THE GLADIATOR

THE GLADIATOR

By

Sean O’Kane

Chapter 1

Tara stared up at the clear evening sky. It was a perfect duck-egg blue with small, pink tinged fair-weather clouds drifting across it. The air was warm and gentle on her bruised and abraded skin and she was lost in her thoughts of the previous forty eight hours. She had known before the show started that it would test her beyond any challenge she had ever set herself but never would she have believed just how far she could be pushed. And it wasn’t over yet. Not for her and the other slaves.

It was the after-show party and all around her, her owner’s special house guests mingled and enjoyed themselves, winding down after the excitement in the arena. She could hear the clink of bottles and the glugging of drinks being poured, the aroma of barbecues drifted across the wide expanse of lawn which lay between the guest wings of the house. And although she couldn’t see them now, when she had first been mounted in her agonising position she had seen all the other slaves mounted or suspended. Some were tied spreadeagled to great cartwheels which had been propped against the sides of the guest wings. Some were suspended by wrists or ankles from frames or from the pergolas which dotted the gardens, some were spreadeagled on the grass with wrists and ankles shackled to stakes driven into the ground. The bruised, welted and exhausted female forms had looked unbearably erotic to her as she and her opposing captain had been led out to be mounted in the very centre of the lawn, just beside the ornamental fountain. And now beside Tara’s own stretched-back head, her dark hair entangling with Tara’s blonde mane, was that girl whose squad had fought so bravely in the arena just a few hours before. With difficulty Tara swallowed against the gag strap and tried to ease her discomfort by shifting a little on the butt plug which impaled her, but to no avail. As ever Carlo’s ingenuity when it came to displaying or disciplining his slaves had been superb. The guards had constructed a sort of double crucifix which consisted of a stout central timber standing some six or seven feet tall, a foot or so off the ground a horizontal bar was fixed to it and stretched out wide on either side. About five feet above this, another identical crossbar was mounted and rearing out from the central upright about four feet from the ground, on both the back and front, were thick wooden phalluses. The angle at which they speared up from the main pole left Tara in no doubt about which of their holes they were destined for and without having to be told she and her opposite number had dropped to their knees and licked and sucked busily at them, knowing it was in their best interests to get them well and truly wet.

Then the girls had been hauled up, turned to face away from the stake and lifted into place. Tara had gasped and moaned as she always did when penetrated in the rear but Carlo’s strong insistent hands on her hips had slowly eased her down until she could feel every inch of the thing stuffing her and squeezing at her vaginal wall. Their legs had been pulled wide apart and their ankle restraints clipped to loops in the lower horizontal beam which had lowered them even further onto the prongs, and their wrists were pulled apart too and fastened to the ends of the upper beam. As a finishing touch, typical of Carlo, both girls now mounted back to back had been fitted with gagging straps which had been fastened to the upright by hooks on the other side, so that their heads were pulled back sharply to rest on the top of the main pillar. And there they still were, splayed out, stuffed and mounted, their breasts and sexes blatantly displayed.

At first there had been many pawing hands, exploring the moistness between their agonisingly wide-spread legs and fingers had delved and twisted inside them making both girls squirm and moan as their vaginas were filled and the rear walls pressed against the shafts in their rectums. But also there had been admiring comments about their fitness and stamina as other fingers had traced the myriad weals, cuts and bruises which two days of nearly constant combat had left on their still-sweating bodies. But then a cheer had gone up from another part of the garden and she had been left, bereft of admirers. From fading snatches of conversation she gathered that the solo gladiators were being paraded and a bolt of pure jealousy shot through her making her moan into her gag as she felt her inner flesh dry and contract even more tightly around the wooden shaft embedded in her.

And while she waited for someone to return and continue the cruel stimulation of her crucified body, Tara’s thoughts went back over the two most exhilarating days of her life.

