Beloved bonds

6 Discipline

The Troop was grateful for its shoes. The issue had not been popular. But Warrant Officer Ringbolt’s insistence had been firm. The girls had put on the utility footgear with mutinous mutterings which had got several bottoms severely caned. But now they were thankful for an old campaigner’s wisdom. The President’s Guard could march with the best the regular Army could muster.

There were rumours. They were going to war; certainly their rifles had been loaded in with them in the truck that took them the first seventy miles. They were going to escort and impress a neighboring dictator. As far as Trudy could tell they were simply exhibiting their prowess for the edification of the voters. Beholding their excellence, no citizen could doubt Khalief Abhad’s insistence on only the best. They marched their circuit from village to village and were roundly cheered. Their uniforms provoked high praise and equally elevated erections.

Warrant Officer Ringbolt was in his glory. Since he was no longer a member of the ruling race he conceded leadership to Sergeant Galla and Captain Rulua. He himself, resplendent in uniform and medals, marched at the side of the column. His commands might have been heard in the next emergent nation. His bellow was impressive. Their route coincided with fairs, gala occasions, fiestas, the opening of public buildings and the like. They added a touch of class. They were serenaded by the President’s Brass Band whose martial music was easy to march to and whose trumpetings stirred patriotic fervour at every stop. Their rendition of the national anthem was often confused by the older members stoutly playing “God Save the Queen” whilst the younger recruits blared away with “Hail, Hail, Zindawba.” Trudy often wanted to giggle. But she also glowed with pride as the brass rumbled resonantly and the sound of their marching feet made a cadence of its own.

Trudy sensed an undercurrent. They were going somewhere, a destination as yet undisclosed. Sometimes she caught Rulua, Galla or the W.O. watching her speculatively as though in expectation of her seeing the tour as an opportunity to escape. Certainly escape was an ever-recurring thought, but it was impractical. She would be easily caught, and terribly punished. She seized an opportunity to confront the sergeant.

“Galla, if you’re uneasy about me, chain my ankles at night, I won’t mind, honest I won’t.” Galla was surprised. “More like I chain Maisie and Daphne than you.” She giggled. “None of you’s going to run.”

“But there’s something on your mind about me. What is it?”

Galla kissed her. “You do fine, love. Mr. Ringbolt, he’s real proud of you.” She groped around for something plausible. “We soon coming to a big town. You heard of Tulabe? The President’s going to be there and a lot of big doings. The troop’s going to have a hard day. We’s goin’ to be right out front.”

With that Trudy had to be satisfied. What did it matter! Her more immediate concern was the servicing of Warrant Officer Ringbolt.

“Never did manage our little tête-à-tête.”

“No, sir.” Trudy looked around the very masculine tent and at the man who surveyed her benignly from under beetling brows. She was trapped and knew it. She wished she could accept his insertion within her body with a better grace and less revulsion. She had thought a lot of his ‘option’ and recoiled from that too. As though it was the voice of a stranger she heard herself say. “I think I’ll take the cane this time, sir, if you don’t mind.”

He was surprised. She sensed chagrin. “Humph! Any reason?”

“I expect it’s all the marching, sir, and the excitement. I guess I’m just not—in the mood.”

“Huh! Damn gels and your moods! Well, what’s it to be: palms, soles, or buttocks?”

“Oh, not my bottom, sir!”

He laughed shortly. “Still sore, eh! That day on the post did you a lot of good. Off with that uniform and let’s see what your little arse looks like now.”

There was no help for it. Woefully, Trudy laid her lovely uniform across a chair and stood before her superior officer, naked. Letting him look his fill, she slowly turned and bent with hands on knees for his inspection.

“Damn me, you’re nearly healed! Not much left of that sandpaper.”

“No, sir, It’s been quite a while.”

“Sure you don’t want ’em across your rump?”

He sounded solicitous. “It’s the best place—and I do like to see a young rump bounce under the cane.”

“That hurt me so much, sir, I’d rather not. Could I have them on the soles of my feet?”

“You ever have your soles whipped?”

