Varik watched her attempt at a curtsy, a nicety rather lost on one such as him, raised in a remote warrior village. Senelek, whose early years were spent among civilised men as a hostage, would better appreciate the action. It was an experience he spoke little of to this day.
‘What is your name, girl?’
‘I am Eliana,’ she replied. ‘If it pleases, milord.’
‘It takes more to satisfy me from a woman than her name, but if you would like to try, I might not object.’ He glanced to Caralissa, hoping for signs of jealousy in the wench. ‘But tell me, Eliana, what is your opinion of your queen?’
Eliana beheld the kneeling girl, roughly her own age. Apart from prior station in life and hair colour they were much the same. Varik watched as Eliana’s facial expression changed, from glee to mounting sadness. Tears formed in her eyes as if it overwhelmed her to look too closely upon her monarch.
‘Be strong,’ Caralissa whispered to the girl. ‘Remember what I told you. Do not disgrace me!’
‘Oh,’ she whispered, putting a finger to her full red lips. ‘Your majesty, forgive me, but I cannot let you suffer alone.’
Remarkably, Eliana now commenced to remove her clothing, as if to give it to Caralissa. At Varik’s signal the guard grasped her arm to stay her action.
‘What mean you by this?’ Varik demanded of her.
The girl’s lower lip began to tremble. Looking to Caralissa and then to Varik she began to weep. ‘Alas, I have betrayed my queen! I could not help myself! I felt sorry for her.’
Varik shook his head, baffled as always by the ways of civilised people. ‘I understand none of this.’
Eliana fell to her knees, crawling to Caralissa, to kiss her feet.
The queen lifted her, offering embrace. ‘It is all right, child. I forgive you.’ Turning to Varik, she offered him explanation. ‘By means of one of these girls, whom I was able to speak to earlier, I passed to them orders to reveal no emotions toward me tonight, to offer no pity.’
‘Ah.’ Varik nodded in satisfaction, taking another sip, allowing the wine to wind its way through his mind. ‘Then you do not hate your queen after all, Eliana?’
Eliana laughed through her tears. ‘Hate her? But sir, we love her. She is kind and fair like her father before her.’
‘But also vain and petty,’ Varik observed. ‘And overconfident, wouldn’t you say?’
Eliana’s face grew pale. ‘No sir, I would not say that.’
‘I shall prove it to you. And in a way which will simultaneously demonstrate that unlike your fair ruler, I am neither kind nor fair.’ Varik clapped his hands. ‘The Dance of Cords!’ he commanded.
The dance was a simple one, ancient and beloved among the Rashal. Most appropriately performed round the campfire, in the dark of night, the flames kissing the sky as warriors, hundreds in number reclined upon cold earth, passing flagons and slapping one another’s backs. There was only one dancer, a female, naked and invariably a prisoner, taken in battle. Several men were required to inspire the dance and to keep the woman attentive and sufficiently sensual in her responses. No pre-set moves were recorded, no requirements as to length or details of performance. The magic was in the cords, the long strands of leather or rope wielded by the Cord Men. The dance was best served up as a surprise, the girl learning upon impact the stakes of her dancing.
The cords left faint marks, thin and red and a good cord man would test his device upon himself and his fellows prior to the start. It was a stinging more than a wounding, and the girl’s pride was the victim first and foremost. Purists would argue that the dance be choreographed and the girl guided by means of the corrective lashes to improve her sensuality. For most men, however, the chief pleasure lay in seeing the girl perform under duress and watching her yield sexually to the very concept of public correction and forced display.
Varik was rather more in the second camp, being less concerned with seeing a perfectly executed performance than with witnessing a girl’s struggle with and ultimate surrender to her own passions. It was especially delicious when the girl was so new to this, when she retained in large part her pride and self-image as a free creature. Caralissa was of this type, as were her captured countrywomen. While he had no intention of subjecting these maidens to the Dance, he would coax from them their own vicarious surrender through their observation of it.