They were the days that everything since her abduction, months previously, had been leading up to. It had happened after a bewildering night of the most ecstatic sex she had ever experienced; she had been betrayed by a big Irishman, Conor Brien, and had ended up on board a ship with eleven other girls who he had also ‘recruited’. Over the long weeks of training under the stern tutelage of Carlo, the girls had been schooled to take a masochistic delight in a constant regime of fighting, sex and iron discipline. Once they had arrived at the ‘estate’ where they now lived, Tara had been astonished to find that she was part of an ambitious plan to revive the Roman arena spectacles using girl gladiators. She had found herself perversely thrilled at that idea and at the idea of being owned, by the man whose name she gathered was Mark Cavanagh, and trained like a thoroughbred racehorse. She had excelled at all aspects of her new life, so much so that she had been made captain of the squad of twenty four girls who had just completed two exhausting days of combat against a squad from another stable. It was the first show staged between two stables with whole squads of slaves in a purpose-built arena. From what she had been able to garner from scraps of conversation, she understood that previously there had been shows featuring just single combat and that these had been so successful the slave owners had invested in whole estates, arenas and mass combat in addition.

The only other thing she knew was that she craved the adulation and attention that the solo gladiators, the original ones, received from their owner, trainer and all the guests who attended the shows.

Tara moaned into her gag and tried once more to find some way of making herself more comfortable in her bondage as she listened to the clamour being made over at the other side of the lawn. She could just picture the three star performers still bearing the marks of their ordeals and maybe still harnessed up with their bridles, bits and plumes; a uniform she was determined that one day she would wear. The thought of the twin plugs the slaves would probably still be wearing along with the studded tit straps and thongs eased her discomfort a little as she moistened inside and her thoughts turned back to the show.

The evening before it, she and all the other squad girls of both stables had been paraded for the benefit of those guests rich enough to attend in person - but via the internet countless others would be watching as the events unfolded. Bets had been laid as both squads had been assessed, and from what she could gather, the Blue team, which was hers and whose colour she wore in the form of an armband was favoured over the Red team. They had been chained to posts out on the parade ground until full dark and then returned to their quarters but Tara had been too excited to get much sleep.

The next morning the show got under way properly.

First up was chariot racing. In their dressing room, which was an adjunct to the arena itself, Tara and her team of seven other girls were fitted with their harnesses. As the guards worked they were followed everywhere by eager video cameras and Tara could tell by the distant cheers that followed the buckling on of the studded and dildo-supporting crotch straps that the pictures were being relayed directly to the screens in the arena. Further delighted cheers confirmed her suspicions as the butt plugs, smeared with Carlo’s special irritant were given their final shoves and the girls began to frisk and squirm as the burning began at their anuses. Bridles, complete with blinkers were buckled on and their bits settled firmly between their teeth. Then once again the cameras closed in as the studded tit straps were buckled on tightly and forced the girls to fidget and prance despite their guards’ heavy slaps to their buttocks and thighs.

Finally all eight of the two Blue chariot teams were led out into the dark, stone flagged corridor and hitched to their chariots. Alongside them the Reds’ ponies were being similarly harnessed and the passage echoed to male voices urging girls into place and cursing them for their slowness. Tara felt her vagina warm and melt around the dildo which stuffed that passage so completely that it felt as though it was touching and rubbing against the butt plug every time she moved. Even the maddening itch that Carlo’s cream had ignited between her buttocks and the discomfort of the studs pressing against her labia, couldn’t quell her excitement at smelling the leather and sweat around her and seeing the bright sand of the arena floor waiting for her just through the arch at the end of the tunnel. She and Carlo had selected Pinky and Chestnut to do the main pulling for this chariot, while she and Jet ran ‘shotgun’ as Carlo called it.

Each lightweight chariot had a long shaft protruding from its front and across the end of it was a six foot long crossbar. Pinky and Chestnut were tethered to this by both wrists, their arms in front of them, hands gripping the wood tensely. They wore no bits or reins but instead had large ball gags in their mouths. Their job was simply to propel the rig as fast as possible while the driver lashed them on. Tara was fastened to the crossbar only by her left wrist and Jet only by her right, they stood at the right and left ends of it respectively. Their free arms were encased in studded leather gauntlets up to the elbows and it was their job to fend off opposing chariots which were threatening to impede them or make them crash into the side netting or the central boarding of the arena. Tara’s bit had only one rein attached to its right end; Jet’s rein was attached to the left. This arrangement meant that the driver had only two reins to worry about and could wrap them round his waist, keeping his whip hand free and requiring him only to haul on the left to make Jet swing the rig to the left, or the right one to make Tara swing the rig in that direction.

