Message-ID: <10535eli$9804221427@qz.little-neck.ny.us>
From: Citizen@GalaxyCorp.com (Citizen)
Subject: {Leeson}"The Crusader and the Slave Girl"( MF tg ScFi rape )
Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories
Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Path: qz!not-for-mail
Organization: The Committee To Thwart Spam
Approved: <usenet-approval@qz.little-neck.ny.us>
X-Moderator-Contact: Eli the Bearded <story-admin@qz.little-neck.ny.us>
X-Story-Submission: <story-submit@qz.little-neck.ny.us>
X-Original-Message-ID: <353d3ef8.10898157@news.mindspring.com>
Reposter's note: to contact the author, please send e-mail to cdl25@usa.net
THE CRUSADER AND THE SLAVE GIRL
by Christopher Leeson
The slave girl clung to the enameled door jamb like a
butterfly clings to a branch. The knight, behind, growing ever
more angry, shoved her into his bed chamber by main force. She
spun suddenly and struck at his face, taking him aback for only
just an instant. Then he grabbed the girl, twisted her arms
painfully behind her back, and forced her on ahead.
When the nobleman had dragged his captive close to his Saracen
bed, he threw her across its silken sheets and paused to catch his
breath and to admire her. Let the wench rage, he thought, let her
glare at him with hate. He was master here and she only chattel.
-- But such chattel! Her beauty inspired him with fantasies of the
houris, the strumpets of Paradise whom the Saracen poets praised so
fulsomely -- or she might have been instead one of those dark
angels which Satan sends abroad to tempt the faithful to eternal
damnation.
The Crusader only nodded with pleasure as the girl glared up
at him with fierce eyes; even her defiance excited him. His
favorite slave had been well groomed by Tanah, the keeper of the
women's quarter, but her paint and garments were too tame for her
wild spirit. She was like a free-roaming young mare captured on
the desert's fringe, still in need of breaking. He bent closer to
his prize, swatting aside her resisting arms to seize hold of her
beaded girdle. He pulled sharply and it came off in his hand,
along with her meager harem skirt.
"You pig!" cursed the girl in rage and misery.
The knight smiled, reached out, and gripped her flailing
wrists, holding them as firmly as manacles of steel. While the
pair struggled unequally, the thunder roared above the towers of
Belvoir castle. . . .
#
A little less than a year earlier the Crusader Baron Simon
Saint-Mihiel had been climbing another tower, climbing so swiftly
as to leave his men-at-arms well behind, struggling to keep pace.
Gaining the upper landing, the Frank stepped warily inside a
circular chamber which, the Crusader observed, was only a prison
cell, its air thick with old urine, and with the acrid odor of
burning which wafted in through the windows. A length of chain
rattled suddenly and the knight turned en garde toward the sound.
He relaxed as he beheld naught behind him but a nude girl
huddling with her knees drawn up, and a second figure lying
face-down beside her -- a white- haired male in robes of dark
damask cloth.
Saint-Mihiel strode toward the supine figure and jabbed it
with his broadsword. No reaction. The warrior nodded, satisfied
that the old man was dead. The conqueror frowned, puzzling over
the demise of Muawiya al-Tariq, the enemy who had defied his siege
lines for so long. He turned the corpse over and his glance fell
onto the pearly hilt of a stiletto protruding from the wizard's
naked breast.
The Crusader also noted that over the magician's heart was
etched a scar in the shape of a heathen glyph which must have been
burned into the man's flesh long ago. It looked like some symbol
of sorcery and the knight crossed himself to ward off its baleful
magic. As the Frank impulsively drew out the suicide weapon as a
trophy, he noted drops of thin blood dripping off the point.
Clearly, the master of Kala'at Sharwar was not long dead.
Saint-Mihiel stood up. This was a feeble end for the famous
Syrian sorcerer who had, reputedly, kept no faith with the God of
the Mohammedans, but worshiped instead the pagan images of vanished
deities -- gods grown old long before Joshua had destroyed the old
races of Canaan and smashed the blasphemous idols of their worship.
Aye, Saint-Mihiel remembered the strange stories that idlers
told, but he wondered why so many had feared the man so greatly?
For all the warnings he had received beforehand, the Crusader had
found Muawiya al-Tariq to be a commonplace foe. His men were
slaughtered, notwithstanding their stubborn defiance, his castle
had been breached, and the sorcerer himself now lay at his feet in
a wallow of filth, displaying less dignity than might a Moslem
beggar.
