The Persian Girl

by Felix Baron

  She was of middle height, with enormous dark-brown eyes that were tilted and set a little further apart than classicists maintain is the perfect proportion – one eye’s width. Their spacing gave her a timid look, like a fawn at bay. As for the rest of her appearance, all was concealed. She wore a stiff brocade cape in green and gold, with arm-slits, that was fastened by frogs and fitted her like a tent. Her head was wrapped in a black scarf, embroidered with gold thread, that covered most of her face, leaving just her eyes exposed.

  Those eyes looked from one of us to the others in patent shock. Maria had draped her shoulders with a snow-lynx cape but was otherwise nude. Fatima, bare, was trying out the sensations that a fox-tail tippet afforded when stroked upwards between her thighs. I was simply naked, but I imagine my size was intimidating.

  The poor thing scurried to sit on a bench, where she remained motionless, staring at the floor.

  I picked up my ‘swaddling cloth’ and knotted it about my loins. My girls made to embrace our newcomer but she shrank down into her cape like a turtle so they didn’t insist. Maria tried Spanish and French and Latin on her, but was ignored. I tried Hindi and Parsee with the same result. Both of my girls performed dumb-show introductions. Fatima took our guest’s fingertips only to have them snatched back and disappear inside her cape.

  I suggested that we leave her be and give her time to adjust to her new surroundings. The girls concurred but were not content. After about an hour, when our caravan was already rolling, they plied her with fruits and sweetmeats, all of which she ignored.

  Maria sauntered casually to where I sat and straddled my knees. ‘She can’t see, because of my cape,’ she told me. She loosened my sparse garment and let it fall to the floor between my feet. Her left hand cupped my testes as her right stroked my shaft, typical of a wise woman who is about to beg a favour. ‘She’s been summoned by the Child, am I not right?’

  ‘So it would seem.’ The more knowledge of this ‘Child’, whom I’d only heard mentioned once before, I feigned, the more those who knew more were likely to let slip.

  ‘And the Child only calls girls who are of a like nature to Fatima and me, is it not so?’

  I waited for her to continue.

  ‘So, if she is like us, why is it that she spurns us?’

  I shrugged. ‘Is it not possible that the Child could have many reasons to summon girls?’

  Maria made a moue. ‘Perhaps.’ The tips of her fingers trailed up the underside of my shaft. ‘You should take her, English.’

  ‘You mean by force?’

  ‘If need be.’

  ‘I don’t do that.’

  ‘You’ve forced me.’

  ‘At your request. Playing at rape is very different from the real thing.’

  ‘She’ll spoil everything.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘She’ll sit there like a nun. How can we …’ Her fist wrapped my column and pumped it by way of explanation, ‘when she just sits there, face like a prune, and frowns on us?’

  I chuckled. ‘Face like a prune? But we haven’t seen her face, except for her eyes, and they are lovely.’

  ‘A woman can tell. Why else does she hide behind her veil?’

  I closed my hand over her fist and stilled it, the better to concentrate. ‘Maria, all will be as before. Our sport will continue. If it offends our guest, so be it. Perhaps, in witnessing our joyful games, she will be moved to participate.’

  Maria thought about that. ‘Well, in that case …’ She tossed the cape aside, moved to sit astride my hips, steered my shaft into her cunny, and began to ride.

  Over her shoulder, I watched the new girl. She didn’t stare. She didn’t avoid looking at us. Her eyes looked straight ahead, as if we didn’t exist.

  Perhaps it was childish but from then on, we three entered into a secret and unspoken conspiracy to somehow reach the caped girl and evoke a reaction from her. Maria showed Fatima that no bruises remained on her body, despite the intensity of the wet-towel flogging she’d endured so happily. The process necessitated displays of her private parts and was performed directly in front of our stranger. A little later, the jade dildo made an appearance and was demonstrated, again, in our guest’s line of sight.

  Those lovely eyes didn’t blink.

  Our first meal since our return to our carriage was delivered. I set a steaming bowl of lentil soup down beside the girl. We all watched and waited. Soup challenges a veil. She simply turned to her Gladstone bag, extracted a square yard of cambric and draped it over her head. The bowl of soup disappeared beneath the linen. Listening intently, we heard the sounds of it being drunk.

