The Emperor's New Pony (14 page)

On the revolving floor, Alira was looking around, as if wondering when, and whether, and how to begin. After a moment, the knights of Maq left her in little doubt. “Get those cunts nice and wet, you Amidian mare!” someone shouted from a few rows behind the emperor. Another cried, “Whichever one he chooses, they’ll both thank you!” The whole crowd laughed.

Comnar watched Alira resolve her doubts. For a filly like her, who understood her body’s craving to submit on a deep level, the course lay clear. Comnar suspected she had never thought of touching another girl this way: he could not imagine that the practice was common in Amidia, and here in Maq the stable routine, by design, made it as difficult as possible for the girls to engage in tribadism with one another.

Under the compulsion of the arena, though—the eyes and the commands of her masters—Alira licked her lips now at the sight of Melisan’s and Adilan’s pretty shaved cunts. Comnar was certain that the act must seem to Alira like a way to find her own pleasure, and also to make her sister-fillies better able to endure what they must endure. She crawled over, switching her tail prettily as she moved, and stopped in back of Melisan’s larger—though still very pleasing—bottom. She knelt up and deliberately put two fingers of her right hand in her mouth, while the crowd politely yelled encouragements like, “There we go, filly!”

Then she began to rub and kiss, and the mewling of protest by Melisan and Adilan became sighs and moans of lewd contentment. Alira, her hand turned palm upward, stroked relentlessly, and tongued even more relentlessly, between the thighs of the girls in alternation, until each filly writhed in her bonds and clearly longed for her fate, whether it should turn out to be the cock or the whip.

When Qartin commanded, Alira removed Lennar’s breechclout, and the crowd admired the cock that sprang up, hardened by the sight of pretty Alira doing shameful service to her friends’ glistening cunts. Alira knew her duty then, too, for she instantly took that cock deep in her mouth, making Lennar gasp with pleasure and give a moan such as Comnar was sure he had never given before, at the new skill Alira had acquired in the imperial stables.

Then, at a signal from Qartin, Lennar’s bonds were loosed by the stable boys, and he was handed the quirt with which he must whip the girl he chose to whip. Comnar looked into the former knight of Amidia’s eyes, and he saw the same terrible lust he knew from the eyes of his own knights, when they came to the stables to mount their fillies. Comnar had won another victory, and another man must acknowledge the sovereignty of the lewdness the emperor of Maq had thrust upon him. He strode straight to Adilan’s smaller backside, where it waited on the left-hand saddle. When she felt the knight’s hardness at the opening to her virgin cunt, Adilan gave a cry of amorous assent. But Lennar, as if wanting to show the world how thoroughly his desire had taken hold of him, brought the whip down upon Melisan’s rump once, twice, three times to make her cry out loud, before he drove hard through Adilan’s maidenhead, as the girl screamed with the welcome pain of becoming a mare and a woman under the lance of the handsome no-longer-knight of Amidia.

Now Lennar seemed frenzied. He had his left hand on Adilan’s hip, and he thrust harder and harder, keeping time with the quirt upon Melisan’s bottom. The crowd shouted encouragement, and Lennar was no proof against their lewd suggestions to fuck hard and whip harder. As both the Amidians on the mounting saddles screamed through their bits for it to end and for it to go on forever, Comnar fixed his gaze across the spectacle on the floor to Versal and Edera.

Edera’s eyes were shining, and she seemed unable to turn away from the sight of her country’s shame enacted there in the arena. Versal’s face was stony, but having watched him ride Edera two days before, there was not a doubt in Comnar’s mind that the Amidian marshal’s cock was hard as any tree trunk.

Then Lennar shouted in his climax, and the time had come for the final spectacle.

Qartin stood up, walked out onto the turntable again, and put up his hands for silence. When the crowd had stopped shouting, the only sound were the sobs of the fillies on the mounting saddles and the groans of Lennar, whose face wore the stricken expression of one whose will has been more thoroughly removed from him than he ever imagined it could be. Qartin called into the hush, “Now shall the defeat of Amidia be made complete, for there is one act left of this drama. Goodman Versal, you who were chief marshal and lord chancellor of Amidia, bring filly Edera, who was princess of Amidia, out for us to see.”

Versal stood up woodenly, and led Edera out on all fours into the center, as the jeers rang from the walls of the chamber.

