and that in a moment it would go away and resume its nap. Sure enough it did, though not after taking very thorough olfactory samples indeed. As a parting gesture Ahzur put his paws upon her shoulders, licking her face and even tasting her hair as though she were some savoury morsel or a small version of his own kind.
Caralissa was visibly rattled as Varik helped her to kneel.
‘Do not move,’ he instructed, issuing the all too familiar command.
‘Where am I to go?’ she asked, shrugging her trussed shoulders.
She heard Varik leaving and for a moment she imagined she might run away. At the very least, she reasoned, she ought to move from this demeaning position. Could she undo the ropes? It was a very disturbing thing, being left like this, dominated by a man when he wasn’t even there. What did he care how she stayed when he was gone? What right did he have to determine if she sat or knelt or anything?
Caralissa rose to her feet, unsteadily. At once Ahzur raised his head and bared his teeth. He continued to do so until she went back to her knees. Wonderful, she thought bitterly, now I am being bossed around by animals as well.
A short while later Varik returned with food. ‘Are you hungry?’ he asked, with typical male denseness.
‘No,’ she snapped. ‘I dined on a roast and some suckling pig while you were gone. I fixed it myself.’
‘No doubt carving the flesh with your sharp tongue,’ he countered.
He let her stew awhile longer while he prepared several bowls, using the awkward wooden stool in the corner. One at a time he laid them at her feet. Finally he stood before her, holding in one hand a bunch of pink grapes and in the other a thin strip of wood, green, the thickness of a twig.
‘A Rashal warrior brings to his slave girl many things,’ he explained sombrely, as though addressing a temple full of worshippers. ‘In general, these things may all be subsumed under two categories: pleasure and pain.’
To demonstrate the former he held up the tiny pink fruits. For the latter he showed the strip of wood, which she now recognised to be an instrument of torture. Instinctively she drew her knees tightly together.
‘Open your mouth, Little Flame.’
She regarded him, tight-lipped. So long as he held that thing, he would get no cooperation from her.
Varik tapped the switch against his thigh. As usual he enjoyed the distinct advantage of clothing. ‘Did you know a Rashal slave can be made to orgasm,’ he lectured, ‘upon command?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I guess Rashal slaves have no minds of their own, then do they?’
Varik flicked the tip of the switch across Caralissa’s captive nipple, just hard enough to get her attention. This achieved he flicked her again, more sternly.
‘That is the level of pain you will receive,’ he explained to his wide-eyed prisoner. ‘Each time you answer me with disrespect. I will now repeat the question.’
‘No,’ she answered when he was done. ‘I did not know that.’
‘Your legs must not be closed like this,’ he said, switching subjects. ‘When you kneel and a man approaches with a whip, you will part your legs. Consider it an unspoken signal.’
Caralissa swallowed. He would punish her if she disobeyed, but once her sex was exposed there’d be no limit to what he might do. Then again, what limit was there now? In the end, she opened herself.
‘You were told previously to open your mouth as well,’ he said harshly, striking her upon the thigh, the switch whistling as it sliced the air.
‘Ow!’ she cried out, looking at him in shock and pain. His face expressionless, Varik lifted his arm once again, taking aim.
Like a tiny bird Caralissa gaped, arching her neck. It was a knee-jerk reaction, one that shamed her for its cringing servility. He fed her the grape, even as the tears began to well in her eyes.
‘Look at your thigh, Little Flame,’ he commanded, after she managed to swallow the sweet little grape down her trembling throat. She did so, seeing the welt, some two inches long, red and angry, which now marred her perfect skin. Indignation rose from deep in her belly, burning and souring the juice of the single grape that occupied her empty stomach. It was unthinkable! Caralissa of the house of Lysor, daughter of Lysanis, sovereign of Orencia, guardian of the people, was being tortured like a common slave.
‘That was the result of disobedience, Little Flame. Note the different punishment it receives than does your disrespect,’ he explained. ‘Note, too, that neither of these constitute your punishment for last night’s more serious offence.’
Defiantly she glared up at him, straining at the ropes. ‘Are these your love bonds, Varik? Must you hit your women for them to love you?’
Varik leaned forward with the switch, taking careful aim as he flicked her other nipple, treating it just as the first. There was in his action no animosity, no trace of emotion. She’d been disrespectful again and he was merely following through on his words, accustoming her to his techniques. In short, he was training her, just as he said he would, and just as she assured herself could never happen.
‘No more games,’ Caralissa declared, summoning her strength to rise to her feet. ‘You may kill me now or else release me.’
She’d risen halfway when Ahzur began once more to growl.
Stamping her foot petulantly, boiling with rage, Caralissa went back to her knees. ‘I hate you,’ she told Varik. ‘I will always hate you.’
The switch whistled across her exposed breasts, catching both nipples.
‘I am sorry!’ she cried. ‘I am sorry!’
‘I did not strike you for hating me,’ he explained, as though the distinction made one bit of difference for her throbbing breasts, ‘but rather because you lied. I know you do not in fact hate me.’
She looked at him through tear soaked eyes, a wicked smile rising to the surface. ‘So I may tell the truth, then?’ she challenged. ‘With impunity?’
He wrinkled his brow. ‘I hadn’t considered it that way, but I suppose you can, yes.’
‘Good,’ she spat. ‘Then I am free to tell you that?’
‘Open your mouth,’ he interrupted, cutting off her intended string of vituperative directed against his many shortcomings.
Caralissa obeyed, but not without showing him with her eyes all the things she intended to say with her tongue. The second grape was sweeter than the first, and as it joined the other in her barren tummy she was painfully reminded of the extent of her hunger. The barbarian had fed her nothing in nearly twelve hours, despite his having put her through gruelling paces and exploiting her body in the most outrageous ways.
‘Open,’ he repeated, and she did so in a much more pliant way this time. Five grapes in all he allowed her. She made no moves to speak in between. Eyes wide like a hawk’s she watched as he set down the remaining grapes and took up one of the nearly forgotten bowls. She saw that it contained meat, finely cubed and browned, and she watched him pop a piece into his own mouth.
Whatever happened, she told herself, she would not stoop to begging.
‘A bit salty,’ he shrugged, sitting himself beside her on the furs, his legs crossed. ‘But not bad. Ahzur, fetch!’
Caralissa gasped in protest as he took a handful of the meat and tossed it to the sleeping cat. Raising its head, yawning widely, it looked down at the tiny offering and wrinkled its nose.