Just then Saint-Mihiel's men, puffing breathlessly, stumbled
into the circular room. Saint-Mihiel ignored them and turned
toward the chained girl with the eye of a collector. Her thick
raven hair fell in disarray but her features were handsome; she
could have been little more than nineteen, he thought. Though the
baron had given orders to take no captives, to make a clean sweep,
he was tempted to make an exception of this girl -- the likes of
whom he had not often seen in his twenty-nine years of life.
The beleaguered brunette was looking his way in eager hope,
but Saint-Mihiel felt no pity as he gripped her tresses and hoisted
her to her feet.
"Please, my lord," she said in the bastard mix of French,
Arabic, Greek, and Turkish that served in the Holy Land as a lingua
franca.
"Why are you here, wench?" the knight demanded.
"I am Rhea Artavasdos," she stammered; "my father is a
gentleman of Thessalonica. Pirates sold me into slavery. I am a
Christian like yourself -- free me!"
#
Rain lashed the stones of Castle Belvoir, and tears of anger
blurred the sight of the struggling girl. Already having shed his
tunic, the Crusader held the girl pinned between the vise of his
muscular thighs.
"I'll kill you!" the slave shouted as she clawed for his eyes
but only succeeded in raking his cheek. Growing angrier, the Frank
slapped her and, as she fell back dazed, commenced to tie her
hands. As the girl felt the length of silken cord being looped
around her wrists she implored, "No! Don't!"
The Frank bound her skillfully and then knotted the rope to
the headboard. As the young woman struggled, the knight forced his
mouth against hers. She tore her lips away and spat in disgust but
he persisted, like a thirsting man assailing a water bottle, trying
to force his tongue between her clenched teeth. She could smell
the ale upon his breath, could feel his calloused fingers groping
between her thighs, hurting her with their roughness. . . .
#
Rhea Artavasdos scanned Saint-Mihiel's grim face, as if
seeking to find just a hint of compassion in it. At that moment,
huffing from his long climb, a small man in a piebald cloak
staggered wearily into the cell room. The heat of the Syrian
summer, the smoke and the long ascent, had his fat cheeks running
with begrimed sweat. When the newcomer saw the girl, his sagging
face cast off its fatigue and he raised his hand as if to stay a
fatal blow.
"Saint-Mihiel! For the love of God, let this one live! I
will pay good gold! Remember, Lord, you promised me first pick of
your captives -- but your men are putting everyone to death!"
"On my orders!" the nobleman growled. "This place is tainted.
Deviltry is like a weed. Every seed must be destroyed. You have
no reason to complain, Marco Sciarra. You have made yourself rich
devouring the leavings of my vanguard like a jackal."
"I pay good money for slaves, my baron! Do you think that I
have come so far, endured the lice and the flies, the heat and the
dust storms, for a charnel of rotting corpses? I will pay thirty
bezants for this beauty -- even blemished the way she is."
"Blemished?" Not understanding, the Crusader took a second
look at the girl and now saw that the slaver's keen glance had
indeed spied something that he had himself overlooked. There was
a patch of inflamed skin on her flank, identical to the scar on the
wizard's breast, but much fresher. Saint-Mihiel bent closer. The
mark resembled a burn yet did not look like a brand. It traced a
character of some kind -- meaningless to the warrior who could
neither read nor write. "What is this, slave?" he demanded.
"I am not a slave!" the girl declared stubbornly.
He raised his gauntlet as if to strike. "Answer my question!"
The girl bent her head, resigned. "I don't know what it is,
Lord. Al-Tariq meant to sacrifice me to the strange gods he
worshiped. He applied this mark to prepare me in some manner --
but when you breached the castle wall, he took his own life in fear
of you."
She raised her eyes in desperate appeal. "I implore you,
Lordship. Have mercy on a woman who has been wronged unjustly.
Free me and return me to my family."
"I would be a fool. I have been offered thirty bezants!"
"No, my lord! I am a Christian!"
"You are a Greek, and so a heretic -- worse than an infidel!
Besides," he added more softly, "you are too beautiful to be
anything but a slave."
The young woman buried her face in her hands. Saint-Mihiel
glanced back at one of his men-at-arms. "Break that chain!" he
commanded.
A big soldier thrust the thick handle of his mace thorough the
iron ring which fastened the girl's collar to the limestone wall.
Straining hard, the man threw all his strength against the stubborn
Saracen iron, until a loud snap crowned his exertions with success.
Saint-Mihiel picked up the fallen chain and handed it to
another of his men, a young squire. "Tell the smith to remove her
collar," he instructed the boy, "and have the women prepare her for
my pleasure."
"My lord!" protested the Italian merchant.
"I may yet take your thirty bezants, Sciarra. The wench may
please me enough to keep her -- but if she does not, she is yours."