The large blinkers they all wore constricted their vision to only that which was directly in front of them and so they relied entirely on the driver to steer. In practices Tara found that this allowed her to concentrate on fighting and running and leave all the thinking to the man with the whip.

When all four chariots were ready the trainers made a final inspection of the opposition’s harnesses and whips to ensure that no cheating had gone into the preparations. They made sure the whips were identical, no weighting to spur one team on more than the other, and made sure the studs lining the crotch straps were of the same length. Then at last a fanfare sounded in the arena, the crowd fell silent and with flicks of their whips the four drivers urged their ponies forwards and out into the arena.

Chapter 2

As she recalled that moment, Tara felt the blessed relief of her vagina lubricating again and relaxing, making the anal penetration and the bondage easier to bear, she squirmed a little and settled down to wait while she continued to relive the magical moment.

The sunlight had blinded her for a moment and the roar from the crowd deafened her, but their driver steadied his team with a couple of licks across their shoulders and steered them forward and to the left. As she waited, tensely adjusting her grip on the crossbar and feeling sweat begin to run under her crotch strap, Tara had bathed in the adulation and excitement of the crowd. Alongside, she could hear the other chariots lining up and as her eyes became accustomed to the bright light, she saw that the row of whipping posts which stood in a line down the centre of the arena had been joined by slatted fences to form a solid barrier. Suddenly an announcer’s voice cut through the cheers and stilled the crowd.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, as you will see there are two red chariots and two blue ones, arranged alternately. They will race over five circuits of the arena and points will be awarded to every team which finishes. There will be three races today and after that the two leading chariots from each team will go head to head tomorrow morning. Now cheer on your fancies and let the show begin!”

Carlo had come to stand just to Tara’s rig’s left and now he raised a starting pistol and fired it. The dry Crack! was almost lost in the explosion of noise from the crowd as the whips snapped and smacked on sweating flesh and sixteen girls threw themselves against the weight of the chariots.

Tara squirmed again as the memory of that dash down the arena, driven by the whip, the shafts inside her shifting with every stride, the studs pressing into her sex and breastflesh, made another tide of warm moisture flood into her belly.

They had drawn the outside lane in that first race and their driver had taken them wide at the turn, then pulled Tara fiercely to the right at the last moment. As she turned, she saw the strategy. The red chariot immediately inside them had gone ahead, pursued closely by the second blue chariot. But the red chariot on the inside lane had had to slow down to take the tight corner. Her driver aimed for them, cutting across the backs of the leading two chariots so closely that Tara’s pounding legs almost made contact with the backs of them. But then her driver had really used the whip. Expertly he had curled it over their straining shoulders and slashed at their hardened nipples. Tara had squealed around her bit and the two girls in the middle had let out muffled yelps but their pace picked up as if by magic and suddenly they were alongside the red chariot. Tara didn’t need any whip to tell her what to do. She struck out with her mailed arm and made contact with the ribs of the girl out on the left of the opposing rig. The girl flailed back but by then Tara was past her and her driver wrenched her head to the right and she dragged the rig across - forcing the red chariot against the boarding and leaving it in squealing and yelling chaos in their wake as the driver cursed and whipped his team back onto their feet and into line. But he had to start again from standing and posed no further danger. The two leading chariots were now well ahead and for three full circuits Tara’s team dug deep, scalded time and again by the whip snaking over their breasts, backs and buttocks as they charged in pursuit. Slowly, over the fourth circuit they closed and took a line which would squeeze the remaining red chariot between the two blue ones, Tara’s chariot heading for the inside. As they wheeled round to start the fifth circuit, Tara’s driver set up a blizzard of biting lashes and the girls strained to their limits, sweat blinding them, their bodies a mass of stinging and burning cuts and weals, but the long pursuit had drained them too far. Jet was barely alongside the red chariot’s axle by the last turn and they had to drop back to third to avoid being driven into the boarding on the final straight.