‘He is spoiled,’ Varik muttered, shaking his head as he took another piece for himself.
‘Varik!’ she cried, unable to still the riot in her belly. ‘For the goddess’ sake, give me something to eat!’
Varik considered her. ‘You may help yourself,’ he decided, pouring out a sprinkling of pieces on the fur in front of her.
Caralissa looked down at the meat, impossibly out of reach. ‘How am I to eat this?’ she demanded.
Varik swatted a nipple, causing her to yelp.
‘What I meant,’ she began again, wincing as she chose her words with distinct care. ‘Your lordship, is that I cannot eat without my hands.’
Varik stayed the whip, apparently having overlooked the sarcastic edge to her use of his title. ‘Ahzur eats without hands,’ he pointed out, inclining his head towards the slobbering animal.
‘Fine,’ she hissed, ‘suit yourself.’
Before he could lash out at her tender nipples Caralissa dove forward, collapsing on her own shoulder. Manoeuvring her mouth, facedown, still on her knees, she grabbed at the meat, greedily inhaling it.
‘Clever girl,’ Varik acknowledged, sliding the bowl within reach.
Caralissa inserted her face, all pretence of dignity lost to the desperation of hunger. So much so that she didn’t even notice him changing positions, placing himself behind her.
‘Do not move,’ he said, repeating once more the words she was coming to dread.
Her body jolted as the object found her opening, the smaller one, slipping in past the rope. It was the switch, she was sure of it. Varik was using it on her, in her, finding a way to circumvent her defiance. Eyes closed, panting, her jaws still chewing, Caralissa submitted to the invasion, to her anal possession by a piece of wood, a green sapling.
Never did she dream a woman could be taken in such a way. It was terrible, revolting, and yet it heated her loins, made her feel even more under Varik’s power as his property, his toy. Shamed, humiliated, Caralissa raised her buttocks to the odd but not unpleasant sensation, silently begging for more.
‘Try the vegetables,’ he suggested, pouring the contents of the second bowl into the first as he removed the switch from inside her anal opening.
She moaned into the rounded container, feeling the sudden, painful vacuum. Subtly, passionately, her body weak and fever-wracked, she went from biting to licking and nibbling, savouring the flavour of the tiny pieces of meat and vegetable. Suddenly it was something else she craved, a different flavour altogether.
‘Let me please you,’ she begged, lifting her head to look into his eyes, her hunger forgotten. ‘Let me please you like I did last night.’
Varik opened the fastening of his trousers. Caralissa took him deep at the first contact, deeper than she dared go before. It was as if with each session between them, the harder he pushed her, the more he shamed and infuriated her, the more he was bringing forth from inside her true self. Could it be she in turn was testing him somehow, seeing if he was worthy to control her, seeing if he would protect and keep her safe, even as she submitted to his bonds and his discipline?
‘More slowly,’ he said, tapping her back with the switch.
Caralissa released him and began again. She was working her way to the perfect rhythm when she heard Varik speak, not to her or to Ahzur, but to another. She felt her blood chill as she realised it was Senelek. She tried to lift her head, to hide herself, but he put his hand on the back of her neck, not hurtfully but firmly, in order to make it clear she was to continue serving him.
‘Well,’ she heard Senelek say. ‘I understand now why we do not march today to subdue Orencia.’
Varik ran the switch up Caralissa’s back, across her bound arms. ‘Orencia seems to me well subdued already,’ he observed.
Caralissa stiffened. With the Rashal warlord’s shaft in her mouth and his bonds biting deeply into her flesh, there was little to mitigate his argument.
‘The men grow restless,’ Senelek responded, his voice devoid of humour. ‘They wish to know why we linger in this place.’
Varik ran his hand over Caralissa’s glossy hair as her head continued to bob up and down. ‘We linger because it is my will.’
Senelek was silent for a moment. ‘Yes, my brother, that goes without saying. But surely they are owed something more?’
‘Tell them I am negotiating for a ransom. A fitting cost for the return of her majesty the queen.’
‘Indeed.’ He cleared his throat. ‘In her present state, I should say that value to be a few copper coins at most.’
Caralissa increased the intensity of her suctioning, it being the only way to vent her outrage. Senelek was effectively calling her a whore, a copper coin girl of the sort to be found in the pleasure-houses.
‘I think her royal personhood takes umbrage,’ Varik observed, no doubt sensing the sudden friction on his manhood.
‘We have never taken hostages,’ Senelek said. ‘It is not the Rashal way. Nor is keeping enemy sluts for one’s self when one’s warrior brothers go hungry.’
‘The girl is worth fifty thousand, maybe a hundred thousand crowns. The Orencians will beg, borrow and steal for her more than we could loot in a year from these petty little kingdoms.’ Varik inhaled, his body stiffening. Caralissa moaned. He was going to discharge, right in front of Senelek.
‘The empire is run on steel,’ Senelek declared. ‘Not on gold.’
Varik grasped Caralissa’s hair, pushing forth his pelvis to find the sweet spot at the roof of her mouth. ‘Perhaps,’ he acknowledged, filling her with a fresh load of his sperm, the largest yet. ‘But steel may be more easily acquired with gold than without.’
A moment later he lifted her from his lap, putting her back onto her knees beside him.
‘Good girl,’ he said, rubbing her head for having swallowed properly.
‘You offer a clever argument, as always, brother,’ Senelek replied, his eyes on Caralissa, shaming her more deeply than could any act of Varik’s upon her flesh. ‘And yet I fear it is not with your brain that you are reasoning.’
She tried to evade Senelek’s stare, but Varik, seeing this, cautioned her to keep looking straight ahead. At the same time he tapped her thigh with the whip - her marked thigh. Having grasped the meaning, very reluctantly then, she opened her legs in full view of the dark-eyed priest.
‘Would you like to try her?’ Varik asked, seeing his brother’s obvious interest.
Caralissa gave a desperate cry, piteous and filtering from the back of her throat. It did not dawn on her till this very moment just how absolute was Varik’s power over her. He had not yet taken her himself, and yet if he wished he could give her to his brother, or to the entire army for that matter.
‘Please, Varik,’ she cried, throwing all caution to the wind, thrusting her face to his foot. ‘Take me yourself. I beg you to have me, only do not?’
The blow to her back was unlike anything felt so far. It had come from the switch, a clean stroke, neatly delivered to one of the open sections of flesh between the intricate crisscross of rope. The pain was searing and did not let up even when the instrument was removed.