“No, sir.”

“It’s pretty bad, y’know—and the marching you’re doing? How about your hands?”

“Rulua caned my hands a couple of times, sir. It makes them all numb and fumbly for a couple of days.”

“Hmmmm!” The W.O. was obviously pondering the capriciousness of females. “Want to be tied for it?”

“Yes please, sir.”

Trudy did not want any of it. But she meekly lay on her back and allowed the military martinet to bind her ankles, one on each side of the tent pole at an elevation of about two feet. “Needn’t bother with your hands.” he said gruffly. “You can’t do much but watch.”

The watching was bad. She would see it all, every hateful stroke. The soles of her small feet were offered in poignant helplessness, she could scarcely move them. Agonizedly, her eyes followed Ringbolt as he selected the cane. A slender thing, vicious!

“Are you likely to scream, m’dear?”

She was! She knew she was! And in a tent . . . !

The whole camp would hear her shame. Trudy passionately did not want the troop to listen to the cries she would emit because the soles of her feet were being beaten. “I’m afraid so, sir. Can I please be gagged?”

“Not much sense with your hands free.”

“But something to bite on, sir.” The nude victim was feeling desperate and a little ridiculous. “I think in the old days they gave you a bit of wood or something . . . ?”

“Capital! Don’t want a fuss. Damn sensible gel!”

She wondered why, if he liked her, he could not forego this sadistic pleasure. But, no doubt, he would point out that if she liked him she would willingly spread and offer himself to be pierced. Perhaps this craggy-faced lonely man deserved pity. His life seemed barren except for the girls . . . The troop was all he had. It was while he rummaged in a box that sounds came from the entrance and Sergeant Galla joined the scene.

“Ooops, sorry!”

“I had it here somewhere,” the W.O. muttered absently. “The very thing. The gel wants something to bite on.”

“You mean you’re getting the soles of your feet beaten, love?” Galla was aghast.

“I’m—I’m afraid so. It’s a sort of option.”

“Yes I know!” The sergeant’s voice was terse. “You don’t want to be fucked. You’re crazy.”

“Does it hurt that bad?”

“You can’t imagine it, dear. Have him do something else.”

“I’m scared, My poor bottom !”

“You’re being ridiculous.” Galla was not much older than the bound and naked girl on the floor, but she easily assumed a maternal authority on a subject with which she was well familiar. “What’s so awful about our own W.O. shoving his dink in your pussy!”

“I make a nice job of it. Ask any of the girls,” Ringbolt offered patiently.

“You might enjoy it,” said Galla.

Trudy felt she had somehow been put in the wrong. She was being unkind, unappreciative and rude. But she was sure she should not feel, in this enforcement of the act of love, like a cow being escorted to the bull. The soles of her feet seemed a small price to pay for purity. “Must it be all ten strokes at once?” she asked plaintively.

“I can make it twenty,” W.O. Ringbolt said stiffly.

“Tell you what,” Galla the peacemaker suggested brightly. “Give the poor dear one to start with, and we’ll take it from there.”

“I’m disappointed in her,” said the W.O. sadly. “She seemed a real sensible gel.” He struck the bottom of Trudy’s left bound foot with a fearful accuracy.

Trudy’s ankles were tied tightly to the post. But the rest of her matched her scream of outrage and despair. She became a whirling tangle of flailing arms, taut belly and vibrating breasts. She beat on the ground with small impotent fists, her hair flew from side to side as she shook her head wildly in negation of her agony. She did not care how she might appear before her audience. She was possessed of a need to demonstrate the awfulness of what had been done to her. Pain was lancing into her being in great sweeping waves from her punished foot.

“Only nine more to go,” Ringbolt said heartily. “She can’t,” said Sergeant Galla decisively.

“She won’t be able to walk, let alone march. Look, I’m taking charge of this little operation—such a silly fuss!”

The W.O. watched with interest. Trudy was past caring, but she spared a dubious glance as Galla took the rope from the tied ankles on the pole and bound one alone at the base. She took the other and dragged it to one side. “Go ahead, Mr. Ringbolt,” she said helpfully. “She’s all yours.”