Strangely, as the girls stood in a gleaming, panting line at the finish and points were awarded, Tara realised that for the whole of the race she hadn’t been aware of the crowd’s noise at all. Her world had contracted to the overwhelming tormented pleasure of the competition and the fighting while her harness dug into her, the whip played on her and the plugs moved inside her.

The cameras were in the dressing rooms as they staggered back in and the guards began to peel off the harnesses. Tara had hopped and twisted as the studs were coaxed off her slick flesh and the plugs eased out of her, but as ever there were mainly just miniature crater-like indentations where the steel had dug in. Round her breasts however there were some spots of scarlet but she wiped at them carelessly and felt nothing but relief when her guard pushed her, face down onto one of the tables and rammed himself into her sodden vagina. All the girls were dealt with similarly and the cheers from outside betrayed the fact that the cameras weren’t missing any of the action.

And so the pattern was set.

After two hours rest in her stall while the solo gladiators fought in the arena, Tara was led out to the concrete pens which stood just outside the arena. And in the hottest part of the day, the walkways above the pens crowded with parasol-holding punters, the squads fought whip duels and cane duels, wrestled and boxed. The mud wrestling came as a blessed relief. Being able to struggle in the cool slime with the slick body of another girl under her hands was pure pleasure to Tara. She lost count of how many duels she fought; all she could be sure of was that she had won. As she knelt gasping on the floor of the pen, each of her opponents was dragged out to one of the posts on the training ground and put at the non-existent mercy of the onlookers who voted with their thumbs on the tariff of punishment. The better a girl had fought the lighter her punishment for losing was likely to be. But if a girl hadn’t put on a good enough show then the thumbs weren’t likely to turn up until a tariff of thirty or forty lashes was reached.

In the relative cool of the late afternoon, two further chariot races had taken place and Tara’s rig won one and came second in the other. As the other blue chariot was driven into the fence by both red chariots in the last race and the driver was unable to get the team back on their feet in the allotted time, the Reds won the team event but Tara’s chariot would race for the individual prize the following morning.

To her delight she wasn’t taken back to her own quarters that night but was taken to a stall in the same building which housed the solo gladiators. As soon as her groom, one of the slavegirls who also served the estate, had chained her for the night she had dived deep into sleep, curled up on a rough sheet spread over straw, but not before she had seen the three solo gladiators led out in their full pony harnesses, complete with nodding blue plumes in their bridles and their tails swishing down the backs of their thighs. Obviously the entertainment would go on until the very last of the daylight had gone.

However, she discovered that it was to go on after that as well. She was woken later on by one of the guards, accompanied by several of the male guests who practically threw themselves on her and took her where she lay, fingernails raking at her scored flesh as they thrust themselves urgently into her sex or her anus, according to their tastes. Tara gathered from snatches of conversation she overheard while a seemingly unending line of men took their pleasure with her that her owner had made a change in his plans. Instead of being auctioned off to serve in the bedrooms of the guest wings as he had originally intended they should be, he had decided that the day’s exertions had been enough for the slaves. Consequently they were being taken in their own quarters and there was to be no further whipping. Tara had a very satisfactory length of manhood between her lips and was being allowed to play with herself while she worked at it, moaning in pleasure as she sucked on the thick erection in her mouth and her fingers stirred the warm, sticky soup in her vagina as she visualised the orgiastic scenes which would surely be taking place in the barracks.

At last she finished servicing the guests and was allowed to lie down again but sleep was further delayed by the return of the solo gladiators. And it became obvious that the owner saw no reason why they at least couldn’t take more whip. Tara lay awake and listened in deepest envy to the admiring male voices further down the stalls, and in particular to that of her owner himself, and the delicious sounds of leather on female flesh followed by the unmistakable noises of those same females being enjoyed to the full. It only served to harden her resolve to be numbered amongst those most privileged of slaves.

For Tara, the second day started later than the first. The three sorely tested solo fighters were led out first and soon she could hear the crowd in the arena cheering as the contests resumed. As Tara had watched she had seen the grooms holding the fearsome whips those slaves used.

