Beloved bonds

11 Slave Girls in Penitence

Flexing against the discomfort of hands bound behind her back, Trudy Ramsay recalled the words of a fictional character, uttered in disgust to the effect. “The Law is an Ass!” She recalled references to the blindness of Justice, and an abstruse affirmation that “Justice must always SEEM to be done!” She sympathised with all of them. Particularly she sympathised with herself. When the Court asked her how she pleaded, she said she was sorry but she didn’t know. She wanted to cry but would not disgrace the Troop.

“You were specifically unlocked from the coffle, Trudy, and taken to the outlaw, Nykobe.” Rulua’s voice was troubled. “Please tell the Court why.”

“Because he wanted to fuck me.”

“Trudy, that’s awful!”

“Well, not really. You see—”

“I am referring to that shocking word.”

“Sorry. I thought that was the one you’d want me to use.”

“Do you wish to tell this Court you were raped?” The prisoner giggled. “Well no, I suppose not.”

“In other words you granted access to your body to an enemy of the State?”

“Mmmmmm, if you want to put it that way.”

“Were you bound when the act was consummated?”

Trudy giggled again. “I was handcuffed behind my back. It made it awfully difficult to lay down and sort of—sort of—lifted my bottom up a bit.”

“Trudy, are you being facetious?”

“Well, Captain, it does seem a lot of fuss about nothing.” Trudy looked around brightly at the stern, or concerned, faces of the court-martial. “If I’ve done something bad, couldn’t you just cane my behind or my hands or something?”

“The implications are not as trivial as you seem to think, dear.” Rulua strove to keep her tone ponderous enough to impress. “Not only have you given comfort to the enemy, but you have publicly made confessions beneficial to his Cause.”

“I was just doing what I was asked. And I bet none of the people in the crowd even bothered to listen. They were all looking at the Troop without its clothes on. There was one chap I noticed—”

“Trudy, pay attention! Do you wish to tell us you were tortured into complying with the enemy’s demands?”

“Gosh no! He’s really awfully nice. If you could just meet him—”

“That’s enough! And you were naked through these, er, experiences?”

“They burned my uniform.”

“Surely you could have found some covering?”

“I never thought of it. Being naked’s really awfully handy, and I’ve been naked so often.”

“You’re not taking this seriously enough, dear. You must—”

“Let me have a go at her, eh?” Ringbolt’s voice was testy, but his fierce gaze held affection for the girl on trial. His reasoning was a series of barks. “You’ve inked your blotter, dammit! Not so much yours as ours. You’re one of our guards, see! And all these wogs out there know damn well Nykobe shoved it into you, and then they heard what you had to say on that ruddy platform. Damn poor show! Leaves us with a red face unless we do something . . . !”

“I do understand, sir. You have to make an example—”

“Dammit, girl, that’s the word I was looking for. The wogs have to know our justice is fair to both sides. We’ve just sent twenty of their little pigeons off into slavery. The least we can do is show ’em we can punish one of ours.”

“You put it so well, sir. I won’t mind a bit.” The Court exhaled a collective sigh. Trudy made an admirable prisoner. But surely a defendant should—!

“I don’t want to put you to a lot of trouble . . .” The bound delinquent looked around smilingly. “Let’s just say I’m guilty. You can cane my bottom in public and everyone will feel better.”

“My dear, this means more than the caning of your bottom,” Rulua explained sadly. “We use the cane too much. It ill befits all transgressions.”

A cold hand clutched Trudy’s heart. “You’re not going to—I mean, you’re not thinking of—putting me in prison?”

“Yes, dear.”

“You mean locked alone in a little stone room with a little window with bars . . . ? And would I be chained?” Trudy’s query was tremulous.

“I’m afraid so, dear.”

The girl with bound hands was trying to glimpse the enormity of a vision too awful to contemplate . . .

“And I’d be locked in there for days or weeks . . . !” She peered further into horror. “Or months—? Or years—?”

“It is a possible sentence, Trudy.”

“But I couldn’t bear it! I just couldn’t! I’d want to die!” She swept an appealing gaze from one sympathetic face to another. “I’d sooner be flogged a hundred times.”

The Court sighed again. “But, dear, we don’t want to have you flogged. We have hoped to avoid—”

“Flog me! Oh please—not prison!” Trudy’s voice broke in the violence of her distress.

