 |
|||
|
|
Chapter 163 The Forest of Cruelty
The sun had nearly reached its zenith in the heavens the following morning when Erika was roughly lowered into the dinghy for the final leg of her journey to the island of General Wang. The hands of the men who had proceeded her into the rowboat grasped her roughly and groped her eagerly as they seated her in their midst.
************
Somewhat to Erika’s surprise, the general had been as good as his word the evening before. After another humiliating public three-bucket shower on deck that had cleansed the blood, sweat, and tears from her nude body, she had been led back to the infirmary. There Tranh had tended to her wounds and brought her green tea and rice, which had tasted like nectar and ambrosia to her. Before he had begun his ministrations, Tranh had locked the door on the inside. Despite numerous pleas and bribes offered by lust-crazed crewmen during the ensuing hours, he had steadfastly refused to admit several different sailors who had been willing to risk the general’s wrath for the pleasure of ravaging the lovely blonde prisoner of the Yang-tze Dragon.
For that Erika was grateful. And, while Tranh’s hands had taken the usual liberties while applying the ‘Mekong Lightning’ they had been skillful too, and between the strange potion and his probing fingers, Tranh had soothed much of the pain that ravaged her body. Even the fires raging through her tender breasts, which had borne the brunt of the final hour of flogging, had been somewhat cooled by his expert - and eager - touch.
Tranh’s hands were still massaging her bare shoulders, which ached from her suspension from the scaffold, when Erika fell into a fitful sleep that was plagued by ghastly dreams of what lay in store for her on the island of General Wang.
She dreamt of dark forests and darker dungeons lit by torchlight, where evil men watched as beautiful women, bound and helpless, writhed under the lash. She dreamt of a grisly wall from which hung all manner of instruments of torture, and braziers filled with red-hot coals. She dreamt of shackles and chains and manacles of every description, mounted to dungeon walls in every configuration that could cause a woman pain.
She dreamt of deep, narrow, inky-black pits where wretched young beauties were forced to defend themselves from the six and eight-legged creatures that crawled walls so close, so confining that they were always within arm’s reach. She dreamt of the slimy, legless worms that lurked in the damp corners of ghastly cells, and of ravenous long-tailed creatures that scuttled in the dark across a floor which, in the eternal darkness, she could not see.
And she dreamt that she could hear the crack of a leather whip on tender female flesh, and screams which sounded very much like her own….
After waking from that fearful nightmare, she eventually drifted off to sleep again, and this time she dreamt that she was in bed with her lover, Daniel Kauffmann. Squirming with sleepy pleasure, she could almost feel the touch of his lips and tongue and fingertips on her body. In her dream her nipples stiffened, and she grew moist between her legs as he stroked her with consummate skill.
It was only when she was awoken in the morning by a loud pounding at the infirmary door that she realized that it was Tranh’s lips and tongue that were teasing her taut nipples, and Tranh’s skillful fingers that were caressing her dainty clitoris. She pushed the little Vietnamese away angrily, but in a way she was thankful for his intrusive touch. For despite the dark and dreadful dreams in the first half of the night, her more pleasant dreams in the small hours had allowed her to sleep into the morning of the following day, a sleep which had greatly restored her strength.
It was only after Erika had drowsily wrapped the tattered blanket around her body that Tranh, clucking his disappointment at having his pleasures interrupted, turned away and began to heat some more tea and rice.
As she waited for her meager breakfast, the terrors of the night came back, and Erika was almost sick with fear at the prospect of her enslavement to the sadistic warlord. When Tranh offered her a little bowl of rice and the cup of tea her hands were shaking so badly she could not take them.
The old Vietnamese tapped her gently on the shoulder. “Missy, you must eat and drink. Today will be very long and very hard. You will need all your strength. Please …”
Shuddering, Erika forced the tea and rice down, and they helped settle her stomach a bit.
When she heard an even louder and more insistent pounding at the door, she knew that her brief respite from madness and cruelty was at an end. Knotting the blanket under her left shoulder, she reached out and touched Tranh’s hand gently and gave him a smile of thanks, and turned toward the door.
Waiting just outside the door were Tiger and Umar. How ironic, Erika thought, that Tiger, the first man to deliver a stroke at the beginning of the Flogging of the Bells, would be her escort on her final morning on the Yang-tze Dragon.
Erika was led up on deck just as the first of several boatloads of crewman were preparing to row the short distance to Zhoushan Island.
The island’s harbor had been damaged during the tropical storm a few nights earlier (Ch 133) and so the Yang-tze Dragon had been forced to drop anchor a half mile or so offshore. As the morning dragged on, Erika watched as the members of the crew crossed the narrow channel to the island, ten or twelve at a time, in the ship’s emergency rowboat.
Hsi Fong had gone on the first crossing, and just before the orange-robed commissioner had clambered awkwardly into the boat, Erika had heard him conversing with General Wang. She had seen them glance her way amusedly as she overheard the words ‘special garment’ and ‘chariot.’ She had also heard some discussion of the preparations that would need to be made for the entertainment of their guests, the bloodthirsty crewmen of the Yang-tze Dragon. “Twelve or fifteen girls should do it,” Hsi Fong said at one point, and a moment later she heard the general inquire, “How many young women do you think we will have for the punishment cabins this time?”
