THE PRIZE (14 page)

Peter watched as Paolo ordered Ayesha to impale herself on it. She was plainly dry and had some problems accommodating it, her labia dragging painfully up and in until she began a hurried frotting of her clitoris, her legs inelegantly bent outward at the knees in the most blatant of poses any woman could adopt. But quite suddenly she moistened and was able to get the wooden prong inside her and settle her legs, her feet by the two front legs of the frame. He went over to her.

“Hold onto the top. You will not be tied while you are flogged but if you take your hands off at any time, you will fail and you will be set free.”

She reached immediately and gave him a frightened glance over her raised arm. He tidied her hair and swept it forwards over her shoulders then gave her breast an encouraging squeeze before leaving her.

When he rejoined the other men the Prince was showing them the new whip.

“The problem was that although the duels with the old studded whips were good to watch, the fights didn’t go on for long because the toughest slave could only take a couple of lashes.”

He paused, they all knew that Osman’s stable had introduced those whips controversially without notifying the opposition over a year previously but he crowds had loved seeing the slaves competing with the studs
piercing
the lashes of the whip along their whole lengths and they had become a staple of the shows. The duels took a lot out of the slaves though and Peter had applied himself to finding a compromise. The Prince now held it out for inspection.

A plaited handle supported a flat bladed lash about two feet long, at its end it widened into an oval shape and here were the studs.

“We experimented with several combinations of features, length, weight, sharpness etcetera, until we found one which will make a pleasing impact, not raise welts too quickly and not split the skin too quickly,” Peter told his audience. “But they will provide all the spectacle we need and prolong the contests.”

“I bet the slaves enjoyed the experiments!” Osman laughed.

“We did go through a few before we got it right,” Peter admitted wryly. The sickbay had been quite crowded for a couple of weeks.

“And now, I’ll demonstrate on that one over there,” the Prince said, nodding in Ayesha’s direction. As they strolled across he explained the nature of his bet with Peter.

“If she passes this test she becomes Peter’s prize. And of course her prize is to remain as Peter’s property for as long as he wants her.”

By then they had reached Ayesha who was waiting patiently for her flogging to start and had not dared look behind her to see the whip that was about to be used on her. Peter postioned himself just to the slave’s right and watched his boss weigh the lash one last time then draw his arm back and strike.

At the very first lash, Heinz and Osman applauded in delight. The wide lash made a thick, satisfying sound as it smacked across the slave’s shoulders and just a millisecond afterwards there was an exciting thud as the studded end whipped in and bit. Peter had known that that first lash would tell him everything. Either the unexpected severity would have her rearing away and into the darkness of freedom or she would weather it and be enslaved to him. Her fingers opened and her
head
shot back, eyes wide, her breath drawing in with the shock of it and in that moment she turned towards Peter. He saw in her eyes the realisation of what she was in for and how much she wanted to undergo it. Her mouth snapped shut and choked off the scream. As the second lash crashed across her back she kept her eyes fixed firmly on her master and Peter knew he had his prize.

Chapter 17

The flogging stopped briefly after the tenth lash and the men stepped in to examine the slave. She gritted her
teeth
and made no noise as fingers prodded her back and explored the small craters in the flesh and the gathering bruises all down her right flank.

“Let’s see how her arse takes it,” the Prince suggested.

Peter felt no need now to stay where Ayesha could see him. She knew he was there and that was enough. In the event her buttocks fared extremely well. They shook and trembled pleasingly at each solid impact and although she alternated between ful
l-
blooded screams and breathless gasps, she didn’t bleed.

After ten more lashes the flogging ceased once more and she performed perfectly for them. As their fingers probed and prodded the welts and the indentations on her backside she began a shameless rocking and swinging of her hips, making the shaft move inside her. Peter moved round to watch her. Her head hung down between her raised arms and she was watching her own pelvis as she gave a public display of submissive excitement. She was a slave now. And she was his. The men allowed her to come to orgasm before resuming and applying a further ten lashes. Ayesha just hung on grimly and grunted under each heavy lash, her hips working steadily at the bar in time to the whip.

“We’ll stop there,” the Prince told his disappointed guests. “Peter has more work for her shortly.” He turned to the limp form hanging from the frame. “Step away,” he commanded.

Slowly Ayesha relaxed her grip on the poles and straightened up then went onto tiptoes to suction herself off the phallus. Once she was free of the frame her hands went immediately to her backside, exploring the hurts, while she craned her head round to survey the damage.

“Kneel down,” Peter told her softly.

At the sound of his voice she snapped out of her self absorbed trance and knelt.

“You formally belong to me now,” he told her. “But I am donating you to His Highness’s stable. You will serve both of us in the arena and you will serve whoever I tell you to in the dungeon or the bedroom. Understand?”

