The Bridle Path Page 9

  'Strip her!' he roared. 'Strip her and shave her head, then string her up in the main courtyard. I'll flog her myself, after we have dealt with the black devil!'

  From an attitude that had originally seemed almost respectful, Fulgrim's men quickly changed their approach to Dorothea, understanding now that her noble rank was to be no protection to her in the eyes of their master.

  Hustling her out into the courtyard, they set about stripping her with a relish that was frightening, cutting her garments away with knives, so great was their eagerness to see her naked. Then, binding her hands behind her back, they forced her to her knees and one of their number proceeded to lop off her thick hair with a pair of crude shears. A second man produced water and a razor to complete the job, shaving the stubble with such thoroughness that her skull was left pink and gleaming.

  Worse still, at the instigation of the man they were all now referring to as Captain Ingrim - who had originally arrived at Varragol dressed as an ordinary trooper - the fellow finished by removing her eyebrows. And only the fact that Dorothea regularly depilated her pubis prevented him from turning his attention - and the wicked blade - to that lower and more intimate target.

  Throughout this horror and indignity there was no sign of Fulgrim himself, but Dorothea realised he must have been watching from some vantage point she could not see, for he appeared through the doorway leading to the main palace building as soon as his brutish minions had finished carrying out his instructions.

  'May I say how lovely you are looking, my lady?' he taunted, standing a few feet directly in front of her, feet planted firmly apart. He had changed into a pair of leather breeches and heavy boots, above which he wore a pale blue silken shirt, open almost to the wide belt that encircled his waist. Dorothea stared up at him, determined not to show the humiliation she felt.

  'I'd hardly say I was looking my best, you Vorsan bastard,' she hissed, 'but then you're hardly the greatest judge of true beauty.'

  'Ah, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder, dear Dorothea,' Fulgrim sneered, 'and I cannot begin to explain to you just how beautiful this picture is. You cannot imagine how many hours I have imagined this moment, nor the moments that are to follow.' He turned to Ingrim and nodded.

  'Fetch the black bitch out now,' he ordered, 'and see if your men have finished cleaning up that cage. Your dungeons are a real treasure house of imaginative creativity,' he said, addressing Dorothea again. 'So many truly ingenious inventions down there and most of them neglected for so long, it seems a great shame to waste them all.'

  Dorothea made no reply, for she could only imagine what Fulgrim was talking about. She knew there were several cells beneath the palace that had not been entered, let alone used, for perhaps half a century, maybe longer, used only as storerooms for equipment that had fallen into either repair or disfavour in the meantime. Agana, possibly, might be aware, at least to an extent, what those chambers contained, but Dorothea herself very seldom ventured below ground.

  A babble of voices, among them Agana's, heralded the arrival of Fulgrim's other prisoner. She cursed and screamed in a mixture of her own native tongue and the language she had adopted and learned so well since her arrival in Illeum. But despite her struggles and attempts to lash out at her guards with her bare feet, she could not prevent them dragging her out to join Dorothea in the centre of the yard.

  Like her mistress she had been stripped and her cropped hair shaved similarly, so that her black pate gleamed dully beneath the bright sun. The men had locked a stout metal collar about her long neck, cuffing her wrists behind her back and drawing them up cruelly, so they were fastened to that collar by mere inches of chain, another chain fastened to the front of the iron band providing them with the means to haul her wherever they wished.

  Her expression was fearsome, her lips drawn back in a feral snarl, the whites of her eyes rolling with rage, but Dorothea knew that even the black amazon must be terrified, her magnificent show of anger and resistance simply masking her true feelings from their captors.

  'Get her to her knees!' Fulgrim roared, and the burly guards obeyed without ceremony, kicking Agana's feet from under her and thrusting her face down into the dust, from which position they pulled her up and back, so that she finished squatting on her calf muscles. Even so, she seemed more concerned with Dorothea's fate than her own.

  'Mistress!' she shrieked. 'What have they done?'