Twelve or fifteen girls? To service three-dozen sex-starved brutes? Despite her own dreadful predicament, the fears that were sending chills racing up and down her own spine, Erika could not help but spare a thought for the young women of Zhou-shan Island. The dozen or so young creatures who were doomed to be the sexual playthings of these maritime savages whose every glance seemed to strip the blanket away from her body. As for the ‘punishment cabins’ she didn’t even want to think about what forms of abuse might take place in those hovels of horror.
As she waited to make her own crossing to the island, Erika also heard the crewmen talking among themselves excitedly. Most of the men had been aroused to the point of bursting by the exciting cycle of punishments meted out to their blonde fellow-traveler; it was clear that they couldn’t wait to get their hands on the unfortunate pleasure girls of Zhou-shan Island. Erika was thankful that their bickering amongst themselves as to whom should go on the early crossings and thus get first crack at the waiting lovelies, distracted them, for once, from paying too much attention to her.
Not wanting to think any more about the depravity and degradation that doubtless awaited her on the island, Erika tried to keep her mind occupied. She made it a point to note how many men had been on the little boat during each of the crossings. There had been eleven men, including Hsi Fong, on the first crossing, but two of them had had to row the boat back to the ship, leaving nine crewmen who had crossed; eleven crewmen less two returnees had been on the second boatload and ten men, including the Captain, had made the third crossing, but again there had been two returnees. Twenty-six men, net of the returnees, were now on Zhou-shan Island
************
Erika’s calculations were interrupted by the arrival of the two men – Cheng Lao, and Kai Pu – who had rowed the boat back to the ship after the third crossing.
There was quite a rush to the side of the boat as the remaining crewmen piled into the rowboat, anxious to get to the women of Zhou-shan Island. When they were settled, Raka and Tattoo helped Erika down into the waiting arms of Cheng Lao and Kai Pu. Raka, smiling wickedly, was careful to subtly tug on the side of Erika’s blanket in such a way that the edges of thecloth separated, giving the boatmen a good look at Erika’s lovely upper thighs and a glimpse of her golden nest.
Kai Pu also made the best of his opportunity as Erika was lowered into his grasp. He used one arm to assist Cheng in lowering Erika safely into the boat, but his other hand crept up Erika’s bare leg slowly. Enjoying the feel of her soft skin, Kai’s wandering hand lingered between Erika’s legs for a moment, probing eagerly at her secret place, before Cheng pulled her away, squeezing her full breasts for a moment through the flimsy fabric before pushing her down onto a rowing bench.
As Erika settled onto the rough bench, she tugged the skimpy blanket back into place in the ancient dinghy, which resembled a large, rather decrepit rowboat more than anything. Glancing around the boat, she noted that there were nine crewmen plus the general and herself making the fourth and final crossing . Which meant that when her boat landed, thirty-seven of the individuals who had been on the Yang-tze Dragon would be on dry land.
Thinking back she remembered that thirty-six men, including Captain McMahon, from the Yangtze Dragon had had taken part in the eight cycles of the Flogging of the Bells (one stroke with the first instrument of punishment, two strokes with the second, three strokes with the third weapon all the way up to eight, totaling thirty-six). Adding in the general and his orange-robed commissioner and herself, that meant that there had been thirty-nine people on the ship, of whom thirty-seven had crossed or were en route to the island. Apparently the captain, had left only two men behind to guard the ship.
Those two men still on board would doubtless be relieved at some point, so that they, too could take part in the erotic debauchery the general had promised, but there was a reasonable chance that only two men would relieve them. And really, why should there be more? The weather was good, and had been getting warmer all morning, and there was not a breath of wind to cool what promised to be a swelteringly hot and humid afternoon. Two men would be more than adequate to guard an anchored ship in calm water.
************
Seated now on the aftmost of two rowing benches, Erika pressed her legs closely together, but as every man knows, the sight of a scantily clad woman can be every bit as arousing as that of a nude one, and with the tops of her luscious breasts spilling out of one end of the tattered blanket, and a pair of long, sleek thighs protruding from the other, there were many more eyes on Erika’s charms than on the island cove toward which they were headed.
On the front bench, Raka the drummer and Tattoo were preparing to man one set of oars. Alongside her on the rear rowing bench sat the well-built islander the crewmen called Tiger. Sitting beside him, Erika sensed that Tiger, whose hair was just beginning to turn silvery at the edges, was the most experienced boatman in the dinghy, and he seemed to be directing the others.
As had been the case on the earlier crossings, several of the men were carrying thick coils of rope over their shoulder. Erika could not help but shiver in sympathy for the unfortunate young women who would be called upon to entertain this bloodthirsty pack of ruffians. The rest of the men on board were seated on curved benches that ran along the gunwales, except for General Wang who had taken a place on a little bench in the bow of the boat, facing aft, his fierce eyes rarely leaving Erika’s scantily clad body.
“You have rowed before, have you not, wench? I seem to remember George Chan telling me a story about one such adventure,” he added wickedly.
Erika nodded glumly. How could she ever forget the arduous rowing excursion to George Chan’s island retreat and the cruel flogging she had received upon her arrival there. {Ch 7}
“Take up your oar, then, and put your back to it! I have much to do this evening!”
Erika could not help wondering how many of the general’s plans involved abusing her, but having little choice, she took up the oar. She was a capable rower, but the crewmen were in a rush to get to Zhou-shan Island and the festival of debauchery awaiting them, and she was forced to maintain the furious pace of her three rowing mates, throwing her body forward into the stroke and then pulling back forcefully and then repeating that one-two rhythm again and again at a hectic clip.