  When we were brought water for washing, she vanished behind the draped curtain. Maria wanted to follow her but I forbade it. Privacy is important when people are confined together. Come nightfall, Fatima, Maria and I snuggled together under a heap of furs. The girl, as far from us as she could get, covered herself with a voluminous ermine blanket. There was movement under it. Her brocade cape appeared and was set aside without more than three slender fingers emerging.

  Our diet had improved. We were served three meals a day – lentil soup and tea for breakfast, boiled rice for luncheon and more rice, with a small portion of curried goat, for supper. We had our fruits, both fresh and dried, should we hunger between times.

  Several days passed without incident and without our shy turtle emerging from her shell. Zema didn’t visit. I missed her. Then, one dawn, it was Melku who delivered our soup. I stood at the tailgate and took two bowls from his hands. When I’d passed those on, I bent for the next two but he only handed me one. I delivered that into Fatima’s care and turned back to take my portion. Melku, looking up directly into my eyes, spat into my bowl before handing it to me.

  I, of course, upended it over his head.

  He drew his pistol so I was forced to jump down and take it from him. Things might have got ugly but Zema arrived and sent the little man off with his head ringing, no doubt, from her backhand blow.

  Sooner or later, I decided, I was going to kill Melku.

  It was two days after that when Zema visited once more. I greeted her with a hearty wet kiss and a fondle but she wasn’t there to be sociable.

  ‘The leader of the Cossacks, Igor Varnokov, knows of your repute as a swordsman,’ she told me.

  I smiled. I am not a vain man but was gratified that my name was known so far from the capitals of Europe.

  ‘He requests a demonstration of your skills,’ she continued.

  ‘A demonstration?’ My heart beat faster at the prospect of holding a blade again.

  ‘Will you cross swords with him, just for sport, no more?’

  ‘By all means.’

  ‘Then come.’

  I girded my loins and followed her, to be met by the Cossacks’ raucous laughter. The sight of a grown man clad in nothing but a cloth a newborn might wear had to be quite amusing. I smiled and nodded with my teeth so tight together I heard them grind.

  The field was flat and flinty but my feet had calloused during the journey so my lack of boots was no great handicap. Zema handed me a sabre. It was about three inches longer than I was used to and imperfectly balanced. I gave it some trial swings, letting its hilt grow to know my hand. As we became acquainted, I let my Chi flow down my arm and into the steel. Soon, the blade and I were one, and I was ready.

  The circle of Cossacks parted. I am tall but Igor topped me by at least six inches. He’d have weight and reach on me. His head was shaven. He had a prognathous jaw and a beetling brow. His face bore six or eight duelling scars. I did not, however, assume he was a mere brute.

  My judgment was confirmed when he addressed me in German with a trace of a Heidelberg accent. ‘Richard, you defeated the French army champion.’

  I nodded.

  ‘A Cossack is not like a Frenchman.’

  I nodded again.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘would you like your scar here …?’ He touched his right cheek. ‘Or here?’ A
massive finger traced a line down his left cheek.

  ‘I already have a scar on my left cheek. If it isn’t too much trouble, the right?’

  He laughed. ‘No trouble, Richard. Shall we?’

  He came at me en flèche, which, had our duel been in earnest, would have proved fatal for him. I stepped aside, merely deflecting his blade. He recovered from his charge and turned to face me. I saluted him. He approached me more cautiously, striding until close and then stamping into a low lunge, aimed at my thigh. I defended with a bind that disarmed him. Watching me over his shoulder, he darted to his fallen weapon and snatched it up.

  I saluted him. He came at me swinging a flurry of blows, intending to confuse me and beat me down by sheer brute force. I effected a froissement to take control and disarmed him with a little more force than was strictly necessary. His sabre flew over the heads of his companions.

  Igor bellowed. He grasped his right wrist in his left. ‘You have destroyed my arm, Richard! Wait!’

  He marched off. I knelt on one knee before Zema and returned the sabre to her, as a knight from a more gracious time might have done. Coyly, she accepted.

