 |
|||
|
|
THE LOST PRINCE—CHAPTER 22
They spotted the fancy coach about halfway between
The coach was maybe twenty miles from the last station, with another twenty to the next, when they’d spotted its dust cloud. Even from a distance they could see it was a pricey roller. Through his binocs Jackstraw could see the markings of the Palace on the coach doors.
“We’ve hit it big,” he whistled.
He’d climbed to the top of a small rise, laying on his stomach to prevent being spotted. The coach was perhaps a half mile off, and was big even at that distance. A team of eight led it, and they were some of the sharpest looking ponies he’d ever seen.
“Marco!” he called down the slope. Marco was sprawled across the top of their own coach, hidden in a small dried-up streambed.
“What?”
“How far up does this gully meet the road?”
“The bridge? Three miles, maybe.”
“Can we get there without being spotted by them? Does the bed stay this deep?” If not, they’d have to shadow the coach at a great distance and wait until nightfall.
Marco sat up and scratched the stubble on his chin, then eyed their ponies. They were tired, but not too tired.
“I think so. But we’ll have to race if we’re to beat them. The bed twists and turns, even if it is flat as a road.” For once the smallness of their coach would be an advantage.
Ramni, squatting halfway down the slope, finished urinating and stood up. “Let’s go then,” she growled, tugging her leathyrs up over her massive thighs. Her piercings jingled. “What’s it look like?” she asked Straw, who came sliding down the slope. As big and broad as she was he still dwarfed her. His blue eyes burned with excitement.
“Money,” he said, then barked out a harsh laugh.
The bridge was a short wooden structure that was hardly necessary now that the stream was dry, but Straw was glad it was there. He and Marco hid under the far end of the span, each to a side, while Ramni and Gui hid under the near end, the end the coach would reach first. The plan was to trap the coach on the bridge itself. At its highest it was a mere fifteen feet from the dry streambed, but that was enough to discourage jumpers. Their own small coach and team was hidden around a bend of the stream. Straw hadn’t even bothered to hobble them—his mares had been broken to the twizzler long ago. Meat was inside the coach, sleeping probably; Ramni and Gui had toyed with her all night and morning until someone had spotted the dust cloud.
“About a quarter mile out,” Ramni whispered to him, after peeking her head up above the slope. Straw nodded. He could hear the approaching coach now, a faint rumble that soon would dissolve into a steady tempo of hoofboots on hardpacked dirt. What such a showy coach with Palace markings was doing way out here he had no idea. The fact that it had no escort coach filled with guards, and only one driver visible (even if it was a male), showed either ignorance of the inherent dangers of the western territories, or arrogance—after all, who would attack a Royal coach?
Straw took a few deep breaths and glanced at Marco. Marco grinned back, his teeth just visible in the gloom under the bridge. The sound of the approaching coach grew louder and louder, and Straw could make out the jingling of their harnesses. Then suddenly the underpass echoed with thunder as the team ran onto the bridge, their hoofboots thudding on the wood beams.
Straw rolled out one direction, Marco the other. By the time they scrambled up and onto the bridge the team was in the middle of the span. Ramni and Gui appeared behind the coach as the two men yelled and brandished their lightning rods.
The two lead ponies jerked in surprise. As high-gen as they were, Straw doubted they’d ever seen any danger. As he ran toward them yelling, the lead four dug their boots into the wood. The driver, mouth open in surprise, flew from his perch atop the coach as its speed was instantly halved. One of the ponies went down on a knee but was back up by the time the coach was stopped.
The driver landed head-down with an audible crunch. Marco flipped him over with a boot, but the man was already dead. His head hung at an odd angle. Marco grabbed the bit of the nearest pony and yanked downward.
“On your knees! Drop to your knees!” he yelled, brandishing the rod. The team quickly obeyed, even thought it was obvious some of them didn’t know what he was waving about.
Straw rushed to the coach and yanked at the door. Unlocked—would you believe it? He sprang into the spacious interior, rod at the ready.
As his eyes adjusted to the darker interior he saw a young woman in robes sprawled on hands and knees from the sudden stop. Before her was an old woman, on her back on the seat, one hand pressed flat to her chest. It appeared she’d been speaking before he opened the door.
The old woman looked at Straw, then at the young woman, then back at Straw. Her face was ghostly white, and her lips were darkening, almost purple in hue. Her hand stayed pressed to her chest.