“Damn practical.” The W.O. removed his brief trousers. “Hold on to that ankle.” He surveyed his field of operation, no doubt mapping his strategy. “Pity the little dear’s so obstinate. Damn beautiful little trick, actually.” He knelt between the taut tanned legs.

The mind of the half-tied girl about to be ravished was awhirl with confused emotions. Paramount was relief. No more pain! Instead, there would be an act which, under different circumstances, could bestow great joy. She had experienced that joy a number of times under varying illusions of love. She was no virgin. Choosing pain had not been to protect a maidenhead: only a girl’s roseate concept of the immaculate. She looked up at Galla’s concerned features and smiled. This way was best. A whip had the power to direct a girl’s steps. In maiden indecision it was a friend. Girls should not have to make up their own minds, it should be done for them by their elders or by a rampant cock. Gratitude welled. In an emotion she could not fathom, she held out a welcoming hand to the craggy male features now so close. With an unsuspected gallantry the Warrant Officer raised it to his lips and kissed it gently before he mounted.

The next incident of their march across Zindawba concerned the girl, Nikola. It began with a whispered confidence in the washroom.

“Trudy, love, I’m in trouble.”

Trudy checked an involuntary glance at a taut dusky tummy. “Your boyfriend?” she asked with feminine intuition.

Nikola giggled. “No, I ain’t pregnant. But he aims to make me. He’s following right along. He’s got an old car. He says that, bein’ in a tent, I got a chance to escape. He say I must.”

“That’s easy,” said Trudy practically. “Just tell Galla and ask her to chain your ankle every night.”

“I already done that. She say I big girl now and don’t need no chain. She say I should play with my clit, then I not get hot for him the way I do.”

“O.K. Then tell your boyfriend to play with himself and go home.”

“Oh, Trudy, don’ joke. He swear he come to tent and get me.” She giggled. “Yo’ knows how’s men are when they got a stiff cock.”

“Then have W.O. Ringbolt talk to him. Ringbolt will scare him off.”

“Then he get in trouble, maybe go to prison.”

“Nikola, you’re letting this bother you. What d’you want me to do?”

“You run away with me? I scared alone.”

“Absolutely no! We’d both be flogged. I’d have thought you’d have more sense after that time when you were tied to the tree.”

“Oh, I got more sense but he ain’t! He comes to the tent at night to get me, and we both get caught. I’ll get flogged anyway and he’ll go to prison.”

“The whole thing’s absurd,” Trudy vowed without conviction. “Just to be safe I’m going to ask to have my ankle chained at night. Then you can’t prey on my sympathy.” She gently patted a dusky arm. “Don’t do anything silly. Run to Galla or the W.O. instead.”

“But I love him!” Nikola wailed.

“It’s a disease,” Trudy admonished. “One day they’ll invent a pill.”

It happened that night. Galla had laughed but provided a padlock: Trudy’s ankle was safely chained to her bed. It was a nice feeling to be absolved from decision or collusion. She slept. But the end of her slumber was abrupt. Somewhere in the night her chained foot was wrenched from beneath the covers, there was a loud snap and her ankle was free. Beside her cot a dark male shape pridefully held up a pair of bolt cutters. Beside him was a naked Nikola.

With disaster knocking at her door, Trudy could think of nothing more than: “Go away. Leave us alone. You’re crazy.”

For answer, the male grabbed her wrist and muttered softly: “You come.”

Later she was to bitterly regret her failure to scream. That was the time for it. But Nikola’s imploring eyes and something about the boy’s voice kept her mute. Fearful of disturbing the sleeping girls, she allowed herself to be led, naked, from the tent. The grip on her wrist was firm and strong.

“This here is George,” Nikola said pathetically. “Get away from the tent where we can talk.”

Trudy demanded.

The male fingers round her wrist led them to the battered car, a dark shape across the dirt road beneath a tree. When she opened her mouth to expostulate, a rag was thrust within, she was tripped to the ground, and a minute later her hands were tied behind her back and her feet stoutly trussed.