“Control yourself, gel!” the W.O. admonished severely. “How about a nice face—saving sentence of thirty days in a cell? And none of this hardware business. Your hands can stay tied the way they are.”

“No, oh no! Don’t lock me up!”

“Damn gel’s claustrophobic.” W.O. Ringbolt looked around aggressively. “Wouldn’t do to lock her up. Damn pity! She’s a nice kid. Ruddy shame to have to fall back on lacing her hide.” He paused thoughtfully. “On the other hand it does make a bloomin’ fine show for the wogs.”

The Court had decided on a compromise.

“I suppose it’s not a bad decision,” Captain Rulua said reflectively. “It makes a satisfactory display of you—and since you’re so frightened of prison . . . !” She surveyed the timber ‘T’ with distaste. “Personally I’d sooner put in that thirty days in a cell.”

“But I’ve only been sentenced to twenty-four hours of this!”

“It will seem like twenty-four days, love. Believe me!”

“Well, it’s settled now and that’s the end of it. Oh, Rulua, I didn’t want that prison thing! I’m sorry if I’m ungrateful.” The repentant prisoner gazed without joy at the structure awaiting her nakedness. “I suppose that’s what I get fixed to?” she asked wanly.

“Sergeant Galla will tie you, Trudy. Nice and tight.”

Galla had carried a box from the Jeep. She placed it against the upright post. “Let me have your hands, dear.”

Trudy turned and gazed at her punishment while the ropes were taken from her wrists. When her hands fell free she scratched her nose, her eyes mischievous. “I’m doing this now because I won’t be able to later . . . I guess you want me to step up on that box?”

“Your back to the wood, dear.”

Sadly, the sergeant found another box and used it to stand on herself while she completed her task. The ‘T’ was not six feet high, but she wanted to do a good job and present a well-bound captive to the community. She did not want to punish her trooper at all.

“My hands out along this bit across the top, Galla?”

“That’s right, arms way out.”

“I’ll look pretty, won’t I! I know I won’t like it but it’s better than looking untidy.”

They adored her as they performed their distasteful task. Trudy had a way with her: Trudy was special. The post had been set in the centre of a small playing area by the town school. No one need pass by, but the ‘T’ and its nude burden would be visible to all of Moghata. The children would soon carry word of a maiden’s penitence. Interested spectators could come as close as they wished and stay and ogle for as long as they liked. For the girl being bound it was as good a place as any.

“Gosh, Galla, you’re making my tummy tight. Why all that rope!”

“You see why in a minute, love.”

Trudy’s wrists were roped, her elbows were roped, her armpits were roped. Each group of bands was emphasised and made more tight by a circling cinch or two. From her hips up she was now immobilised, save for her fingers and her head she could not even twitch. Her breasts jutted, her cinched middle causing her lungs to inflate her chest . .

“Sorry about this one, Trudy love.” Galla was busy with strands between the unbound legs. They went down from the waist strictures one on each side of her pussy, protruding its lips in a pout, then up the back to be tugged and pulled so as to demandingly divide her crotch. “I’m afraid it’s part of the picture.” Thoughtfully, she tied a knot. Then took away the box.

Trudy gasped in shock. The ropes had become enemies indeed, biting at her wherever they touched. She understood now the circles round her tummy beneath her ribs, they were supporting the greater part of her weight. Her bare armpits and her female secret took the rest. Woodenly and without protest she exclaimed in bitter understanding: “Oh, Galla ! Galla—!” She looked at Rulua regretfully “You tried to tell me—you tried!”

They separated her feet, then placed one on each side of the post and bound them there, next, her knees. The separation of her legs displayed her black muff as a feminine challenge to the world. “Is my little do-funny wide open?” she asked woefully. “It feels like it.”

They assured her it was not. Its lips were puffed but chastely closed, within them there was no strand of rope to cut. Trudy said “Thank you” politely, then started to cry. Her superior officers stood on the boxes and dried her tears as they fell. When she stopped sobbing they put the boxes in the Jeep and drove away. The fact they had kissed her first was their captive’s only comfort.

Twenty-four hours! The sentence throbbed in the mind of the bound girl. She was already vibrant with pain. It would get worse. She could not know if after hanging thus for many hours she would become numb and inured to her punishment or if the nagging bite’ of the cords was progressively awful. Either way she was stuck with a penance she must pay to a concept of Justice, and affection for those who had bound her. She supposed the time must eventually pass. She looked about her world with dreary disinterest.