“Yes, Sir,” the slave’s voice was no more than a hoarse whisper but it carried to the listeners quite plainly.

“Now, there is one other improvement we are suggesting,” the Prince went on and waved to one of the guards who was hovering by the tunnel entrance. He led out another slave, her lead in one hand and a long pole in the other.

Again Peter assumed the role of enthusiastic teacher. “The other problem with the studded whips was that the slaves were most unwilling to take the lashes that the punters like to see.”

The second slave was one of the solo fighters and Peter stepped towards her, running his hand across her breasts and making her shiver with pleasure. “For some reason they would do almost anything rather than take those whips there.” His audience smiled. “So we have come up with a way of reducing their options during a combat. “ He clicked his fingers and Ayesha got to her feet and approached obediently.

The two slaves now stood face to face some ten feet apart. The guard hustled them closer together then knelt and fastened one end of the pole to Ayesha’s left ankle and then the other to the second slave’s right ankle. They were now about six feet apart and joined by a kind of spreader bar. The guard ran back to where he had been standing and returned with a second of the new whips and two strange looking gloves.

“We found that if we didn’t give them a shield or allow them to use their free hands to ward off the lashes, we got a very entertaining endurance contest,” Peter went on as the guard fastened each slave’s hands into the devices. They were pairs of gloves with the hands joined by a strap and buckle at the wrist, just above where their restraints encircled them. The result was that each slave’s hands were now cupped and joined. The final stage was to put the whip hafts into the hands so they could hold them. The two females faced each other, unable to take a step back or take any evasive action apart from twisting. In front of them dangled the whips and nervously Ayesha looked at Peter.

“Obviously one of them has the advantage of having had some practice, but then this is just a demonstration,” he said as the men took in the elaborate preparations. He turned back to the slaves.

“Begin.”

If they leaned back when an opponent swung, the bar was just long enough to allow the lash to whistle past their breasts and then a retaliatory sweep could be launched. The solo fighter had clearly been rehearsed in this form of combat and Ayesha was there just to make up the numbers. It soon became a rout, weakened by thirty lashes already taken, the first ten or so to land had her twisting and screaming. Her back took further punishment until she could stand it no more and turned to face her tormentor. This was exactly what Peter had wanted. He wanted a demonstration of how these new whips could make a slave’s breasts dance and swing until she could take no more - but it wouldn’t damage like the old ones had. He explained all this while Ayesha yelped and made futile attempts to strike back. Her breasts made superb targets and soon carried wide swathes of red and patches of small spots where blood was gathering beneath the skin. The more experienced slave was ruthless, cutting lashes across her opponent’s pelvis to make her drop what little guard she could muster. Ayesha was doing all that Peter wanted, being a punchbag for the sake of the demonstration.

He turned away for a moment. “Now, gentlemen, I think you’ll agree that six or more couples fighting like this will make a grand sight.”

Behind him the hiss and thud of the whips continued, punctuated by gasps and whimpers. He was certain that when he turned back Ayesha would be down and he could call the demonstration off. But when he did turn back he found that something quite different was happening.

Ayesha, looking like some kind of avenging fury, her hair flying wildly, her teeth gritted, her mouth snarling was lost in some kind of battle rage. She had taken pain on pain and had finally broken. Her temper had snapped and the slave opposite her was getting the full blast of it. The black
-
haired harridan quite suddenly refused to accept any more. She just ignored the pain, submerging it in her anger. She swung her whip back and forth with furious speed. Her opponent who had been cruising to an easy victory was now reeling as Ayehsa’s whip clubbed and snapped at her own breasts. She raised her arms and Ayesha in her turn swung low, more by luck than by judgement she got one lash in which allowed the studs to dig into the soft skin at the top and on the inside of one thigh. Despite all her experience the solo fighter couldn’t help dropping her hands to cover her groin. Ayesha moved her free foot forward and began to lash the slave’s back. The wide and deadly end of the whip, smacked down onto her. The girl took it for as long as she could and then she too reared up in fury and began to hammer lashes back at Ayesha.

The men looked on in astonishment. The demonstration was turning into a full blooded spectacle all of its own. But it was proving Peter’s point; the new whips made a fine sight and sound but allowed for prolonged combat. Only now was Ayesha beginning to show spots of claret but she was tiring at last and finally, after one searing lash dug into the side of a breast and the follow up took her on the thighs, she went down. The men broke into spontaneous applause as the two combatants panted and gasped on all fours on the sand beside each other, victor and vanquished indistinguishable.

Osman looked down thoughtfully at Ayesha’s striped and pockmarked back.

“You have won quite a prize there my friend,” he said.

“So it would seem,” Peter agreed. He had always thought she would make a fine servant of the arena but that performance from one so inexperienced boded well indeed.