The sight had made her impatient to get back into the thick of the action and she was relieved when at last she was taken out, ready and willing to face whatever tests lay ahead. All twenty four girls of each squad raced over the assault courses in front of those spectators who fancied watching a mass spectacle rather than single combats. From there, she and the her chariot team had been taken still wet and panting into the dressing room under the arena and after a short rest had run the final chariot race. They had won but the exertions of the assault course had reduced both teams to a staggering trot round the last circuit and while Tara had lashed out at and grappled with her opponent as the teams sweated and gasped their way towards the finishing line, the crowd had gone so hysterical that Tara actually became aware of the noise as the drivers had mercilessly flailed with their whips - even using uppercuts to score their ponies’ inner thighs. And as she looked back on it, Tara could see why it must have been quite a sight. All eight of the ponies must have been gleaming from head to foot with sweat and were plainly at the ends of their tethers. All that kept them going were the whips and their desire to get the harnesses off as soon as possible. And after that.......

Tara and Jet had pulled the chariot over the line almost despite the two girls in the middle, rather than with their help. They were beyond doing anything other than keeping their feet. There had been the blessed relief of bottles of cold water held to their mouths as they stood shivering and gasping on the arena floor, but they weren’t allowed out just then. The losing team were tied to the whipping posts to accept their punishment, two on either side of the barrier and the victorious team looked on as the lashes were applied, the huge images on the screens providing close ups of the arching and twisting bodies under the whips. And Tara was well aware that in the strictures of their harnesses, the movement, coupled with the eroticism of public punishment would be propelling the girls to dizzying heights and depths of pain and pleasure.

And when her own harness was once more peeled off and the dildos removed, she took one of the guards for the best ride she could; laid back on a table, legs wrapped tight around him, interior muscles clutching desperately, she bucked and howled her way to her own long overdue orgasm, heedless of the grinning cameramen.

All the squad girls were rested for the next few hours while the finals of the various single combats were fought and punishment was meted out. Tara listened to the crowd from her stall and wished only to be back in the arena to face the final test. She knew it would be something special. Carlo had been tight lipped but obviously excited about ‘the finale’ for days and she pricked up her ears when she heard the noises of heavy machinery coming from the direction of the arena. She stood up and moved to the front of her stall, stretching her chain to its limit, but however she tried she could get no clue as to what was going on, all she could see was the stable courtyard. Horses were being brought back in, though she had no idea what they had been used for, and eventually the three solo fighters were half carried, half led back and tethered outside. They were covered in dust and sand, but through that coating Tara could plainly make out the livid traces of whip play.

She paced her stall, nervous and excited for what seemed like hours. Sometimes the announcer’s voice boomed out but she couldn’t make out the words. She picked half heartedly at some food until at last her groom returned, ran a brush roughly though her hair, said tersely that she would do and led her out.

In the dressing room all twenty four girls were gathered amid an atmosphere of suppressed excitement which seemed to be exuded by the guards. They were buckled into their fighting kit, the unstudded leather corsets, which were no more than wide belts, and gauntlets. But nearly half of Tara’s squad were not equipped with whips, instead they had the weighted nets. Hours of practice had taught them that these could be used, if slung like a weighted rope at knee height, to bring an opponent down but after that, it meant wrestling with them to prise the whip from their hands. It was time consuming and could be a big handicap in mass combat. She frowned her puzzlement at Carlo, but he just grinned and told her, “When you get out there, Blondie, you’ll understand.”

He was right. When she and her opposing captain led their troops out of the tunnel and acknowledged the deafening cheers which greeted them, she did indeed see what Carlo intended. Over the afternoon, the men had been very busy. The barrier and posts had been removed from the centre of the arena and instead the machinery that she had heard earlier had constructed a small hill of hard-packed earth. It stood some twenty feet high at its peak and its slopes stretched out almost to the perimeter fencing. At its crest stood the whipping posts, looking even more sinister than they had before and making Tara’s heart pound and her mouth go dry. She jumped when she felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Carlo.

“Okay, Blondie. You and the rest of my lovely bitches hold that hill against this rabble. Hold it and then beat the crap out of them.” He smiled and then continued, “If they take the hill then you’ll be the first on those posts and I’ll start the bidding at fifty lashes. Understand?”