‘Sit up,’ Varik commanded, his voice as sharp as the steel of his sword. Caralissa hastened to obey so that she once more looked Senelek in the eye.
‘You have insulted my family and my honour,’ Varik declared. ‘You will go to my brother at once and beg his forgiveness.’
Caralissa looked at Varik, her eyes pleading.
The warlord’s jaw tensed slightly. ‘Go,’ he said in a voice that she was quite certain none would dare refuse, either man or beast. Pitifully, Caralissa struggled to rise.
‘No,’ Varik countered, pulling her back down by her bound arm. ‘You will go to him on your knees. He is high priest here, you will address him on your belly.’
The ground brazed Caralissa’s knees. The way was long in her current condition. Putting her head to the dirt finally, the black earth clinging to her lips, she begged forgiveness at the high priest’s feet.
Senelek ignored her. ‘I have no interest in these games, Varik. Nor in your latest plaything. I am sure, however, that she would amuse the men. I shall arrange a raffle.’
‘No,’ said Varik, in a voice whose intensity surprised the prostrate Caralissa. ‘If it be women they desire, than we shall find some. Order a raiding party to scour the nearby villages for wenches.’
Senelek regarded him. ‘Indeed.’
‘This one is worth too much to us,’ Varik offered, rising to his feet as if to cover his show of emotion. ‘I do not wish to waste a hundred thousand pieces of gold.’
‘As you wish,’ Senelek bowed, his voice rich with irony, ‘my brother.’
Caralissa waited till the man was gone to fall at Varik’s feet. ‘Thank you,’ she offered breathless. ‘For sparing me.’
Varik growled from the back of his throat, sounding like Ahzur. Seizing both her arms he yanked her to her feet, holding her before him on tiptoe, like a rag doll. ‘Do you dare to insult me again, wench?’ he fumed. ‘Do you think I care one whit for your feelings? Think yourself more to me than a momentary diversion from my battles?’
Caralissa shook her head. ‘I - I meant no offence.’
Varik frowned, his eyes a raging sea. ‘I grow tired of these games,’ he declared, unwittingly echoing Senelek’s words. ‘We shall end them. Now.’
Lowering her to the ground, on her back in the dirt, Varik fell upon her. Using the dagger at his waist he cut the rope that held her crotch then spread her legs painfully apart. He took her in a single stroke, not bothering to free her hands. The barrier of her virginity was torn as a sheet as he pressed himself as deep as a man could go.
Caralissa clutched him with her thighs, issuing sounds of shock and wonder and ultimately pleasure. He was taking her, at last, at long last.
‘Oh, my lord,’ she whispered in ecstasy. ‘My barbarian lord, I beg to come for you.’
‘No,’ he said fiercely, gripping her chin between his fingers. ‘You will not climax beneath me. That is your punishment. Is that clear?’
Her acknowledgement was lost in a long wail as she set herself down the torturous road of obedience. Round her the world faded as everything focused on her subservience, her grip in his iron will. Until at last, trembling, shaken, her will broken, her body bound beneath him, she accepted the gift of his lust, the sign of his dominance and her submission. The cycle, ancient as the goddess, ancient as the moon, was now complete. Silently then they lay together, he sated, she yet burning till at last they were able to speak.
‘This changes nothing,’ Varik said, his loins already pumping towards a renewed erection. ‘When I am finished with you I shall take you home and collect your ransom.’
‘Yes,’ she acknowledged, ‘my lord.’
Though still a helpless prisoner, she welcomed him yet again, for he alone among men dared to do with her as he pleased, dared to ignite her secret submissive passions. She sought to meet him with every thrust, telegraphing his conquest of her with moans and yelps and with the soft, bound flesh of her, desperately pressing, seeking contact betwixt the ropes that harnessed her breasts and torso.
On and on he pressed, till he was satisfied, and satisfied again, caring not one whit for her pleasure. When he was finished, Varik sliced away the ropes to announce that he would lay hands on her never again. Once freed she continued to beg him, on her knees. Fists clenched, sweat beaded at his forehead, veins protruding from his forehead, Varik lifted his head to the unseen sky and cried a man’s cry, the unrestrained roar of the wolf or perhaps some unknown beast, noble and surefooted, sleekly furred of the sort that roams the plains of purer lands as yet undreamt. Naked and splendid, hair wild about his shoulders, he screamed his troubles to his gods, or hers, or perhaps to no gods at all.
Varik thrust the gag into her mouth, having swathed it first between her outstretched legs to catch the prodigious juices, hers and his. His eyes were cold and distant. He did not even bother to fetch clean material, employing instead the sweaty handkerchief of a nearby soldier. The action was meant to spurn her, to douse their flaring passions, but its effect was quite the opposite.
As he gave the order to deploy the massive machine to which she was bound, Caralissa strained at the thongs, offering herself with muffled whimpers. How could he deny what was between them, how could he deny that she was his now, as fully and absolutely as if she were his slave?
And yet deny it he did, ignoring the whimpers, the pleading eyes. It was, of course, a splendid Rashal joke, rolling the queen of Orencia home, naked and spread-eagled on the front of a battering ram. Its symbolism would be unmistakable, both to his troops and hers.
The afternoon sun was golden upon her skin, which still burned from Varik’s touch. She laid her head back, so that her hair whirled in the breeze.
Closing her eyes she prayed to the goddess, seeking things of the heart too deep for words. It mattered not, the lust-filled eyes of his warriors, the thousand takings she endured in their minds’ eyes as the ram rolled slowly past their waiting ranks. It was irrelevant now, too, what might happen in the future, of no import whether she returned to her old life or died instead in the midst of battle.
All that lived in her mind were the memories of Varik’s possession of her. How wild he had looked, the heat in his eyes beyond reason as he took her.
They brought the ram to the edge of the Rashal camp. Varik and Senelek, mounted on their stallions waited beside the machine, flanked by a picked number of men, cavalry and foot soldiers. Riders were sent ahead to the castle, some forty minutes’ hard ride to the east, with orders to summon the senior Orencian leadership for an immediate meeting with regard to the queen. It would be Romila who would come, no doubt with members of the royal council. It was a smaller council these days, a number of them having been sent packing by Caralissa along with the halfwit Telos.
It infuriated her still to think how she’d found four of them in the council chamber, holding down a hapless serving girl over the oak table while Telos rammed in and out of her squirming body. They were supposed to have been in session, looking for solutions to the impending Rashal invasion.
It was this incident that set in mind her own determination to deal with the Rashal in her own way: alone, in the way of her father.
