by Anne Rice
It was a most ingenious harnessing. I would be tugged forward by their marching, and I could not fall even if I lost my balance. And there were two of them to my weight and I could see by the thick muscles of their calves and thighs that they were accomplished ponies.
They tossed their heads as they waited, as though they liked the feel of the leather, and I felt the tears already flowing. Why couldn’t I be harnessed as they were to a cart? What was being done to me? They looked sleek and privileged suddenly, with their shining horsetails and high-pitched heads, and I felt bound like a lowly prisoner. My naked feet would pound the road behind the loud metallic ring of their shoed feet. I twisted and pulled, but the straps were tight and the boys, busy with oiling my buttocks, ignored me.
But I was suddenly startled by the Master’s voice as he appeared in the corner of my eye with that long leather strap dangling from his waist and asked softly if I was ready. The boys answered yes, one of them giving me a good smack with his open hand, the other pushing the phallus into my wide-open mouth more firmly. I gave a desperate coughing sob and saw the Master step in front of me.
He wore a beautiful doublet of plum velvet with fancy balloon sleeves and looked every inch as fine as the Princes of the castle. And the warmth of our lovemaking last night swept over me and caused me to swallow my cries silently. But desperate unfamiliar sounds came from me.
I tried to restrain myself, but I was already so severely restrained that I seemed to lose all interior command. And pulling against all my bonds at once I realized I was absolutely helpless. I could not even drop to my feet if I wanted to, and the strong ponies held me ef fortlessly.
My Master drew close and, turning my head roughly towards him, kissed both my eyelids. The tenderness of his lips, the clean fragrance of his skin and hair, brought back all the closeness of the bedchamber. But he was the Master. He had always been the Master, even when I rode him and made him groan under me. My cock writhed and a fresh volley of groans and cries broke from me.
I saw a long stiff flat thrash in his hand, which he tested now against one of the ponies. Two feet of it was rigid handle tapering out into another two feet of flat slapping leather that stood straight out when it was not being snapped at the pony’s buttocks.
In a clear voice, he said: “The usual morning round of the village.”
The ponies started off at once, and I stumbled into a march behind them.
My Master was walking beside me. It was just as it had been last night when the two of us had walked down this road, only now I was a prisoner of these monstrous straps, these tightly bound phalluses. And terrified of his correction, I tried to march well as he had taught me.
The pace was not too fast. But the flat snapping switch played with my welts. It stroked and petted the underside of my buttocks. My Master moved on in silence, and the pair ahead turned as if they knew the way, into a broad lane that led to the center of the village. It was the first real look I had had at the village on a regular day, and I was astonished.
White aprons, wooden clogs, rawhide breeches. Rolled sleeves and loud convivial voices. And everywhere there were toiling slaves. I saw naked Princesses scrubbing thresholds and balconies above and washing shop windows. I saw Princes bearing baskets on their backs, hopping ahead of their Mistress’s lash as fast as they could, and through an open gateway a gathering of naked, reddened rumps around a great laundry tub.
A harness shop loomed ahead as we turned a bend, with a Princess manacled much as I was manacled and hanging from the shingle over the door, and then came a tavern in which I saw a row of slaves along a ramp waiting to be punished one by one on a little stage for the indifferent amusement of dozens of patrons. There was a phallus shop beside it, and on display in front three Princes squatting with their faces to the wall, their buttocks well outfitted with samples of the merchandise.
And I could be one of these, I thought, squatting in the hot dusty sun as the crowd passed. Was it worse than trotting with anxious breaths, my head and my hips pulled inexoraby forward, my sore flesh reanimated by the long, loud snapping behind me? I couldn’t really see my Master. But with every lick, I saw him as he had been last night, and the ease with which he tormented me again astonished me. I had never dreamed it would stop because of our embraces. But for it to be intensified like this ... I felt suddenly some awesome sense of the depth of submission he wanted from me.
The ponies pressed proudly through the thick crowd, making many a head turn, as villagers milled everywhere with market baskets or slaves at tether. And over and over, the observer glanced from the finely turned-out ponies to the slave behind them. But if I expected scornful looks, I was disappointed. What I saw was simply muted amusement. Everywhere these people looked they saw some delectable bit of naked flesh, punished or positioned or harnessed for their pleasure.
And as we turned corner after corner, rushing through this narrow lane and that, I felt more surely lost than I had been on the turntable.
Each day would have its dreadful course, its obliterating surprises. And though I wept more desperately when I thought of it, and my cock swelled in the lacings, and I marched harder, trying to squirm away from the snapping thrash, it gave a strange luster to my surroundings. I felt the undeniable urge to fall at my Master’s feet, to tell him silently that I understood my lot, that I understood it more clearly with every excruciating trial and that I gave thanks from the depths of my being that he had seen fit to break me so thoroughly. Hadn’t he used that word yesterday, “breaking” a new slave, said the thick phallus was good for it, and the phallus was splitting me wide again, and another stretched my mouth making my cries hoarse and wildly unmanageable.
