Fingering her service scourge, the overseer halted before the coffle. "If you fall short in any way of your owners' demands, I shall be obliged to have you taken down to the cellars where you will be deprived of erotic pleasure and tortured. I therefore advise you to do your best." As with the Elder, Silvana sensed her colleagues were baffled by the peroration. She was glad their two worthless sisters-in-chains were otherwise engaged...
"You may proceed, Mila dear," the woman finally concluded. "Explain the use of the appliances but only briefly. No dawdling or whipping, for we have little time left on account of those two listless ones whom I shall see are dealt with sternly. They'll just have to catch up when they've learnt to behave. This lot seems ready enough. Then to the Slave Quarters with them." Mila bowed her head of dark hair.
"What about the pair upstairs, mistress?" she asked. "Am I to wait for them?"
"Certainly not. It will only retard matters. Yannis and I will handle them. Now get to work. When they have finished here, the Master of Slaves may wish to inspect them."
Silvana felt a thrill of elation at the prospect of being vetted by Thanon, of all people. The expectation of another smile from him and possibly a hand on her breasts made her knees go weak. To be in love with a man so mighty and so handsome was beyond her wildest dreams but she was sure those smiles were meant for her and nobody else.
The overseer turned on her heel, consigning the cohort to Mila, and left. Like the newcomers, Damiana needed respite prior to the full training session to come which would demand all her attention if her slaves were to reach the standard of her colleague Saletha's. And Saletha was not one she held in her heart, as she held Thanon, to whom she was to give herself that night, naked and bound. That was her special privilege and not Saletha's.
The departure of Hephaistos and Damiana left Mila and Yannis in sole command. To the slaves' surprise, she announced: "From now on, you may speak if you so wish. I'll answer questions but only about your duties. Now, move your bodies over here."
With arrogance, she led the group to the nearest construction, her gloved palm caressing a broad incline of planks. The touch was tentative and Silvana saw why: the surface was sprinkled with sharp tines, sparkling in the candelight.
"This is the flogging rack," she began, delighted to be in charge. "Either Yannis or I attend to the stretching but naturally it's the courtiers who do the beating." She actioned the spoked windlass, mounted on brackets at the head, letting out hooked chains from a drum. She demonstrated how at the foot of the slope the iron hasps could be screwed down, parting and securing the ankles. "Once your body's fully tensed, the whipping can start, see? Usually you're arse down but sometimes they want to lash your hindquarters and then you'd better pray hard to the deities if you value your tits or, in your case," she gave each youth's ringed cock a lascivious look, "that spunk pump of yours. The spikes are honed to hell."
About to move towards an iron grid propped against the wall, she suddenly turned to Carmela who was staring blankly at the board and windlass, as if gazing at an Elder.
"Hop on to it, fatty, just as an example. Go on, slug! It's all part of your grooming."
Hesitating, as her wrists were freed, the huge bulk hoisted itself slowly on to the planks, raising the arms and subsiding painfully into the harvest of needle-sharp points. Mila chained the mass of flesh as she had described it, Yannis turning the windlass until the body was stretched tight. That at last brought a long groan out of the peasant slut. Silvana watched with something approaching envious fascination, astonished how the solid muscles tensed under the strain. Then, to the onlookers' consternation, Mila unhooked her scourge and brought it down with a thud across Carmela's pelvis. The blow set the sex rings jangling but the sturdy, spraddled farm girl scarcely stirred. The sight of the reddening welt gave Silvana a jolt of voluptuous yearning to be in the place of the gross slug who would, she thought, be much more at home working on a hay wain than lying naked on a whipping rack.
About to lash the body again, Mila suddenly froze as Damiana reappeared, dragging in the two indolent sluts, both troublemakers firmly gagged and heavily scarred.
"Mila dear," the overseer protested mildly, "there'll be plenty of time for that later. Please get on with the explanations. I know how tempting and mouth-watering such a load of brawn can be, but you forget the bumpkin and the others have yet to be allotted their palliasses. Do as I told you. And add these two miserable waifs to the group."
