The Persian Girl

by Felix Baron

  She turned to look at me. I was no wiser. She had the face of a painted porcelain doll, but with startling yellow eyes.

  ‘You’re awake, Richard,’ she said in French with some sort of Slavic accent.

  I nodded and gave her a polite, ‘Madam.’

  ‘I should introduce myself. I am she who they call “The Child”. I am not so named for my years, but for my parentage.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. My Father was Chingis Khan. He begat me upon a giant she-wolf.’

  I was moved to make some amusing comment, such as, ‘You carry your six hundred odd years very well,’ or, ‘And which side of your family do you favour?’ I held my tongue. It isn’t wise to make fun of a megalomaniac who has you in her power.

  The Child continued, ‘Do you know why you have been brought here?’

  I hazarded, ‘So that I might have the pleasure of making your acquaintance?’

  Her brilliant eyes clouded. ‘Are you a frivolous man, Richard?’ She snapped her fingers. What I’d taken for a great mound of furs rose up and divided. Two massive wolves, the male as tall as The Child’s shoulder, the bitch just a few inches less, padded to her and nuzzled her hands, but with their baleful eyes on me.

  The threat was obvious. I said, ‘If I have offended you, Madam, please accept my apologies.’

  ‘Accepted. You are here, Richard, to tutor my girls.’

  ‘You have daughters?’

  ‘In spirit. You have travelled with a handful of them, en route to this place.’

  That gave me pause. If she considered Fatima, Maria and the rest of my playmates as her ‘daughters’, how did she feel about my having diddled them all on an almost daily basis? I’ve faced irate mamas on occasion, but never while naked and fettered.

  Perhaps my consternation showed on my face, for she continued, ‘You are known to have studied the Kama Sutra and various similar works. You have a reputation as an expert in the erotic arts. Your skills have been tested. I’m told that they are practical as well as theoretical. I require that you coach my girls to become supreme seductresses and bedmates. I want them to be houris, Richard, such women as men dream of but rarely meet.’

  ‘May I ask to what end?’

  ‘You aren’t stupid. You know of the Hashisheen, I’m sure.’

  ‘The Old Man of the Mountain – he drugged young warriors – they woke surrounded by pliant girls and in the utmost luxury. After a period of debauchery, they were drugged again and when they woke, told they’d been granted a visit to Paradise. If they died in The Old Man’s service, they were guaranteed to return. They were assassins who knew no fear, for they welcomed death.’ I paused to rub my itchy nose against my arm. ‘Is that your intent, Child, to emulate The Old Man?’

  ‘In part. My houris will be put to diverse tasks. Some will entertain covens of my werewolves. Some will become close to men of power or wealth. Each will be a seductress, an agent provocateur and a betrayer, all in one. They will not kill by their own hands but they will open the doors that let my deadly werewolf covens in.

  ‘Men are easily swayed by the women who please them in bed. The wisest sage is a fool when his passions are aroused. My soft sweet army of a mere five hundred girls will sway the entire world, once they are set in place. Those they cannot control, they will cause to be slain, whenever it suits my purposes. The Czar has entrusted me with …’

  ‘How proud you must be,’ I interrupted, ‘to be trusted by your monarch, and to trust him, but even Czars are not immortal. What of his eventual successor? Might not he decide to take the weapon that you have wrought out of your hands?’

  ‘I am no fool, to put my trust in kings, Richard. No one but I will know which girls are where, or which code words will command them. I alone …’

  She raved on about ‘fomenting war’ and ‘securing a warm water port for Mother Russia’ but an earlier phrase, ‘a mere five hundred girls’, echoed in my mind. I repeated it, I thought under my breath. She must have had remarkably sensitive hearing.

  The Child giggled. ‘Fear not. Your enrolment will not be so great. I will give you but ten girls at a time, for ten days. In that time, you will teach them everything they need to know to lure and then enslave both men and women. There must be no carnal act in which they are not adept.’

  ‘What if I fail to teach them? What if one fails to learn?’