That night Simon Saint-Mihiel celebrated his victory beyond
the stench of the slaughter by feasting with his officers.
Afterwards, as the smoke-soiled skies grew dark, he raped the Greek
girl -- and well.
#
The thunder rolled. "Aaghh!" the Greek girl yelled, twisting
her head from side to side, straining to make her vaginal muscles
too tight for him. All in vain, as the Crusader's rigid lance
easily forced entry like a mighty battering ram, swinging back and
forth. The girl cried out to Heaven for mercy, for a little
respite, but her appeal seemed rejected in celestial anger as
another roar of thunder drowned out her yelling.
Ignoring her shouting, the knight advanced and retreated at
will, determinedly sawing away at her burning flesh. Another
deafening crash sounded and a dazzling flash lighted the face of
her violator. It cast the Crusader's visage into terrible
highlights and deep shadows, like a carved gargoyle poised grimly
above her. . . .
#
Simon Saint-Mihiel lifted a hand against the light of the
bright Syrian dawn, sleepily thinking on the pleasures of the night
and of the Greek girl's body. She had been clumsy -- like the
virgin that she had claimed to be -- but her beauty had made up for
her lack of skill.
The Crusader had decided while taking her that Sciarra's
silver must be damned; he would keep the female for many another
night like the last one. But the Italian was useful and should not
be sent away empty-handed. He would sell him another of the
several women he already kept. A wise commander did not drag his
army down with excessive camp followers nor make himself a bad
example of voluptuousness to his men.
Suddenly a spark of annoyance banished the Crusader's
euphoria. He was alone! The foolish wench must have slipped away
while he had slumbered! Saint-Mihiel sat up and scanned the
loot-cluttered pavilion. But Saint-Mihiel in rising felt a sway of
unfamiliar weight upon his chest. "Mon Dieu!" he cried as his
fingers fell upon the smooth mounds of flesh that now hung there.
He was still sleep-groggy and did not understand. These alien
extensions were part of his body!
Breasts.
"For the love of sweet Jesus, what --?"
Now Saint-Mihiel's motions made him aware of a rawness between
his legs. He threw back the coverlets and cried out.
He had been unmanned!
The Crusader scrambled to the largest clutter of gold, ivory,
jewelry, and enameled glass. He threw open a strongbox and,
casting aside cups, ornate implements, basins, and candle stands,
seized upon a brightly polished sliver tray. This he lifted to his
face.
With a cry of dismay, the Frank threw the reflector aside like
a thing accursed. He had not seen the hard, mustachioed, and
sun-burned face of Saint-Mihiel, but the olive loveliness of Rhea
Artavasdos!
All Saint-Mihiel's memories of horror, slaughter, and torture
paled now against the terror that now clawed at him. Was he insane
or drunk and in delirium? He turned furiously. No! His mind was
clear. This was magic! The woman whom he had foolishly spared had
cast a delusion upon him! He now swore to kill her! Kill a witch,
it was said, and all her glamours must vanish!
Saint-Mihiel ducked through the tent flap into the vermillion
glare of the mountain dawning. "Guards!" he shrilled, his voice
high-pitched and strange. "It's witchcraft! Sorcery!"
The dust-powdered footmen turned with surprise toward the
lord's pavilion. Many smiled admiringly at the nude girl standing
there in such excitement; laughter and nods passed amongst them.
Before Saint-Mihiel could say another word, a shadow loomed at
his side and he swung toward it with a desperate appeal, but his
thin voice died in the shock of recognition.
The thunderstruck Frank retreated back into the tent and the
other casually stooped to follow him. The man who pursued the
Crusader was the same in face, the same in form, as Saint-Mihiel --
or at least as Saint-Mihiel had been but the day before. The giant
stood up to his full height once inside the tent and stared down at
Saint-Mihiel with an expression that went beyond mere amusement,
hatred, or even contempt.
At that instant Saint-Mihiel became aware of a sore spot upon
his flank and, looking down, saw the scabbing that etched a cursive
mark in his flesh. It was the same mark he had seen in the flesh
of Rhea Artavasdos. The baron looked up in shock, finally
understanding. The witch had possessed him and imprisoned his soul
in her own cast-off body! The mark was some sort of devil's sign
used in the sealing of the spell.
The Crusader burst out with a string of invectives: "Devil!
Fiend! Demon from the Pit! Take away your spell!"
Instinctively, Saint-Mihiel dived for the weapon belt that
hung upon the central tent pole, tearing the familiar falchion from
its scabbard. But as it rasped free, it fell to the floor, almost
too heavy to lift. Before the transformed lord could bring the
unwieldy thing around, the other Saint-Mihiel had lurched forward
to seize the feeble hands that held the blade.