Warrant Officer Ringbolt was doing what he considered the ‘right thing.’ Had one of his girls been hospitalised he would have visited with flowers and said appropriate things. He visited his one delinquent damsel now, minus the carnations. Trudy was grateful but embarrassed to be so starkly naked in his presence. The W.O. had a habit of beetling his brows in a focus on her most female parts. She might easily have thought of him as a dirty old man, but his scrutiny was always such as to convey surprise that any human being could be so quaintly endowed.

“Sorry about this, m’gel.” He frowned at her right breast. “Bit uncomfortable, eh!”

“Thank you, sir. Yes, it hurts.”

“Uncivilised lot here.” He transferred his attention to her crotch. “The white man’s burden, and all that rot.” He guffawed. “In your case, the white woman’s, eh!”

“I expect so, sir.”

Trudy always felt sorry for Warrant Officer Ringbolt. His world had been male, no mark of matrimony had marred his record. He was a veteran of sundry wars and skirmishes, a relic of the British Raj in India and the days of District Commissioners in Africa. He was no longer quite real. Yet, considering what he had done with the Troop, who could say that the passing of his breed was not a loss! He was a solid bulwark of faith in something. That the something had slowly dissolved beneath his feet through half a lifetime diluted his faith no whit.

Inevitably he was a ‘father figure’. Ageless as the rock, he could well have been a grandfather. In their sexual encounters she had felt a child beneath his flinty eyes and granite features. Seeing almost as incestuous their fleshly couplings: and herself as a naughty little girl when he caned her bottom or her hands. But in none of the pain he bestowed upon her skin had he seemed a sadist. He was a lonely man seeking a communion he had never found. She was immovably bound but she longed to give him comfort.

“Wogs give you any trouble? I mean . . . can’t, move, can you! Any of ’em—do things—?”

There had been the girl child who had promised to return in the darkness and suck “that nice hairy cunny.” There had been small boys fingering her breasts and tentatively pinching her nipples. They had been enraptured by the discovery that manipulation could enlarge the pink and defenceless buds and make them hard. They had poked at her with bits of stick, then gone away, bored: Too young to value the treasure on the ‘T’.

“Not really, sir. Just children. The adults just look at me and make remarks I don’t understand.”

“Just as well, I expect!”

“But I think it’s working! I mean, sir, I’m here to prove a point, and the way I’m fixed gets it across to them.”

The W.O. nodded absently, allowing his regard to rove from breasts to parted legs, from belly to armpits. His voice was diffident: “Ever feel like going home—the Old Country? Making a run for it?”

“Yes, sir. But it’s not possible, is it?”

“Looked at in terms of ‘escape’?”

“Yes sir—escape! What would be done if I was caught?”

“Humph, see your point! Bit like Nelson’s sailors and Wellington’s army. Once they’d taken the King’s shilling they’d had it. Least you could expect would be a flogging and a spell of that prison you’re so skittish about.” He shrugged apologetically. “They’d have to make an example of you, see what I mean?”

“Yes, sir, I’ve seen all along. But the Troop’s made a life for me. I don’t know what I’d do without the Troop.”

He gave her a fumbling father’s kiss before he left.

“But, Khalief, the poor darling will be suffering terribly!”

The President of Zindawba chuckled at the vehemence in his Mistress’s anxiety. “Don’t agonise, love. She’ll survive.”

“I won’t sleep a wink all night thinking about her—out there tied the way Rulua told me.”

“Get me a drink and stop the emoting or I’ll beat your bottom.” Abhad gazed tenderly at his most prized possession. “I suppose they can put up another post and tie you to it the same way if you want to keep her company?”

“Oh, Khalief, don’t tease! And anyway, that wouldn’t do her any good at all. How about letting me take her place after a few hours?”

“I’ve been waiting for that. You’d do it too!”

“Please let me? Khalief, I’m serious.”

“No!”

The emphatic negative meant Khalief would punish her if she importuned again. She twisted irritably on the rug at his feet, searching for an approach.

“Caroline.” His use of her name was ominous. “You’re in a mood I don’t trust. Get handcuffs.”

Caroline obeyed her lord, but listlessly, her mind still racing. When she knelt and proffered both the chrome circlets and her wrists she bestowed her most winsome smile. “Forgive me, lord. I am but a foolish female.”