Then again, there was no telling what the headstrong Lysanis might have done. Truth be told, he was said to favour serving wenches himself and even, upon occasion, to have visited the pleasure-houses much as she was wont to do herself. Needless to say, however, it was likely King Lysanis did more on these outings than observe.
‘What is taking so long?’ she heard Varik ask, with uncharacteristic impatience. ‘They should be back by now.’
Senelek allowed a moment’s silence, which she knew now was his way of exposing weakness. ‘Perhaps they are having trouble catching the Orencians,’ he observed at last. ‘The sight of even a handful of Rashal warriors has likely sent them fleeing clear to the Forest of Night.’
Caralissa clenched her captive fists. It was one thing for her to criticise her own people, but it was quite another coming from the mouth of an enemy. Then again, she thought with shame, Varik was her enemy and she was doing something with him far worse than running away. Colour came to her face as she entertained the possibility that her recent behaviour might smack more of treason than of passion in the minds of her subjects.
There was a cheer from the right, and as Caralissa looked she saw it was some of the soldiers, raising their spears and swords in joy at the sight of an approaching column of mounted riders. She thought at first it was the castle delegation, but as she looked more closely, she saw it was another Rashal scouting party. The horsemen were riding slow and lazy, as beside them, on a long chain, hands bound before them, each one attached to the waist of the one ahead, was a line of women. Though the warriors were only trotting their horses, the captives were forced to run to keep up.
They were all of them young and beautiful in their Orencian peasant dresses. Some were fair-skinned blondes, others raven-haired or chestnut-haired. As they came closer the fear in their eyes became palpable.
‘You would stand a better chance to get your hundred thousand gold coins for one of them than for the queen,’ observed Senelek, as the party passed quite close on its way back to the camp. ‘Ask any merchant. Used merchandise inevitably requires discounting.’
‘Stick to religion, Senelek,’ Varik replied curtly, digging his booted foot into the side of his horse. ‘Economics is not your forte.’
Varik galloped past her, a look of dark intensity on his face as he headed back towards the camp ahead of the column.
‘Did you hear that, majesty?’ Senelek called to her once his brother was out of earshot. ‘My abilities have been called into question. But you and I know better, don’t we? Varik may understand steel, but he knows nothing of the difference between copper and gold.’
He was referring again to his earlier remark about her being a whore, with only the value of the cheapest copper coins, the kind that can be thrown upon an oak table in exchange for the having of a hapless pleasure-house slave whose life consists of the endless serving of ale in the common drinking area betwixt trips to the pleasure rooms, the mats thick with the scent of stale sex and fermented hops.
She’d imagined such rooms, and the things that happened within them many times; even as she watched the doors slam shut, excluding her eyes. And yet on all those occasions, she never dreamed she herself might one day be evaluated in anyone’s mind as chattel, her value being that of her flanks, her worth tied integrally to her ability to writhe under a whip.
As for Senelek’s insolence, were she given license to speak she would certainly have told this sorry excuse for a holy man that he might pray all he wanted, but he would never have her heart or her soul, much as he might lust after her. For these belonged to Varik and Varik alone.
Though Senelek said nothing more, she was infinitely relieved a few minutes later when she heard over her shoulder the resounding hoof beats of the chieftain’s returning horse.
‘What was that all about?’ Senelek asked, after his brother resumed his place beside him.
‘I was instructing the camp watch commander to treat the women as our guests, to provide them with food and drink,’ Varik replied.
Senelek brushed a bit of dust from his arm. ‘Such generosity,’ he noted dryly. ‘Coming from a chieftain; I do hope the Orencians arrive soon, as I fear we will need their capital if we are to finance any more of these new invasions of yours.’
Varik ignored the insult. ‘You there!’ he shouted to an officer at the head of the cavalry line. ‘Send fresh riders! Find those messengers and get them back here with the Orencians!’
‘I think that will not be necessary,’ Senelek interjected, inclining his head to the horizon.
All eyes focused on the tiny dots, rapidly enlarging. There were eight or nine in all, some in Rashal armour, others in the brilliant colours of the Orencian court. As they approached Caralissa recognised Romila, in a hooded cape of red. Beside her was a man in a uniform of light blue, richly decorated in gold. She thought for a moment her eyes were playing tricks on her, and then it dawned like a blow to the abdomen.
The man was Telos! He was back, and worse still, he was wearing the uniform of a general!
Desperate for an explanation, her eyes scanned the remaining three of her people for familiar faces. They wore the cloaks of green reserved for the royal council, but she knew none of them. Not one. As the party approached the Rashal escorts fell to the rear, allowing the Orencians to approach their chieftain directly. It was Telos who galloped to the lead, taking the vanguard place.
‘Greetings, Your Lordship,’ the man bowed with a ridiculous flourish. ‘The nation of Orencia welcomes its liberator, the feller of tyranny, the new sun upon our cloudy and oppressed land, the great and noble chieftain of the Rashal!’
Caralissa stiffened in her bonds. What nonsense was this buffoon spouting and why was he speaking for the state?
Varik frowned. ‘Your words are unclear to me.’
Telos wrinkled his nose, causing vibrations in his short black moustache. Across his forehead a pile of black hair poured forth from under his gleaming, tufted helmet. ‘Why, the tyrant Caralissa,’ he laughed. ‘But you are jesting, obviously. The Rashal, we know, are renowned for their sense of... the absurd.’ Telos had paused briefly before concluding his thought, his eyes having fallen blatantly and lustfully upon the body of the bound queen. Behind her gag, Caralissa screamed at him in rage.
‘We are most grateful,’ Telos continued, seeing that Varik had nothing as yet to say. ‘As are the people of Orencia, our humble peasants, whom the cruel queen has bruised so heavily beneath her iron fist.’
Caralissa shook her head frantically. It was a lie. All of it. It was Romila and Telos who wanted to increase the taxes and impose levees on the peasants, not her. The people loved her, as they’d loved her father.
‘The queen seems to take issue,’ Senelek said, noting the squirming girl. ‘Personally I think her a bit puny to wield an iron fist.’
In a rare show of commonsense, Telos said nothing.
‘Either way,’ Senelek continued, interposing himself for his strangely silent brother, ‘Lord Varik has no interest in the internal politics of your regime. He merely seeks to bestow upon you terms for the release of your queen. And they are, I might add, most generous terms, unprecedented in the history of our people. My advice to you, then, is to identify yourselves to his lordship and then wait humbly upon his pleasure.’