  Igor returned and tossed a leather bottle at me, left-handed. ‘A prize,’ he announced. ‘For being the winner, and for not spoiling my so-pretty face, huh?’

  I snatched my gift from the air and gave him a flourishing bow. ‘You almost had me,’ I lied. His rueful grin told me he didn’t believe me.

  My prize proved to be about a quart of vodka. Back in the carriage, I offered it to the new girl and was rewarded by an almost undetectable shake of her head. Neither Maria nor Fatima had any such qualms, although Fatima spluttered her first sip. What followed wasn’t exactly a Bacchanalia, but approached one.

  Strong drink seems to make my yard indefatigable. The girls took this as a challenge. I’d had both, in both bums and cunnies, when they, giggling, challenged each other to a duel. Maria produced a gold half-hunter from her baggage. Each girl was to be allowed five minutes of fellating me, alternating. The one who drew my climax from me was to be the winner, with a prize of having the loser serve her on command for a full day.

  Fatima went first. She didn’t even try to take me to orgasm, that turn. Looking up at me with saucy eyes she laved my privates with a lascivious tongue in such a manner as to stiffen my cock even further but not give it satisfaction.

  Maria, not to be outdone, dangled my testes, one at a time, in the hot soft cup of her mouth and tongued them but without so much as touching my shaft for her allotted time.

  From time to time my girls threw sly glances towards the newcomer, who they had taken to calling ‘The Maiden’. To them, this was a pejorative epithet. As the girl seemed not to understand a word they spoke, I doubt it bothered her.

  Fatima swigged from the bottle and dropped to her knees. This time she seemed in earnest. Her lips closed tightly on me. She took hold of my thighs. Her head bobbed so hard that my balls slapped up under her chin and so fast that her face seemed to blur.

  Maria, standing beside me, kissed me deep and long while I fondled her small but delectable breasts.

  ‘Time,’ I announced.

  Fatima relinquished her oral treat and stood, with a strand of saliva stretched from her mouth to my cock. Maria knelt. I took Fatima into my arms to kiss her but paused.

  ‘Your mouth’s bleeding, Fatima,’ I said.

  She touched her lips and inspected the blood on her fingertip. ‘I don’t hurt,’ she said.

  I moistened my thumb and rubbed it across her mouth. When I inspected her lips, they were unmarked. I looked down. There was a dribble of blood on Maria’s chin.

  ‘Oh!’ Fatima exclaimed. ‘One of us must have bitten you.’

  She proved right. There were two tooth-shaped indentations in the underside of my helmet that oozed droplets of blood. It was my fault. A fully-aroused cock feels pleasure but is numbed to pain. Fatima was a skilled and careful fellatrice but her background was Muslim so she’d never tasted liquor before, and the vodka was likely one-eighty proof. With her half-drunk but enthusiastic and me rendered insensitive, an accident was almost inevitable.

  I told them, ‘No matter,’ and poured vodka on my wound to cleanse it. That was another mistake. My cock might have been numbed but it wasn’t totally dead to feeling. Luckily, Maria’s mouth was close at hand to both suck away the stinging liquor and kiss my wound better.

  I found this so amusing that I sat down on the bench to enjoy my laughter without the strain of standing upright. Fatima joined me but her joints seemed to have softened. She slithered from bench to floor, tucked her hands under her face and began to snore softly.

  Maria looked at me. ‘Do I win?’ she asked.

  ‘By default,’ I replied. This quip struck us both as so hilarious that we ended up beside Fatima, and then we slept.

  My small wound was never a bother to me until the day, long after, when my Isabel noticed the tiny twin scars.

  Twenty

  THE COSSACKS ALLOWED me freer rein than the Tatars had. Perhaps I’d earned a modicum of their respect. I was allowed to trot behind our conveyance for my daily exercise. I was watched when I sought the privacy of bushes, but from a discreet distance. The one freedom I was definitely denied was that of passing ahead of our carriage. Perhaps there was something or someone in the other vehicle that I wasn’t supposed to see – or someone who wasn’t supposed to see me.