"I just thought a moment on the prickly Bed of Roses would help them, mistress."
"Naturally, but time presses, you know."
Again the overseer stalked out, leaving the slaves astonished at the clemency of the rebuke, and a released Carmela muttering foul oaths under her breath. The meaty slave's rear and back disclosed a profusion of pockmarks where the tines had spurred her. She was far from content and said as much to Silvana. "Yon's a bitch of a whore," was Carmela's verdict.
Thereafter, with Yannis's help, the newcomers, including the two stunned youngsters, were conducted round the chamber more temperately. What they were shown was frightening enough without further physical demonstration. The gamut of objects ranged wide. First came a semicircle of lofty stakes fitted with manacles and, halfway up the slope, ebony shafts in the form of a penis, while beyond, several iron tripods waited patiently for bodies to be laid and chained over them. To the right stood a long flogging horse that seemed to be whinnying for lack of a rider. The flesh bench followed - a pair of upright beams with crossbars which, Mila pointed out, were also arrayed with sharp nails and straps to hold the breasts or phallus rigid for the three-tongued quirt. The mention of the quirt brought the group to the instrument panel and its array of implements. The things glinted in the half-light: scores of chains, more iron manacles, metal head cages, leather hoods, single and double dildos and, above all, an endless line of whips, canes, crops and strange, knotted lengths of horsehide.
"Surely, mistress, those things are not going to be used on us." It was the lad Nisos who risked a word. Not only was it the first time Silvana had heard him speak but the words were the first anyone had dared utter since the arrival. Mila answered straightforwardly. "But of course. What do you think they're here for? Decoration?" She took down a phallic-hafted six-thong and let the lashes slide over the youth's erection and then over Britta's minute breasts, causing the remaining traces of colour to drain away from her cheeks. "But you'll get used to them soon enough. Just keep the arse slack when you're flogged. That's the rule."
After fondling other items, she sashayed to the door, only to hear Silvana speak out. "Obviously, we've been brought here - to the palace, I mean - to be whipped for the pleasure of others..."
"And a lot more than that, you blonde dolt," Mila snapped back.
"But what about our pleasure? Are we allowed to orgasm, if that's the word, when we're being whipped? I mean..."
"Of course, stupid. As much as you like. But watch your step. Particularly if you're being used by the gracious Lady Menthif, the dowagers or some of the sterner nobles. Premature climaxes are punishable. But you'll learn all that later from Mistress Damiana."
Her companions stared at Silvana, astonished at her daring to ask such a thing. Then, ignoring the nearby wrought-iron grid, bristling with honed prongs, Mila herded her flock into a narrow passageway, Yannis prodding the two gagged ones forward with evident pleasure. Leaving the great chamber, Silvana had thoroughly enjoyed the hour, however emotionally exhausting it had been. Secretly she had imagined her beautiful body on each item in turn.
Staggering with fatigue, the six newcomers were driven into the Slave Quarters and assigned to what they had imagined would be straw pallets. Delighted to be free of the wrist chains, they could hardly believe what they saw. Along the side of the long hall under the lancets, a dozen or so sleeping forms lay, not under sacking but in silk sheets. These had to be Saletha's
cohort, enjoying the end of a tranquil night; only two of the senior slaves had been woken in the small hours to be oiled, chained and taken to some bedchamber, returning an hour or two later. And there they were, catching up on well-earned repose, nursing flayed breasts and buttocks.
Silvana no longer had the strength even to interest herself with Pervez's cock. She was asleep before her golden tresses had spread over the pillow.
Through the massively barred lancets high in the whitewashed wall, the blood red hue of dawn was already dappling the clouds over Bithynia the Magnificent.