  ‘You will find them eager pupils but in that unlikely event, I am of an economical nature. The Czar is sending me a garrison of Cossacks, a force of one hundred large and lusty men. They will require entertainment. If a girl misses your passing mark, I will give her to them, to use as they see fit. I already have one such girl waiting.’

  ‘Who? Not one of my erstwhile companions, I trust?’

  ‘The Persian girl. The one called Honey.’

  ‘But surely she would make a fine seductress.’

  ‘She might, but she is spoiled. You spoiled her. She witnessed your victory over my first coven. She knows that my werewolves are not invincible. That poisonous truth must not spread.’

  ‘She might tell the Cossacks.’

  ‘They have no language in common and I doubt there would be much conversation between her and them even if they did. Cossacks have other uses for pretty girls than to talk to them.’

  ‘I know that same “poisonous truth”. What if I confide it to my pupils?’

  She counted on her small slender fingers. ‘Then the entire class will fail. They’ll all be given to my Cossacks. You will be given to my wolves. I’ll find another tutor. Volunteers won’t be hard to find.’

  ‘And Igor threw Bora into the abyss to hide the truth about your “werewolves”,’ I guessed. ‘But why bring him so far to die? And what of the other members of his coven?’

  ‘Honey’s young lover? Zema made use of his strong back. He helped keep Honey amused. As for the other cowards that you routed so easily, all are long dead.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Enough!’ she commanded. ‘All will be as I say. You will now meet your keepers and your enslavement will be completed.’

  I admit that I bristled. Britons are never slaves, and the least enslavable Briton I knew was me. No doubt my muscles flexed in reflex, but it did me no good. Gold is a soft metal but not so weak that I could break bands of it that were three inches wide and half an inch thick.

  The thought brought a smile to my lips. At that moment, I was clad in more riches than I’d ever dreamed of possessing but I couldn’t so much as purchase a five-penny cigar, nor a Lucifer to light it with.

  And so I met my gaolers. Kashk was a tall stringy fellow with a hatchet face and restless hands. His skin was as creased as old leather although he couldn’t have been more than forty. By his looks, he might have been Cree, though that seemed unlikely.

  The other, Lom, outweighed me by a hundred or more pounds. He was well larded, but with hard fat that would easily absorb blows and would protect his organs from all but the deepest wounds. I thought he might be a Mongol. Both men wore gaudy silk pantaloons and shirts and long sleeveless embroidered jackets.

  I took them to be eunuchs – Kashk likely mutilated when fully grown – Lom emasculated before reaching puberty. A young boy who loses his stones rarely misses them. An adult man who is robbed of his manhood is likely to be vicious and resentful of men who are whole.

  Lom reached towards my privates. I cringed, inside. I have an abhorrence of having my parts touched by my own gender. His fingers, however, closed on the gold crossbar. I cringed once again. Misery loves company. If I was right and neither of these were fully men, the better to suit them to guarding what amounted to a harem, it could be that I was destined to join their sorry state.

  It was something of a relief, then, when Lom only bent the metal into a circle that girded my member.

  Before the ring fully closed, Kashk set a half-cylinder of stiff dark fabric between it and the underside of my column. The band of gold was tight but not unbearable.
Kashk went to the brazier. I set my teeth. Whatever torture they intended to inflict on me, I would not cry out.

  He returned with a metal rod that was tipped by a white hot diamond of glowing steel. I tried to think of a quip that would demonstrate my sang froid. None came to mind. Lom lifted my shaft out of the way. He used the backs of his fingers, thank goodness. Burning metal came closer and closer to my shrinking scrotum. I tensed. There was heat on the underside of my shaft. I became distinctly uncomfortable but was spared the agony I’d anticipated.

  Kashk returned his rod to the coals. My sphincter unclenched. Lom tugged the half-cylinder from between my cock and the gold ring. I breathed a sigh of relief. No doubt the fabric had protected my skin while the heat melted the gold band closed. It seemed likely that the other bands I wore had been united in the same manner but I hadn’t been conscious then.

