As they helped her to a sitting position, two more women appeared from the direction Anya had been running towards. They had the young sailor, his head was bowed and he looked beaten. But when the women stopped to look at Anya, the sailor tried to break away. Though neither woman took a step in pursuit, one whip lashed out and caught him round the ankle and a second wrapped around his wrist. He was tugged to the ground and the handle of each whip was driven into the sand. He could have unleashed himself easily with his free hand, yet it seemed that, with all four women now standing over him, he was disinclined to try. He lay on his back shaking, his eyes darting from one woman to the other. The leading woman drew her knife, which had a thick spatulate double-edged blade. She twirled it through the air and caught it. The man began to plead. She shouted at him in her own tongue. He shut up. Then she knelt beside him, placed the blade beneath the neckline of his shirt and slit it down the front. He swallowed; the apple in his throat bobbed up and down. She slit the sleeves, which fell away, leaving his upper body bare. The women began to chatter excitedly. They descended on him, touching the curls on his chest and making small appreciative cries. The leading woman spoke again; she must have instructed them to stand back, for they moved away and fell silent while she continued the operation on his trousers. Anya watched the fascination in the faces of those beautiful bronzed forms as they stood, hips angled, slim thighs moving gently, toes kneading the sand and thumbs tucked into each fur-skin belt. She watched the fingertips then reaching to the lips, or behind the neck, to stretch across a smooth-skinned shoulder blade while perhaps the head was tilted and a lifted foot began to scratch behind a knee.
On the ground, against the faint pleas, the trouser legs were slit to the waistline, the belt was unbuckled and the prisoner's sex lay revealed, surrounded by a thick dark bush of hair. Next, his legs were parted fully. His cockstem lolled. The leading woman then moved so rapidly that the man cried out from fear. She lifted back the cockstem and placed the blade flat against the bag. He gasped when the cold threat touched him. She gritted her teeth and cried, 'Abaata!' He did not understand her, but his eyes were wide with fear. 'Abaata!' she screamed again and pressed the knife-blade harder. One down-swipe of a blade such as this would surely have severed his ballocks from his body, and he knew it. His breathing came in sobbing gulps; his cheeks became wet with tears, but the woman would show no mercy. She screamed the word again. The knife was taken away and his bag was gathered in the woman's hand; then the blade returned to press against him more threateningly than ever. 'Abaata!' the woman cried again, though clearly her patience now was running low, as the man's sobs welled ever freer.
Then all at once it happened. Perhaps it was the way the knife pressed against him; perhaps it was the attention, so closely directed there; perhaps it was the way that anxiety had gripped him in its thrall. But whatever the driving pressure, the cockstem suddenly began to swell. Though no one touched it, it rolled across his lower belly, sufflated strongly and lifted. The women looked at each other, murmured softly, 'Abaata ...' and nodded knowingly. The leader released the bag and stood up, pointing the knife at the man. 'Abaata,' she said firmly, and the man understood. His cock, curving very stiffly up above his belly, had pulsed when she had pointed. She tucked her knife away and folded her arms. For a while all the women watched the cockstem throbbing gently on the otherwise immobile frightened body on the ground.
They made the man kneel up while they tied his wrists behind him, then the youngest of the women knelt before him, spread his knees apart and touched his stem and bag. But her fingertips kept returning to stroke his curls as if they held a special fascination. The others watched her and advised. Each time one of them spoke, she would look up at her and listen carefully, then touch him in some way that she had evidently instructed. There were many nips in places on the underside of the stem and beneath, in places Anya could not fully see. But it was not clear whether she did it to hurt him or to cause him pleasure. The young woman then closed her hand around the dangling bag as if it were a fruit on a twig and she would pick this fruit by cupping it and twisting. The man groaned gently with what Anya assumed must be pain. But the women nodded sagely as the cockstem stood up harder than before. And Anya was stirred inside by witnessing these women take a man like this and use him in such ways, as if he were their plaything.