“Craft and designing. You should be beaten daily.” He slowly tightened the bands upon her, emphasising each click of the cuff. “I wouldn’t put it past you to do something really foolish for that girl.”

“Thank you, lord.” Caroline repossessed her hands and admired the shining metal now joining them. “Would you like me to fetch a cane?”

“No. Unless I’m brutal you enjoy it.”

“You are never brutal with me, lord.”

“You know damn well I am. You’d ride over me roughshod if I wasn’t.”

“You are too sweet to me, lord. Please be brutal now. Tie me for a while in Trudy’s place? It will teach me a lesson.”

The President of Zindawba shook his head sadly.

“Very well.” It was as though he was conceding a defeat. “You may go and fetch me the cane you like the least.”

Caroline Dowling knew herself privileged. She had become Mistress of the Residency as well as Mistress of the man who ruled Zindawba. That she was frequently demoted to the most humble of slaves bothered her not at all. The Residency staff was forced to make frequent adjustments to her unstable status, viewing her in costly raiment or nude in chains with equal aplomb. Their impersonal acceptance of her in any condition simplified her life enormously. Even when she was sent to Mr. Assad to be whipped he performed the delightful task with exceeding charm, marking her skin with an artist’s skill. They were the best of friends. The handcuffs did not matter. They would not stop her. She knew they had been locked on her wrists as a symbol, a warning. She felt guilty in abusing the trust they actually implied. Khalief often clasped them on her wrists, knowing she adored wearing them. For Caroline too they had a symbolism all her own. Within their confinement she had perfected a remarkable dexterity.

It was dusk, approaching night. Caroline’s only disguise was the black and anonymous wraparound. It hid her dress. It hid the handcuffs. It hid the knife. It hid even the colour of her skin, making her one with the Moghata evening. The town was no metropolis, her destination was little more than half a mile.

The two girls gazed at each other in shock. The bindings upon Trudy’s nakedness were even more cruel than Caroline had expected. But she herself was an incongruity in her frock, her perfume and her handcuffs. The girl tied to the post belonged, but Caroline was not of Moghata.

“Oh, darling, you shouldn’t have come! Or did he let you?”

Caroline laughed softly and kissed the taut breasts. “He doesn’t know. Poor dear man, he thought the handcuffs would prevent—a sort of stern warning . . . !”

“You shouldn’t be here, should you?”

“Well, maybe not.” Caroline nibbled a responsive nipple. “But it’s such ages since I had you, then, when they told me what they’d done to you . . . and the reason—I had to come.”

“You’ll be whipped, won’t you!”

“If he finds out,” Caroline chuckled. “I’m going to give you six orgasms, just the way you are! Then I’m going to cut you loose, give you this awful black thing and the knife, and then I’m going to run like crazy . . . could be I’ll make it O.K.”

“But you mustn’t! The risk—!”

“Want me to stop nibbling?”

“Well no, it’s lovely. But, oh gosh, this is crazy—”

“Nuhnuh! You can easily tell ’em some cock and bull story ’bout bad men cutting you loose to screw you: and you escaping . . . ! Besides, you haven’t a thing to say about it, you’re helpless.”

“You telling me! I can’t even twitch. Oh, Caroline . . . ! Oh, darling—! Oh—oh—oh!”

“That’s right. Just keep gasping. I’ll do the work.” Caroline’s admonition was muffled by pubic hair and the nuzzling of pouting lips.

For a long time neither girl said anything articulate.

When the last gasp had died away and Caroline had explored her mouth for tenacious pubic hairs she said with firm decision: “I’ll cut the ropes now, your arms first. Then lean on me as I cut on down.”

They clung, breathing heavily, wallowing in proximity. Trudy was sobbing tears of joy and relief. The peeling away of the strictures within her flesh had been agony, but it was done . . . past! Caroline’s assurance was infectious. Somehow everything would work itself out. She would think of a story, and in the meantime she was not hurting anymore. She had been bound to the ‘T’ for four or five hours: it had punished her cruelly, but it was done! Naughty little Trudy was reprieved, reprieved, reprieved . . . ! She clung and hugged her gorgeous Caroline in an ecstasy of love. It was the elder girl who first beheld their doom.

Caroline tensed, stricken. Trudy turned in alarm.