“I see what you mean, Peter,” the Prince said. “I wouldn’t want anything to disturb that one.”

He reached out with a foot and prodded Ayesha in the ribs. She sank down onto her back and the men admired the way her heaving chest accentuated the magnificent breasts.

“We have some more suggestions,” Peter said. “But I think first of all, we need some relief after that display. Who would like to take which one first?”

Osman stepped forward, his hand already at his flies. “Yours, Peter. Her mouth I think.”

The Prince was already settling himself between his solo fighter’s wide open legs and she moaned as his weight came down onto her breasts. Ayesha, had been pulled to her knees by her hair and was emitting muffled grunts as she tried to catch her breath around the thick shaft of the cock which was already driving imperiously towards the back of her mouth.

“It is almost a shame to cover a breast like this one. But His Highness knows best.” The old woman held the breast in question up by its nipple, stretching it just enough to make Karen bite her lip to stifle a groan. She was tied in an X shape on a table of the same pattern and was staring up at a brightly coloured canopy. She was entirely naked and just outside the tent a bustling and noisy market was taking place. But what was being bought and sold was not to be found in any old market place. In fact she was in the strangest place she had ever seen. And she was in more pain than she ever been in.

After some interminable length of time, hooded and chained in the palace, she had been taken out suddenly and dumped into the back of what turned out to be a jeep. For two whole days it had bumped and jerked until she was bruised all over. But then it had stopped and she had been allowed to sit up and the wretched hood was thrown off. The Prince, the man to whom Ayesha must have betrayed her and who called her a treacherous snake of a whore, stood before her.

“Look behind me you bitch,” he had hissed at her. His hatred of her was so strong she could almost taste it and he was so powerful here that her knees trembled and a terrible urge to wet herself overcame her when he spoke to her.

However, she had done as he had ordered and saw what looked like a small football stadium.

“That is an arena where I train female slaves to entertain paying customers. I train them to whip each other and pull logs under their guards’ whips. They pull chariots, they are punished and are fucked for the crowd’s pleasure. They are the lowest of the low. And yet they are too good for the likes of you!”

Her eyes had misted with tears of self
-
pity and fear. Why had Ayesha betrayed her
?

“You will be taken up into the mountains to the village of the women. They will prepare you for your future and mark you as a warning to all other women.”

He had slapped her then and stalked off. She had been bundled back into the jeep and driven past the arena back onto dirt tracks and up into the hills. She glanced behind her and saw the arena falling away behind and beneath them. Was that where Ayesha was? If she was then it served the bitch right! She had had no right to betray her, she should just have taken what was coming to her and left her, Karen, to get the payoff from her misappropriation of her husband’s funds. Then she would have ransomed her.......almost certainly she would have.

But instead the treacherous bitch had spilled the beans. Probably she couldn’t bear the thought of her little Karen, out enjoying herself with Brian. Yes, that was it. Ayesha had always been a selfish cow.

Then after a further day’s travel they had come to this terrible place and she had been delivered up to this horrible old woman.

The village was where the women of Bakhtar made sure that the girls of Bakhtar upheld the traditions of the country. Any headstrong girl was sent there for correction. Any wife who wasn’t totally obedient. Any daughter who was being prepared for a life in service at the palace. It was the only place in Bakhtar where women ruled supreme and the men only entered between dawn and dusk.

Perched on a hill and surrounded by desolate, rocky uplands and the tents of the men who were currently visiting, the village was as secure as any fortress. As the old woman had said on Karen’s first night; “You can always walk out, but there is nothing within three days’ walk of here. And the men will bring you back anyway. Once they have finished with you. In Bakhtar the men don’t like women who don’t like our village!” She had cackled at that and left Karen to sleep on her narrow cot.

The next day she had been taken to the market place and seen what was for sale. Women. Although they were rented more than sold. The square in the centre of the village had been divided into streets which specialised in correcting various forms of misbehaviour. One street specialised in correcting disobedience
.
The old woman had explained to Karen that buttock punishment and bastinado was considered the best way of dealing with that. On both sides of the narrow thoroughfare were small tents and each of the old women who ran the village had a ‘pitch’. Out from the front of the tent, beside which they sat like old crows in their black burnooses, naked buttocks and bare feet protruded, the girls having been tied down over benches.

Another street specialised in unfaithful wives. Ankle suspension and cunt whipping was the cure here. Karen’s pain
-
hungry nature had asserted itself when she had first seen the rows of inverted, wide open, naked legs.

Women who were not considered obedient enough were breast whipped. Women who were considered slatternly were flogged on their backs. Those who were not considered to be ardent enough in bed were subjected to nipple and labia piercing and clamping, plus some flogging as well.