Maybe he understood from my cries. If only he would condescend to comfort me with just a little touch of his lips.... And I realized almost with a start that never had I felt this softened and subservient in all the rigors of the castle.
We had come to a large square. All around I saw the signs of the Inns, and the carriageways and the high windows. Rich and fancy Inns they were, windows as ornate as those of a manor house. And as I was whipped and pulled in a broad circle around the well, the crowd agreeably letting the ponies through, I saw with a shock the Captain of the Queen’s Guard lounging at a doorway.
It was unmistakably the Captain.
I remembered his blond hair and coarsley shaven beard and those brooding green eyes. Quite unforgettable. It was he who had taken me from my native land, captured me when I tried to break and run from the camp, and brought me back, my hands and ankles bound to a pole carried between two of his horsemen. I could still remember that thick cock spiking me and that silent smile as he ordered me whipped through the camp evening after evening until we reached the castle., And that strange inexplicable moment when we parted and both of us looked at each other.
“Good-bye, Tristan,” he had said in the most cordial voice, and I had kissed his boot of my own will, my eyes still fixed on his silently.
My cock recognized him, too. And as I was drawn near to him, I was in sudden terror that he would see me.
My disgrace seemed too much to bear. All the strange rules of the Kingdom seemed for the moment immutable and just, and I was bound, penitent, condemned to the village. He would know I had been sent down from the castle to harsher treatment than even he had given me.
But he was watching something through the open door of the Sign of the Lion, and in one glance I saw the little spectacle. A lovely village woman with a pretty red skirt and white ruffled blouse was spanking her slave quite diligently upon a wooden counter, and the lovely face peering out through its tears was that of Beauty. She writhed and struggled under the paddle. But I could see she was unfettered, just as I had been last night on the Public Turntable.
We passed the door. The Captain looked up, and as if in a nightmare I heard my Master halt the ponies. I stood still, my cock straining against the leather. But this was inescapable. My Master and the Captain were greeting each other and
exchanging pleasantries. And the Captain was admiring the ponies. Roughly he jerked the horsetail up in the one on the right, lifting and stroking the shining black hair, and then he pinched the red thigh of the slave as the slave tossed his head and sent a shiver through the harnesses. The Captain laughed.
“0, we have a little high spirits here!” he said, and he turned to the pony with both hands, apparently provoked by the gesture. He lifted the slave’s chin and then the phallus and gave it several strong rocking upward jerks until the pony kicked and worked his legs friskily. Then came a soft pat on the rump, and the pony settled quietly.
“You know, Nicolas,” he said in that familiar deep voice, able to strike fear with one syllable, “I’ve told her Majesty several times that she should give up her horses for short journeys and rely on slave ponies. We could outfit a great stable for her quickly enough, and I think she would find it delightful. But she sees it as a village occupation and won’t really consider it.”
“She has very particular taste, Captain,” said my Master. “But tell me, have you ever seen this slave before?”
And to my horror he pulled my head back by the straps of the harness.
I could feel the Captain’s eyes on me, though I didn’t look. I could picture my cruelly stretched mouth, the straps of the harness scoring me.
He drew closer. He stood not three inches from me. And then I heard his low voice deeper still.
“Tristan!” and his large warm hand closed on my penis. He squeezed it hard, pinching the tip shut, and then let it go as sensation knotted at the end of it. He fondled my balls, pinching between his fingernails the covering of skin that was already pulled so tight around them by the lacings.
My face was scarlet. I couldn’t meet his gaze, my teeth clamping down on the huge phallus as if I could devour it. I felt my jaws working, my tongue lapping the leather as if I were somehow forced to do it. He stroked my chest, my shoulders.
A flashing image of the camp returned, of being tethered to that great wooden X in a circle of X’s and the soldiers standing idle about me, teasing my cock, educating it as I waited hour by hour for the evening whipping. And the Captain’s secretive smile as he strode past, his gold cape over one shoulder.
“So that is his name,” said my Master, his voice sounding young and more refined than the deep murmur of the Captain. “Tristan.” And hearing him speak it further tormented me.
“Of course I know him,” said the Captain. His large shadowy figure moved just a little to let a collection of young women pass, who were laughing and talking loudly.
“I brought him to the castle only six months ago. He was one of the wildest, broke and ran through the forest when he was ordered to strip, but I had him beautifully tamed when I put him at her Majesty’s feet. He’d become the darling of the two soldiers whose duty it was to whip him daily through the camp. They missed him more than any slave they ever had to discipline.”
I shivered silently, swallowing the sound, as the gag, strangely enough, made it all the harder.
“A rather volcanic passion,” said that soft rumbling voice. “It wasn’t the severity of the whippings that made him eat from my hand; it was the daily ritual.”