Both gazed in trepidation at the male statue, a black silhouette in the night, silent and accusing. With a despairing sob, Caroline flung herself at the feet of judgment. “Punish me. Don’t punish Trudy. It’s all my fault—I planned it all—” She clung in frantic appeal to the male leg with her chained hands, rubbing it with her cheek and moaning penitence. Suddenly she tensed again, thrusting herself away, looking up in horror. The man was not Khalief Abhad.

It was Nicholas Nykobe. It was a tense moment: the three of them assessing what they saw. A deep rumble of amusement welled from the rebel leader’s throat. In a pure female instinct Trudy sped to take the pose the older girl had relinquished in fear. She clutched the massive legs in thankful security, she had no need of words. It was Nykobe who spoke first.

“I came as soon as I heard.” He picked up the nude trooper and cradled her possessively, shrewd fingers finding the deep weals the ropes had left in her flesh. His arms held Trudy, but his scrutiny was fastened on Caroline. “And who have we here? What’s your name, woman?”

“She has to go.” Trudy was trembling. “She came to cut me loose. She’s in danger—”

In a sweep of lithe motion, Nykobe set his love upon her feet and grasped Caroline by the arm. “I asked your name, girl?”

“It’s Jenny Smith,” Caroline said blandly, hoping he could not hear the pounding of her heart.

With both hands he held her at arm’s length, looking her up and down in growing comprehension. “And why does Jenny Smith wear handcuffs?” he asked drily.

Trudy was tugging at his arm. “It’s her husband,” she said wildly. “They do it for amusement. Let her go so she doesn’t get caught—she’s been so kind to me. Please, lord . . . ?”

Nykobe seemed not to hear. “She’s caught already, beloved child.” His teeth showed white in a pleased smile. “This is my lucky day. I get my little trooper back, and also the President’s whore. The gods are kind to Nicholas Nykobe.”

Caroline wrenched herself free and fled. He caught her easily in four leaps, pinning her to the ground with a cruel knee while he pealed a bird call into the night. When the black bulk of the Jeep slid whisperingly and without lights to stop beside the strange trio, he spoke a single demand: “Rope.”

Caroline could not fight him. He was as strong as Khalief Abhad. She knew herself captured, a helpless prey, the spoil of war. Against the battering of Trudy’s small fists and frantic demands, she uttered a gentle: “Hush, darling . . . hush! He has to take me. Don’t you see—I’m too good a prize to pass up.”

“But it’s all wrong! It’s so unfair,” Trudy wailed. “Please, lord, let her go . . . Oh, please let her go.”

Caroline gasped at a familiar pain. Strands of rope had circled her elbows and were tightening inexorably. Deft dark fingers arranged her forearms and her cuffed hands at her waist before the ruthless cinching drew her elbows close at her back and knotted them safely. She was now helpless. The bite of metal on her wrists combined with the scorch of rope on her arms made her a subservient package easily handled. She thought of Khalief and knew the bitterness of despair.

Nykobe stood erect. Chuckling, he repossessed his distraught trooper and held her nudity close. “Do I have to tie you too, love?”

“No, of course you don’t! Oh well, perhaps you’d better—! Oh damn, damn, damn, I just don’t know! Let her loose—let her loose! Oh please?”

“No, child, she’s worth more than an army—”

“You mean you’re going to hold her for ransom to try and make the President do what you want? Then, if he won’t, you’ll do things to her—horrible things . . . ?”

“It is war, little one. Get in the Jeep, in front with me. The sooner we are gone the better.”

“Help! Help—someone help . . . !”

Trudy’s desperate cry echoed eerily across the open space and was lost in darkness. In swift gentleness Nykobe pinned her down and tied her wrists and elbows behind her back, thrust rag into her protesting mouth and tied it tight. Thoughtfully he gagged Caroline too. Both girls ceased to struggle. He lifted Trudy into the Jeep while his henchman disposed Caroline into the back. He tied her ankles and tugged them up to her elbows to make her the smallest and most helpless bundle of femaleness possible. He crouched beside her, smelling heavily of sweat. The motor came to life. Caroline could not move but she could weep. If the soldier noticed her tears he gave no sign.

“The President’s spies haven’t found this place yet.” Nykobe busied himself with the checking of blinds upon the windows and the adjustment of electric lamps. They had heard the purr of the generator as they had been carried from the Jeep. “Just an isolated farmhouse,” he chuckled. . . . loaned.”

Caroline’s ankles had been freed. The two tied and gagged females stood in penitence before their lord, mute but inwardly seething. Nykobe eyed them with the paternal benevolence of a school principal to whom a pair of delinquent damsels have been sent for correction. “If I remove your gags, may I expect a reasonable silence?” he inquired drily.