  They’d saved the most frightening welding for when I was awake to enjoy it. That was an error. I can forgive a man who inflicts pain on me. I will never forgive one who inspires my fear.

  The Child said, ‘Bring him here.’

  Lom was impressively strong. He wrapped his arms around the cross I was chained to and carried it, with me on it, to the grill that divided us from their Mistress. He set me down so close that my chest was pressed hard against the ornate bars. Did she intend us to futter through the grill? This suspicion was reinforced when she brought a pot of salve and began to smooth it over my member. It occurred to me that a six-hundred-year-old woman might have need of a lubricant.

  ‘This lotion is similar to the one my “werewolves” anoint themselves with,’ she told me. ‘It’s a little more potent. You might even find the effect pleasant. There are irritants and stimulants in it that will engorge your member to an extent that few men have ever experienced. At the same time, it contains alkaloid compounds that will deaden your nerves. The combined result is a priapism beyond any that occurs naturally. In other words, Richard, I am blessing you with an oversized and very demanding cock.’ She smirked, looking up at me and then back down to my engorged member.

  ‘The constriction about the base of your shaft will add to and maintain the effect.’ Her two small hands wrapped my column and pumped it. ‘I want you to give my girls practical lessons. My lotion won’t make you insatiable, but close to it. If you are diligent, you might be able to achieve orgasm. If not, unslaked lust can make a man quite uncomfortable, or so I have been told.’

  My cock grew between her hands. I couldn’t see it but it felt as if transformed into some gigantic heavy-headed club. The animal in me ignored my detestation for the nasty little witch. It demanded that I break free and ravish her. My self-control, and my chains, restrained me.

  ‘What a fine big member you possess,’ she said. Her fingers ran from its base to its aching head. ‘Such heat! Such a strong pulse!’ She applied downward pressure, which my shaft resisted. ‘So strong! It will serve my purposes admirably.’

  The Child stepped back. She went to her table and washed her hands in something that smelled like alcohol. I made a mental note that strong spirits might be an antidote to the lotion. Lom dragged me away from the grill. Both of my guards disappeared for a moment and returned armed. My heart lifted. A heavy revolver was thrust into the sash around Lom’s mighty girth. It had to be my Dragoon. Kashk wore the sabre my Isabel had given me, to his left. Tucked through his sash, behind him, was my Smith & Smith patent spring-loaded swordstick. I wondered about my Bowie knife and my Derringer. Could they be close by?

  So, it amused them to threaten me with my own weapons, did it? That could backfire on them, particularly if they hadn’t uncovered my stick’s secrets. I tried to concoct a plan but my cock demanded my full attention. From memory, I’d rogered a dozen girls and women since my current mission had begun. That made thirty-six orifices, approximately. No – thirty-five, for Zema’s mouth hadn’t been available, except for the briefest moment.

  Right then, I’d have sacrificed my left testicle for five minutes with any one of them.

  I now know that the first application of The Child’s lotion made me delirious. I recall being taken down from the cross and stumbling through various chambers and passages at the point of my own sabre. Later, I realised that my cock hadn’t grown so long that I shouldered it, like a rifle. Nor had my testes dragged on the ground. The floor under my feet hadn’t really been as warm and soft as woman-flesh.

  After minutes, or hours, in my fever I couldn’t tell, we arrived at my personal cell. It was plain stone but comfortably furnished, with a chair, a table and a narrow bed. Lom produced a ring of keys from a pocket in his voluminous pantaloons and gave them to Kashk.

  In the distance, a gong sounded. It had to signal something urgent because Kashk fumbled his keys in his haste.

  It seemed that my gaolers didn’t plan to allow me any rest on my first night in their charge. No doubt they thought to teach me a salutary lesson. My left wrist was linked to a ring set in the wall about three feet up. My right was chained to a ring immediately below the first but set in the floor. I couldn’t stand, sit or lie down. Very soon, my back began to ache. My cock was a constant torment. Even so, at some point, I lost consciousness.