When the whip was produced again, he tried to back away on his knees until the leader threatened him again. He was made to lean back on his elbows with his cock pushed in the air while the bag was gathered up with it and the end of the whip was wrapped for three times round the entire collection. A leather collar was tied round his neck. Attached to this collar was a length of twine which, once he was lifted to his knees, dangled down his back to the level of his waist. The twine was wrapped once around the cord between his wrists. At the end of the twine was a small loop. He was made to stand while the whip was drawn back between his legs, up between his buttocks and was threaded through the loop at his waist. Now the handle was tightly pulled until his head was forced back sharply, the whip strands bedded deeply between the cheeks of his buttocks and his cockstem, drawn down by the tension, stood straight out from his body. The women seemed satisfied with this arrangement. The leader then came over to Anya, still pinned by her ankle, with her hands tied behind her. The woman pushed her back on to the sand and Anya's fear welled up to choke her as she read the woman's lips before the word was uttered.
'Abaata,' said the woman firmly as her hand went to the knife. And at that word, Anya felt the fear sinking back down again, very deep inside her, pushing out hard as she spread her thighs. The woman reached; she stroked the bright red curls between the legs and touched the sun-warmed flesh; she lifted back the swollen lips and deep delicious fear pushed out - a small hard ball of excited shame, for all to see. 'Abaata,' the woman murmured, nodding gently as the others crowded round to look at it and Anya's cheeks flushed crimson.
And though Anya was not trussed in the way the man was, with one of the women behind him, controlling the traction in the thong between his legs, keeping him hard and bobbing, still she remained in that state as they were driven before the women, who would not leave her be but kept stroking her curls and touching her in that one place even as they hurried her onwards through the open bushes. When one woman left her side, another would take over. Momentarily, they would stop. 'Abaata,' the new woman would say. Anya, her breathing now deliciously shallow, would feel her legs slowly bowing outwards as the hard bud swelled again to meet the specific predilections of these new and urgent fingers.
They would touch her in ways she had not known; there would be things - small polished objects - held between their fingers when they touched and soft things pressed against her. While the fingers or the objects touched her, she would be watching the tethered cock throb gently beneath the stroking fingers of the youngest as the other two women waited, seemingly indifferent to the young man's murmurs, and advised the young girl how to edge his pleasure forwards. As the cockstem swelled up harder, as its colour deepened, as the throbbing turned to thrusts, the leather would be tightened, the man would moan, he would be rubbed, then the plum would be held between two cupped palms, then rubbed again and all this while the small polished thing would be investigating Anya between the legs, or the fingertips would be taking the measure of her ever swelling bud. When it was judged the man could take no more, he would be driven onwards once again, his head back, his cockstem stiff and throbbing purple, tethered, drawn down to make it project horizontally and sleeved intermittently in a slim bronze hand until it was decided that a halt should once again be called while the young girl was instructed further.
They came upon a clearing fringed by bushes full of lush red berries. The women stopped and began to pick and eat them. The man was made to kneel while he was stimulated. The handle of the whip was introduced between his buttocks. Still tied, he was made to lean back on his elbows with his belly in the air, so his cock stuck straight up. The women clustered round his arched, defenceless form, sweeping in, touching, working him quickly, treating his tortured flesh roughly, nipping his belly, squeezing his tethered ballocks, tightening their hands around his plum, then suddenly releasing when he moaned, until they appeared to Anya like she-wolves - circling, feinting they would come in for the kill then retreating, only to return. As the movements came quicker, the women seemed more excited. A thick twig was taken from a bush, stripped of its bark and used to whip the underside of his stem. Then he was worked and whipped again until he pleaded for respite. 'Abaata,' the women told him as the whip thong was tightened once more about his cockstem and his bag and the youngest one took command of him again.