"Monster! Free my soul!" the girl cried out as she struggled
against his overwhelming strength.
Calmly, as if to make a point, the giant squeezed her wrists,
sending streaks of pain up her arms. As the heavy weapon fell from
her benumbed fingers, the enchanted Frank fought back impotently
with barefooted kicks and sinewless punches that did no harm. With
the power of a warhorse, the false baron threw her back upon the
bed.
"You are a tasty morsel," the pretended Saint-Mihiel mocked.
"We must waste no time in accustoming you to your new life."
As the girl watched, the giant stripped off his tunic and his
boots. As it emerged from his breeches, his great organ was
already swollen with lust. But it was not that which terrified
Saint-Mihiel the most, for as yet she could not quite comprehend
what fate it presaged for her. What instead filled the girl with
horror was the sight of the raw and bleeding glyph incised into the
lower belly of the giant -- resembling the burn mark on her own
flank -- and also resembling the scar upon the breast of the dead
sorcerer Muawiya al-Tariq.
Stunned, the Greek barely defended herself as the giant
gripped her and crushed his bewhiskered mouth against hers.
#
The hard rain beat against the masonry, slopping over the
casement, pooling darkly upon the flagstones. This latest rape of
the Greek was a hard one, but this time, to the Crusader's genuine
surprise, the slave was responding in a different way, making
mewing sounds like a bitch in heat, moving under his oppressive
weight in a manner that she had never moved before.
For some reason, the girl had ceased to struggle. Trying to
reawaken the fiery defiance in her, the Crusader pushed his
throbbing cock home again and again. Its great reach ever sought
for her innermost depths, but the Frank only saw her wince, heard
her moan, at what had become merely a physical sensation. . . .
#
In a vast sea of darkness, Saint-Mihiel seemed to drift alone.
There was nothing, not even pain, shame, or fear; her mind wandered
as if lost in an empty dream. Suddenly she seemed to hear a man
whispering as if through many curtained folds of intense blackness:
"You have caused me great loss, Saint-Mihiel, but Muawiya
al-Tariq will have again all that which you would have taken from
him.
Her dreaming self sought for the speaker, but the terrifying
darkness clutched at her even as the voice returned:
"How easy it would be to slay you," it said, "even as you have
slain my servants. But it pleases me more to take your name, your
family, your titles, your wealth, your strength, your virility,
your freedom, and your pride, and let you live on knowing all that
I have done.
"But it shall be a life without honor. By my spell, you
shall be denied the power to speak of who or what you once were.
There is but one fit use that a beautiful woman may be put to.
And finally, when you have been forced for the hundredth time,
your true punishment shall only then begin. Fear it, Saint-
Mihiel. . . .
#
Saint-Mihiel woke. She thought that she had just torn free
from a nightmare, but then she touched herself and cried out. Her
crotch was sore from the giant's brutal use of her and there were
bloodstains on her inner thighs. But shame instantly gave way to
desperation. She looked wildly about. She was alone. She had to
flee now before the sorcerer came back. She had to be free!
Suddenly the tent flaps parted and the woman gasped to see the
giant had returned with Marco Sciarra waddling in train. The
bewitched Crusader tried to cry out to the Italian, to warn him
that a devil walked amongst them, but she had no voice. Only her
agitated panting reached the merchant's fat little ears.
Sciarra noticed the blood on the girl's thighs and smiled,
supposing that the rude Frank had been hard on her the night
before. Good! he thought. Cruel treatment should make her all the
happier to go with him.
"You shall have every bezant that I promised you yesterday,
Saint-Mihiel," he addressed the false baron. "I think I said
twenty, didn't I?"
The knight shrugged indifferently. "Twenty is fair. But I
warn you, the wench is proud and insolent. She fought and bit
incessantly. She must be well-tamed before you find a new master
for her."
"If she needs strapping, she shall have it," promised the
Italian. Then he beckoned to the girl. "Come, pretty one. I am
your master now."
Flabbergasted, the metamorphosed Frank tried to shout: "I am
Saint-Mihiel," but could not manage even the smallest whisper.
Then she tried to form other words and one of these finally came
forth in a plaintive voice:
"Mercy."
"Mercy?" replied the merchant with a shake of his head. "You
shall have mercy when you have earned it! Now, get up!"
When she did not obey him, Sciarra strode toward the girl,
stepping over the bed clothes and locked his fingers around her
slim upper arm. "No more of this! Come or I will punish you!"