“Now,” Qartin said, having called again for silence, “Goodman Versal will deflower this filly and fuck her before you all. Show us your cock, Goodman Versal!”

Comnar could hardly contain his glee. He had planned the moment so beautifully, and now all the planning had come true.

But the cheers died away, for Ranin Versal stood there doing nothing at all, looking out into the audience defiantly. Silence fell again. “No,” Versal said. “I shall not.”

The arena usually met such brave declarations with catcalls, but to Comnar’s surprise, silence greeted Versal’s declaration. Something about the Amidian man’s presence did seem to possess a dignity that was difficult to mock. That would make it even better when Versal was stable master in Morqan’s place, Comnar reflected.

And such a lovely challenge in this defiance! Not difficult to meet, but oh, so amusing! Comnar stood up and waved to the crowd, as they cheered to see that he would give the sentence.

“Then, because we are here,” Comnar called out, “for fucking and whipping, your filly shall be whipped. Morqan, get me a quirt.”

“If she is to be whipped,” Versal said, “your imperial majesty, let it be by me.” Versal’s eyes were steely, as if he tried to hold back a sea of rage. For a moment, Comnar wondered whether the Amidian thought he played for much bigger stakes than he had any right to play for.

“Nonsense, Goodman Versal,” said the emperor, playing to the crowd. “You refused to take one pleasure with your filly! Why should I grant you another? I shall whip your former princess, and teach you how it is done.”

Then the strange thing happened. A man way at the back, whose voice Comnar did not recognize, called out, “Let the Amidian whip his princess!” Then another, from another section, shouted, “The Amidian! Let us see what he can do!”

“The Amidian!” called another. “The Amidian!”

Comnar, who had been leaning in toward Versal, the way he often did when he knew he had an opponent exactly where he wanted him, suddenly drew back. The shouts had a tone he did not like, and he had the fleeting sensation that all might not be exactly as it should be here in his arena.

But he knew what to do—Comnar always knew what to do. “Very well!” he called. “Indeed, let us see what the Amidian can do! I have promised to make him a master, and to have him put on a grand chariot race for you, if he can train this filly well!”

A cheer went up at that, and Comnar waved and beamed. “Get the girl up on the chair where the knight of Amidia was,” Qartin instructed. “And get Goodman Versal the training whip.”

“Yes, perfect,” Comnar said, a little surprised at how eager Qartin seemed to be to arrange things. It must be because he wanted to see the nonsense about Versal being something marvelous die away quickly.

So Versal helped his filly, who had begun to cry in fear of the long quirt, onto the chair, where he loosed her wrists from her belt and then bound them to the chair’s back so that she could not flail about and hurt herself. He bound her at knee and ankle as well, to the legs of the chair underneath. He whispered in her ear, and she nodded, though her tears continued to flow, and she sobbed through the bit at the thought of what she must undergo. The whole scene moved Comnar so greatly he thought he might cry himself at the sheer beauty of Amidia’s humiliation under his feet.

Versal received the long training whip from the hand of the stable boy Gad. Lennar and the other three Amidians were led off to sit on the bench where Versal and Edera had been, vacant looks in their eyes at what they had undergone. A hush fell again in the arena.

“I call on you to witness, your imperial majesty, my lords, and my countryfolk,” Versal said loudly, holding the whip high. Comnar was not sure whether to be displeased with this display of independence, but what Versal said then reassured him. “That I whip my filly for your pleasure here in the knowledge that I do only as the emperor commands, for it is he who has subjugated and humiliated our once proud people so thoroughly.”

Then he bowed low, amid the applause of the crowd. Really, it had been a very pretty speech, Comnar thought. Versal would rise very fast in his service, now that he was corrupted.

The Amidian turned to survey the filly bound upon the chair. Though Comnar had looked forward all day to watching Versal deflower Edera, to watch her whipped like this was certainly nearly as pleasing a prospect. And he knew from watching them in the ring that Versal had great skill with the long whip, and could bring it just where he wanted.

Versal brought the whip forward with a strong flick of his wrist, and the leather lash travelled much too fast to be seen. But Edera screamed, and a lovely red welt appeared just to the right of her white tail. And then Versal became merciless—really, almost too cruel even for Comnar, lashing his girl on her poor bottom and thighs over and over—twenty, thirty, fifty times as she screamed around her bit into the hard wood of the chair to which he had bound her. He whipped her with consummate skill never to break the skin, but clearly so as to cover her entire rear end in welts that would leave her wincing for days whenever she moved.