‘Fetch the cords,’ Varik said, ‘and chains as well.’
There was laughter as a large number of the men set about a good-natured competition for the right to wield the cords.
‘Here, Lord,’ shouted a man, holding up the leather strands. They were binding cords, useful in securing wagonloads or, alternatively, pretty girls. Out of the corner of his eye he regarded Caralissa, who was watching, warily, suspiciously, deliciously. Her eyes were glassy as she beheld the cords that would all too soon nip at her heels, singe her buttocks and braze her calves and thighs, not to mention her breasts and buttocks. There were Rashal men who wished heavier markings, employing whips for the Dance. Senelek was one of these, Varik was not. For him it was a far greater thing to tame a woman with minimal use of force, this being a fulcrum, a mere catalyst to invoking the far greater weapon which is a woman’s own passion.
Handled properly, the Dance would make for a night of ecstasy for all. Which would go a long way to quelling the grumbling, thereby keeping the officers satisfied till the morrow, when the Orencian gold would arrive. There would be, he decided, a fair share for everyone. Even Senelek.
It was his brother’s hostility that troubled him most. At one time he could have read the man’s every thought, and yet now he seemed a stranger. What had changed him so much? Or was it Varik who was changing, growing softer somehow, less able to endure the rigors of military campaigning, the travails of empire building. Where would it end? Would they stop at the Forest of Night, or would Senelek’s infernal augers, his endless and arcane consultations with their gods - his gods - call them to raise arms even against the supposed demons that inhabited that lonely and miserable place? Personally, he had no use for demons. Nor had he any use for wives or even slaves to whom one might become overly attached.
Caralissa was conveyed to the dancing place, a circle in the dirt, drawn by the blade of a warrior. The circle was crucial, being both a religious and a sensual symbol. They put her in the irons then, locking the metal bands on her wrists, connecting them with a mere six inches of chain. On her ankles were locked another set of irons, these having a larger lead between them. Some would consider it in poor taste to dance the girl in shackles, but again it was not technical proficiency he desired, but erotic stimulation. If his calculations were right, Caralissa’s yielding beneath the cords would be intensified a hundredfold by means of steel. If so, then the maidens would be given little choice but to give in to lusts of their own.
‘I do not understand what I am to do,’ Caralissa said, her tone entirely too haughty for a slave.
‘You are to dance, Little Flame,’ he told her, delighting as always in encouraging her resistance only to sweep it aside for his own pleasure. ‘Do not tell me you have become shy?’
She looked at the three men holding the cords, and then at the expectant maidens, all of whom were lined up now at Varik’s feet. ‘You would have me do this in front of my own people?’
He shrugged, eyeing Eliana, who squirmed uncomfortably on her knees. ‘If you would like we can supply one of them as your substitute.’
‘No, warrior,’ said Caralissa with surprising vigour. ‘You will abuse me alone.’
‘As you wish.’ He clapped his hands, signalling for the piper and the reed flayer, the reed flay being a flat disc of woven air-filled stems which one strikes with a kind of thick brush. ‘Let the Dance begin.’
The tune was a variation of a Rashal nursery rhyme, though played with rather more gusto. The piper and flayer together were a pleasant combina
tion, though one could enact the Dance with any instruments, or for that matter, with none at all. Predictably, Caralissa did not know how to begin. As much as thirty seconds may be granted the girl to gather herself under these circumstances or, alternatively, she may be lashed at once.
Varik felt his manhood swell as she looked at him in confusion, her chained hands hanging down, her arms framing her ample breasts as she cupped her wondrous sex. They were nearly a verse into the song and all three of the cord men were poised, awaiting Varik’s command. He was the host, the dance maker. The right to punish and to take pleasure was his and his alone. In most circles it was considered a matter of courtesy to allow the cord men use of the girl, and she is oft times instructed to dance with her eyes at belt level, which means that she is to gauge her performance by her ability to visually arouse those men to whom her body is to be given.