By the time the rowboat was three hundred yards from the ship, Erika was sweating profusely in the hot sun. By the time they were about halfway to the island, Erika’s strenuous physical exertions had loosened the knot at the top of the blanket. Moments later the coarse fabric slid down her luscious breasts to the delight of the crewmen who were in a position to watch the delicious bobbling of her pink-nippled lust-mounds. Her delicious man-pleasers danced enticingly as her body rocked to and fro in time with the rowing stroke.
A few seconds after the blanket slipped down, Erika tried to re-adjust it, but her efforts to do so broke up the powerful rhythm of the other rowers and she was rewarded with a sharp elbow in the side courtesy of Tiger, her bench-mate.
“I ordered you to row, wench, not to adjust your apparel!” General Wang snapped angrily. And so it was that Erika rowed the balance of the distance to the shore bare-breasted, a pleasing sight indeed to the small welcoming party gathered near dock.
As they drew closer to the cove where they were to disembark, Erika became more and more conscious of the eyes of her boatmates on her breasts and her naked thighs. At first she tried to shift her position slightly so as to shield her body from view, but soon she realized that her fidgeting did more to draw stares than it did to protect her modesty, and at length she gave up.
A few minutes later, Tiger, an islander with long experience in shuttling between the small islands of the East Indies, lassoed the only dockpost that had survived the recent storm, and drew the boat close to the shore, giving Erika an opportunity to once again knot the blanket that was her only garment.
After Erika was helped up onto the flimsy boards that were all that was left of the dock, Tiger gripped her roughly by the arm and marched her forward into the center of a small clearing.
As he did so, Erika looked around to survey the lay of the land. The area around the tiny harbor was one of the few relatively flat spots on the island. From it, a winding dirt road, deeply rutted by the downpour of a few days earlier, led up a steep incline toward the dark, forbidding castle atop a bluff which looked to be a mile or so in the distance. Erika’s heart sank. Despite her superb physical conditioning, developed under the demanding physical tutelage of George Chan and Ming-tsu, and her remarkable recuperative powers, aided in some degree by Tranh’s flesh-soothing Mekong Lightning, she was not looking forward to hiking up that grade. Especially with the midday sun beating down on her.
On her right, the shoreline of the cove gradually receded, giving way to tall groves of bamboo. Off in the distance the rural landscape consisted of dozens of little farms studded with barns and huts. To her left, graceful green terraces of tea and rice stretched as far as the eye could see. Behind her lay a meadow studded with wildflowers. Further in the distance she could see a wooded area, dense with all manner of undergrowth, thick and green from the recent storm. The general’s island was not without beauty.
What was without beauty, however, was the sneering visage of Jasper Slegg, who was standing alongside a handful of unkempt soldiers whom Erika presumed to be members of the general’s militia. These men, who had been ogling the golden-haired, bare-breasted rower during the boat’s approach, were clad in disreputable olive uniforms, some of which appeared not to have been washed in weeks. Slung over their shoulders were carbines that looked to be older than the castle on the hilltop, some of them in such condition that Erika wondered if they had ever been fired or ever could be fired. Especially by such a band of slovenly, apparently poorly trained ruffians.
However, there was nothing laughable about the other weapons they carried. One of the men, sporting a dark goatee, and with a gold officer’s insignia on his sleeve, carried a short coiled whip tucked into a holster at his hip. Other were equipped with bamboo rods of various lengths and thicknesses, and one man, a stocky, brutish looking man of thirty or so, carried a long, thick-handled Asian knife, of the type used to chop bamboo or clear brush.
Erika noticed that even the general seemed to view his men with thinly veiled contempt. It occurred to her that perhaps he and Hsi Fong had been away from the island for some time and that whoever had been left in charge was complacent about or ignorant of military discipline. In her own country, Bismarck and the Junkers would have had the officers in charge of such soldiers drummed out of the military in a heartbeat; a century earlier Frederick the Great would have flogged them half to death to set an example for the others.
As Erika was pondering all this she noted that almost all of the men who had crossed with her had already started their trek up the hill, anxious to get their hands on the pleasure girls the general had promised. Only the general and Tiger the boatman, who had a menacing coil of rope slung over his shoulder, remained, and only Jasper Slegg, it seemed, of the crewmen, had come down to greet the general. Or perhaps, it occurred to her, he had come merely to taunt her during the difficult trek to the castle.
At a gesture from Slegg, the group of unsavory looking soldiers parted, revealing a vehicle that resembled pictures Erika had seen of ancient chariots. The vehicle had large wheels, and a platform upon which a rider could stand while managing the reins of a horse, which at the moment was nowhere in sight. Erika guessed that if had been led off to be fed and watered before beginning the difficult climb up the hill.
“Slegg, did you bring the … garment?” the general barked. Erika noticed that the warlord seemed to choose his words with unusual care.
“Rightio, your lordship. The other lordship, the one in the orange outfit, had it all ready for me. Got it right ‘ere.”
Slegg reached into the chariot and produced a handful of gleaming leather the color of dark Belgian chocolate.
“Come over ‘ere, Cinderella, and try on your ball gown,” Slegg said in a jeering voice.
