Captive (14 page)

Slowly, hesitantly, Sulitea pulled up her burnouse up, then off, leaving herself nude. She opened her thighs, keeping her eyes tight shut as she showed off her tuppenny to Babalyn.

‘What a pretty cunt!’ Babalyn exclaimed cheerfully. ‘You have such sweet little lips!’

Sulitea’s face and chest were flushed crimson with blood and Aisla giggled at her friend’s discomfort. Babalyn, who seemed to have no concept of embarrassment, reached out and tickled Sulitea’s clitoris with a nail, evoking a sharp squeak.

‘Don’t be such a baby,’ Babalyn chided.

Sulitea was shivering hard, making her nipple bells tinkle, yet she stayed in position, thighs well spread, sex pushed out. Babalyn began to whistle to herself as she reheated a needle, a process which both Sulitea and Aisla watched with rapt attention. As the tiny sliver of iron hissed into the banana spirit Sulitea mumbled a quick prayer to her mother, shut her eyes and pulled her sex lips wide. Babalyn pinched the inner ones, pulled them out and drove the needle through them. Sulitea gave a sharp cry and winced, her vagina tightening in response to the pain as if at orgasm. Still whistling, Babalyn finished the job, threading, pulling and sealing the bells off, one in each lip. Sulitea was breathing hard and made no effort to close her thighs, leaving her sex gaping to the air.

Babalyn took no notice but began to prepare the other needle, completing the task of piercing and decorating Sulitea’s tummy button quite calmly. With Sulitea nude, in chains and pierced, she looked to Aisla more like a Vendjomois slave girl than a Mundic noble.

‘Stand up!’ Babalyn ordered. ‘Let us see how you look.’

Sulitea stood, nude, her face burning with blushes, her nipple and tummy bells tinkling as she moved, the ones in her tuppenny peeping out from between the outer lips.

‘There,’ Babalyn declared, ‘now you are truly beautiful and will be accepted everywhere, and I with you! Come, swing your hips a little more, make your bottom wobble as you walk. You must show pride in you beauty to emphasise your rank!’

Sulitea tried, nearly tripping over her chains and only regaining her balance after a series of contortions that had both Aisla and Babalyn clutching their sides in drunken laughter. Sulitea’s face set in a sulky pout.

‘I’m sorry,’ Babalyn chuckled. ‘You are truly beautiful, and will be talk of Opina. Is she not more lovely now, Aisla?’

‘She was always beautiful,’ Aisla admitted. ‘In Mund, she would be ridiculed and whipped for a slut, which is why she is blushing so hard. If anything she resembles the slave girl I saw in the Vendjome seraglio.’

‘You have been to Vendjome, you have seen the Panjandrum’s seraglio?’ Babalyn demanded in disbelief.

‘Yes,’ Aisla answered, feeling pleased that the attention was back on her.

‘How?’ Babalyn demanded, shuddering so that her big, dark breasts quivered. ‘It is a terrible place. All foreign girls are automatically slaves. They are whipped! They are chained! Oh you poor thing! Did they fuck you often, did they whip you?’

‘A few times,’ Aisla admitted. ‘We were caught and sold as slaves…’

‘A terrible thing!’ Babalyn interrupted, with a deeper shudder. ‘Chained up, helpless. Whipped like that poor girl in Hai, and fucked whenever the men take a fancy to it!’

‘Only the Emperor has a right to imperial slaves and he is a pederast,’ Aisla said. ‘That didn’t stop two nobles taking us off for their amusement. While they were busy with my mistress Elethrine and I, Talithea, Sulitea’s cousin, brained both with a great brass tube for looking at the sky. We escaped…’

‘Obviously,’ Babalyn interrupted again, to Aisla’s annoyance, ‘but what about the chains, and the whippings, and the violations, tell me!’

Her eyes were bright with excitement, her nipples taut and erect, while Sulitea was also listening with interest. Aisla glanced from one to the other, cross that they did not wish to hear how heroic Elethrine and Talithea had been, yet amused and intrigued by their obvious arousal.

‘We had to wear these things called pyjamas,’ she said. ‘They were gauzy and showed everything.’

Sulitea bit her lip, Babalyn made no response.

‘We were chained,’ Aisla went on, ‘and whipped with dog quirts.’

Babalyn put her arm around Sulitea, hugging her close. Both girls showed fear and longing in their eyes.

‘That’s how girls are kept,’ Aisla said. ‘Chained to the wall, maybe by their feet, maybe by their necks. They wear almost nothing, and if they’re bad they get beaten.’

‘With people watching?’ Babalyn asked weakly.

