by Felix Baron
Maria looked up from her happy task. ‘Oh, there you are, English. We’ll be right with you, if you don’t mind waiting a few moments.’
Twenty-five
I HAD TO wait for more than a few moments. Asuka made Asp spend and was taken to climax in turn, by Maria. Jia Li whimpered and collapsed. With three of the five limp from orgasms and the other two ‘in heat’ I anticipated a merry romp. My cock was at ‘present arms’. I had taken but a single stride in the direction of the carnal treats when a noise behind me halted my progress. I held a fur before my naked loins and raised the sacking at the rear. Time had flown. It was our supper being delivered. A Cossack handed up a great steaming tureen of Kinema curry and a fistful of horn spoons but no dishes. We ate from the communal tureen. I am not fond of fermented soybeans but there were chapattis left over from lunch, so I didn’t go hungry.
Asuka made no attempt to impose artificial formality on our meal. It seemed that her reserve had melted. She and Jia Li exchanged meaningful glances and eyed my shaft, which they were seeing for the first time.
Fatima told me, ‘While you were gone, Maria organised a game that calls for forfeits. There are spankings due to two of us. Asuka is owed six smacks and Jia Li thirty. We agreed to select the one to deliver the smacks by vote. I propose that you be that one, English.’
‘Indeed! Perhaps we could have a show of hands from you ladies. Who would like me to administer the slaps?’
Four hands shot up, Asuka’s being the only one that didn’t.
‘I accept the honour. I shall also pick the time. We are all replete from our supper. I have found it unwise to bend a girl across my knee when her tummy is full. For now, we shall find less strenuous amusement.’ I looked from girl to girl, as if pondering, but I had already decided. ‘Asuka,’ I said. ‘You have been trained in many methods of pleasing men, have you not? Tell us about them.’
‘I sing like a nightingale. I dance like a dervish or a flamingo, as required. I play the Sheng moderately well. I tell wonderful stories, and no one performs the tea ceremony as elegantly as I,’ she boasted.
‘Those are all wonderful accomplishments,’ I allowed, ‘but what of the carnal arts?’
‘Oh! You wish me to describe my pillow skills?’
Fatima interrupted with, ‘We all do. Perhaps we can learn something new from you.’
‘I – I cannot face Richard and talk of such things.’
‘But you’ll face him when you do them,’ Maria put in.
‘That’s different.’
‘You may turn your back,’ I offered.
And so she did. She had a pretty back, shaped somewhat like a cello, with dimples to each side of the base of her spine and a delightfully curved bottom. The cords that bound her transformed mere beauty into a much more appealing erotic obscenity.
‘I am practised in eleven positions in which the man need not move to reach his happiness. I know my paces from walk to gallop and when each is appropriate. I am skilled in massage, both with my hands and my feet.’
‘Massaging their cocks, do you mean?’ Maria asked.
‘I am an adept at that, but I meant for relaxation and redistribution of Chi.’
‘Is that like “jism”?’
I interrupted before we got too far off topic. ‘Chi is a spiritual thing, Maria. Let Asuka continue, please.’
‘I can satisfy a man using my yoni, my mouth, my hands or my feet.’
‘Not your bottom?’ Fatima asked.
‘If that is what he requires, but there is little skill involved in that.’
‘I disagree. Perhaps we could debate that later, if English agrees.’
‘Asuka is listing her erotic skills,’ I reminded them.
Maria’s expression might have been a sneer on a less attractive woman. ‘We all of us here know a dozen ways to get a man’s jism out of him. I can’t imagine that Asuka knows one that we don’t.’
Almost whispering, Asuka said, ‘I have studied Lady Takara’s Pillow Book. It is possible that there are skills described in that ancient collection of erotic wisdom that you of the West do not know.’
For a moment, my antiquarian interests superseded my erotic ones. ‘Lady Takara’s Pillow Book?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know of that one. Do you have a copy?’
‘Alas, no, but if you wish, Richard, I could demonstrate the Chipatama Kiss.’
‘Chipatama means?’
‘The head of the male organ.’
That roused my interest. I find that I always respond when a woman offers oral service. I said, ‘I’m sure that we would all enjoy a demonstration.’