Caralissa’s own fate was yet to be decided. Within him warred two impulses, each quite powerful and striving for mastery. On the one hand there was the call of duty, his obligation to divide the spoils. To remain aloof from his own desires in the role of chieftain, the one who shares the fruits of victory. And yet there was the other voice, dark and compelling, dangerous and unpredictable which told him to hold on to this particular woman. At any cost.
Varik scowled. This dark voice was, of course, treason, a flirtation with the spurning of the code of the Rashal. For a warrior, let alone a chieftain, to keep a captive woman as his own, to set up house like a civilised fool denying his friends and allies their rightful use of an enemy wench was the greatest of sins. Were one of Varik’s own men to even speak of such a thing, he would have the man flogged and the woman passed through the ranks until every last warrior had tasted her charms.
The Racial chieftain drained his goblet and threw it to the ground. By the gods, he would not succumb to the wiles of any female, even those of a charmingly seductive queen with hair of fire and lips of wine.
‘You may strike her at will!’ Varik called to the cord men. ‘And to the man who makes her writhe the best, goes her body for the first hour of the night!’
Caralissa saw stars as the first cord struck her on the left calf. Yelping in shock she leaped from the spot only to land herself another blow, to the right thigh. And so began a hissing, stinging rain of cords, infernally delivered, impossible to avoid. Varik was a beast, an animal for expecting her to fend off these nipping demons with her hands and ankles chained! He was no gentleman, no man at all to put a girl to such misery.
And yet, in her undulations, in her tiny world of closed torment, she found a rhythm, a pattern to be followed. It was so shameful, and yet it was beautiful at the same time. To be a female, only a female, and to be under the power of strong men, men able to control her, to rouse her with the cords. She must perform for them, in her chains; she must be pretty, she must be pleasing to the men with the cords. Her naked body was theirs; they would have her, do with her what they wished. It was Varik’s will. And so she danced, finding the ways to move, to show them she was a woman, that they were men and that her place was at their feet, subject to their whims, their steel, their discipline. Her sweet breasts, made to be gripped by strong hands, her sex made to liquefy at the touch of a strong man.
There were sounds of awe coming from the maidens, shocked gasps. At the same time from the warriors there came the sound of palms slapping together in the way of Rashal cheering.
‘Seize the wenches!’ someone cried.
One by one the maidens fell, willingly brought to the floor, their clothes opened, torn, thrust aside in service of iron hard shafts. It was like a fever filling the whole of the tent, and it was cantered in Caralissa, in her swaying thighs, her honeyed undulations.
What was it that drove her? Was it the incentive of the biting gnat-like cords, the nipping tendrils, or was it something else that invoked her passion? Could it be the knowledge that these men were going to possess her? Between her legs she was like a waterfall roaring, and that wetness she knew would serve the best of the cord men, and then the second and then the third, in that order and after that, maybe all the men in the room would have her.
Use her like a slut. A pleasure-house girl.
Rage came, and indignation then self-pity. Though it seemed now that every emotion she could conjure was feeding into the Dance. Especially her hatred for Varik. Who was this man to award her favours to these warriors? Who was he to bind her and punish her and keep her naked? She was a queen, and among these witnesses to her shame were her own people, people whom she ruled, and who must respect her. A curse on Telos and her sister Romila, too, for their impudence, their utter lack of support and respect. They could have freed her today if they’d tried!
This mere peasant Eliana had done more to defend her ruler than her own kin! She made a mental note to reward the girl, perhaps with a title or even the services of a particular male slave, one with a ridiculous little moustache and unkempt hair, a new slave whom she would inaugurate herself.
‘More!’ she heard Varik roar. ‘I demand more!’
Caralissa’s eyes slid shut. It was voices alone that carried now to her senses. There’d been moans from the females, and Caralissa was sure they were succumbing in their heat, opening their legs and mouths, giving in to warriors of their own choosing. She prayed that Eliana would find a strong one, a kind one, the sort of man Varik himself might be if not for his arrogance, his stubbornness. She moaned as she heard the crack of a palm upon bare skin. Someone was being spanked.