And the woman guarding Anya, the one who had captured her, whispered that word too. She was so beautiful, this woman, so relaxed; her eyelids were heavy as she bit into the lush red fruit. Anya felt a warm tingling sensation washing up her inner thighs as this woman opened them; she felt the warmth bathing her swollen sex lips; she felt her nubbin pushing out hard, wanting to be measured by those fingers. She heard the moan and turned to look at the man. She watched the girl's fingers touching and stroking the tip of his stem while further down, other hands pressed a small round pebble against the base, on the underside, trapping the tube where it fed into the bag. Then she watched a thin skin strip being slowly bandaged round the pebble and pulled very tight, forming a tourniquet around the base of the stem until the pebble was pressed so deeply into the thick tube that its shape could not be seen. But before the bandage had even been wrapped around him for three full turns, his pleasure spasmed as the young girl's fingertips rubbed beneath his tip. It was as if that pleasure had been dragged from very deep within him, yet not a drop of milt came out. The cockstem pumped in quick convulsions, each convulsion echoed in a word, shouted in unison by the women, but a different word each time. Anya realised that the women were counting.
As the count of each failed emission continued, Anya turned and looked at the woman before her. The woman's full lips kissed the fruit; her teeth bit into it again and her fingers squeezed the pulp. 'Abaata,' the woman murmured and Anya opened her legs wider, planted her feet deep into the liquid sand but closed her eyes when the soft pulp touched her and the gentle fingers squeezed. The smooth unyielding pip inside the fruit touched her like a stone. It pressed against the underside of her nubbin. Again the fingers squeezed. She shivered very gently when the warm thick juice divided down her open flesh lips and trickled down her legs.
[8]
The Village
The women seemed untiring as they led their captives onward through the bush. They moved with a smooth loping stride which Anya found impossible to match. She stumbled many times in the soft sand underfoot, but they never scolded her. Each time she fell, she would be lifted up again and one of them would wait until she had regained her breath. But they were much harsher with the man. He was made to run collared and erect, with the cord of the whip secured around him. When he fell, he would be punished: they would turn him on his side, and fold his knees up whilst the youngest girl whipped the underside of his cockstem with a thin resilient stick then threatened him with the bandage and the stone.
They appeared to be following a line parallel to the shore; at times Anya could glimpse the sea to her right. But she could see no path underfoot. Eventually, they came to a ridge of black jagged rock sparsely clad with trees and began to climb it. There were many footholds and Anya found the going much easier than on the sand. When the ground began to level, the women stopped. Two sat down and Anya followed their example, but the man was tethered to a tree. The women standing next to Anya had turned to look back, shading their eyes. As they spoke to each other, the two who had been sitting stood up and joined them. Anya looked out above the trees and in the direction they pointed. The air was misty with the heat of day, which softened the colours in the distance, but even so, the wide sweep of the bay was visible ahead and to the left as a thin yellow line between green and blue. To the right were the mountains - very tall but showing no bare stone; they seemed so different from the mountains of her homeland, which were craggy and covered in snow. One of the women shouted and pointed to the sea. Then Anya saw the pirate ship; she hadn't noticed it until now because it appeared so small. When she realised it was moving away from the shore, she glanced at the man. He had seen it too; his look, already sad, was now forlorn. There was no possibility of escape from here for either of them now.
Anya stared out into the distance, looking for the reef with the ship dashed upon it, even though she knew the wreckage must be far away on the other side of the island. She looked again to the mountains. She thought of her Prince again, pictured his face, focused it into her mind. Last night she had seen the waves; she had seen his ship broken, in its death throes; she had seen the wide expanse of raging water between the reef and the dry land, so why did she not accept that her Prince was surely drowned? Because she could see his face too clearly.
A hand touched her shoulder. As Anya looked up at the slim bronze figure of the beautiful woman beside her - the woman who had caught her, had touched her so deliciously - a tear escaped and trickled down her cheek. The hand squeezed her shoulder gently. The expression in those dark eyes was one of concern. The woman helped her up. She stood taller than Anya by a hand's-breadth. The fingers touched Anya's red hair, straggly from the dried salt water. The dark eyes searched her own. 'Ikahiti,' said the woman. Anya's eyes, a little apprehensive, looked to the side, then back again. The woman stepped back. Her hand lifted then swept gracefully down in front of her body, then pointed to her heart. 'Ikahiti,' the woman repeated.