  Dorothea, blinking away tears, shook her head. 'They have not harmed me, Agana,' she replied, fighting to keep the tremor from her voice, 'nor, I think, will they just yet, but I fear they mean a dreadful ill to you.' Agana, her breasts heaving as she fought to draw more air into her lungs, set her powerful jaw squarely.

  'Let them do their worst, my lady,' she challenged. 'I am ready to meet my gods, as I have ever been ready. Death holds no terrors for the N'Gazi, for there is a far better life beyond this.'

  'Ha!' Fulgrim exclaimed. 'Bravely spoken and no less than I would have expected.' He stepped forward, seized Agana's jaw in one hand and bent her head back savagely, forcing her to look up into his face. 'Death, however,' he continued, his voice taking on a sinister, velvet quality, 'is the least of your possible fears and will be the last of them, mark my words.

  'Truly, I would like to keep you in the sort of suffering you inflicted upon me and for just as long, if not longer.' He released his grip on her and took a half pace back again. 'Time, however, does us no favours in that respect, but still you will not die quickly. It may take a few hours, it may take a few days, but it will seem longer even than the year through which I suffered at your hands.'

  He turned away, looking back towards the entrance into the palace, and then addressed one of the nearby guards.

  'You!' he roared. 'Get down below and see if Captain Ingrim needs any help. I want this bitch to see the fate that awaits her and get her started on the first stage of her long voyage to the seven hells.'

  The bailiff quickly summoned two muscular young village men, who lifted Corinna from her horse, not without a few coarse comments when they saw the nature of the saddle and the effect its protruding shaft had had upon her. Mindful of Savatch's instructions, they stood by, waiting until Melik Ar Fenook returned with the leather chastity belt and then watched, grinning, as Savatch inserted the fat dildo and fastened the leather straps to keep it in place.

  Corinna grunted as the hard shaft entered her, her eyes bulging at its size, and Savatch lost no time in explaining the truth concerning this latest invader.

  'This pizzle was once the pride and joy of a prize bull,' he said. 'The original owner had it cured and stuffed, but his new bull trampled him to death before he had chance to introduce his mistress to its pleasures.' Even had she not remained securely gagged, Corinna would not have asked him how the monstrous weapon had come into his possession - there were some things, she knew, that were best not known.

  'Right then, lads,' Savatch said, stepping back and slapping Corinna sharply across her naked rump. 'Put her up in the pillory and then join me in an ale. And make sure the mud buckets are nicely full.'

  Her sex may have been locked beyond their reach, but the young village men took every advantage of Corinna's defencelessness to paw and mould her breasts, tugging at the slave tags hanging from her nipples and stroking the tips of her engorged teats with their rough fingers, so that she squirmed and wriggled, despite her most stoic efforts to remain unmoved.

  On the stone dais they released her mitted arms from the belt cuffs and bent her forward, neck and wrists forced into the waiting half circles, closing the heavy timber top section to complete their entrapment. While one man inserted the rusting padlock, the other stooped in front of her lowered face, staring up into her eyes.

  'Methinks you're a hot one,' he whispered, licking his lips, 'and I'm a-wondering just how much his lordship might take for you, that I am. My grandfather left me eight fine horses this winter past and I reckon Master Savatch would think any two of them a worthwhile trade for
a slave reject such as you.

  'A few days under my whip and with something not far short of that dead meat inside you and I reckon you might make something of a decent bargain, that I do. If nothing else, you've a fine pair of tits to keep a man's hands and mouth occupied!' He laughed good-naturedly, reached out to caress Corinna's hanging left breast one final time, and stood up again. His companion now seemed eager to be off.

  'Leave the wench, Bal,' he said. 'Savatch doesn't want to sell her anyway, the way I heard it, so let's go drink at his expense, eh?' Bal seemed reluctant to leave Corinna, but eventually bowed to the inevitable and the two friends swaggered off together in the direction of the tavern, leaving Corinna to her own thoughts.