  One dawn, I wandered into an unusually fertile little grove for that part of the world. The sound of rhythmic grunts stopped me. Advancing with caution, I discovered Igor flat on his back with Zema riding him hard. He saw me and winked. I winked back and crept away.

  As I answered nature’s call, I formulated a theory that she was attracted to the strongest man in any company, but preferred one she could dominate. On the other hand, perhaps Igor had a bigger cock than I. I chose not to dwell on that thought. In any case, I had discovered why Zema had ceased her recreational visits.

  Later that same morning, the landscape changed. It had been dry and inhospitable but now it became arid and palpably hostile. The horizon was blurred by sandstorms but I could just make out some crescent dunes that had to be two hundred or more feet high.

  We’d entered the Taklaman desert. Little wonder we carried extra water. It’s the driest land in all of Asia. It also explained the furs. Although at that time of year it’d be blazing hot most of the day, at night it’d drop well below freezing.

  Our caravan slowed and crunched to a halt. I looked out of the back. Our trailing Cossack had shed his felt coat and Astrakhan hat. Now he was clad in a loose white shirt and burnoose. When I dropped off the tailgate and trotted as far forward as I was allowed, I saw woven straw mats being attached to the horses’ harnesses, to shade their heads. Our journey was about to become difficult. I just hoped we weren’t hit by a tornado. They’re as common in the Taklaman desert as showers are during an Irish spring.

  Back in our carriage, I warned the girls, ‘It’s going to get very hot. We’ll have to do our best to keep cool.’

  Fatima asked me, ‘Does that mean we should take our clothes off?’

  I grinned. It was a funny question. Her ‘clothes’ consisted of a single long narrow strip of silk, tied loosely around her hips and trailing almost to the floor.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You’ll just have to sacrifice your modesty, I’m afraid.’

  Maria nodded towards The Maiden. ‘How about her? Does she have to undress?’

  ‘That’ll be up to her,’ I said.

  Fatima pressed her strip of silk into the slit of her cunny. She liked the way that looked. ‘Then I hope it gets very hot.’

  ‘Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.’

  Maria, in her chemise that was slit on both sides from hem to waist, took a ladle of water and poured it over her left breast. ‘This is how I’ll keep cool.’

  I admired the way the water rendered the cotton transparent and clinging but had to warn her
, ‘Water will be precious for a while. Don’t waste it.’

  ‘Then I shan’t,’ Fatima declared. She went to Maria, to suck the damp from her flimsy garment. She just happened to purse her lips on the exact spot that Maria’s nipple poked at the cloth.

  I made my voice stern. ‘We’re only just entering the desert. It’ll likely get warm today, but tomorrow it will be warmer. From now on, we do as little as possible between sunrise and sunset. At night, it’ll be very cold. We’ll huddle to our hearts’ content.’

  Maria frowned. ‘Does that mean we sleep all day and futter all night, English?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it does.’

  Fatima clapped her hands. ‘How delightful! That’s exactly how I’ve always wanted to live.’

  The rest of the day was something of an anticlimax. It got about as warm as an English August and cooled off just enough that we were pleased to have covers to wrap our shoulders with. The next morning justified my warnings.

  A loud dry hissing woke me. I looked out of the back. A crescent of sand that had to be five hundred feet high was marching diagonally across the way we’d come at about the pace of a leisurely walk.

  ‘Cover all the openings!’ I ordered. Our oilcloth roof cover extended down to within about eighteen inches of our wooden walls. I started snatching up cloths and wedging them into that space as best I could. When the girls joined my efforts, I made sure that the sacking blind at our rear was secure and then covered it in cotton sheets. It became dark. We’d blocked out a lot of the light but the sky I peeked at through a crack had turned into the underbelly of a shaggy grey-brown monster. Lightning crackled. Thunder shocked into us less than a second later. Fatima squealed. Maria bit her lip. The Maiden blinked.

  There was a howl and we rocked and the howl became a banshee scream. To our left, where we’d missed openings, horizontal streams of fine grit invaded our carriage. I pulled my girls down to the floor and extended my hand to The Maiden. There was fear in her eyes but she still ignored my invitation.