Erika, sensing by his mocking tone that she wanted no part of Slegg’s newfound interest in fashion, tried to back away, but Tiger was right behind her and the muscular islander quickly pinned her arms behind her and marched the protesting beauty toward the grinning first mate.
Slegg meanwhile was unfolding the handful of leather. “It’s a bit on the small side princess,” he growled. “I’m guessing it was made to fit skinny Chinese wenches, not big ‘ealthy Amazons like yerself. Be that as it may,” he concluded, “don’t you worry, frowlein. We’ll make ‘er fit! Won’t we lads?”
Slegg’s comment drew a chorus of lewd catcalls from the soldiers.
When Tiger had muscled Erika within arm’s reach of Slegg, the latter snarled, “Ye won’t be needing that any more, Cinderella!” as he reached out and snatched the blanket away. Erika flushed as she felt the hot gaze of the General’s men on her nude body. Most of them had never seen a western woman before, much a less a gorgeous blonde like Erika Weiss in all of her long-legged, full-breasted splendor. The officer with the whip was particularly taken by Erika’s beauty. He leisurely inventoried Erika’s lovely assets with a casual sneer, waiting for her eyes to meet his before meaningfully grasping the handle of his whip as if to promise what lie in store.
“What do you think of our new prisoner, Lieutenant Meng?” General Wang asked his subordinate.
At a nod from the warlord, Tiger spun Erika around so that Lieutenant Meng and his men could enjoy a rear view of their prisoner, from her broad shoulders tapering to a slender waist which accentuated the roundness of her womanly hips. The soldiers took special delight in the cock-stiffening curves of her shapely buttocks, which still bore the faint striata left by lash, cane and strap.
“Very nice, your excellency,” Meng responded with a slight bow as Tiger spun Erika around again and pushed her even closer to the soldiers, so that they could get a better look at her sumptuous breasts and her inviting pleasure slit. “You have outdone yourself, sir! Do not hesitate to call on me, general,” he continued with a malevolent glance at Erika, “if she requires … special treatment.”
Erika tried to calm herself but the cruel intent of the lieutenant had sent her already rising sense of panic to new heights. What ghastly horrors lay in store for her on Zhou-shan Island?
While the general’s soldiers continued to salivate at the sight of the surprise visitor to the island, Slegg unfurled the leather garment and Erika stared at it in disbelief. For it was not really a garment at all, but rather a bewildering assortment of straps and buckles.
“ ‘old ‘er boys, while I ‘elp Cinderella to slip into ‘er ball gown,” Slegg snarled mockingly.
The garment was so obviously a prelude to some form of punishment that Erika recoiled in alarm. As she did so she sensed a slight slackening of Tiger’s grip as he adjusted the coil of rope on his shoulder. Seizing her opportunity, she drove an elbow hard into his gut and freed her pinioned arm. Before Slegg or the soldiers had a chance to react, she had spun free from Tiger’s grasp. She quickly turned and sprinted away from the castle toward the meadow and the wooded area behind her, hoping to find a refuge from her captors.
Behind her, Erika could hear a few of the soldiers clumsily shouldering their guns but she didn’t really care. A quick clean death would almost surely be preferable to sexual enslavement in the grim castle on the hill. Her heart stopped when she heard a shot fired and she braced herself for the end, but the end was not yet.
“Don’t shoot her, you fools!” bellowed the general. I want the whore alive!”
Hearing these words, Erika knew that she must run like she had never run before. Despite her fatigue and her aching muscles, the naked beauty began to race across the fifty yards of cleared area. Behind her, the general’s men stood frozen for a moment, admiring the graceful stride and churning buttocks of this latter-day Atalanta.
As she lengthened her stride, Erika was ironically grateful for the arduous physical conditioning to which George Chan and Ming-tsu had subjected her. Her speed and stamina would stand her in good stead on this today.
Behind her the fuming general was issuing orders.
“Meng!” he barked at the Lieutenant. “Take these two,” he said, pointing at the man with the bamboo chopper and one of the men with the bamboo rods “and get after her! And Meng -- if the three of you can’t catch one naked unarmed woman, I’ll have your stripes!”
Turning toward another man, he snapped “You, fetch a couple more men with parangs; the brush leading south is very thick. We may need the parangs to cut our way through. Quickly, you fool! The rest of you, fan out to the west and make sure she doesn’t escape inland.”
Erika heard only bits and pieces of the general’s commands as she raced across the meadow toward the forest. As she ran, her mind raced with equal celerity. Apparently there would only be three men in the first wave of pursuers, and they would be somewhat encumbered by their carbines and their other gear. If she could just make it to the bosky wooded area in the distance, perhaps she could lose herself in the dense undergrowth….
But as she drew within a few strides of the woods, Erika realized that, until she could find a place of refuge, the thickness of the foliage ahead would be her enemy not her friend. But there was no alternative. Wiping at the perspiration streaming down her face, she plunged headlong into the brush doing her best to wade through clumps of Chinese silver grass and Purple Emperor and ramie, a fibrous cousin of the nettle, and all manner of dense and sometimes thorny shrubs and bushes whose names she did not know.
The brush ranged from three to six feet in height and irritated every inch of skin it came in contact with. Her creamy thighs got the worst of it, but some of the shrubs and hedges were tall enough to attack her belly and breasts, and occasionally she had to deal with springy twigs that gave way at first and then snapped back into place with a vengeance, clawing at her face, her neck, her ripe-nippled breasts.