With a cry of dismay, Saint-Mihiel struck at the man's thighs
and knees. Annoyed, Sciarra lashed out with the back of his hand.
The girl fell back stunned, tasting the blood on her broken lip,
and in her overwhelmed and distraught state made no more attempt at
resistance.
As the merchant dragged her toward the flaps, Saint-Mihiel
threw a dazed glance back toward the impostor. He was not looking
after her -- indeed, he seemed to no longer care at all about her
fate. He was merely staring into the silver tray that she had
earlier dropped, touching the face reflected in it as if
confronting it for the first time. Then the girl was pulled from
the tent into the painful light of day and Simon Saint-Mihiel saw
the master of Kala'at Sharwar no more.
#
The slave felt her inner body tightening, increasing the
already intense friction. Had her hands been free, she would have
reinforced the Crusader's motions with her own pulls. As it was,
the girl could only lurch her pelvis upward in rhythm to the man's
downward thrusts, increasing his penetration, if only by a little.
When she realized what she was doing, she gasped in astonishment.
In the midst of rape, the act had ceased to be rape.
But if not rape, what was it?
Whatever the captive girl might call the thing that she was
experiencing, her excitement was building into a overwhelming
pressure that needed release. She wanted that release, sought to
find it in the red darkness of her tightly-closed eyes, sought to
surrender to it. To surrender to --
Suddenly the slave gave out with a scream and her entire body
spasmed. The man felt her movement, heard her moan of pleasure and
could not hold himself back any longer. His rush came, filling his
captive's womb with the generous flood of his essence.
Now, at last, the nobleman withdrew his softening cock and
half-rolled away. The girl sank back quietly, spent. She shifted
her blood-shot eyes his way, her lips parted, but she had no words
to speak.
The thunder had quelled and rain now fell softly outside, its
drumming sound soothing the man and woman in their shared bed. A
shower would irrigate the fields, the lord knew, awaken the seeds
in their dark furrows, bring new life and renewal to his land.
The Crusader, Giles D'Avernec, felt pleased with himself as he
lay sleepily at the girl's side. He had for months sought to tame
his slave like some wild creature of Nature. Her reaction told him
that he had finally succeeded. He sensed that matters would be
rather different between the two of them from this night on.
Had that been what he had been seeking? he wondered. Would a
dull, cowed woman, even a beautiful one, please him more than had
the spirited, black-maned mare who had protested so bravely against
his sharp spurs over these several months?
The Crusader took pause.
#
For long hours Simon Saint-Mihiel, known to others as the
slave girl Rhea, lay restlessly in the women's quarter of Belvoir
Castle. The fresh drafts which followed the rain storm fluttered
the curtains and fanned her sweat-dampened body. As her passion
subsided away from D'Avernec's bed, she began to shiver and so drew
a warm sheet over her nudity. In her sleepless dormancy the
painful thoughts of the recent past mocked at her.
Rhea had counted off her rapes one by one, scoring each of
them upon her raw and bleeding soul like the notches a warrior
might cut into the hilt of his sword. It had been the false
Saint-Mihiel who had first ravished her, then it had been the turn
of the fat merchant Marco Sciarra.
And each time that she failed to please the slaver, every
time, in fact, that he had touched her, she had been strapped like
a dog.
For weeks the merchant had forced her to go about with him,
displaying her, sometimes in finery, sometimes naked, before the
wealthiest of the Crusading gentry. Finally, the young Lord Giles
D'Avernec had accepted the Italian's high asking price; this new
Crusader had taken his purchase home to his castle of Belvoir and
raped her the very night which they arrived.
In the early days, at least, the girl had fought back against
the man who would call himself her master. Could she do otherwise?
She had been a knight and though a harsh and ruthless one, Simon
Saint-Mihiel's heart had always brimmed with stubborn courage and
the pride of place.
But, as Rhea, Saint-Mihiel had found herself in a war
unwinnable. D'Avernec was a warrior, as she had been, and
doubtless enjoyed claiming victory in each new test, like a jouster
who carries all before him. The girl might have hated her captor
even more than she did, except that she understood the feelings of
such a man. How could she not?
Painful recollections tormented her. Since he had owned Rhea,
D'Avernec had frequently loaned her to his friends, his officers,
his guests, and sometimes even his favored servants. Rape had
followed rape, and on some days it had come more than once. As the
terrible count mounted, the girl could not forget the sorcerer's
threat -- that her true punishment would begin only with her
hundredth violation. Finally, this night, in the arms of Lord
D'Avernec, that which she had most feared had happened -- she had
been outraged for the hundredth time.