‘You heard Lord Varik,’ called one of her tormentors. ‘Give us more. Touch yourself. Move for us or we shall go for your little friends instead of you!’
Caralissa had never done such a thing, not even in the privacy of her own quarters. She told herself she would do it now only for the maidens, to spare them what she now felt. But there was more, something deeper, a call from her own soul perhaps, which drove her ever onward to greater and greater acts of self-abasement. Was Varik watching? Could she bear to look herself? The feel of her fingers, like silk on her breasts, made her nipples throb. Echoes of their stirring reverberated to her fleecy triangle.
Like slaves to a master, her fingers slid over her stomach in search of her honeyed heat. Fingers attached to hands in turn attached to arms, and none of it at this moment her own as she worked towards her goal. Let them be Varik’s fingers she thought, or any man’s for that matter. For what was she now, if not a girl who belonged to men? It was a temporary haze to be sure, the result of captivity, of corporal punishment and teasing and humiliation, and yet it was all too real at the same time, as real as the steel which held her, as real as the cords, as real as the jeers and mocking music, as real as Varik’s voice demanding more, still more.
Caralissa drew a ragged breath, her fingers sliding into place. She cried out as she reached the soft nether lips. She no longer felt the cords as her own self-manipulation took centre stage. Mercilessly, giving no quarter, she flicked her own clitoris, piercing her pride with swirling circles across her oozing lips. Elsewhere girls were climaxing; she could feel their saturated heat pouring into the air from tiny vessels, mouths exhaling as men, true men, took them blatantly, definitively.
She tried to picture them, virgins no more, legs splayed, buttocks on the ground, mouths forced open, warriors pounding at them as their commander sat gloating. What a proud victory for Lord Varik! The chieftain who wins wars without crossing blades, the king who plants his flags between the thighs of helpless women. How many others, and from what countries were his other conquests?
No, she thought, this matters not. Revenge, this was the dish she should be savouring. Revenge on Telos, on Romila, on their rump council and for that matter, upon each and every man in this room, and all of those outside, even the unlucky foot soldiers, the men of no rank being denied the pleasure of Orencian girl flesh.
Round and round Caralissa spun, whether moving in space or
only in the landscape of her own desires, she knew not, nor did she care. It was her own orgasm she claimed, even as those about her sought to claim it for themselves.
‘She finishes herself off like a whore!’ someone cried, while another wagered he could make her dance upon his spear.
‘No, worse than a whore!’ she heard, and then there were fingers clenching at her, pulling her away from herself.
‘Looks like I’m the lucky winner,’ one of the cord men spat into her ear with fermented breath, though truthfully she never heard the contest’s end, never really acknowledged its beginning. Hands were dragging her from the floor, taking her to a corner, dark and pillow-strewn.
‘Could you feel my cord the best?’ he crooned, the odour of his air sickening her. ‘It was the biggest.’
More laughter. There must be an audience. Or was it the others who were to come after him? Were they already waiting in line? She felt the ground rising to meet her, or rather she felt herself being forced down. No matter, it was all the same. Perhaps she would die here, in this very spot, and then her sister would have to live with the guilt, and Telos, too. Was there any doubt now, she thought bitterly, as to who the betrayer was? How far had she gotten from the castle, she wondered, before the informant was sent ahead to Varik? Did Romila’s lips even have time to grow cold from the kiss they shared, the one she gave Caralissa to wish her good luck?
‘Have you ever seen a shaft so big?’
Caralissa pictured the man shouting stupidly, waving his manhood like a flag. If such a word as manhood could be applied to a creature who stings naked girls with nasty little strings making them do terrible things to themselves, requiring them to drip their own juices down welt-ridden thighs to the sound of cacophonous music, the echo of orgasmic maidens filling the air.
‘No!’ she heard a man roar into the void. ‘It is enough! No more, I say!’
Caralissa's Conquest Page 7