The Tutelage
On waking, Silvana found the Slave Quarters even more welcoming than she had anticipated. The mid-morning sunlight slanted through the window bars revealing the glances of the other inmates seated at the long table, enjoying the mint tea and sweetmeats. The senior resident, Odile - they all introduced themselves - beckoned to her, astutely making room at her side on the bench. The dark-haired woman differed from the rest in that she wore a broad metal neckband and in addition to the prescribed flesh rings, had a small circle of silver pierced through the septum to dangle over the upper lip. Well-built with powerful shoulders, her breasts seemed to sag somewhat, no doubt from constant elongation during use. The thirty-odd year old greeted Silvana with a hug.
"It's great to have company," she said. "We're all a little worn out and could do with some reinforcements to satisfy the demands of our insatiable courtiers. You lot are fortunate to be under Damiana instead of Saletha the Salacious and her two allies, that harpy Saroya and her boyfriend, Rainer..."
"We call them the Bloodhounds," put in a pretty ash-blonde with lash marks adorning her pert breasts and thorax, marks that Silvana rather envied.
"Whom you should try to avoid, if you can," Odile added. "They're not particularly meek and mild when they're preparing you on a flogging grid for a courtier. Now eat up, sweetheart, because you going to need nourishment."
Noticing that in her cohort Britta alone was not at table, Silvana glanced back at the row of beds. With a jolt she realized that one of the two bodies writhing on a far bunk, the russet head buried in some other girl's crotch, was Britta's. Two sleek arms encircled her waist as it jerked above a hidden face. The groans and slushing sound of cunnilingus - it was Odile who added the word to Silvana's fast-growing vocabulary - seemed to be accepted by the others with understanding if rather nervous smiles.
"Leave them be," Odile said, noticing her neighbour's startled look. "They're running a risk but that's their affair. Yannis freed your little friend of her gag and she's got herself entangled like a fly in our Ayesha's proverbial web. Ayesha just can't resist a novice and a chestnut head of hair, and loves playing with fire. You see, we've got to be at table when meals are served. So take no notice."
Silvana tried to dismiss the scene being enacted on the tangled sheets and Britta's bird-like cries as the light-brown head lifted momentarily from the ringed cunt. With a shrug she joined in the babble across the table, sipping what seemed be jasmine tea rather than mint and it helped to quench her burning thirst. The two humping bodies were left to tongue and lap amid the silks, the newcomers unable to believe their eyes. Britta, of all people!
The older inmates gave the others not only a generous welcome but valuable information. Odile did most of the talking, with a surprising command of high Bithynian.
"I think you'd better know what you're in for here. Let me explain. The most common argument among courtiers and overseers is that flagellation's healthy for us slaves, quite apart from the pleasure they - and, of course, we," there she rolled her eyes comically,"derive from a good whipping. It keeps us on our toes, in both senses. And they maintain that drawing blood is salutary, just as when you're bled to cure an ague." The others laughed at that, as Odile's cultured voice went on. "Anyway, the slave mistresses are meant to check your condition when you return from a session under the scourge or cane and after a bout in the precincts. But they never do, so we look after ourselves..."
"I see you've been ringed," a harsh voice put in, "so you're ready for training." It belonged to a sullen-faced, heavily-breasted woman with freckles like Silvana and with walnut-coloured eyes.
"Thank you, Rouxel. Just leave the briefing to me, darling. Otherwise you'll just confuse them. What was I saying? Yes, about duty sessions. You just have to obey and, for holy Phranis's sake, don't start moaning. And above all never speak unless you're given permission. Of course, you can scream your head off, but entreaties for mercy - I'm sure you won't ask for that - can earn you another thirty lashes in a cell in the punishment precincts."
In the silence that followed, Silvana decided to pose some questions that troubled her.
"Are we always chained and nude like this, Odile?" No sooner was it out than she realized from the blank looks that her query was absurd.