“George, you crazy! She my friend.”

Nikola’s shocked exclamation was lost in another whirl of motion. George was a very strong young man. After the ropes were knotted round her wrists and ankles, his inamorata wailed softly:

“Why you tie us up, George?”

“So you do what I want,” said George with relish.

“But poor Trudy . . . ? We’s both helpless.”

“That’s right. She do what I want too.”

“Let us loose or I’ll scream.”

“No you won’t. You scream, I gag yo’.”

Nikola did not scream. A helpless Trudy had little hope she would. They were doomed, both of them. She moaned and fought her gag while George tied her elbows tight together with a single strand of rope. The pain was instant, it would keep her pliant to his will. There was more to George than she had expected. Nikola escaped this extra infliction just as she escaped a gag. George sat his impotent girlfriend in the front seat of his car and tossed the trussed helplessness of Trudy into the back. He was lithe and swift and strong in all he did.

The gag was implacable, so was the elbow cord. They reduced the white girl’s nudity to a few useless wigglings which she soon desisted. They hurt! The pitch and toss of the car on rutted roads was bad enough. The sagging shanty in the unnamed village was perfect for their disappearance, anonymous! The bound and naked girls were carried inside.

Nine men, all varying degrees of black. George proud and grinning. Nikola weeping softly. Two kerosene lamps defeating the shadows from which there rose a man, a man with the calm presence of authority. Trudy, from the chair on which she had been uncomfortably positioned, sensed him as ‘The Leader.’

“I am Nicholas Nykobe,” he said in cultured English. “I bid you welcome. Miss Ramsay. I hope you will join our cause.” Deftly, he whisked the wadding from her mouth.

“I don’t want to join anything,” Trudy said bluntly. “Please untie me.”

Nykobe cut the cord from her elbows, that was all. “You have heard of us?” he asked politely. “The People’s Party?” Trudy sniffed at the hackneyed platitude. “Could I have some clothes, please, or something to cover me? I’m naked.”

“So I noticed,” Nykobe acknowledged drily.

“But we too are naked. It is no dishonour in Zindawba.”

George interposed anxiously. “That girl, she be mine, sir, when yo’ finish with her? She not be passed around . . . ?” Nykobe waved an imperious arm in the direction of the distraught girlfriend. His voice was contemptuous: “Take that weeping wench away and plant your seed in her, it is what you both want.”

“She be all mine, sir?”

“For now, yes. Take her and go!”

George picked Nikola up as though she was a doll. The girls exchanged one despairing glance before she was whisked away to loving ravishment. Trudy wondered, bitterly, if he would bother to untie her first. She looked up at one of the finest male physiques she had ever seen and asked despondently: “What do you want of me?”

“You occupied a cage, Miss Ramsay.”

“Not by choice,” she said warily.

“In a distant part of this land, an area we still control, there is a town, in it a market place, there too a cage!” His eyes glowed. “I want you in that cage. I want you to speak to all who pass of your admiration for our cause. You are educated, you are white. I want you to tell of the decadence and decay of your race and the resurgence of the African. Will you do this?”

“You have no problem, Mr. Nykobe. If you whip me enough I’ll do anything. Surely you understand I’ve already found that out.”

He smiled charmingly. “Ah yes, but you do hold cards, Miss Ramsay. In the cage you will be naked. It would be inconsistent with your affirmations that your loveliness bear the weals of whips . . .

“You could beat the soles of my feet.”

“Please don’t jest.”

“Isn’t the cage itself a denial?”

“Not if you explain you are in it by choice, that it is symbolic of what you preach.”

“But I wouldn’t be in it by choice!”

“A woman can dissemble, Miss Ramsay?”

“You want me to look cheerful and happy in a cage!” Trudy was frightened but she was also angry. “What will you do to me if I refuse?”

“You will be fastened by a chain to something solid in a public place. There you will be available to any of my men who wish to honour you with their sperm.”

“I’ll take the job,” Trudy said without humour. “I told you you’d have no trouble compelling me. Do I have to wear my country’s flag around my hips?”