‘Of course,’ Aisla answered, ‘they’re only slaves, why should people not watch them punished? It is done on the spot, I suppose. Dignity is not relevant for a slave. We were quirted, bare-bottomed, in the audience hall.’

Babalyn moaned and spread her thighs. Grabbing Sulitea’s hand, she pressed it to her sex. Sulitea looked startled for only an instant, then began to play with Babalyn’s tuppenny and made no objection when Babalyn returned the favour to her freshly pierced sex.

‘Tell us,’ Babalyn demanded, ‘about the beatings, about how it feels to be chained, like you are, only at men’s mercy, to be used, and fucked, and whipped, oh my…’

‘Elethrine was whipped,’ Aisla said. ‘They made her bend out of a window so those in the city below could watch her and hear her cry. Her bottom was stripped and a dog quirt was used on her. She was beaten hard, until her poor bottom was a mess of red lines. The man who had whipped her used her between her breasts and in her mouth. He came all over her breasts and in her face…’

Sulitea and Babalyn were masturbating each other firmly, both rapt in their attention to Aisla’s words, their faces set in mixed horror and ecstasy. Seeing no reason not to join in, Aisla pulled up her burnouse and showed them her sex, then began to play with herself as she went on.

‘Later she sucked off a caravan guard, a fat old man. He had me to, in my mouth, in my tuppenny, and worst, up my bottom. I can still remember his fat little belly slapping on my bare cheeks and the feel of his cock up my bottom, all sticky with honey. I got whipped too, bare, and spanked ever so much…’

‘I’ve got to have it,’ Babalyn panted. ‘Come on, roll me over, beat my bottom, pretend I’m just some stupid slave girl who’s been naughty.’

Aisla responded, helping Babalyn to roll and push up her behind then starting to spank with one hand and play with herself with the other.

‘I was kept bound like that on the boat after we were captured, trussed like a chicken for market with my bum up. They used to make Elethrine suck their cocks hard and then mount me. I could do nothing. My ankles were tied and my wrists were tied behind my thighs and to my ankle bonds. My tuppenny showed, and my bottom hole, just like yours do, and they’d spank me to make my hole juice, just like I’m spanking you.’

Babalyn’s plump black bottom danced and wobbled in the candlelight, jumping to each smack as she squeaked and giggled her way through the spanking. In no time she was pushing her bottom up for more and moaning aloud, her fingers working in the wet pink mush of her sex. Sulitea watched the spanking, still masturbating, mouth open in ecstasy, revelling in what was to her the most shameful and degrading of all punishments, the spanking of a naked girl by hand. Suddenly she was turning, catching in her chains as she rolled to take the same lewd pose as Babalyn.

Aisla began to spank both girls, slapping each quivering buttock in turn. Her climax was coming, just from having the two nude bottom in front of her, one white one black, both with tuppennies spread wide and fingers working on clittys, both with bottom holes bare and winking. Sulitea’s bells were jiggling as she masturbated, while Babalyn’s ornaments jumped to the motion of her fingers.

‘You ought to be slaves,’ she moaned. ‘A pair of fat bottomed sluts like you, it’s what you need. How can you do it, Sulitea, with your bare bottom in the air and your tuppenny showing and bottom ring showing and bells in your cunt…’

She came on the word, slapping Sulitea’s bottom with all her force as her orgasm exploded in her head. Sulitea’s own orgasm followed an instant later, with a cry of ecstasy as her holes tightened and her fingers jerked at her clitoris. Aisla’s hand smacked hard on Babalyn’s bottom, drawing a squeal from the black girl and then a cry as she too started to come, leaving the three of them grunting and squealing out their ecstasy before collapsing together in a sweaty, satisfied heap.

For days they rode slowly south and west along the caravan trail, through a wasteland of burning red sand and rock. To the west and north the smoky columns continued to rise, drawing closer until the peaks of two volcanoes became visible on the furthest horizon. The girls took little notice of this, spending most of their time enjoying the ebullient company of Babalyn within her wain. This included drinking a great of deal of wine and banana spirit, and also uninhibited sex. In return for teaching Babalyn the pleasure to be derived from having her bottom smacked, Aisla and Sulitea learned more subtle tricks, stimulating their skin with feathers, various unguents and mildly irritant plants, especially nipples, tuppennies and bottoms. Even N’Garu ceased to be suspicious after a while, and in return for a leisurely suck of his cock he allowed Aisla to retrieve the birdswing axe, without which she had been suffering a feeling akin to nakedness.