“I’m Lady Minok,” the scrawny woman gasped. “Fourth in line.” Her arm where it sprang from her sleeve was thin as a branch and lined with unsightly veins. A bubble formed in the corner of her mouth and Straw watched her eyes roll back. “Ggggkk.” She slumped bonelessly onto the bench, and didn’t move. Straw lowered the rod in surprise.
Ramni pushed her upper body into the open doorway, saw Straw had things under control, and disappeared. He could hear the thumps as she and Gui started going through the luggage on the roof and in the rear compartment.
Keeping an eye on the young woman, Straw edged over to the prostrate spinster and touched a hand to her throat. The other backed away from him and perched on the edge of the seat, throwing glances at the open doorway.
Straw pressed his ear to the old woman’s chest, then straightened up. “Dead,” he said without preamble. “Bad heart.” He sat on the seat across from the coach’s other occupant and looked her up and down. She wore a simple white robe made of an expensive-looking material, maybe silk. Her light brown hair was straight and came down just to her shoulders. The robe hid much, but she seemed slender and nicely shaped, with pale skin and pretty features. Her brown eyes were guileless.
Straw smiled, leaned back with an expansive sigh, and then suddenly guffawed. “Put away two without ever having to lay a finger on them,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s a story I wouldn’t believe if it hadn’t happened to me.” He looked at the young woman. “So that was the Lady Minok,” he said, nudging the still warm corpse with a tow. “What does that make you?”
“I’m—“ the young woman stopped with her mouth open, and glanced at the body sprawled ungainly across the seat. “Lady Minok’s handmaiden,” she finished in a more subdued manner. “Genia. Who are you? And what is the meaning of this outrage?”
It was ignorance, not arrogance, Straw decided. She was just too young—and probably sheltered—to know how scared she should be. She thought she could use her status as a Royal vassal to intimidate him.
“Outrage? So far it’s only a conversation. How old are you?”
The woman who called herself Genia decided there was no reason to lie about that. “Eighteen,” she told him. She’d never seen a man like him before. Huge, wrapped in cracked leathyrs, dusty and smelling of sweat. And with a thick black beard—she’d never seen a beard before. He kept staring at her with piercing blue eyes—it made her uncomfortable. She assumed they were bandits, thieves, this group. What had happened to the driver she had no idea, she’d never heard him utter even a challenge. Had he been in on this ambush? Had she been betrayed?
“My, my, my,” Straw said, his eyes running up and down Genia, his smile widening.
Ramni jumped down off the roof and leaned into the coach. Genia recoiled at the sight of the big, wild-looking woman. She was as big as a big man, and dressed as one, in leathyr trousers and a black leathyr vest over bare skin. The vest was open in front, revealing much of her large breasts. They were sweaty and covered in road dust. Her head was oversize, with brown hair pulled back into a short ponytail. Genia was both repulsed and fascinated by the sight of her.
Ramni ran her eyes up and down the young split while speaking. “Even after we dump anything with the Royal Seal, we can live off just what the silks will bring in for months,” she told Straw. “D’you see those ponies?”
Straw nodded. “I want them too. Send Gui back to our coach, and tell Marco he’s driving this one. The mounts seem obedient enough, they shouldn’t give him any trouble.”
“This is probably the first time they’ve been west of the River.”
“Where were you going?” Straw asked Genia.
“To visit Clan Bukkake,” she told them. “I—Lady Minok wanted to see the Inseminariums.”
“I bet she did,” Ramni said. She saw the old woman still hadn’t moved. “Did you hit her?”
Straw shook his head. “Heart attack,” he explained. He jumped down off the coach, grabbed one of the old woman’s skinny ankles, and dragged her body out the door. It fell with a thump, arms akimbo, onto the road. Genia watched this with a stunned expression, too shocked to even object.
Ramni had a funny smile on her broad face. “Maybe if you’d yelled a little louder all three of them would have croaked off,” she told Straw. “Pack it up and leave it where it is,” she called up to Gui, who was picking through an ornate chest. “We’re taking the coach.”
“Good,” Gui called back. She wore longsleeve canvas coveralls, brown, stained with dirt and sweat. Her black hair was in a shaggy bowlcut, obscuring her face whenever she leaned forward. Only her lined face betrayed her age, her wiry body could have been that of a woman half her age. As she jumped down from the roof, barefoot as usual, Straw climbed back into the coach.
“You’re certainly not going to leave her there!” his young captive said indignantly, pointing at the body sprawled beside the coach.
“Sure I am. It’ll give the buzzards something to eat. Take off your clothes,” Straw told her. He began unbuckling his leathyr jacket. Her mouth opened in shock.