Wincing with every step, she continued onward, doing battle with the foliage. Behind her she could hear the general’s soldiers crashing into the woods, shouting and cursing as the lead man hacked noisily at the undergrowth with his parang, the crop knife used in parts of Asia to cut bamboo and to hack through dense vegetation. She cursed the fates that allowed the soldier to fight the dense brush with a heavy knife while her only implement was her own body.
Her heart pumping furiously, Erika staggered and stumbled forward as branches and brambles and thistles and thorns tore at her body. To make matters worse the sun was now almost directly overhead and she could not be certain that she was continuing in a straight line. She dreaded the possibility that she might manage to fight her way through to a clearing only to find that it was the one whence she had come.
“Surrender, wench!” Lieutenant Meng bellowed angrily. “You’ll never get away!” As he watched the blonde fugitive’s bare legs scissoring their way through the brush, the swarthy lieutenant vowed to make her regret her attempted flight.
Erika thought that the voice was still some distance behind her, but it was difficult to tell whether or not the soldiers were gaining ground. As she ran she tried to inspect the nearby trees, looking to see if there were any which she might climb and hide in until her pursuers had passed, but she did not see any that seemed suitable.
Onward she ran, her lungs on fire, repeatedly having to lift her arms in front of her face to protect her eyes and face from the tallest brush, but each time she did so she left her nude torso defenseless against the snapping twigs and the thick grasses that seemed to delight in implanting burrs in the most sensitive parts of her body.
Even more ominously there seemed to be no way to keep her flowing golden hair from becoming entangled in the grasping, clawing fingers of vegetation.
Fortunately, just as Erika had been forced to pause to pull her tresses free for the second time, the vegetation seemed to split into two types. To her left, a more woodsy area persisted, populated by trees, large and small, including many with the low-hanging branches she had come to despise. Underneath the branches were various types of brush much like the area through which she had already passed. To her right, however, there seemed to be many fewer trees, but the brush, which looked to range from waist to chest height looked even more dense, more impenetrable. But in that direction, at least, her long hair and the need to protect her azure blue eyes would not be her undoing.
Before plunging ahead Erika glanced down at her body and was hardly surprised to find that the flora of Zhou-shan Island had opposed her passage with fierce determination. The grasses and brush had inflicted scores of lacerations, large and small, on her calves and thighs and belly and sweat-drenched upper torso. Several types of burrs and thorns had lodged themselves in her glistening breasts and an especially irritating burr had ensconced itself in her pubic fleece and the pink labia it guarded. Another was rubbing against her clitoris as if it were a grain of sand polishing a lovely pearl.
The proud-breasted beauty swept at the thorns with her hands, brushing most of them away, but the ones that had bitten deepest into her breasts and thighs did not so easily renounce their desire to cling lovingly to her soft body. As Erika brushed at the thorns, she heard the dreadful sound of the bamboo knife hacking its way through the brush behind her, and she realized there was no more time do deal with the prickers. Despite her burning thighs and bursting lungs, Erika veered to her right and charged into the thicket, crouching to stay low and out of sight but knowing that she would have to run at full height at times to protect her eyes and to keep her hair free.
She fought her way forward aggressively plunging through vegetation that was every bit as dense as the hedges she had known in her homeland. Fifty yards further into the brush, Erika’s spirits rose when, for a few scant seconds, she could not hear her pursuers. Had they possibly gone to the left and lost her trail? She paused, on the verge of exhaustion, her proud breasts heaving with every breath, to listen to see if she had at last eluded them.
But her hopes were dashed when she heard the Lieutenant’s voice.
“Here, Cho! Over here! She came through here!”
“By the gods! It’s as thick as a jungle through there, lieutenant. The brush must be tearing her to pieces!”
“Serves the slut right! And I’m going to tear to pieces what the brush leaves behind! Wu! Get your ass over here and cut through this stuff!”
Knowing that the Lieutenant and his two comrades were still in hot pursuit, Erika staggered on desperately. The sun overhead was merciless now, and she found herself wiping at her brow every few steps to keep the perspiration out of her eyes. To make matters worse, many of the flying insects of the forest welcomed the naked, sweat-slick interloper into their sylvan world by lighting on her and sipping at the scarlet streamlets left by the thorns and the rivulets of perspiration pouring down her naked breasts.
Sweating and swatting, Erika staggered on, but in the end fatigue is the undoing of even the most valiant, and gradually her pace slackened, and the sounds make by the pursuing soldiers grew louder. They were closer now.
“Damn these briars,” cried one. “When I get my hands on that bitch….”
“I’ve a good mind to hang her by those big juicy tits when we catch her,” Lieutenant Meng snarled as he wiped blood from his thorn-gashed neck.
“I’d like to give ‘em a taste of my bamboo first!” one of his men answered.
They were only yards behind her now, Erika thought, although she couldn’t see them. And still she ran, if forcing one’s way through clump after clump of dense foliage can be called running, trying to ignore the sharp, whippy twigs that were snapping against her thighs and belly. She was breathing so loudly now that she feared that her trackers would be able to hear her even if she were to find a hiding place where she couldn’t be seen.
Still, she lurched onward, bloody and beleaguered, until she tripped over a root and crashed headlong into a thicket bristling with briars and thorns.