Fatima coughed in a very pointed way but she said nothing.
I asked, ‘Do you need to make special preparations?’
‘All I need are these …’ She fluttered her long delicate fingers. ‘And this.’ She touched the tip of her tongue.
Maria asked, ‘What about your lips and mouth? What about your throat?’
Before Asuka could say anything that might cause friction, I said, ‘Let Asuka show us her way, Maria. Later, you can show her yours.’
Maria shrugged.
‘Shall we start?’ I asked Asuka.
Bowing, with her hands pressed together as if praying, Asuka shuffled towards me. ‘Please,’ she said, ‘to sit on the edge of the bench? I need to reach your parts.’
I shifted to sit on my tailbone, with my cock wagging and my balls dangling.
‘Thank you. And feet further apart?’
I spread. Maria brought a cushion. I hitched up for long enough that she could get it under me.
‘Thank you,’ Asuka said. ‘Comfort is important.’ Her hands disappeared from my view, below me. At first I wasn’t sure that she was touching me but when I concentrated, I could just discern a delicate prickling immediately behind my scrotum.
She smiled and held one hand up for me to inspect. Her almond nails had been filed to sharp points. Asuka laid both palms on my thighs, high up and just inside, where there is a line between where hair grows and where it doesn’t. She dragged her nails down my legs, softly and gently, but leaving four thin white lines down each thigh. Holding my knees, she leaned forward and to my left. The tip of her tongue, just the very tip, traced one line, then the next, and so on, before moving to my right thigh. The sensations were no more intense than if a spider had walked down my leg, but they raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
Fatima asked, ‘Does that feel good, English?’
I nodded. Speaking might have broken the spell.
Asuka cupped my balls, one in each palm. Those needle nails tickled behind them. The ball of one finger palpitated the spot where I had been scratched, between my balls and my anus. The pressure was slight and yet I felt it penetrate deeply. My sphincter tightened and my shaft lifted. Asuka’s pink little tongue protruded from between her lips. I thought she was going to lick me, but it just moved from side to side. I was reminded of snakes I’d seen, tasting the air.
She had my balls separated. I think it was the ball of her thumb that she used to stroke the skin of my scrotum, between my globes. I became aware of my pulse, beating hard in the vein that runs up the underside of my shaft.
She caressed me with one finger and one thumb, the finger pressing rhythmically on my perineum, the thumb stroking between my balls. Her other hand took a grip on my shaft, at last. She held it between her thumb and two fingertips, as she might a flute. I held my breath, forgetting that she’d said she wouldn’t use her lips or mouth.
With the utmost delicacy, Asuka turned my cock this way and that, inspecting its swollen purple head. A small bead of clear fluid appeared from its eye. She ignored that. Her tongue flickered. Her head bent closer. Asuka’s eyes narrowed, as if she were taking aim. When the tip of her tongue touched me, it was on the rim – the collar of my cock’s head. Moving like a hummingbird’s wing, delicate as a butterfly’s kiss, that teasing tongue-tip travelled the circumference of my dome, pausing to pay extra attention to its kn
ot.
And that finger and that thumb were still pumping beneath me, but with a little more pressure. My cock felt like a balloon, blown up until ready to burst. Were I not a patient man, blessed with preternatural self-control, I’d have been demanding that Asuka suck me. I had that feeling that all men know – that I just had to do something to tip myself over that glorious edge.
I resisted it.
Her tongue traced a spiral, getting closer and closer to the weeping eye of my straining cock. Her lips were drawn back in a sort of erotic snarl, as if she were denying them what they craved, my cock.
Another finger began to work beneath me. Without penetrating, it pressed and relaxed on the sensitive rim of my sphincter. I was in an agony of anticipation. Something had to happen to relieve my tension.
Asuka’s eyes, black as sin, gazed up into mine. Her tongue reached the eye of my cock at last. It dabbed, once. My balls tightened. It dabbed again. I felt the base of my cock thicken. It dabbed for the third time, withdrew an inch, and hollowed into a spoon of flesh.
I wondered why she had stopped just when I’d been so close.
And then I climaxed.
And I discovered why she’d shaped her tongue into a spoon.