Eventually the desert began to soften, with bulbous cacti and euphorbians growing in sparse clumps, then straggling bushes and stunted trees. Babalyn announced that they were approaching Joquina, the most northerly among the Aprina states, the boundary of which proved to be a single squat building of whitewashed stone beside the trail. As they approached a group of guards emerged, a half dozen men with bombards and another, unarmed, at the front.

‘That is the Intendant,’ Babalyn said, ‘he had direct authority from the Board of Regulation in Joquina. The town has some rivalry with Blue Zoria and he will be keen to pick fault. Be meek and maybe simper a bit, and for the sake of us all will you put that axe down, Aisla!’

Aisla quickly concealed the axe behind some wine cases and returned to sit demurely beside Babalyn. As he approached, the expression on the Intendant’s face was officious, and became more so as he saw her and Sulitea. Briefly he consulted a pad of fine charta.

‘Hai girls?’ he queried. ‘Your outgoing manifesto makes no reference to this.’

‘They had become abandoned in the desert,’ Babalyn answered. ‘They intend to take employment with my family in Blue Zoria.’

He responded with a surly grunt, made a mark on the paper and then looked up again.

‘The Hai are barbaric and ill suited to civilisation,’ he remarked, ‘but still, there is no actual proscription…’

‘We are not Hai, but Mundic,’ Sulitea said.

‘Mundics, from Kora!’ he exclaimed. ‘Northland barbarians! Why did you not say this?’

‘You said they were Hai, not us,’ Babalyn answered. ‘They are Mundics, but what is the difference?’

‘Everything!’ the Intendant exclaimed. ‘All peoples of the continent Kora are proscribed on principal. Do you not know their reputation!’

‘Certainly,’ Babalyn answered, ‘but these are only girls.’

‘Stand up,’ the Intendant ordered.

Aisla stood, doing her best to look mild and inoffensive.

‘Only girls!’ the Intendant went on, addressing Babalyn. ‘Look at them! The red haired one stands a full head taller than you and has the eyes of a maddened civet. The other is little better. Think, what if they lose their temper? What of their macabre habits? They drink the blood of their enemies! They wear the finger bones of their slain as necklaces!’

‘No we do not!’ Aisla exclaimed.

‘Not for a thousand years!’ Sulitea added. ‘A hundred even in the wildest parts of Aegmund and the far north!’

‘They are harmless!’ Babalyn added. ‘Just girls! They were lost in the Ara Khum, it is simple humanity to give them shelter!’

‘The proscription is absolute,’ he answered.

‘How can you do this?’ Babalyn stormed. ‘How will they get back across the Ara Khum, two girls, alone?’

‘They crossed the Ara Khum one way, they can cross it the other,’ the Intendant answered. ‘They may have water and food sufficient to take them to Hai, although there are nearer villages on the shore of the Ergan Deep. Do they own camels?’

‘We do,’ Aisla sighed.

‘Then take your belongings and mount up, and no pilfering.’

Babalyn continued to remonstrate, but the Intendant refused to yield, opening his pad and citing the regulation that excluded all inhabitants of Kora from the Aprina States, regardless of sex or age. Finally N’Garu and the other caravan guards joined in, siding with the officials in support of regulations. At last Babalyn was forced to give in and Aisla and Sulitea reluctantly formed up their camel train. Lastly Aisla retrieved her axe, at the sight of which the Intendant gave a knowing sniff.

Feeling helpless, Aisla and Sulitea sat on their camels, watching as the caravan moved off with Babalyn’s furious protestations still ringing out. Finally, when the guards began to walk towards them, they wheeled their camels to the north.

Chapter 6 – Girl Hammers

For two full days they rode north, with the twin volcanoes that marked the Rieve straits growing slowly larger and clearer. Sulitea insisted on riding to the front, struggling to maintain her high status despite what had happened between them. Each night their behaviour was very different. They slept together, huddled close against the cold, their intimacy growing in response to the loneliness of the desert and their sense of isolation from their homes. No longer did their arousal need to be stimulated before they could touch each other, but came from their need for comfort and security. Each evening they would masturbate each other, behaving as lovers and equals before going to sleep in each other’s arms.

On the third day they reached the lower slopes of the eastern volcano, an eerie landscape of volcanic glass thrusting up through red-brown sand, patches of brittle grey ash, tongues of black lava. Ahead, a jagged line of mountains stretched away to the north east, and to the west they could see the sea. In the south west it was a sheet of pure blue that met the sky with no perceptible horizon. To the west was a narrow strait with a second volcano rising across it. A heavy, broad beamed vessel was visible in the strait, its oars moving to a slow rhythm as it made its way towards the north.