  Her solitude was short-lived, however. Word of the slave girl in the pillory spread quickly throughout the small village and out into the surrounding fields, and very soon a small crowd was gathering, forming a half circle before her. Approaching the dais directly, let alone mounting the steps, seemed to be forbidden, but the two wooden tubs filled with the wet sticky mud were clearly public domain and very soon the villagers, young and old alike, were enjoying their sport amidst a chorus of laughter and jeers.

  Even the smallest children joined in, scooping handfuls of the sticky mess and pressing them into rough balls, before hurling them at their helpless victim, and it was not long before Corinna was covered in the gooey mass from head to toe. Fortunately, the thick leather of the slave helmet offered some protection, and it also seemed that those missiles which did strike her about that part of her body were mostly badly aimed.

  To attack the head, it appeared, was considered un-sporting, whereas the sight of a pair of hanging breasts instantly evoked a spirit of keen competition. Time after time the sticky mud pats slapped into Corinna's tender flesh and her skin was tingling by the time Savatch reappeared to call a halt to the proceedings.

  'Fetch water and sluice her down,' he ordered two more of the youths. 'And give her a drink, but put the gag back in her heathen mouth again afterwards. I hear tales that some of these pagan wenches are really witches and their curses have great potency.'

  Once again, Savatch walked away, apparently disinterested in Corinna's fate. The designated young men eventually reappeared with buckets of water slopping from either hand, dashing the cold contents over Corinna's shivering body and mopping away the diluted mud with sacking rags. Eventually, having cleaned her as best they could, one unfastened the gag strap, drew the gag from her mouth and offered a small earthenware gourd of water to her lips.

  Because of her position in the pillory, drinking by normal means was impossible and Corinna was forced to slurp the water like an animal, dribbling much of it. However, the youths had carried out their instructions and Savatch had not specified exactly how much the slave girl should actually drink and, mindful of his warnings about witches and spells, they seemed only too eager to gag her again and beat a retreat.

  Corinna was finally left alone, her aching back dulled by the fire in her loins and the kaleidoscope of thoughts and emotions that now filled her head. This was truly unbelievable, she told herself, that she could ever have thought this was what she wanted, yet the evidence - the treachery displayed by her unruly reflexes - was undeniable.

  Perhaps, she thought, closing her eyes, perhaps she was, in reality, some devil's spawn, some animal throwback. Perhaps she was diseased, possessed of some plague that attacked not the body, but the very mind, distorting, twisting and corrupting as it went, turning perfectly respectable young women into wanton whores. Wanton whores who gained vicarious thrills from having their most intimate secrets displayed before a baying public and then having the evil whipped out of them.

  Except that the whip, Corinna knew, would serve only to whip more evil into her, if evil indeed it was.

  The guard Fulgrim had addressed turned to carry out his instructions, but before he had covered even half the distance to the palace entrance, Ingrim appeared through the doorway, closely followed by two more of the Vorsans, dragging between them a curious contraption of black iron bands.

  For a few seconds Dorothea was confused, but as they manoeuvred the rust spattered object out into the sunlight she suddenly recognised it, and a gasp of sheer horror became a desperate scream of protest.

  'No!' she shrieked. 'No, Fulgrim, not that monstrous device. Its use was abandoned fifty years since and it should have been destroyed then!'

  'Yes,' Fulgrim mused as the two men struggled to bring their burden between the two prisoners, 'I'm afraid its condition does rather reflect its age, but the rust is only on the surface and my men have oiled it where necessary, so I am confident it will still work as intended.'

  'But even you cannot mean to use that?' Dorothea wailed. 'It is surely the most inhuman torture machine ever devised!' Fulgrim made no reply, beyond a low chuckle, but words were unnecessary and Dorothea could see, from Agana's eyes, that the black woman also knew the cage's purpose.

  Made from an assortment of iron bands, it was constructed in a human shape, hinged at the side so it could be locked about the unfortunate subject, whose arms and legs, as well as torso neck and head, would then all be held in a metallic exoskeleton, legs apart, arms held out parallel to the ground.