As the turntable revolved, he looked into Versal’s eyes, which seemed as cold as ice, though he breathed hard now with the exertion of the discipline. It went on for long minutes, and Comnar realized that the crowd had fallen silent, in admiration no doubt at the man’s skill. But the quiet made Comnar restless, and finally he stood up, waved, and said, “Enough! Well done, Goodman Versal!”

Versal dropped the whip, turned to Comnar, and bowed, and that was when Comnar noticed that the poor Amidian had tears rolling down his cheeks. Edera sobbed uncontrollably upon the chair of her torment, and the other Amidians, the three fillies and Lennar who had once been a toy knight, were all weeping too.

A triumph for the ages,
Comnar thought.
Yes, I shall be Comnar the Cruel
.

Chapter Sixteen

To Edera’s surprise, though she felt that surprise through a haze of pain, Ranin did not take her back to her stall. Instead, after helping her across the yard to the stable block, as she sobbed with every step at the agony in her bottom from the whipping he had given her in the arena, he helped her climb the stairs to the apartments of the stable men. She remembered that once before, in the Amidians’ second month in the stable, when a Muadi filly had received a very severe whipping from the lord who mounted her, they had brought her upstairs and let her lie in bed for a night.

Now Ranin lay her down upon her front on his own pallet. It was not the feather bed she had once slept upon in Amidia, filled with the soft down of the geese who nested in the mountains above the horse lords’ city, but at that moment, with Ranin rubbing her back, it felt softer than that feather bed ever had.

Carefully and tenderly, he removed her harness, her bridle, and her tail.

“Ranin?” Edera whispered, turning her face so that her cheek rested on the pillow and she could see him moving deliberately about the little chamber. “Did I do well?”

Ranin knelt down next to her and stroked her cheek. “Yes, sweetheart, you did so very well,” he said, nearly into her ear. “You did better than you even know.”

“What does that…” She was about to say “mean?” when she fell asleep.

The pain of the welts woke her long before dawn. Edera opened her eyes to see Ranin sitting on his little stool, his head down upon his table. His face, resting on his forearms, was turned toward her. Looking at its lines, strong and sad even in sleep, framed by the dark hair that cascaded around it, Edera knew that she loved him not only as her protector—her chancellor and marshal forever—but as a man… as the man she wanted. Surely he felt the same?

“My lord,” she called softly. Ranin opened his eyes.

“Ranin,” he murmured, without lifting his head. “You called me Ranin last night.”

Edera felt her own face break into a smile despite the constant ache of her backside. She had been determined to call him lord, but now for him to tell her to call him simply Ranin seemed even better.

“Ranin, soothe me?”

Now he lifted his head, smiled, and said, “I have a balm that will take away some of the smart, sweetheart. I did not want to put it on after you had fallen asleep for fear of waking you.”

Through the tiny window of Ranin’s little chamber, the full moon illuminated his face and made him look weary, but also so kind as to make Edera’s breath catch in her throat.

“But I deserve the pain,” she whispered.

“No, you do not,” he replied urgently. “Did I not say that you had paid for all, when I spanked you? That whipping in the arena was a show for the empire, and I hope it will prove in the end to be the show we needed, and they needed.”

“What does that mean?” Edera felt a kind of nameless excitement at the mystery: she propped herself up on her elbows and gave Ranin what she hoped might resemble the kind of piercing stare she had once given him in her own palace.

“Hush, sweetheart. I cannot tell you now, but know that there is hope.”

“My lord…”

“Hush! I am sure you do not want another spanking now!”

Edera giggled at that, for though he was stern, he was also smiling. “Very well,” she said, mocking her own old royal airs, “you may apply your balm.”

His smile broadened to a grin, and he reached for a little stoneware pot that sat on the table. He moved the stool down toward the end of the pallet, and Edera felt a little sadness that she could not see his wonderful, reassuring face anymore, but then she felt his fingers, with the ointment, upon her punished bottom cheeks, and she could not miss anything, for the feeling was too marvelous to think of anything but those fingers. She gave a questioning little moan, and Ranin said, “Hush, now. Put your face in the pillow if you must.”