“There she is!” the lieutenant barked. “Over there!”
“Yeah, I see her, now!” a voice answered. “Ow!! Damn these thorns! You’ll pay for this, you fucking whore!”
The voices were closer now, much closer. Erika could hear the parang chopping at the brush. Surely her pursuers were only yards behind her now.
Erika clambered to her feet, trying desperately to free herself from the thorns that clung to her so devotedly. And then she saw, some thirty yards ahead, a patch of daylight which suggested that she was close to reaching the far side of the brush. Perhaps, she thought, with her speed, on clear land she could put some distance between herself and the men on her trail. She was at the point of exhaustion, true, but surely her pursuers were weary too, after hacking their way through the woods with their gear on their backs.
She plunged forward again doggedly, but the hacking and cursing were closer than ever now. She glanced quickly over her shoulder, and saw her pursuers for the first time. As she suspected there were only three in the vanguard, although surely more would be following at some distance.
“You can run, slut, but you can’t hide!”
Erika’s pursuers had her in view now and the sight of her well-toned legs, her rounded buttocks and her big, bouncing breasts infused them with new energy.
“Surrender, wench, and maybe we’ll go easy on you!” Lieutenant Meng shouted, although he had no intention of doing any such thing. To the contrary. With luck they’d have time to have a bit of fun with this golden-haired forest nymph before the general arrived with reinforcements. And during that time, the weary and resentful lieutenant planned on giving the gorgeous escapee a working over she would never forget.
Erika was only a few yards from the clearing, when her right ankle got caught in a patch of vines. She screamed in frustration, desperately trying to pull her foot free from of the vine, but by the time she had untangled her foot it was too late.
“There she is! Get her! Get the slut!”
Erika turned to face her stalkers who were arranged in a semi-circle around her in the thick brush. One, a stout man of thirty with short-cropped hair, was breathing as heavily as if he’d chopped down half the forest with the sharp-bladed bamboo-cutter he held in one hand. The second and nearest pursuer was a wiry, pigtailed lad who could not have been much more than eighteen. Despite his youth he had, along with his carbine, a wicked looking bamboo cane stuck in his belt. The young man’s malevolent countenance suggested that he was not inexperienced in using the cane on helpless women; the lust in his eyes made it clear that he had never seen a woman like the bloodied, sweat-drenched beauty before him. The third man was the goateed man wearing the lieutenant’s stripes; Meng’s features were contorted by an unholy combination of malice and lust.
When the stocky man lifted the chopper and started to advance on Erika, the lieutenant snapped. “Put that away, Wu. You heard what the general said. He wants us to take her alive. Besides,” he sneered lasciviously, “I’ll bet he’s got plans for that pretty head. You’d better leave it on her shoulders.”
Lieutenant Meng reached for the braided whip coiled on his hip, but despite the threat from that quarter Erika knew that her only chance was to first disarm Wu, the stocky man with the sharp-edged parang. While the odds were long, they were not impossible. Wu, after all, had chopped his way through a few hundred yards of brush and he was clearly even more exhausted than she was. If she could somehow manage to get her hands on the bamboo-cutter….
Spotting a fist-sized rock on the ground, Erika swiftly bent down and grabbed it. Summoning her last burst of energy she made a clever feint in the direction of the knife wielder that lured him into lunging forward with the parang. At the very moment that Erika felt the first sharp sting of the lieutenants whip on her back she crashed the rock down violently on Wu’s extended wrist. The man with the parang screamed in pain and dropped the knife. Erika dove for it, but in doing so, she continued to pay a heavy price for turning her back on the lieutenant. Meng lashed her first across the shoulder blades and then across the buttocks, before Erika turned on him, brandishing the parang.
“I think the fucking cunt broke my wrist,” Wu wailed, as Meng lashed at Erika again, this time finding the outer curve of her left breast.
“Ow! Schwein!!” Erika seethed. She feinted cleverly with the knife, driving the lieutenant back, just as the third man, the youngest of the three, charged at her through the brush, his carbine extended diagonally in front of his body. Erika braced herself for the collision, absorbing a lash to the backs of her thighs from the lieutenant in the process, and swung the thick-handled chopper at the lead hand of the man with the carbine.
TWHOCKK!! A crimson geyser erupted from where the fingers of the young man’s left hand had been, spraying Erika’s nude breasts and midsection with blood
“AIAGGHHHH!!! My hand!!! My hand!!!” he screamed, as he dropped to his knees, still cradling the carbine in his good hand. His face pale, he ripped at a sleeve with his good hand hoping to use it to staunch the bleeding.
As Erika was battling Cho, Lieutenant Meng had taken careful aim at her succulent, blood spattered breasts. With a thunderous, “Yaaahh!” he swept his whip forward catching Erika full across her slick pain- melons, just below her delectable nipples.
“AAIAGH!” It was Erika’s turn to cry out in pain.
Even armed with the parang and with two of her opponents down at least for the moment she was still at a disadvantage. Between herself and the evil lieutenant was a yard-thick, thigh-high patch of thorny briars that was not nearly as deep as his whip was long.
“You’d better give up while you can, bitch,” Lieutenant Meng sneered as he lashed out with a backhand slash at her right side, knowing that she dared not try to make a grab at the whip for fear of dropping the knife.