‘Forgive our boorishness,’ Telos effused, with another bow of the sort more appropriate for the comic stage than the battlefield. ‘I am Chief Regent Telos, Commander of the Home Militia and Royal Consort to her highness, the Princess Romila, soon to be Queen Romila.’
Caralissa looked at her sister. There was upon her face no emotion, no sign of recognition.
‘We await your terms, Lord Varik,’ Romila said, employing the bravery of cold reason. ‘Our lives are in your hands. We have nothing to lose.’
‘Lord Varik requires the sum of one hundred thousand gold pieces,’ Senelek declared. ‘To be delivered by sunset tomorrow. Upon receipt of it your queen shall be returned to you.’
Telos smiled in a failed attempt at irony. ‘That is a good deal of money, gentle sirs.’
‘Enough, Telos!’ This came from Romila. ‘We shall bring the money,’ she said to Senelek. ‘Precisely as you say.’
Senelek curled the right side of his lip, revealing to Telos and the rest the true nature of irony. ‘We have no need of your words, princess. Everything you own is already ours.’
‘This meeting is at an end,’ Varik declared, breaking his silence.
‘Go home,’ said Senelek to the Orencians. ‘Go home and give prayers of thanks to your gods. Apparently they have been watching over you of late.’
Romila bowed her head, rapidly, mechanically. Before she turned, as she seized upon the reins, her eyes met her sister’s for the briefest second. Caralissa felt a chill down her spine as she saw in them the truth. Romila hated her.
‘Good day to you, esteemed ones!’ waved Telos over his shoulder as they galloped off; a gesture Caralissa was convinced was done solely to allow the man to burn into his brain one final image of her ripe and helpless body.
‘So,’ said Varik, some time later, his mouth full of fruit as he addressed the kneeling and obeisant Caralissa, her head to the dirt at his feet. ‘It seems you are a tyrant just as I am.’
‘When I return home,’ the naked queen informed him, maintaining her position of subservience, ‘I will have my sister and her blue-suited pet monkey executed, along with every one of their allies.’
Varik reclined upon the cushions, taking another bite of the apple, complements of a nearby Orencian orchard. They were in the Tent of Pleasures, the place in the camp where Varik and his chief officers gathered for celebrations. There were guests today, in the form of a dozen captured maidens. Their laughter could be heard, bright and sweet as the soldiers fell upon themselves to impress their particular favourites. A few of the girls seemed already more than impressed, having descended to various states of undress in the arms of would-be lovers.
Varik extended his goblet, signalling Caralissa to refill it from the pitcher by her side. His stomach was filled with wine and it was beginning to tangle his thoughts. Or perhaps it was the girl, with her unique power to drive him into a blinding rage at one moment and then at another to pluck from him the most peculiar protective and nurturing instincts. He’d hoped putting her upon the battering ram would end his growing addiction for her body by reducing her in his eyes to a mere object, a pawn with political purposes only. Were he a pragmatic man he would have her chained in a dark tent, out of sight till the Orencians saw fit to bring him his gold. Or else he ought turn her over to his men, to remove her entirely from his thoughts. Instead, he had lain with her again and brought her to a feast. His Little Flame. The fire that burned too hot even for a warlord.
‘You have not answered the question,’ Varik observed, renewing the verbal banter for which he was rapidly developing an insatiable appetite. ‘Are you or are you not a tyrant?’
Caralissa curled her lips, a sparkle in her eye. ‘My Lord Varik has possessed me to the depths of his soul. Can he not tell this for himself?’
‘All women are tyrants,’ he replied, gulping the sparkling beverage. ‘Until they are mastered.’
‘I serve the goddess,’ she said proudly. ‘And in her name, justice.’
‘Indeed. This can be verified, you know.’
‘How?’
‘By means of a character witness.’
Varik signalled to a nearby guard, one who’d drawn the lonely job of watching over the feasters. ‘You there, bring me one of the Orencian wenches. Any will do, they all seem equally overjoyed to be witnessing their queen’s degradation.’
He fetched a buxom blonde, her bosom sharply accented in a low-cut dress of yellow with white trim. Her cheeks were rosy and her lips engorged, presumably from kissing.
‘Yes, milord?’ she chimed pleasantly, her pitch and volume indicative of having consumed a fair amount of the sparkling wine herself. Either that or the girl was in shock from having been kidnapped by ruthless barbarians only to be invited to a sumptuous feast. Chalk it up to the legendary Rashal sense of humour, he told himself.
Varik watched her attempt at a curtsy, a nicety rather lost on one such as him, raised in a remote warrior village. Senelek, whose early years were spent among civilised men as a hostage, would better appreciate the action. It was an experience he spoke little of to this day.
‘What is your name, girl?’
‘I am Eliana,’ she replied. ‘If it pleases, milord.’
‘It takes more to satisfy me from a woman than her name, but if you would like to try, I might not object.’ He glanced to Caralissa, hoping for signs of jealousy in the wench. ‘But tell me, Eliana, what is your opinion of your queen?’
Eliana beheld the kneeling girl, roughly her own age. Apart from prior station in life and hair colour they were much the same. Varik watched as Eliana’s facial expression changed, from glee to mounting sadness. Tears formed in her eyes as if it overwhelmed her to look too closely upon her monarch.
‘Be strong,’ Caralissa whispered to the girl. ‘Remember what I told you. Do not disgrace me!’
‘Oh,’ she whispered, putting a finger to her full red lips. ‘Your majesty, forgive me, but I cannot let you suffer alone.’
Remarkably, Eliana now commenced to remove her clothing, as if to give it to Caralissa. At Varik’s signal the guard grasped her arm to stay her action.
‘What mean you by this?’ Varik demanded of her.
The girl’s lower lip began to tremble. Looking to Caralissa and then to Varik she began to weep. ‘Alas, I have betrayed my queen! I could not help myself! I felt sorry for her.’
Varik shook his head, baffled as always by the ways of civilised people. ‘I understand none of this.’
Eliana fell to her knees, crawling to Caralissa, to kiss her feet.
The queen lifted her, offering embrace. ‘It is all right, child. I forgive you.’ Turning to Varik, she offered him explanation. ‘By means of one of these girls, whom I was able to speak to earlier, I passed to them orders to reveal no emotions toward me tonight, to offer no pity.’
‘Ah.’ Varik nodded in satisfaction, taking another sip, allowing the wine to wind its way through his mind. ‘Then you do not hate your queen after all, Eliana?’