“I will not!” she said in outrage. She sat rigid in her seat, haughty, then her eyes spotted the open carriage doorway. She lunged for it. Straw caught her easily with one arm around her chest and tossed her back into the coach. She landed on her knees in front of the bench seat, and yelped in pain as Straw, with one big hand, pushed the side of her face into the seat.
“Hey!” she yelled. “You--!” With one locked arm he kept her head wedged against the seat. With his other hand he began pulling her robe off.
She cursed and struggled, but her efforts were weak and half-hearted. It was as if she couldn’t believe it was happening to her.
Under the robe she wore a whisper-thin white silk undershirt and shorts. She had a nice shape, slender but not too skinny. More to his liking, she was clean and smelled of flowers.
“You can’t rape me!” Genia protested, her face mashed against the seat cushion. She’d stopped trying to pull away his hand and now gripped the edge of the seat with her fingers.
“So stop fighting, and then it won’t be rape,” Straw said with a wicked grin. “You can’t rape the willing.” It was one of his favorite phrases. Ramni climbed into the coach and shut the door firmly. She eyed the girl’s shapely backside sheathed in silk and sat out of the way in the corner. The coach jerked into motion under Marco’s command.
Straw pulled Genia’s silk shorts down to her knees and then fumbled with his zipper. “Don’t tell me you’re a virgin,” he said with a laugh. Although if she said she was, and he believed her, he might have to leave her alone. Virgins weren’t hard to come by in the western plains, but finding one her age was almost unheard of. She could fetch a steep price.
“Well, no,” Genia said. “But, I mean, it isn’t right! Are you a barbarian?”
Straw spit onto his fingers and rubbed it onto his organ, then spit again and worked it into her folds. Genia gasped, more out of the shock at being touched there than anything else.
“If I was I wouldn’t have used spit,” Straw said with a grin.
Ramni snorted. “All this outrage from someone riding in a coach being pulled by eight humans trussed up like livestock,” she spat.
Straw pressed the head of his cock between Genia’s thighs and pushed in. Genia gasped again, but not in pain. He had used more than enough spit, because as far as Straw was concerned a dry split just wasn’t any fun.
Keeping one hand pressed hard against her head Straw began roughly stroking in and out of her. Genia cried out at his first pump, and stiffened. She tried to pull her hips away from him, but had nowhere to go. She cursed, but seemed uncomfortable saying the words.
She might not’ve been a virgin, but she sure hadn’t been used much. Her glove was nicely snug around his organ as he pumped her. “Nice,” he told her, intending it as a compliment. Straw reached underneath her, inside her silk undershirt, and squeezed Genia’s breast. Grunting with each impact of his loins, Genia gripped the seat edge until her knuckles turned white. She was panting as Straw Bent over her, and he could see her staring at the wall. She’d stopped fighting, stopped cursing, and Straw figured she’d accepted that events were beyond her control. Then he noticed something else.
“You’re all wet!” he said in surprise. And not just wet—her hole had loosened up around him as well, sure sign she was nowhere near tense. It couldn’t just be inexperience—she had to be downright stupid. Captured by bandits, her Mistress dead . . . didn’t she know they could just as well have killed her as taken her along? What the hell was she doing getting wet during a rape? Had she no sense of self-preservation?
Genia didn’t respond, and looked as much away from him as she could. She said nothing. For once in her life something exciting was happening to her! She couldn’t help but respond—it had been too long for her, and the amusements west of the River had been sorely lacking. She’d never had a hairy man, didn’t like hairy men, but that was a minor point when compared to the size of him, his forcefulness, his willingness to treat her like a toy, use her for his own pleasure. The thought of what might be in store for her had her on the edge already. Not danger—she knew they’d never really hurt her. If only he knew . . . but no, she couldn’t tell him. And she had to try to restrain her impulses, they might get her in trouble.
“You’re kidding,” Ramni said.
“The little twist likes it!” Straw said, fucking harder. “She’s a swamp.” He came with loud grunts, banging hard against Genia’s ass.
“You’re not using the twizzler?” Ramni said in disbelief. Straw checked the controls of the metal web covering the back of his right hand.
“No.”
Breathing hard, he pulled out of the young handmaiden and sat on the edge of the seat. Her ass cheeks were pink where he’d been banging against them, and the dark furrow between her legs glistened.
“Come over here and clean off my cock with your tongue,” he ordered Genia. She slowly straightened up, and half turned toward him. There was a lot of color on her cheeks, and her nipples were hard against the silk undershirt.