Afraid of what Muawiya al-Tariq's curse might mean, Rhea had
fought D'Avernec as she had not fought back in a long while. But
like her every fight before, this one, too, had been useless.
But now, if the sorcerer's curse was upon her, what was the
meaning of it? Would her body, or her condition, change in some
terrible new way? Rhea touched her breasts, slid her fingers to
her loins. She sensed no change in either her mind or her person.
The only thing that had been different through it all was --
The pleasure.
Rhea had been a woman for almost a year, and often had been
forced to share the bed of a man. But the experience had never
before been like tonight. It was as though her body had suddenly
rebelled against her mind, leaving her wondering and baffled.
As she lay back on her cot, thinking feverishly, Rhea realized
that she had lost the sense of repulsion that had always been her
companion when she submitted to a man's embrace. But if the
loathing was gone, what had replaced it?
Rhea sat up, her fists clenched. She could not go on the way
she had. No, not for one day longer! But what other way was
there?
Impulsively, the girl swung up from her couch and tip-toed
through the sweet, perfumed darkness, through the scented curtains
of the alcove where Tanah, the keeper of his lordship's women,
moaned in heavy sleep. Rhea knelt beside the woman, but at the
last moment hesitated to wake her, unsure of what she wanted to
speak about. Puzzling, her eyes wandered to the full moon which
was shining through an arabesque grate. It seemed as though the
broken light it cast off was spilling precious silver coins across
Tanah's bedclothes. This fascinated the girl and, as if enchanted
by a glamour, Rhea reached out and touched one of them.
Tanah awoke with a start. "Who? -- Rhea? What?"
What could she reply? What kindness could she expect? These
last months had not been easy ones in the women's quarter, neither
for Rhea nor for those who shared it with her.
"You have been patient with me, Tanah," the slave girl
whispered through a dry throat, "but I have not been patient with
you. I am sorry. You must hate me." She bowed her head
penitently.
The elder woman sat up, sleepy and puzzled. "I do not hate
you, child," she yawned. "You are proud and brave, and this I
respect. But you have not been wise. If only you could surrender
to your handsome young master and permit him to be kind to you."
"I want to surrender, Mistress!" the girl asserted without
thinking, but then, realizing what she had said, Rhea's face grew
hot. Fortunately, the darkness hid her flush from the older
woman's notice.
"I don't understand, my sweet. What troubles you tonight?"
"I --" Unable to form words, Rhea covered her face.
"Yes?" Tanah urged gently, drawing the girl's hands away and
stroking her tear-slickened cheek.
"I was with -- the master -- tonight," Rhea began haltingly.
"That you know. But -- but this time it -- pleased me." She
choked on her words and cringed into herself, her face pressed to
the sheets.
"Why do you carry on so, child? What you say fills my heart
with joy."
Encouraged by the soothing words, the younger woman gathered
her courage and looked up. "I -- I am ignorant, Mistress. I know
not what to do, how I should act. I have learned nothing. I would
not permit you to teach me. I am sorry. Now it is too late."
The matron peered thoughtfully into the moonlit face. Then,
like a doting nurse, she drew the maid close, kissing her neck
through her ebony hair. "It is not too late, my sweet! I do not
know what has come upon you so suddenly, but I am glad that it has
finally come. I and the other women will gladly teach you all that
you must know -- how to adorn yourself, to dance, and to drive a
man mad with passion -- if that is what you truly desire."
Was it? It must have been, for Rhea wrapped her arms around
the older woman's neck, like the grateful daughter of a generous
dame.
#
D'Avernec had feasted with his retainers and now lay drunk.
He had seemed pleased with Rhea's belly dance this night. The girl
had hoped that her young lord would be so pleased that he would
summon her, but the knight had drunk too much and had been carried
to his chamber alone. Despite her disappointment, Rhea could not
but smile. Men were like that. She appreciated their ways and
enjoyed their society. How could she not? Had she not been one of
them herself?
Rhea had returned to the women's quarter after the feast, a
plan forming in her nimble mind. She had arrayed her supple, olive
form in a gossamer body veil, had applied scent and paint as she
had learned to do. Then, at last, the plotting slave had stolen
into D'Avernec's darkened chamber.
Breathless with anticipation, the girl now dropped to her
hands and knees and approached the bed slowly, like a cat stalking
its prey. Reaching it, she groped the darkness for her
softly-breathing master. His strong, thick thigh was bare, she
discovered. It pleased her that he wore no hose.
Rhea slipped into the bed next to Lord D'Avernec and gently
took his limp cock into her delicate hands. She acted with
alacrity because she knew that he would not awaken easily after so
much wine. Satan! She only wished that he would! But the harem
girl was determined that he should not wake unless it was to the
most sublime of pleasures. Her eager fingers began massaging his
soft tool, rubbing it lightly, trying to excite it into a mighty
truncheon.