They nodded.

Endowed with speech, Caroline asked, woodenly:

“Punish me, not her. She was only trying to help—”

“It was I who cried out, lord. Punish me! Poor darling, she—”

Nykobe laughed at their concern, waving it away with a gesture. “Not that again, please! I refuse to punish either of you.” Amusedly, he untied his beloved’s hands and arms. “There! You are free. Are you going to run away?”

“No.” She sparkled up at him. “But please untie—”

He held up a hand to stem the flood. “Yes, yes, yes! I know! Please untie darling Caroline because her elbows hurt . . . !” He motioned to his hostage. “Come here.”

The President’s Mistress obeyed, turning her back and standing still while her elbows were relieved of their biting strictures. She sighed in relief and said a polite “Thank you.”

“You’ll have to wear those handcuffs, I don’t have a key.” He frowned at her. “I have to remember you’re a prisoner. I suppose you’d run if you got the chance?”

“Yes.”

Nykobe nodded. “A good honest answer. I’ll try and not burden you with opportunity.” He went to a cupboard, rummaged, and returned with a collar and chain. “Hold still. Tilt your chin.”

Caroline knew herself blushing as the strong fingers fitted the metal circlet on her throat and pressed it tight to make its lock respond with a daunting click. It was snug upon her neck, obviously fashioned for a woman. The chain tether was long, he dropped the handful of links on the floor and padlocked its end round an upright support for the roof. It would need an earthquake or a key to set her free. She felt shamed, but made no demur. It was Trudy who exclaimed:

“But you’ve chained her like a dog! Collars are beastly—and all that chain—!”

“Trudy, keep quiet.” It was Caroline the captive who admonished. “Mr. Nykobe’s being quite kind to me. There’s enough chain so I can sit at the table with you. I simply can’t run away. Look, I’ve got quite a lot of freedom.” She paced back and forth to the limits of her tether. “See, it’s not really cruel—I don’t hurt.”

“Mrs. Dowling is a sensible woman,” Nykobe approved. “She will make an admirable hostage. Help her remove her clothes, Trudy. She looks absurd attired for a tea party.”

“How can I get her clothes off, the way you’ve got her fixed!”

Caroline, ruefully, tore at her clothes herself, her joined hands making the task difficult. Why make a fuss! If Nykobe wanted her naked he would ensure she was stripped. “You haven’t a stitch on yourself, y’know, dear.” She comforted a sulky girl whose hands were reluctant to her lord’s command.

“With daylight we make a run for it,” Nicholas Nykobe informed his women soberly. “We cannot stay here. Now we sleep.”

“But, please lord, what are you going to do with Caroline?” Trudy persisted dangerously.

“She is a hostage. Her price is half of Zindawba.” The prisoner was stricken. “Abhad will never pay that! When he refuses, what will you do with me?”

“We will consider the means of your execution tomorrow,” said Nicholas Nykobe blandly. He stretched out on the floor. “The two of you may hold each other for comfort. If you utter another word you will both be thrashed.”

The silence in the room was heavy with unspoken words.

The sound of the trucks had no more than become audible when the door burst open, light flooded, and Khalief Abhad stood, huge and menacing in the glare, an automatic rifle at the ready. He wore only a breech-clout. At his back were soldiers, their rifle barrels hungry for the trigger. Two of the trio on the floor were prudent in immobility. Caroline was trembling in shame and longed only to die.

“We followed,” Abhad said simply. He smiled at the startled and naked member of his Guard. “My apologies, child. We used you as bait for the tiger.” He turned his regard upon his mortified Mistress but said no word, waiting . . .

Mrs. Caroline Dowling disengaged herself from loving arms. At the full length of her neck tether she knelt in submission before her Master. “I am guilty, lord,” she said without emotion. “I am guilty, I do not plead.”

“You will be flogged.”

“Of course, lord. It is only proper.”

“I trusted you!”

Caroline wept piteously.

“By setting your little sweetheart free you nearly ruined our whole plan—a few minutes either way—!” Khalief was angry.