Twenty-six
A WOLF HOWLED in the distance.
I was grateful for the straw on the ground, for I was barefoot and it was freezing. We’d been hustled from our carriage, only allowed to wear the clothes we owned, and I owned none. Zema had distributed furs. My cloak was sable and quite warm, except it only came down to my knees.
The village consisted of a score of sagging sod huts, a very large stable and a larger warehouse. The latter two had been built from whole pine trees, trimmed, shaped and chinked with moss. Despite the meanness of the hovels, there were signs of prosperity. I’d heard but not seen cattle and chickens and had been fed a bowl of scrambled eggs.
Scabs of dirty snow crusted the lean flanks of the hills. We’d passed a good-sized flock of real sheep, not sheep and goat crosses, which are more common in those parts. A trio of pigeons that hadn’t the sense to go in out of the cold circled overhead.
Bustling little people – I couldn’t tell male from female even when I saw their creased and greasy faces – were unloading our caravan and loading vehicles much like English dog-carts; a seat for two and a low-walled flat back, with only two wheels. No English dog-cart was ever drawn by a mule, though. These were – all thirty-six of them, by my count. Another peculiarity was that all the mules wore felt over their hooves and the wheels’ rims were also padded.
The first cart was filled. It, with Honey perched atop its load, was driven away towards a narrow ravine. I couldn’t see far into the slot, for it curved not a hundred feet in. Maria’s hamper and trunk were added to the pile of goods in the back of another cart. Zema came to us and led Maria away, to be loaded into it.
One by one, each of my companions was put aboard a cart. Soon, I was left alone. Finally, Zema came for me. ‘I am sorry, English,’ she said. ‘Here I release you from your parole. Where you are going, you may not enter unbound.’
Some three-score armed men were watching us, so I extended my wrists and suffered her to wrap them with a leather thong. To my chagrin, Zema helped me into the back of the last cart. I was somewhat mollified when she, who had never allowed my cock near her mouth during the course of our many couplings, lifted my fur cape aside, bent, and gave me a quick hard suck. Perhaps she was repaying me for something or another, although the touch of her lips had more symbolic value than erotic, it being unanticipated and brief. Perhaps it was simply her way of saying good-bye.
Bora, Honey’s Turkish paramour, shared the driving seat with Igor, who took the reins. We rolled with unnatural silence into the ravine. It twisted and turned and became even narrower. My erstwhile home would never have fitted through.
After no more than half a mile, the way sloped downwards slightly and opened on to a geographical feature the like of which I had only seen twice before, and both of those on coasts. Nature had carved a rugged tower of stone with perpendicular sides. It was perhaps a hundred yards across and stood alone, rearing a full fifty feet above us and dropping into a chasm below us for at least four hundred feet. It was crowned by a squat, massive fortress, featureless apart from arrow slits.
The ravine path debouched on to a stone bridge that looked natural in origin but had been enhanced by tools. That bridge was no more than a foot wider than our cart’s axle.
We rolled on to the hazardous span. Ahead, a roughly triangular cave, twenty-five feet to a side, waited like a monster’s mouth to devour us. There was something bulky lurking just inside the cave’s shadow but I couldn’t make out what.
Igor reined his mule to a halt in the middle of the bridge. As I glanced at him to ascertain why, he gave Bora a straight-armed shove, toppling him, screaming, into the abyss. Bora’s usefulness, whatever it had been, had obviously come to an end. It was fortunate that Honey had already disappeared into the cave, though perhaps she wouldn’t have cared. Sympathy for others wasn’t one of her virtues.
I was reminded that although I had become mildly fond of both Igor and Zema, they weren’t pleasant people.
When we entered the cave I found that the bulky object I’d glimpsed was a gigantic bronze cannon. Its bore looked to be between twenty and twenty-four inches. There was a canvas strapped over its muzzle so I couldn’t be sure. Iron bands bound its barrel but I wouldn’t have wanted to be near the monster, not before, beside or behind it, if it were ever fired. A bronze cannon with that massive a bore is as likely to explode as discharge.