“Thank you, we prefer to see your cunt.”

“I’m a lucky girl,” Trudy said bitterly. “I’ve got a cause.”

Surprisingly, they shared a laugh.

“Sir!” A male voice interpolated urgently. “The uniforms?”

“Didn’t that rutting dolt bring them?”

“No, sir, he forget. He thinking o’ something else.”

“Get him. Bring the girl too.”

Nykobe looked down at his still bound recruit. “I want a pair of those uniforms Khalief Abhad flaunts his whores in. Where are they?”

“On a hook by our cots. We sleep naked.”

“He could have got them?”

“He was busy dragging me, and he had the bolt cutters.”

“Hmmmm . . . and if I send him back?”

“Let me go. I’ll get them.”

“Oh come, Miss Ramsay, I was not born yesterday! What are George’s chances?”

“Possible. If a girl wakes she’ll scream.”

A sweating George and a flustered Nikola were ushered in. The leader gestured. “Fasten the girl, you know how.” And to George: “The uniforms, idiot! You forgot them. Go back and get them. If you fail, the girl is no longer yours.”

Trudy cringed at Nikola’s fate. Without preamble, two men took her, tied her hands, wrists crossed, behind her back, and hoisted her arms by a rope thrown over a rafter and tugged. Her fingers splayed wide as she bent forward against the wracking of her shoulders. When her heels left the floor the rope was snubbed and she was left to teeter helplessly. As an afterthought they spread her feet apart and tied them down to the floor. Her plight was grievous.

“Think you can hurry, boy?”

The boy took a frightened look at his tractioned lady-love then sped to the door. His car roared into the distance.

“Please, sir, don’t let nobody do nothin’ to me.”

the female hostage to George’s fidelity quavered. “What could they do, my dear?”

“They could fuck me, sir—the way I is.”

“Would you not enjoy that?”

“No, sir, I belong to George.”

“And George carries a vision of you just as you are.” Nykobe gestured. “Relieve her of the hoist. Leave her hands tied.”

Trudy sighed thankfully. No doubt George was sufficiently inspired. She looked up at her captor, seeing him in a different light. “Thank you. That was decent of you. The poor kid’s innocent of anything.”

“And so are you, Miss Ramsay.” Personally, he untied her ankles. “You won’t mind if the hands stay where they are?”

“No, I suppose not. And thanks again. Why do you want our uniforms?”

“Ridicule. Rub them in the dust as symbols of decadence, a rot within our own land.”

“And when I have served your purpose, what will you do with me?”

“Marry you.”

She stood erect. It felt good to have her feet. She thoughtfully flexed her arms against her corded wrists, looking at Nykobe in disbelief. “But that’s—that’s—!”

“Entirely practical, my dear, I am a Mohammedan. I do not have four wives.”

“But what good would I be to you! I’m just a girl—and white—and I haven’t any money—and, and—”

Nykobe laughed delightedly. “You underestimate yourself completely, Miss Ramsay. You have two of the loveliest breasts I have ever seen on any woman, a flat belly and a lush and shining bush. From what I can see of your cunt it is exceptionally neat and tidy.”

Trudy blushed and was suddenly naked. She had become so accustomed to nudity that, most of the time, she was unaware of it. But this man’s words and piercing regard made her flaringly alive to all her femaleness. Instinctively she tugged at her bound hand, a reflex Nykobe did not fail to note.

“Surely you would not cheat me with your hands?”

“I’m glad they’re tied,” she admitted wryly. “They’d have been tempted, and I hate doing it: a girl looks silly. Look at me all you want.” Mischievously, she stuck out her chest. “Look, I’ll even take a deep breath.”

“You are superlative, a treasure.”

“Not really. I’m just a pretty girl who’s had her inhibitions taken away. Mr. Nykobe: this marriage thing? You’re not serious?”

“Yes, I am.”

“As a Mohammedan’s wife? What would be expected?”

“You would serve me, and be subservient to my first wife, Ayesha.”

“She would beat me, wouldn’t she.”