As her hand fondled his quickening phallus, the sound of
D'Avernec's snoring changed a little, but he continued sleeping.
Rhea's fingers surrounded the quiescent flesh as she leaned
forward and let her hot breath flow over its flaccid head. Her
mouth opened wide and she began lapping the warm corona with her
tongue. Though his conscious mind was heavily besotted with wine,
some part of Lord D'Avernec must have remained sensible because the
girl's effort began having its intended effect. The dome of his
cock began to swell, becoming more solid, hardening until it
reached its full length.
Rhea's tongue licked her lord's scepter down to the testicles.
It had by now become a thick-stemmed instrument. This the girl
gripped firmly at its base with her left hand, cupping the man's
stones lightly with her right. Slowly, deliberately, her lips
covered the shuddering head and she began teasing the vein-knotted
underside with the flat of her tongue.
Soon her tongue was pressed flush to the bottom of her oral
cavity and she felt the obelisk intruding into the ring of her
gullet. The longer Rhea played with his organ, the more it
astonished her that her master seemed unable to wake up. She
accepted that as a challenge, however, and her love-starved lips
continued their diligent work. Now the harem girl had more than
half of the throbbing masthead engorged and her rich saliva flow
cascaded down its length. Her nostrils flared, feeding air into
the blazing furnace of her lungs.
Feeling D'Avernec's arms move, Rhea thought that her lord must
be waking at last. But his was a purely reflexive motion and he
continued to sleep. Frustrated, the girl's lips pursed with
determination and she sucked on even more strongly.
The knight's body continued to react and Rhea was encouraged,
her head bobbed up and down with her waxing excitement. She let
her toy slide down deep into her throat, like a sword-swallower
admitting a blade. Finally, she had the entire length of it
between her lips, leaving no room for her fingers. She filled with
pride, for she knew that only one other girl in the castle -- the
one who had taught her the art -- could do what she had just done.
Rhea's long fingernails now dug into the hard cheeks of
D'Avernec's bums while her teeth bit into the base of his
cock-stem, thinking to stimulate her lord with just a little pain.
It seemed to work; she felt the beginning of a throbbing between
her jaws.
Mon Dieu! she thought. The knight would come if she kept up
her mischievous assault. Rhea only wanted his manly tower to
attain enough length and hardness to fill her womanly receptacle
and did not wish it to exhaust itself uselessly in her mouth. So
she ceased her phallic worship at that point and changed position,
climbing astride him, straddling his hips, sitting upon his thighs.
In this commanding position, Rhea took D'Avernec's erection
into both her hands, moving it toward the lubricated lips of her
small cony, pushing the blood-swollen corona between the soft
labia. She savored the feel of its initial penetration with a deep
sigh. Then, pressing her body forward, she felt her master sliding
snugly inside her, like a rabbit into its burrow. Then her pelvic
bones kissed his hard groin and she was forced to cease her
pressure.
Rhea savored her position for an instant, then gritted her
teeth and began sliding backwards and forward. Her mind quickened
with fantasies. She imagined herself a sacrificial lamb impaled by
a blade, struggling for life upon the altar of some ancient
fertility god -- a god of the fierce and imperious kind that only
one like Muawiya al-Tariq himself might still yet worship. She
moaned out loud, feeling D'Avernec inside her, his largeness
stretching her fragile tissues.
A moonbeam entering the chamber from a window notch fell upon
them both and Rhea was able to see her herself in the chamber
mirror. She smiled, as if she were a spy observing another master
with another mistress. She gazed at that other female in the
mirror with intense interest, beguiled by the beauty of her breasts
and limbs, her seductive movements, and the slave experienced a
vicarious excitement that almost made her feel like a man again.
Suddenly D'Avernec gasped and Rhea saw the whites of his
astonished eyes blinking in the moonlight. Hurrying now, Rhea
excited his rampant phallus with her brazen thrusts. Not yet fully
awake, the knight could not control his bodily reactions and Rhea
was rewarded with his hot rush deep inside her, the fluid burst
that she had so determinedly sought to call forth. The chamber
echoed with the moans of her release, and of his. The pleasure of
their mutual orgasm banished Rhea's momentary illusion of being a
man and amazed her with the immediate pleasure of being a woman.
The slave girl fell exhausted across her master's body. Only
now, with her lust tamed, did Rhea pause to think of the strapping
she might have earned for invading her master's privacy. Well, if
so, let it be, she thought. The D'Avernec's strength, dwarfing her
own, even when it plied the leather belt with a disciplinarian's
vigor, was an intoxicant for her.