"But, of course, dear one! Whipping and savaging a slave attired in muslin and brocaded skirts are hardly their thing." The redhead who replied was extremely attractive and erotic, particularly as she had her breasts wrenched upwards and attached round the neck by a chain running from her ringed nipples. Silvana's uterus clenched at the sight, her downflow running even more copiously, for the undersides were ridged with purple whip weals. "No," the beautiful one went on, "you're kept stark-naked here until your time's up. Of course, it's thrilling to be stripped garment by garment" - Silvana recalled her one and only cotton shift at the hovel - "but here you're naked for the whip or sex torture at any moment, day or night."
"Except for a slave-hood, now and then," a thin, auburn-haired wench added, "or a spiked chastity belt when - or rather, if - you have the curse."
"That's so, as Ortalana says," Odile admitted. "And the occasional spiked straps over your breasts to make you feel at home. But..."
It was Pervez who reverted to what the redhead, Elfra, had said. "Until our time's up? What does that mean?"
"Oh, it's just that when you weaken or your flesh, particularly your butt and bubs, begin to sag," Elfra responded helpfully, "or a cock isn't as hard as it should be," - she glanced at the youths at the table - "they turn you out on the heath among the wild life or throw you into the dungeons to amuse the prisoners. It's rare anyone reaches the age of thirty summers here but there are exceptions." She smiled at Odile who merely lifted an eyebrow.
"You know," the rediscovered youth Andreas put in, "you lot are lucky, as Odile said, to be under Damiana, despite her moods. In place of Greta, she's Thanon's mistress..." Silvana turned pale at the news but no one seemed to notice. Then she asked: "Was it you lot we saw out there on that terrace of sorts, chained to posts, on our way down here?"
"Who else, poppet?" Odile replied. "We're nearly a dozen down here but there are comings and goings. But don't worry your lovely head about that, sweetie. Anyway, with a body like yours, you look as if you could take a lot of leather from our caring courtiers, particularly aging ladies who seem to avenge their wrinkles on us." Suddenly, Silvana felt the woman's hand sliding slowly over her thigh towards the leaking slot. At the same time, the senior went on: "By the way, on your journey down here you probably saw our wonderful Zelda undergoing her daily treat. She's a favourite and we don't see much of her. Either she's there in the refectory, chained aloft, or hung by the ankles down in the Fifth Precinct. She's in constant demand because of her sturdiness and her fierce orgasms. And she loves it. She can't live without the whip." That Silvana understood. What she understood less was what was taking place under the table around her crotch; if that region was beginning to heal, it felt still extremely tender, particularly as Odile's fingers had grasped her clitoris by the ring, gently tugging on it. Silvana parted her thighs almost instinctively.
"Enjoying it, Silvie?" Odile could never remember names. "But don't spill your thirst quencher here. Tonight you'll come to my bed and we'll climb the heights together, right?"
Silvana's smile showed
more than gratitude. It was pure lechery. To explode under another's rosebud lips, under fingers, a whip haft, a penis or anything was exactly what she wanted. A whole night since the experience at the hut had gone by without that joy. Vaguely, she heard Rouxel talking about the strange sexual demands of some dowager called Alicia and her concubine, but, despite Odile's fingers, she wished she was there in Ayesha's bed.
Calm as cream, Odile went on, her hidden hand busy on the vulva. "You see, boys and girls, there are three degrees of service here. First, what we call a straight come in a bedchamber. What's that, you wonder?" She answered Pervez's look, Silvana wondering whether the lad's handsome cock, that resembled Thanon's, was alive under the table. "That's when you're called to perform straight sex." She cupped Silvana's breast with her other hand. "But that you won't have to worry over, with bodies like yours. You're taken to one of the silken chambers and... well, used normally by one of the nobles or his wife or both. Sort of seraglio duty. They have real fun with your holes but nothing more. Of course, you're chained down to the bed and you do what you can. It's boring - in both senses." Her colleagues giggled at her jest. "Then, secondly, there's the infamous Chamber of Gratification with all its artefacts, columns and so on, which I presume you've seen. Well, that's where the real whipping takes place. And heaps of sex. We rather enjoy that."
Silvana's Quest Page 5