Bracing herself for the thorns that would claw at her bare flesh and for another stroke or two of the whip, Erika charged into the briars toward the whip-wielding lieutenant. She gritted her teeth in pain as the thorns tore at her thighs and she took another whip stroke across her proud breasts a split second before Cho’s rifle butt slammed into the back of her neck. She fell forward into the briars as everything went black….
************
Moments later Erika came to, revived by the canteen of water that had been emptied onto her head and shoulders and the pressure of a carbine barrel being forced into her vagina.
She heard Wu, the heavy-set man mutter, “I ought to smash your skull with that rock!” and a hissing THWICCKKKK! an instant before she felt his cane slash deep into her buttock-flesh.
“Aghhh!! She cried out as the heaviness of the blow drove her prostrate body down even deeper into the thorn bush.
CRACCKKK!!! Lieutenant Meng, not be outdone by his subordinate, lashed Erika viciously, leaving a weal that stretched from just beneath one shoulder blade to the bottom of her rib cage.
Meanwhile, Cho, who had wrapped his bloodied hand – minus the first knuckle of three of his fingers – in a strip of cloth torn from from his sleeve was working the barrel of his carbine deeper into her body.
THWICKK!!! Wu brought the cane down again, ravaging the base of her buttocks, only inches from Cho’s punishing, probing carbine.
Erika had dropped the bloody parang when she had been knocked unconscious. She saw that it had fallen deep into the thorn bush. She plunged her right arm deep into the briars and had just managed to grasp its thick handle when the lieutenant’s whip scored her back yet again.
Then with a sudden herculean effort, she wrenched the parang free from the briars, and tore her breasts and midsection and thighs free from the dozens of thorny twigs clawing at her flesh and staggered to her feet to fight again. Her encrimsoned right arm lifted the parang high as she prepared to leap at Lieutenant Meng just as Wu whipped the cane into the very center of her bloodied breasts, crushing her tender nipples with such agonizing force that Erika lost her grip on the knife.
Cho, his visage vengeful, was just about to drive the butt of his carbine into Erika’s superb pain-globes when the four combatants heard the stentorian voice of General Wang bellow “Enough!!!”
“Did I give orders for this?” the warlord continued. Erika’s three attackers lowered their weapons as the olive-clad warlord emerged from the thick undergrowth, preceded by a couple of brush-hackers armed with parangs. The general was followed closely by Jasper Slegg and Tiger, still with the coil of rope around his neck, and another pair of slovenly dressed soldiers.
As Wu bent down to retrieve his bloody parang, Erika’s hopes sank to their lowest point. She had been only a few yards from the clearing and a chance to extend the distance between herself and her pursuers when the accursed vine had tripped her up.
And now she stood, naked and bloodied, surrounded by a circle of men whose sadistic leers assured her that no mistreatment, no humiliation, no depravity, would be spared her.
A thin smile crossed Jasper Slegg’s face as he studied the ravages Erika’s desperate race through the brush had inflicted on her body. Her usually creamy thighs were blotched and bloodied from their duel with the Chinese silver grass. Here and there from her calves to her shoulders, burrs and broken-off briars were still lodged in her flesh. A fortunate few were still embedded in her succulent breasts, which were covered with Cho’s blood. Her desperate attempt to jerk the parang up and out of the briars in one swift motion had left her right arm covered with blood as well.
“It’s not as bad as it looks, your excellency,” exclaimed Lieutenant Meng meekly as he wiped most ot the blood from Erika’s proud breasts with his sleeve. “This is his blood,” he added, pointing at Cho, who was still cradling his hand, “not hers.”
“Very well, lieutenant. Why did you try to flee, wench?” the general taunted his re-captured prisoner. “I am gratified that you wished to see something of my island, but you have yet to visit my castle. It has many unusual attractions that my female guests find quite unforgettable.”
“I would rather visit the devil in hell!” Erika bristled.
The general gave an almost imperceptible nod to Wu, who rewarded Erika’s insolent reply with a cane stroke across the tops of her thighs.
THWICCKKK!! “Agh!!…. Gott!!”
Turning to his men, the warlord said, “Take her back to the dock. I have a little surprise waiting for our guest of honor!”
While he had been leering at Erika’s scarlet-streaked nakedness, Jasper Slegg, as was his custom, had been pondering ways to make the dreadful situation of the general’s voluptuous captive even more miserable. “If I might make a suggestion, yer lordship?”
“What is it?” the general rasped curtly
“It’s rough goin’ through that brush. Ye wouldn’t want any of yer men to get ‘urt now, would ye?”
“What’s your point, man?”
“I was just thinkin’ yer excellency, that per’aps we should have the frowlein lead the way back. Serve ‘er right for runnin’ off like she did.”
A cruel smile crossed the warlord’s face. He had missed Erika’s first battle with the brambles; judging by the prickers lodged in her flesh, he wouldn’t mind seeing the rematch. “Yes, that’s not a bad idea.”
As Lieutenant Meng and Wu, nursing his injured wrist, marched Erika back toward the edge of the undergrowth, she saw with relief that the parangs of Wu and the general’s party had carved an irregular trail through the deep thicket, leaving it somewhat more passable than she had originally found it.
“Beggin’ yer pardon, your worship, but if I might make one more little suggestion?” Slegg interjected in a wheedling voice.
“What is it now?” the warlord snapped.