  At various points on the cage small iron rings had been fixed, by which chains or ropes could be attached to raise the cage once the wearer was inside. Its original designer had intended it be used to dangle miscreants, either from a high gibbet or from the battlements of the castle wall that surrounded the palace.

  Unable to move more than fingers and toes, the prisoner would be held rigidly, exposed to the elements and to the eyes of the local population, a suitable warning as to the sort of fate that could await any others foolish enough to consider challenging the legitimacy of the steward's authority. In itself, a day or two in the embrace of the humanoid cage was a terrible enough punishment and few who survived it would wish to experience its horrors a second time.

  However, the original designer had included features that ensured that the simple hanging could be made worse and that, in extreme cases, the terrible thing could be used as a means of eventual execution.

  There had been, originally, two of these awful machines, similar in their basic design, but differing in order to accommodate the different sexes. That intended for male victims had incorporated a metal band that could be fastened around the base of the victim's genitalia, a screw mechanism allowing it to be inexorably tightened. The final effect of such treatment, Dorothea knew, though only by legend, was that the unfortunate man's equipment gradually turned black and finally tended to drop off, though that was only if he were fortunate. The less fortunate sufferers ended up with the flesh rotting disease, which gradually spread to the rest of their body, bringing with it the most dreadful and agonising death.

  For female victims, apart from the dimensions of the cage being slightly modified to the differing size and shape of their bodies, there was a different attachment by which the torturer could inflict similar horrors. This was in the form of a long metal phallus, a curious and indeed ingenious piece of engineering. Once inserted within the woman's vagina, separate screw mechanisms allowed it to be lengthened and broadened, stretching her unbelievably and eventually, if her tormentor decided, puncturing vital organs that would mean a lingering death no less terrible, in its way, than that inflicted upon the male victims.

  In both cases, however, the fiendish mind of the cage's creator had gone further still. Among the various metal bands were some, at strategic points, that could be slowly tightened: about the waist and chest, about the thighs and elbows, about the forehead and, if the torturer decided to finally end the suffering by a relatively humane means, about the neck, a wicked spike being available that could be driven into the top of the spine by degrees dependent upon the whim of the operator.

  Grotesque as this garrotting feature was, it was preferable to the alternatives - crushed joints, burst muscles and the slow driving of the air f
rom lungs that would gradually become punctured by the splintering of crushed ribs.

  Fully aware that she could expect not even the slightest show of humanity from the man she had tortured so long, Agana now renewed her struggles, striving to rise to her feet with one final, superhuman effort. But the guards were too many for her and were not disposed to waste time on any niceties. A swift blow to the side of her head, delivered with the handle of one fellow's sword, sent her eyes rolling and she fell back again, stunned and disoriented. By the time she was even halfway returned to her senses it was too late, for the final locks and screws were clicking into place and she stood in what she knew would be her final, obscene pose.

  'Get her up to the rampart and hang her over the top,' Fulgrim ordered. 'Tighten everything, but not too much just yet. We have three days before we needs move on and I want her to enjoy every last hour of that time.' He turned, grinning maliciously at Dorothea, who could now barely see through her tears.

  'And you, too, milady,' he said. 'You will be taken outside every two hours, where you can watch your black whore as you are whipped. With luck, she'll take the sound of your screams to her heathen gods.'

  The sun was now directly overhead, its heat burning into Corinna's unprotected back and shoulders, but still there was no sign of Savatch returning. Gnawing against her gag, Corinna was beginning to wish she had never suggested this misadventure, when suddenly she was stirred from her daze by the sound of approaching footsteps and voices. Raising her head as best she could, Corinna found herself looking down once again at the young man, Bal, and beside him, a homely female of about his own age.

  'You see how a real master treats a worthless female, Erin?' Bal said, smirking. The girl's plain features registered horror at the way in which he spoke, but she said nothing. Bal gave a short laugh and pointed a finger directly into Corinna's face.