As the maid lay panting, she recalled Muawiya al-Tariq's
curse. Where was his mighty curse? Was it this joy that she was
experiencing? Was it nothing more than a spell cast over her
heart, one that had induced her to become desirous of yielding and
pleasing, of loving and seeking for love? Was there no more terror
in the magician's mighty spell of vengeance than this -- this
pleasure that she hoped might go on forever?
Was the wizard just a fool after all? Or did Muawiya
al-Tariq, who had lived for centuries by stealing the lives of
others, believe that a woman's surrender was her greatest
denigration? The sorcerer might have believed otherwise had he
spent more than just single a day in the body of a woman himself.
Rhea laughed. It was a woman's laugh. It was the laugh of
one who had realized a final victory over her would-be tormentor.
The drink-dulled Frank recognized the peal and raised his head.
"Rhea?" he muttered. She who had been Simon Saint-Mihiel smiled
and reached out to touch her master's muscular flesh.
"It is I, my lord," the girl murmured.
The Crusader finally understood Rhea's prank, but he was not
yet capable of doing more than drawing the girl closer to him. She
nuzzled the hollow of his shoulder and gave out with a sigh of
"Mmmmmm."
They rested afterwards entwined in one another's arms, content
to be so. But, hours later, D'Avernec awoke again, his mind having
grown clearer. He was reassured by Rhea's nearness and warmth.
How she had changed over these past few weeks! the Crusader
thought. Her strange metamorphosis had come with such swiftness he
had been left unprepared for it. Rhea had once been like the wild
caracal, the cat-beast whose woman-like screams rived the Saracen
hills under twilight's blood-red glow. But now the Greek seemed
more like a tame kitten napping upon a cushion, waiting to be
awakened and played with.
Here, surely, was a woman fit for a man! Rhea seemed to have
an uncanny appreciation of the male body and of what gave it
pleasure. And the girl seemed wise in other ways, too. She made
him think that she understood the travails of a man who must bear
arms, while expressing insights regarding military affairs that
surprised him. Sometimes she made him forget that he was talking
to a harem wench. He could not take the advice of a woman, of
course, but --
It occurred to Lord D'Avernec that Rhea was like this Syrian
land -- fair, but not easy to possess. He had had to fight hard to
conquer his fiefdom, just as he had had to fight to conquer this
girl. But yet now both she and the land were finally subdued.
D'Avernec's remembered the day that he had left for the Holy
Land. His baronial father had warned him that a wise man does not
fight merely for the sake of fighting. There comes a time when the
conqueror must cease to make war upon the foreign foe and become
the defender of that which he has already won. Time is so short,
he had warned. The vine must be planted, the herd husbanded, the
field sewn, the corn harvested. The warrior must surcease from
burning and commence to build. In peace there may not be great
glory, true, but in peace alone was to be found joy.
To be suddenly thinking such mild thoughts after years of
slaughter seemed strange to D'Avernec. He was, after all, still a
young man and proud to be known from Constantinople to Cairo as a
redoubtable warrior. Yet how easily these peaceful musings came to
him in the cool drafts of the night as he lay comforted by the
nearness of the girl that -- that what? What did she mean to him?
D'Avernec touched Rhea's face. Was it not high time to start
thinking about the future. It was said by those of his class that
man without a family had no future. He should find himself a wife,
he thought seriously. But what wife? What woman might give him
comfort and delight in his hours of rest? What woman should give
him an heir?
The nobleman bent his head and kissed Rhea upon the cheek.
She stirred but did not awaken.
Had it only been a few short weeks earlier that he had
wondered whether he would lose interest in his raven-haired
prisoner once he had secured her surrender? He smiled at his own
foolishness. Did the knight scorn his charger once he had broken
it to the saddle, or feel contempt for it as it bore him in the
charge? No, he treasured it all the more. The knight had not
regarded women in such terms before -- at least not often -- but
Giles D'Avernec was still young.
The girl's cheek was pillowed upon his firm pectoral; her
breathing came in little sighs and mews which tickled his moist
flesh more lightly than a feather. He touched his nose to her
hair, inhaling the florid scent of it. Finally he nestled up close
against his bedmate, his hand at rest upon her smooth, firm hip,
until he joined her in the peaceful sleep that lovers share.
THE END
--
Robert
"Would that reason were as contagious as emotion."
--
+--------------' Story submission `-+-' Moderator contact `------------+
| story-submit@qz.little-neck.ny.us | story-admin@qz.little-neck.ny.us |