0, how true, I thought. My face smarted. That fearsome, inevitable sense of nakedness again descended on me. I could still see the freshly turned earth before the tents, feel the straps and hear their steps and their conversation as they moved along with me. “Only one more tent, Tristan.” Or that greeting every evening, “Come on, Tristan, time for our little trek through the camp, that’s it, that’s it, look at this, Gareth, how quickly this young man learns. What did I tell you, Geoffrey, that after three days I wouldn’t have to use the manacles?” and their feeding me with their hands after, wiping my mouth almost affectionately and patting me and giving me too much wine to drink, and taking me out after dark into the forest. I remembered their cocks, the argument about who would go first, and whether it was better with the mouth or the anus, and sometimes one of them fore and one of them aft, and the Captain never very far away it seemed, and always smiling. So they had felt affection for me. It had not been my imagination. And neither was the warmth I felt for them. And a slow, undeniable realization was dawning on me.
“But he was one of the finest, most beautifully mannered of all the Princes,” the Captain murmured, that voice seeming to come from his chest, not his mouth. I wanted suddenly to turn my head and look at him, see if he was just as handsome now as he had been then. My glimpse before had been too quick. “Given to Lord Stefan as his personal slave,” he continued, “with the Queen’s blessing. I am suprised to see him here.” Anger crept into his voice. “I told the Queen that I myself had broken him.”
He lifted my head, pushed it this way and that. I realized with mounting tension that I had been almost silent all this while, struggling not to make a sound in his presence, but I was now about to give way, and at last I couldn’t control it. I gave a low moan, but it was better than crying.
“What did you do? Look at me!” he said. “Did you displease the Queen?”
I shook my head no, but I wouldn’t look into his eyes, my whole body seeming to swell under the harnessing.
“Was it Stefan you displeased?”
I nodded. I glanced into his eyes and away, unable to stand it. Some strange bond existed between me and this man. And no bond—that was the horror of it—existed between me and Stefan.
“And he’d been your lover before, hadn’t he?” the Captain pushed, drawing close to my ear, though I knew my Master could hear him. “Years before he came to live in the Kingdom.”
I nodded again.
“And that humiliation was more than you could bear?” he demanded. “You who were taught to part your buttocks for common soldiers?”
“No!” I cried behind the gag, shaking my head violently. My head was pounding. And that slow, inescapable realization that had begun only moments before became clearer and clearer.
Out of sheer frustration, I cried. If only I could explain.
But grasping the little silver buckle of the phallus in my mouth, the Captain pushed my head back.
“Or was it,” he said, “that your former lover didn’t have the strength to master you?”
I turned my eyes, staring directly at him now, and if one can be said to smile with such a gag in one’s mouth, I smiled. I heard my own sigh come slowly. And then despite his hand on the phallus, I nodded.
His face was clear and beautiful as I remembered. I saw his full and robust figure in the sun as he took the snapping thrash from my Master. And as we looked each other in the eye, he commenced to whip me.
Yes, the realization was complete. I had wanted the total degradation of the village. I could not bear Stefan’s love, his tentativeness, his inability to govern me. And for his weakness in our predestined bond, I despised him.
Beauty had understood my aims. She had known my soul better than I knew it. This was what I deserved and hungered for because it was as violent as the soldiers’ camp, where my dignity, my pride, my self had been so thoroughly plundered.
Punishment—here in this busy, sun-drenched square, even with the little village girls gathering round, and a woman standing in the door of the Inn with her arms folded, and the loud snapping blows of the thrash—pun—ishment was what I deserved, thirsted for, even in terror. And in a moment of utter surrender I spread my legs wide and thrust my head back and rocked my hips in a gesture of total recognition of the whipping.
The Captain gave great swinging sweeps with the flat lash.
My body was alive with the stings and hurts he had inflicted. And surely my Master understood the secret. And there would be no mercy for me as, reading this little dialogue, my Master would take me the full journey no matter how I might later plead with whines and whimpers.
The whipping was over but I did not break my supplicating position. And the Captain gave back the thrash and caressed my face suddenly, impulsively it seemed, kissing
my eyelids just as my Master had done. The last knot in me broke. It was agony that I couldn’t kiss his feet, his hands, his lips. That I could only incline my tortured body towards him.
He drew back, his arm out to my Master. I saw them embrace rather naturally it seemed, my Master slighter of build, elegant as a fine carved silver knife beside the solidly made Captain.
“It’s always so,” the Captain said with a slow smile, looking into my Master’s cold and clever eyes. “Out of a batch of a hundred timid and anxious little slaves sent down for purification, there are those who have invited the punishment, needing the rigors not to purify their faults but to tame their boundless appetites.”
It was so true that I was weeping, struck to the soul by the incentives this would give to all my tormentors.
“But please,” I wanted to plead, “we don’t know what we do to ourselves. Please have mercy.”
“My little girl at the Sign of the Lion, Beauty, is the same,” the Captain said. “A naked ravenous soul that foments the passion in me dangerously.”
Beauty. And he had been watching her through the Inn door. So he was her Master. I felt a divine ripple of jealousy and solace.
My Master’s eyes pierced me. The sobs shook me, the spasms passing through my cock and my sore calves.
But the Captain was at my side. “I’ll see you again, my young friend,” he breathed against my cheek, his lips tasting my face, it seemed, his tongue licking at my cruelly opened lips. “That is, with your gracious Master’s permission.”