The body of the weapon had been formed into the likeness of a fantastical snarling wolf, with the barrel projecting from its great maw. All the paraphernalia a cannon requires was lined up in soldierly fashion: two racks, one of sponges on long poles, the other of equally long ramrods and wadhooks, five half-barrels of water, a pile of pre-shaped wads, a titanic brass monkey, complete with its pyramid of iron balls, two neat coils of slow-match, and an orderly stack of packaged charges.
I was taking a mental inventory in case I somehow escaped with the intelligence. If I managed to report to either the Indian Army or John Company, I might have to brief the commander of an armed force, prior to his launching an attack on this place. I prayed that day would never come. The cannon might prove useless after its first discharge but a schoolboy with a catapult could have defended that narrow bridge. If I had been ordered to take this fortress, I’d have opted for a siege, though my supply lines would have been perilously long.
We arrived at an opening to a downward-sloping tunnel, off to my left, just in time to see Honey, hysterical, carried into it over a Cossack’s shoulder.
It was very dim where we were. Twenty or so feet farther in, I discovered why. To my right there was a secondary cave that served as a magazine for the storage and measuring of black powder. There had to be five hundred or more hogshead casks piled against one wall. Before them were copper scales, scoops and funnels and cotton bags, where the powder was weighed and packaged in single charges. Inevitably, there had been spillage. No wonder the mules’ feet and the wheels’ rims had been padded; no wonder there were no lamps or candles. The shelf of felt slippers, waiting for the powder monkeys to wear, was a wise precaution.
I’d never heard of several thousand pounds of black powder going up all at once. If ever such an explosion were to occur, I’d sooner be far from it than near.
Not far beyond, the tunnel widened and there was light, some from lamps and some from ingenious slots cut through the rock. There, mules were being fed hay from mangers or drinking at troughs. Carts were being unloaded.
Igor jumped down from his seat and came to lift me from the back. I thanked him, though it galled me to need his assistance.
He grinned, nodded, and hit me with a club.
Twenty-seven
I AWOKE CHAINED to a heavy wooden St Andrew’s Cross in the strangest room I’ve ever been unfort
unate enough to occupy. My manacles looked to be made of gold, thick bracelets with ‘D’ rings attached. My ankles were similarly clasped. The oddest restraint, though, was the band about my waist, which had a strap of the same metal, vertical down my belly, with an offset crossbar of gold at its end. That thin flat strip was at the exact level that my shaft sprouted from my pubic hair. I found that menacing.
The half of the room that I was in was built of unadorned stone blocks. It was lit by both a dozen spluttering flambeaux and the menacing glow of a brazier that had some sort of instruments heating in its coals. I didn’t feel like speculating on the uses the instruments might be put to.
The room was divided by a wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling wrought iron screen. The other side could have been an illustration from my translation of The Arabian Nights, become real, though I didn’t think that at the time. My modest opus was both written and published much later.
The luxurious area was made bright by a fine pair of crystal chandeliers such as might have graced a Duke’s ballroom. All the walls were concealed behind tapestries, draperies, hanging rugs and swathes of sumptuous fabrics. The floor was covered by carpets and rugs and rugs-on-rugs, and animal hides and furs in a zoological garden of patterns and colours. Not a stone showed.
There was a long table, or perhaps a workbench, for it was equipped with alembics, retorts, bottles, flasks and phials – all of the paraphernalia an alchemist might need. My father, an ardent amateur chemist and renowned creator of bad smells, would have died of envy.
Behind the bench was a set of shelves, bearing earthenware pots. The containers were labelled in a variety of languages and scripts so that I couldn’t read them all. Among those names that I could translate were: Aconite, Essence of Nettle, Willow Bark, Ambergris, Ginger, Fugu Liver, Poppy Juice and Black Cohosh. It was a strange selection, ranging from medicinal through intoxicating to deadly.
The room was occupied. I puzzled over the figure who was grinding something in a mortar with her back to me. By size, she was a young girl. By shape, as far as I could see, she was a woman. Her garb argued that she was a child – a white smock over a bell-skirted dress in pink with blue polka dots. It was mid-calf length, with a froth of matching pink crinolines showing beneath. Her hair was the glistening white of fresh-fallen snow and cascaded to the ankles of her naked feet. That made her age – I knew not what.