“Well, yer honor, if my friend Tiger ’ere was to tie the wench’s ‘ands behind ‘er with that rope ‘es been luggin’ around all day, she wouldn’t be able to use ‘em to push the branches and suchlike out of the way, now would she? She’d be leading with ‘er tits, if ye gather my meaning.”
General Wang’s malicious sneer brightened. The thought of Erika nude body fighting its way through the undergrowth without being able to use her hands to ward off twigs and thorns was indeed appealing . He nodded to Tiger and the crewman stepped forward, cut a length of rope from the coil on his shoulder. Despite Erika’s resistance, she was quickly overpowered and within a minute her two her arms had been bound at wrist and elbow across the small of her back so tightly that her fingertips almost touched her elbows.
Tiger roughly spun the product of his workmanship around so that she faced the general.
The warlord nodded approvingly. Tiger’s ropework had forced Erika’s luscious, blood-streaked breasts into even more glorious prominence, superb pink-nippled targets for briars, brambles and brush.
“Of course,” Slegg continued, “Ye wouldn’t want ‘er to lose one of those pretty blue eyes to a springy twig now, would ye?”
It was true, the general considered. In places the brush had been head high.
Slegg, noting that Cho had already cut a length of fabric from one sleeve to bind his bleeding hand, grabbed the bloody parang. “Ye’ll need to find another shirt anyway, mate,” he rasped and cut a strip from Cho’s remaining sleeve.
Slegg whirled around waving the piece of fabric. “That should do it, yer lordship – as nice a blindfold as anyone could ask for.”
“ ‘ere ye go, Princess. We wouldn’t want yer baby blues to get scratched now, would we,” Slegg jeered as he set about covering Erika’s eyes with the strip of cloth, knotting the blindfold tightly at the back of her head.
“Please … please …. Those men have cut a bit of a trail, now, but with the blindfold, I won’t be able to see …”
“Well, princess, it seems to me you should ‘ave thought of that before running off like ye did.”
And with that Slegg pushed her so forcefully from behind so that she stumbled face forward into the brush, and Erika immediately felt the rough vegetation clawing at the front of her body.
“General, if one of yer men will lend me one of their canes, I’ll walk be’ind ‘er and make sure that she that keeps up a good pace. She’s wasted enough of our time today, don’t ye think?”
Wu, who was more than a little disappointed that he would not have the pleasure of whipping Erika through the forest to avenge his injured wrist, grudgingly handed his bamboo rod to Jasper Slegg. The wily first mate hefted in his hand for a moment and then satisfied that it was a nasty weapon indeed, slashed it viciously across Erika’s shapely buttocks, driving her forward blindly into the forest.
“Forward march, fraulein!”
************
It had taken Erika only minutes to crash her way a few hundred yards into the forest before she was recaptured; it would take the nude and sightless beauty nearly an hour to make the return trip.
Every step was torture. She tried, as best she could, to turn her body sideways slightly so that her shoulders bore the brunt of the punishment, but the deep patches of silver grass interwoven with all manner of briars and brambles, always seemed to find her well-toned thighs, her pubic area, her smooth belly, and her creamy pleasure globes, clawing at them with what seemed like a hundred talons.
Occasionally the exhausted beauty stumbled blindly into the partly-cleared path the parang wielders had cut on their way into the undergrowth, but as often as not after a few relatively easy steps, Slegg slashed at her with the cane, forcing her toward more virginal foliage.
She could hear a few of the general’s men ahead of her, no doubt following the path already cleared. But their conspiratorial whispers convinced her that they were setting booby traps for her, because nearly every time that the masses of rough-edged twigs snapped viciously into her thighs and torso, the painful impact was followed almost immediately by outbursts of crude laughter.
She was also nearly certain that Slegg, who was driving her like a cattleman, lashing the borrowed cane at her buttocks and thighs two or three times a minute, was steering her into the worst clumps of thorns and prickers.
And she was right. Whenever Slegg saw a particularly nasty patch of brambles, he’d give the soldiers an evil wink and then he’d drive Erika’s nude body head first into the worst of the brambles. General Wang’s soldiers gaped lasciviously at the sight of the blindfolded beauty’s creamy breasts being impaled on flesh-piercing thorns every few steps.
Erika was beyond exhaustion when Slegg drove her through the last few yards of brush and into the meadow where she had begun her ill-fated dash for freedom. As they crossed the grassy field, Slegg saw that yet another handful of soldiers were lounging carelessly in the general area of the chariot.
When Erika was some twenty yards from the soldiers, he removed her improvised blindfold, so that she would be aware that these dissolute men were enjoying the sight of the nude beauty being paraded toward them.
And what men would not enjoy the sight of a tall, golden-haired demi-goddess, with her arms bound so tightly behind her back that her luscious, coral-nippled breasts, flecked with fresh streaks of scarlet, jutted toward them invitingly as she approached? What men would not enjoy the sight of a forest nymph, fresh from capture, whose sweat-drenched thighs glistened in the bright sunlight, and whose every stride offered a glimpse of a golden triangle and the alluring folds of femininity that lay just beneath.
As one, the soldiers watched mesmerized as this gorgeous creature drew nearer. Each man knew – and the most fortunate among them had taken part in - the kind of cruelties and depravities that often befell attractive young women on Zhou-shan Island. And each man among them dared to hope that he would be called on to assist in the sexual subjugation of the long-legged, full-breasted beauty lurching exhaustedly toward them.
|
|
|