“You have been reading fiction.”

“Supposing I failed to please you sometimes? Would you beat me?”

“Yes.”

His single word sent her pulse to racing. She laughed diffidently and explained. “I’ve already come to recognise how good that can be for a girl. We’re silly creatures.”

“I do not find you silly.”

“Yet you keep my hands tied as a precaution!”

She gazed at him wistfully. “Thank you for the offer. But—it’s not possible . . .”

Nykobe stroked her hair. “It is very possible.” He paused for effect. “Consider the alternative. You would return to your people and find them no longer yours. You would be discredited, ostracised, something of a pariah. Unjustly considered a traitoress.”

“Damned unfair.”

“The fortunes of war.”

“There hasn’t been any war. I was kidnapped, and since it happened almost everything’s been done to me.” She sparkled at his amusement. “I’ll admit you’re one of my nicer experiences.”

Nicholas Nykobe was pleased with her. Trudy picked up his emanations and was pleased herself. When he clapped his hands and ordered: “Bring refreshments,” she asked, demurely. “Are you going to hold a glass to my lips?”

He chuckled at her persistence. “You want your hands, don’t you! Very well, but you lose your feet.”

She sat and watched her ankles tied again, tied tight to forbid mischief. Then twisted to offer her hands. When he had freed them and she was rubbing chafed wrists she asked, innocently: “Why don’t you trust me?”

“I only met you an hour ago.”

“Yet you’ve already proposed marriage?”

“In the future, after you’ve proved yourself.”

“Naked in my cage?”

“Yes. It’s that simple. At the moment I suspect you cherish loyalties to that absurd troop of chorus girls from which I’ve rescued you.”

“They aren’t chorus girls, they’re girls like me.”

“Abhad has dressed you as sexual exhibits of his monarchy.”

“You’ll both stay tied. Be grateful for the freedom you have. Ah, here we are! Your glass, madam.”

Trudy accepted her drink with pleasure. “What about poor Nikola?” she asked winningly.

“She can kneel beside your chair. You can hold sips to her lips as required. Remember, she is under the influence of concupiscence. Girls in heat are unpredictable. She stays tied. If you seek to free her again I’ll have her back on the hoist.”

Trudy shivered. Steel beneath the velvet! She offered her glass to the girl kneeling at her side. Nikola giggled and drank deep. She finished it off herself in a couple of gulps.

Their host replenished the glass. “Dutch courage, my dears?”

The two girls drained their second glass. Its effect on Nikola was instantly sentimental. “Do you think George really will marry me?” she asked wistfully of no one in particular. She fixed an inviting eye upon Nicholas Nykobe.

It was at that moment the rifle shot split the night. The door was flung open to admit a wide-eyed George. He was clutching a wounded arm, there was blood.

“They’re savages! Hellcats!” His wild gaze traversed the room.

“Who, man, who?” the leader demanded.

“Them!” George’s finger pointed at Trudy and then at his own startled girlfriend. “Them girls! They’re crazy! There’s hundreds!”

The guns appeared from nowhere. A flap was raised in the floor. Before he disappeared into the underground passage, Nykobe gestured fatalistically. “I live to fight another day,” he shrugged. He kissed Trudy’s hand. “Your cage will be polished and waiting . . .”

The flap closed above his vanishing head.

The rifles in the room barked savagely at an unseen foe.

Two men prudently bound Trudy’s hands and Nikola’s feet. There came the crisp rattle of firing and the splintering of the shanty’s walls. Two men dropped to the floor clutching wounds, then another. The bound girls, helpless and petrified, slipped to the floor and lay flat. When one more man dropped his gun and clutched an arm, the rest of Nykobe’s small force raised the flap and followed their leader. George muttered savagely at the hurt survivors and at the two girls: “We tells ’em we’s all there is. There weren’t no one else, see!” A bullhorn blared as the rifles died.

“If the girls are hurt you all die. Come out with your hands at the back of your necks. No guns! You are surrounded. You have one minute only in which to obey.”

It was unmistakably the voice of Warrant Officer Ringbolt.