Eliana laughed through her tears. ‘Hate her? But sir, we love her. She is kind and fair like her father before her.’
‘But also vain and petty,’ Varik observed. ‘And overconfident, wouldn’t you say?’
Eliana’s face grew pale. ‘No sir, I would not say that.’
‘I shall prove it to you. And in a way which will simultaneously demonstrate that unlike your fair ruler, I am neither kind nor fair.’ Varik clapped his hands. ‘The Dance of Cords!’ he commanded.
The dance was a simple one, ancient and beloved among the Rashal. Most appropriately performed round the campfire, in the dark of night, the flames kissing the sky as warriors, hundreds in number reclined upon cold earth, passing flagons and slapping one another’s backs. There was only one dancer, a female, naked and invariably a prisoner, taken in battle. Several men were required to inspire the dance and to keep the woman attentive and sufficiently sensual in her responses. No pre-set moves were recorded, no requirements as to length or details of performance. The magic was in the cords, the long strands of leather or rope wielded by the Cord Men. The dance was best served up as a surprise, the girl learning upon impact the stakes of her dancing.
The cords left faint marks, thin and red and a good cord man would test his device upon himself and his fellows prior to the start. It was a stinging more than a wounding, and the girl’s pride was the victim first and foremost. Purists would argue that the dance be choreographed and the girl guided by means of the corrective lashes to improve her sensuality. For most men, however, the chief pleasure lay in seeing the girl perform under duress and watching her yield sexually to the very concept of public correction and forced display.
Varik was rather more in the second camp, being less concerned with seeing a perfectly executed performance than with witnessing a girl’s struggle with and ultimate surrender to her own passions. It was especially delicious when the girl was so new to this, when she retained in large part her pride and self-image as a free creature. Caralissa was of this type, as were her captured countrywomen. While he had no intention of subjecting these maidens to the Dance, he would coax from them their own vicarious surrender through their observation of it.
‘Fetch the cords,’ Varik said, ‘and chains as well.’
There was laughter as a large number of the men set about a good-natured competition for the right to wield the cords.
‘Here, Lord,’ shouted a man, holding up the leather strands. They were binding cords, useful in securing wagonloads or, alternatively, pretty girls. Out of the corner of his eye he regarded Caralissa, who was watching, warily, suspiciously, deliciously. Her eyes were glassy as she beheld the cords that would all too soon nip at her heels, singe her buttocks and braze her calves and thighs, not to mention her breasts and buttocks. There were Rashal men who wished heavier markings, employing whips for the Dance. Senelek was one of these, Varik was not. For him it was a far greater thing to tame a woman with minimal use of force, this being a fulcrum, a mere catalyst to invoking the far greater weapon which is a woman’s own passion.
Handled properly, the Dance would make for a night of ecstasy for all. Which would go a long way to quelling the grumbling, thereby keeping the officers satisfied till the morrow, when the Orencian gold would arrive. There would be, he decided, a fair share for everyone. Even Senelek.
It was his brother’s hostility that troubled him most. At one time he could have read the man’s every thought, and yet now he seemed a stranger. What had changed him so much? Or was it Varik who was changing, growing softer somehow, less able to endure the rigors of military campaigning, the travails of empire building. Where would it end? Would they stop at the Forest of Night, or would Senelek’s infernal augers, his endless and arcane consultations with their gods - his gods - call them to raise arms even against the supposed demons that inhabited that lonely and miserable place? Personally, he had no use for demons. Nor had he any use for wives or even slaves to whom one might become overly attached.
Caralissa was conveyed to the dancing place, a circle in the dirt, drawn by the blade of a warrior. The circle was crucial, being both a religious and a sensual symbol. They put her in the irons then, locking the metal bands on her wrists, connecting them with a mere six inches of chain. On her ankles were locked another set of irons, these having a larger lead between them. Some would consider it in poor taste to dance the girl in shackles, but again it was not technical proficiency he desired, but erotic stimulation. If his calculations were right, Caralissa’s yielding beneath the cords would be intensified a hundredfold by means of steel. If so, then the maidens would be given little choice but to give in to lusts of their own.
‘I do not understand what I am to do,’ Caralissa said, her tone entirely too haughty for a slave.
‘You are to dance, Little Flame,’ he told her, delighting as always in encouraging her resistance only to sweep it aside for his own pleasure. ‘Do not tell me you have become shy?’
She looked at the three men holding the cords, and then at the expectant maidens, all of whom were lined up now at Varik’s feet. ‘You would have me do this in front of my own people?’
He shrugged, eyeing Eliana, who squirmed uncomfortably on her knees. ‘If you would like we can supply one of them as your substitute.’
‘No, warrior,’ said Caralissa with surprising vigour. ‘You will abuse me alone.’
‘As you wish.’ He clapped his hands, signalling for the piper and the reed flayer, the reed flay being a flat disc of woven air-filled stems which one strikes with a kind of thick brush. ‘Let the Dance begin.’
The tune was a variation of a Rashal nursery rhyme, though played with rather more gusto. The piper and flayer together were a pleasant combination, though one could enact the Dance with any instruments, or for that matter, with none at all. Predictably, Caralissa did not know how to begin. As much as thirty seconds may be granted the girl to gather herself under these circumstances or, alternatively, she may be lashed at once.
Varik felt his manhood swell as she looked at him in confusion, her chained hands hanging down, her arms framing her ample breasts as she cupped her wondrous sex. They were nearly a verse into the song and all three of the cord men were poised, awaiting Varik’s command. He was the host, the dance maker. The right to punish and to take pleasure was his and his alone. In most circles it was considered a matter of courtesy to allow the cord men use of the girl, and she is oft times instructed to dance with her eyes at belt level, which means that she is to gauge her performance by her ability to visually arouse those men to whom her body is to be given.
Caralissa’s own fate was yet to be decided. Within him warred two impulses, each quite powerful and striving for mastery. On the one hand there was the call of duty, his obligation to divide the spoils. To remain aloof from his own desires in the role of chieftain, the one who shares the fruits of victory. And yet there was the other voice, dark and compelling, dangerous and unpredictable which told him to hold on to this particular woman. At any cost.
Varik scowled. This dark voice was, of course, treason, a flirtation with the spurning of the code of the Rashal. For a warrior, let alone a chieftain, to keep a captive woman as his own, to set up house like a civilised fool denying his friends and allies their rightful use of an enemy wench was the greatest of sins. Were one of Varik’s own men to even speak of such a thing, he would have the man flogged and the woman passed through the ranks until every last warrior had tasted her charms.