“No,” she said firmly, glancing at his slimy tool. “I won’t do that. I—“ Ramni grabbed her shoulder and shoved her toward Straw.
“What’s the matter, too good to suck cock?” Ramni snarled.
Straw turned on the twizzler, set it to one-tenth power, and placed his hand on Genia’s shoulder.
“Trust me, you’ll really like it,” he said with a knowing grin.
As soon as his
hand had drawn near, even before it touched her shoulder, Genia’s expression
had gone soft. She looked down at his
half-hard, slimy cock laying in a bed of
“I—I’m not going to service . . . . ” she stuttered. “That’s not what . . . .”
Straw removed his hand, and suddenly she felt empty, depressed.
“All I want you to do is suck it,” Straw said again, switching the twizzler to one-quarter power and touching her again, this time placing his hand on the top of her head. The joy that had coursed through her before now bloomed again. She was not only aroused, wet and throbbing, she was happy, happy in a way she hadn’t been in years, since she was a little girl. The feeling that flowed through her, it was like nothing had ever been wrong or ever could go wrong. Under the gentle pressure of his hand she bent forward and put her mouth on his wet cock head, and it tasted horrible. She made a face and straightened up, and the sense of joy and pleasure and well-being suddenly vanished. She felt empty, and wanted to cry.
“Suck my cock and it’ll make you happy,” Straw told her. He kept his hand to one side. He wanted her to take the initiative, make the move, it would mean that the hold he’d have over her would just be that much stronger.
The twizzler was a simple device. It electrically stimulated the pleasure center of the brain. When turned to full power the person receiving the signal froze in ecstasy that was far beyond that of a simple orgasm. It was everything that gave them pleasure and joy—food, music, sex—times one thousand. The tool had been developed to train difficult ponies, but their use was discouraged as the mounts tended to become addicted.
Straw had bent all the women in his group to his will with the twizzler, even the ponies. Ramni hated him for it, for making her a slave to her desire for just one more jolt. She’d thought of killing him and cutting it off his hand, but knew it ran off the electricity his body generated, and wouldn’t work for anyone else. She didn’t have the skills to reprogram it, so she was a willing slave to it, and Straw.
Genia’s head slowly bent down, and the second her lips touched him his hand touched the top of her head. She stiffened as much in pleasure as surprise as the sensations of the twizzler at one-tenth power buzzed through her head.
“Yes, that’s good, good,” he crooned to Genia. The taste, the texture, the smell of him repulsed her, but still she found herself enjoying the act, and the harder she worked at pleasing him the more pleasure it brought her. She had seen the act performed hundreds of times, of course, but this was a first for her. She was awkward, and forgot her teeth at times, but the more she threw herself into it the more pleasure wracked her body.
“Oh yeah, oh yeah, take it you little twist,” Straw growled, as Genia pounded her face down on his stiff cock. Strings of drool ran from her lips to his balls as she labored under the twizzler set on one-third power, applied directly to her head. He’d been told one-third felt like being on the verge of orgasm while being told you were suddenly Royal rich. He couldn’t use the twizzler on himself—and didn’t want to—but the information was useful.
Ramni took off her leathyr vest, revealing pendulous breasts whose nipples sported multiple piercings—two holes per nipple, one horizontal, one vertical, each filled with two or three rings or barbells. She stood up to take off her dusty leathyr pants, revealing a forest of piercings between her legs, so many they’d stretched her labia grotesquely. Most were rings or barbells. From several hung small pointed lead weights on short chains that she ducked down her pantlegs when clothed.
Ramni hated piercings, thought they were ugly and useless, and had said as much soon after meeting Straw and his band of outlaws. That was before she’d experienced the twizzler. Ramni had done all the piercings herself. Each one meant five minutes of the twizzler at full power, but she was running out of places to pierce. Her ears were full, as were her nipples, and there was so much steel between her legs she couldn’t close them properly—she jingled when she walked. Her nose was next, she’d decided, then her eyebrows. The four studs in her tongue were more than she had room for, really; the last had migrated out, leaving her with a tiny fork in her tongue.
She knelt behind Genia and eyed her appraisingly. Her fingers were broad and calloused, like a man’s, but they slid easily into the young woman’s folds. Genia groaned and continued her frantic head bobbing.
“She’s like a waterfall,” Ramni told him. Straw could hear the squelching as Ramni worked her fingers inside their new find. He smiled, and began instructing his charge on the finer techniques of fellatio. She was energetic, but lacked skill. That, he knew, would change quickly.
|
|
|