The delinquent sobbed. “Yes, yes, punish me!” Khalief pointed a commanding finger at a nude trooper about to burst into speech. “Quiet, you! I don’t want to hear.” He winked sardonically. “If the just punishments of your lesbian love are too much for you to bear I may allow you to share them. But if you go to prison for five years it is by your own persistence.” Abhad smiled inwardly at the visible impact of this pronouncement upon the naked girl. “Or perhaps you would like to resume your twenty-four hours on that post?”

Trudy wept too. Their future seemed bleak. She slithered over to Nykobe and wet his chest with her own wet cheeks. “I am sorry, lord. Oh—oh—oh damn everything! It’s all gone wrong!” She nestled into the cradle of his arms.

“Most touching!” The President sounded genuinely regretful. “You will forget him, child. Believe me, time will erase—”

“When d’you intend to have me shot?” Nykobe inquired.

“Immediately would be pleasantly simple.” Abhad examined his enemy reflectively. “But I suppose I had best extract the most political profit from a magnificent trial as a prelude to the firing squad. Imagine what the world’s press will make of it!”

“This girl? Will you harm her?”

“No. Her infatuation for you is no doubt a natural reflex of her glands. Actually she deserves some honour. She is a member of my Guard. She will return to its ranks, esteemed by all.”

Caroline knew herself so totally condemned she could toss caution to the winds. Unconsciously she reverted to the Mrs. Robert Dowling of long ago. “Khalief, don’t be so mean! You don’t have to kill this poor man—or take his girl away. They love each other.”

“How kind of you to explain.” Abhad’s voice was cold.

“Oh, don’t sound so stuffy! Why don’t you offer Mr. Nykobe some sort of job? I’m sure he’d make a good—”

“Silence, woman!” Nicholas Nykobe was outraged. “I need no woman to plead—and as for working for this vulture—!”

“See, you’re just as bad as he is!” Caroline turned her feminine fury on the disgruntled rebel. “You men, you’re all the same—sound and fury! And we could have had the nicest wedding—!”

“Can you run a nation when you cannot control a woman!” Nykobe glared at his enemy, scoring heavily with sarcasm.

“Would you happen to have a cane or whip around this place . . . ?”

The warring males had become allies against a woman’s scorn. With thudding heart, Caroline watched her lord and master take the limber length from his enemy and flex it in satisfaction. Without a word, she tossed her head in disdain and positioned her ready nakedness, bent forward, her linked hands on each side of the post to which her neck was chained. Her pink bottom was a perfect target.

The President of Zindawba thrashed his Mistress with cold skill. Caroline knew he would not have hurt her so much had Nykobe not been watching. She kept her moans and cries to the barest minimum she could manage as the cane cut and sliced her flesh.

“Thank you, lord. I was impertinent.”

Caroline was panting with the pain, but was a woman possessed. Kneeling submissively, she looked at the two dictators impartially. “Please. please—don’t you see! You can be friends. You don’t have to keep killing . . . ! You’ve got Trudy and me: when you’re angry, whip us! That’s what women are for. Don’t you both feel better now for having cut my bottom half to bits?” She glared at a startled Nykobe. “Do you want to have a go at me now? I’ll bend over if you do. Or would you sooner use a whip on my back?”

“Abhad—this woman—!” Nykobe was groping. “Whip her yourself.” Khalief’s voice was sardonic.

Caroline, panting, watched the rebel go again to his drawer. This time he turned holding the black snake of a whip. Without thinking, she advanced to wrest it from him, but was snubbed short by her collar. In frustrated fury she followed impulse. She picked up the strip of rug and heaved with all the strength of her fettered hands . . .

The feet of Nicholas Nykobe followed the rug.

The massive bulk of their owner sat on the floor with a thud. The whip flew from his hand. Caroline picked it up. There was a terrible silence.

Trudy giggled. Within seconds the room was an uproar of hilarity. The man on the floor laughed loudest. Only Caroline remained sober. Dragging her chain until it was taut upon her neck, she proffered the whip to Khalief Abhad. “You whip me, master. I belong to you.” She returned to the post and flattened her nakedness against it, her handcuffed wrists above her head.

“The key to her collar, Nykobe: let me have it.” She stood, trembling, as the metal band was taken from her neck. She turned to see Abhad pick Trudy up and toss her at the man who had risen from the floor. “Take this child and the Governorship of the Province.” Khalief’s voice was fierce. “Is that enough?”

Nicholas Nykobe held mischievous nudity possessively. His words were firm. “It is enough, lord.”

The President of Zindawba picked up his thrashed Mistress and carried her out to the car.