The Racial chieftain drained his goblet and threw it to the ground. By the gods, he would not succumb to the wiles of any female, even those of a charmingly seductive queen with hair of fire and lips of wine.
‘You may strike her at will!’ Varik called to the cord men. ‘And to the man who makes her writhe the best, goes her body for the first hour of the night!’
Caralissa saw stars as the first cord struck her on the left calf. Yelping in shock she leaped from the spot only to land herself another blow, to the right thigh. And so began a hissing, stinging rain of cords, infernally delivered, impossible to avoid. Varik was a beast, an animal for expecting her to fend off these nipping demons with her hands and ankles chained! He was no gentleman, no man at all to put a girl to such misery.
And yet, in her undulations, in her tiny world of closed torment, she found a rhythm, a pattern to be followed. It was so shameful, and yet it was beautiful at the same time. To be a female, only a female, and to be under the power of strong men, men able to control her, to rouse her with the cords. She must perform for them, in her chains; she must be pretty, she must be pleasing to the men with the cords. Her naked body was theirs; they would have her, do with her what they wished. It was Varik’s will. And so she danced, finding the ways to move, to show them she was a woman, that they were men and that her place was at their feet, subject to their whims, their steel, their discipline. Her sweet breasts, made to be gripped by strong hands, her sex made to liquefy at the touch of a strong man.
There were sounds of awe coming from the maidens, shocked gasps. At the same time from the warriors there came the sound of palms slapping together in the way of Rashal cheering.
‘Seize the wenches!’ someone cried.
One by one the maidens fell, willingly brought to the floor, their clothes opened, torn, thrust aside in service of iron hard shafts. It was like a fever filling the whole of the tent, and it was cantered in Caralissa, in her swaying thighs, her honeyed undulations.
What was it that drove her? Was it the incentive of the biting gnat-like cords, the nipping tendrils, or was it something else that invoked her passion? Could it be the knowledge that these men were going to possess her? Between her legs she was like a waterfall roaring, and that wetness she knew would serve the best of the cord men, and then the second and then the third, in that order and after that, maybe all the men in the room would have her.
Use her like a slut. A pleasure-house girl.
Rage came, and indignation then self-pity. Though it seemed now that every emotion she could conjure was feeding into the Dance. Especially her hatred for Varik. Who was this man to award her favours to these warriors? Who was he to bind her and punish her and keep her naked? She was a queen, and among these witnesses to her shame were her own people, people whom she ruled, and who must respect her. A curse on Telos and her sister Romila, too, for their impudence, their utter lack of support and respect. They could have freed her today if they’d tried!
This mere peasant Eliana had done more to defend her ruler than her own kin! She made a mental note to reward the girl, perhaps with a title or even the services of a particular male slave, one with a ridiculous little moustache and unkempt hair, a new slave whom she would inaugurate herself.
‘More!’ she heard Varik roar. ‘I demand more!’
Caralissa’s eyes slid shut. It was voices alone that carried now to her senses. There’d been moans from the females, and Caralissa was sure they were succumbing in their heat, opening their legs and mouths, giving in to warriors of their own choosing. She prayed that Eliana would find a strong one, a kind one, the sort of man Varik himself might be if not for his arrogance, his stubbornness. She moaned as she heard the crack of a palm upon bare skin. Someone was being spanked.
‘You heard Lord Varik,’ called one of her tormentors. ‘Give us more. Touch yourself. Move for us or we shall go for your little friends instead of you!’
Caralissa had never done such a thing, not even in the privacy of her own quarters. She told herself she would do it now only for the maidens, to spare them what she now felt. But there was more, something deeper, a call from her own soul perhaps, which drove her ever onward to greater and greater acts of self-abasement. Was Varik watching? Could she bear to look herself? The feel of her fingers, like silk on her breasts, made her nipples throb. Echoes of their stirring reverberated to her fleecy triangle.
Like slaves to a master, her fingers slid over her stomach in search of her honeyed heat. Fingers attached to hands in turn attached to arms, and none of it at this moment her own as she worked towards her goal. Let them be Varik’s fingers she thought, or any man’s for that matter. For what was she now, if not a girl who belonged to men? It was a temporary haze to be sure, the result of captivity, of corporal punishment and teasing and humiliation, and yet it was all too real at the same time, as real as the steel which held her, as real as the cords, as real as the jeers and mocking music, as real as Varik’s voice demanding more, still more.
Caralissa drew a ragged breath, her fingers sliding into place. She cried out as she reached the soft nether lips. She no longer felt the cords as her own self-manipulation took centre stage. Mercilessly, giving no quarter, she flicked her own clitoris, piercing her pride with swirling circles across her oozing lips. Elsewhere girls were climaxing; she could feel their saturated heat pouring into the air from tiny vessels, mouths exhaling as men, true men, took them blatantly, definitively.
She tried to picture them, virgins no more, legs splayed, buttocks on the ground, mouths forced open, warriors pounding at them as their commander sat gloating. What a proud victory for Lord Varik! The chieftain who wins wars without crossing blades, the king who plants his flags between the thighs of helpless women. How many others, and from what countries were his other conquests?
No, she thought, this matters not. Revenge, this was the dish she should be savouring. Revenge on Telos, on Romila, on their rump council and for that matter, upon each and every man in this room, and all of those outside, even the unlucky foot soldiers, the men of no rank being denied the pleasure of Orencian girl flesh.
Round and round Caralissa spun, whether moving in space or only in the landscape of her own desires, she knew not, nor did she care. It was her own orgasm she claimed, even as those about her sought to claim it for themselves.
‘She finishes herself off like a whore!’ someone cried, while another wagered he could make her dance upon his spear.
‘No, worse than a whore!’ she heard, and then there were fingers clenching at her, pulling her away from herself.
‘Looks like I’m the lucky winner,’ one of the cord men spat into her ear with fermented breath, though truthfully she never heard the contest’s end, never really acknowledged its beginning. Hands were dragging her from the floor, taking her to a corner, dark and pillow-strewn.
‘Could you feel my cord the best?’ he crooned, the odour of his air sickening her. ‘It was the biggest.’
More laughter. There must be an audience. Or was it the others who were to come after him? Were they already waiting in line? She felt the ground rising to meet her, or rather she felt herself being forced down. No matter, it was all the same. Perhaps she would die here, in this very spot, and then her sister would have to live with the guilt, and Telos, too. Was there any doubt now, she thought bitterly, as to who the betrayer was? How far had she gotten from the castle, she wondered, before the informant was sent ahead to Varik? Did Romila’s lips even have time to grow cold from the kiss they shared, the one she gave Caralissa to wish her good luck?