  Twenty-eight

  A PAIL OF icy water woke me. Another, a little warmer, sluiced me to full awareness. My left arm felt as though laced through by hot wires. My head ached. My cock was still engorged but throbbed less urgently than before.

  While I was still chained, Lom shaved me and sponged me down. He wasn’t rough. He took care not to spoil my moustaches. Perhaps he thought he could assuage the enmity he’d inspired the day before. If so, he was wrong, but I’d let him think he had. I told him, ‘Thank you. You’re a fine fellow who is just following The Child’s orders. I don’t hold it against you.’ I don’t know if he understood my lying words but my tone was friendly.

  My manacles were rearranged so that my wrists were chained to my waist. Again, I was prodded along to a new location, but one that was close by. I was pushed through a wide door made of iron bars. It clanged behind me with my guards on the other side.

  ‘Back up,’ Kashk ordered in harsh Marseilles French.

  I set my back to the bars. He reached through and unlocked my fetters. They were being very cautious, but this was the first day. Familiarity, I hoped, would breed contempt.

  It seemed that The Child’s fortress was divided between areas that were forbidding and those that were sybaritic. This chamber was opulent. Like the half-room I thought of as The Child’s Alchemical Laboratory, no stone showed. It was lit by bronze lamps and silver candelabra. The furniture was eclectic. The Child had shown foresight. There were tables and chairs and sofas and divans and ottomans and stools, cushions and pillows – anything and everything that a woman might be sat upon, perched on, bent over or spread across to facilitate erotic activities.

  There was statuary, some Hindu but much of it looked Italian to me. Figurines with larger-than-life sexual parts coupled in some positions I was familiar with and others that even Asp would have found beyond her. Two of the figures were life-sized, a male and a female. I was to use them as teaching aides, no doubt. His bronze cock was as large and as erect as my own. Her cunny was intricately detailed, but impenetrable, of course. I dubbed them Adam and Eve and then changed my mind. Adam was fine for him but the exaggerated contours of the female statue made Lilith a more apt name for her.

  Shelves were laden with dildos, from miniature to gigantic, from featureless to grotesque.

  Although my shaft still projected like a yacht’s prow, my immediate need was for food, and that there was in plentiful supply. A buffet was set out on a long marble-topped sideboard, with thick slices of ham, chafing dishes of scrambled eggs, steamers full of porridge and a stack of bread rolls, similar to Scottish baps, with a butter dish at hand and, incongruously, a haggis. There was a row of glass jars, each containing either pickles or preserves. A huge pot of coffee was warmed by candles. There were pewter pitche
rs of fresh milk. How strange, to think that a milkman delivered to that place!

  There was far more food than my class and I could eat at one meal. Perhaps it was intended as a full day’s supply.

  There was also cutlery, of a kind. It seemed I wasn’t to be trusted with metal implements so there were knives and spoons that had been carved out of hard wood. You can kill with a wooden knife but it’s less menacing than cold steel and menace can be important. I can slay a man with a straw but I doubt anyone would find one threatening.

  I looked back. Kashk and Lom were eyeing me through the bars. I gave them my most pleasant smile, which I’m afraid has sometimes been compared to a puma’s snarl. My fingers tore three baps apart. I smeared them lavishly with butter and closed them over slabs of ham. Two of them, I took to the entrance and handed through. The eunuchs looked shocked at my generosity but recovered enough to snatch the sandwiches and nod their thanks.

  I sat down to enjoy my own sandwich and put my thoughts in order. The Child was obviously a lunatic. That made her no less dangerous. Throughout history, lunatics have become emperors and generals. I cite Alexander of Macedon and Napoleon Bonaparte. Both of them were short. The Child was short. Could there be a connection?

  Part of her mental disease seemed to be focused on her own safety. The Child lived in barred quarters, in a strong fortress, in the remote Himalayas. She was triply protected. I deduced that she most feared the very thing she was creating with her covens, assassins. If we can control something, we need not fear it. She wanted to control an army of assassins. It all made a queer sort of sense.