‘Have you ever seen a shaft so big?’
Caralissa pictured the man shouting stupidly, waving his manhood like a flag. If such a word as manhood could be applied to a creature who stings naked girls with nasty little strings making them do terrible things to themselves, requiring them to drip their own juices down welt-ridden thighs to the sound of cacophonous music, the echo of orgasmic maidens filling the air.
‘No!’ she heard a man roar into the void. ‘It is enough! No more, I say!’
Caralissa opened her eyes, to see if it was a shattered dream or some taste of afterlife, but instead she saw the shadow of Varik, wrenching the foul-smelling man away, his penetration having failed, been disallowed before it ever occurred.
‘But, my lord,’ the man wailed. ‘I never even got to touch her.’
‘Find a maiden,’ she heard Varik growl. ‘Leave this wench to me.’
Caralissa lay beneath the furs, her breath soft in the darkened air. Making herself as small as possible, she tried not to listen even as the men’s voices increased their hushed intensity.
Just outside Varik’s tent, where he’d carried her after rescuing her from the aftermath of the Dance, he was speaking now with his brother. It had been several hours now, and in that time Varik made love to her twice more. At least it felt like love, his hands firm and gentle, his taking of her marked with possessive concern and relentless attention to detail. She was glowing still as she huddled herself, making herself small, invisible. Yes, it felt like love.
There must be something to it, she thought, something more than barbarian custom alone or mere barbarian lust. Hadn’t he even given her an ointment, a healing cream brought long ago from the Forest of Night to ease her smarting legs and buttocks? Almost at once she’d felt the cord marks ease and shrink. A small thing, perhaps, but for a woman in her position, desperate for any sign of her future, for a vision of her true allies in a world of danger, it was a lifeline.
Varik was growing angry with his brother, this much she could discern. Senelek, by contrast, was maintaining his usual clipped style, his biting sarcasm. Straining her exposed ears, she sifted the air for their words.
‘Let them come to me themselves,’ Varik declared. ‘If they dare. Or is it that the complaints are yours alone?’
‘Truth has many voices, brother. It uses what messengers it will. Though more often than not it is more a curse than honour to be chosen as its mouthpiece.’
Varik exhaled noisily. ‘Why must you always speak like one of them, in riddles with such high sounding phrases? Is it not enough we must forever be conquering them and living in their lands?’
‘The city dwellers, you mean - the civilised ones? Perhaps you’ve forgotten my childhood, then, how I served as hostage among their kind in order to save our village?’
‘How could I ever forget, Senelek, when you remind me each and every day?’
‘A Rashal never tires of hearing of his obligations and his debts.’
‘A Rashal allows a man to pay those debts,’ Varik countered, ‘at a fair rate of interest.’
‘I will not debate you, Varik. There is no defeating you on any front, which is why you are chieftain instead of me. My humble lot in life is to serve you, and this compels me to issue you this warning: Lie with this Orencian slut much longer and you shall incite rebellion.’
‘And I warn you, Senelek: raise the point again to my face and you shall court treason.’
The space of several breaths passed before Senelek replied. ‘It is not your face you should concern yourself with, my brother,’ he said, his voice devoid of emotion. ‘But rather your back.’
A moment later Varik returned to her, having closed the tent with an angry flourish.
She clung to him in the blackness, seeking to ease his worries with her warm and willing body. ‘Tell me what I can do for you,’ she whispered, stroking his cheek with the tips of her fingers, ‘and I will do it. It would be my pleasure to best that brother of yours.’
Varik took her wrist and slid it behind her back, applying sufficient pressure to make her wince. ‘Have you been eavesdropping, Little Flame?’
‘No - I mean yes, but only a little.’
He slid his free hand down between her legs, to her waiting moistness. ‘This makes three offences, then,’ he declared, stroking her slit, commingling the sensation with that of the tension on her wrist. ‘The first being your continued insolent disrespect for the high priest, the second being your dishonesty with regard to the incident, the third being your invasion of our privacy. How am I to handle this - Orencian slut?’
Caralissa writhed against him. How unfair it was to be a woman; to be so easily put into one’s place and to be aroused in the process. ‘I - I should be punished,’ she confessed breathlessly.
Varik released her. ‘Show me how,’ he commanded, sitting upright.
With a whimper, her spurned sex stinging with need, Caralissa crawled across Varik’s lap. Crying out in frustration, her nether parts rubbing against his thighs, she put herself in a position to be spanked. It was a trifling punishment, a girl’s punishment.
‘Now tell me,’ he demanded, making her wait, her sex wet over his skin, her buttocks twitching enticingly. ‘Tell me what I am to do to you.’
‘I’ve been naughty,’ Caralissa trembled, her voice barely audible. ‘I need to be spanked. I beg for you to spank me.’
His palm sat heavily on her buttocks. ‘And what about your pleasure? Should I allow you to climax tonight?’
Caralissa clenched her small fists, knowing he intended this night to bring her to new depths of shame. ‘Not at first,’ she wheedled. ‘But after I am punished enough, when I am very sorry, and if I beg and if I am pleasing, with my mouth and my sex, maybe yes, you should let me.’
Varik struck her with the palm of his hand, drawing a low gasp. ‘No, Caralissa, not at all. There will be no climax for you tonight. I shall keep you at a fever pitch; I shall use and tease and torture you till I am bored and then I will sleep. In the morning, when I awaken, I will send you and you will fetch water for me and make me breakfast, which you will serve on your knees. You will do all these things to remind you to behave more pleasingly in the future. Is this acceptable to you?’
‘Aaah,’ she cried as he snaked a finger in and out of her. ‘Yes, yes, I’ll do as you say.’
‘And another thing,’ he added, his hand having impacted upon her pert behind a second time. ‘If I do decide to keep you, it shall be because I desire it; your will is of no import.’
‘I hate what you do to me,’ Caralissa moaned as he touched her yet again. ‘I hate it! Do you hear me?’
‘Your body says otherwise,’ Varik countered, taking his sticky finger and putting it to her mouth.
Caralissa rubbed her breasts helplessly against the furs as she tasted her own juices, her tongue and lips obediently paying homage to Varik’s finger. It was going to be a long night, she decided as he spanked her yet again. A very long night indeed.