“So my good masters’, see this time if you can see which cup hides the coin!” There
was a flurry of hands and deft twisting of the cups on the table top, beneath one of them,
Carla had created the illusion of hiding the offered coin beneath. Smiling, the gambling
man eyed the pretty conjuror, before tapping one of the cups. Carla looked at him for a
second.
“The middle one Master? Are you sure?” Urged Carla. The untidy man’s friend egged
him on with a nudge of his shoulder.
“Go on! Stick to it. I can see in the slut’s eye, you’ve got her this time,” he
assured his friend. The man smiled again.
“Go on. Turn it over, I’ll swear the coin’s under there!” He was adamant.
Carla paused, her hand hovered over the cup, drawing out the suspense and then,
with her eyebrows raised quizzically, she turned the middle cup over...Nothing.
“Oh, blast! Confound the slut. Where is it then?” Shouted the angered man. Carla
replied by flipping over the cup to its right, to reveal the coin. The man pushed his way
through the throng of straining faces muttering.
“She’s twisted me someway. I could have sworn...” and his friend, frowning and
staring back at Carla aggressively, followed his friend without comment.
Carla could feel an undercurrent of discontent emanating from an increasingly
hostile crowd of men, confounded by their inability to track their elusive minerla. Being
tricked constantly by some cheap waif, that was obviously dealing in some trickery with
them, was beginning to antagonise them and Carla decided that a few more deals and she
would be on her way.
The business had been brisk that morning. As usual, she brought the gamblers in by
losing her first few hands, but thereafter, she had cleaned twenty minerla or more from
them and she knew she would not be good for too much more. Conjurors and tricksters who
got too clever, found themselves being pulled to pieces by their victims and all their
money taken, or even dragged to the magistrates. There, such girls were given short shrift
and she would be stripped to the waist and whipped with canes across her back and all of
her gains returned to the disgruntled crowd.
Whilst she was completing her day, taking the hapless punters for a few more coins.
A rich merchant ambled past. His whole demeanour was one of fabulous wealth. He wore
expensive and luxurious white silks, rich, leather boots. Tall and dark, he was also very
broad, his whole mien was one of size, wealth and strength. Alongside him walked a
skimpily clad, buxom slave-girl, who held a light umbrella aloft, to protect her Master
from the harsh sun. He had a neatly trimmed, black beard and wore a white turban. His
hook nose and sharp features marked him as more from the provinces than Talasian, but his
opulent wealth was more common amongst the all conquering Talasians than any other. His
dark, hawkish features, were at once handsome, urbane, his cold, grey blue eyes were
almost cruel, callous even. He looked as though he were capable of putting any slave-girl
that displeased him to unspeakable torment with the simplest gesture of his hand and think
no more of it.
As he passed the small group of people, he stopped to watch, his face alight with
mild amusement. He glanced over at his bodyguard and smiled. Then, his manner suddenly
changed, he became more intense and rather than watch the display, his eyes were
transfixed on Carla, performing her tricks. He suddenly appeared fascinated by the girl.
Without speaking, he grabbed his bodyguard, his huge, strong hand, taking his shoulder in
an irresistible grip. The bodyguard looked at him quizzically and followed his gaze to
Carla.
“What of her Pallistarchus?” He asked.
“Look at her!” Pallistarchus demanded and then looked at his aide. He remained
blank as he stared. “Well look damn you! What do you see?” He asked. The aide was lost for
words.
“Well... a pauper, a cheat. I don’t know!” He stammered.
“Do you not see that accursed Sultana?” Asked Pallistarchus in an almost breathless
gasp of wonder. His deep, strong voice seeming to resonate from deep in his belly, it was
so low. The bodyguard looked again. “Look at her!” He repeated. “Replace those rags with
decent silks, some jewels and her hair just so and she would be the fool dog’s double” he
said in a wondrous tone. “We must have words with her,” he decided.
Stepping forward, pushing easily through the crowd to face the table, Carla looked
up and was taken aback by the huge presence of strength and wealth before her. Regaining
her composure, she addressed him.
“You Master. Would you like to try and see if you can find your coin here?” She
smiled sweetly, her head to one side. Pallistarchus said nothing, but tossed a large,
silver, ten minerla coin on the table. There were gasps of surprise and Carla herself
gulped.
“Good Master. The coin is too large to fit under the cups,” she complained and
placed an upended cup onto the coin to show the silver edges protruding from the
circumference.
“You asked for a coin. You did not specify any type!” Pallistarchus’s deep voice
toned, a note of accusation in it. Carla flushed and seemed lost for a second.
“You can see Master. I cannot perform the test with this coin. Perhaps Master has a
one minerla coin he could choose?”
“Can’t or won’t?” Growled Pallistarchus. “I am not accustomed to being defied or
refused ruffian girl!”
Quickly, Carla thought of a ruse to arrest the rather awkward situation in which
she had suddenly found herself and picked up the coin and held it in front of the large
man’s face between her forefinger and thumb and then, she clasped her other hand around it
and in a twinkling of an eye, she opened both hands before him and both were empty. Carla
stood there, smiling. Pallistarchus looked unmoved.
“A clever trick. However, you will make the coin reappear, or it will be worse for
you!” Carla saw the furled, heavy, leather horsewhip in the belt that held his wide
burnoose close to his body. He looked as if he would be most adept and used to using it.
The deep growl of his voice, his brooding looks and strong demeanour, gave Carla a strange
shiver of anticipation as she glanced again at the heavy horsewhip, furled at his side.
Carla waved her hands in the air again and then, putting her hands close to his
dark, brooding countenance, she flicked her fingers and seemed to produce the coin from
behind his ear, waving the coin in front of him. Pallistarchus stared at her.
“That was your most sensible trick this morning girl!” He growled, but Carla
somehow gained the impression that this wealthy stranger was not so much looking at her
trickery as herself. There was something in his stare that disturbed her somewhat.
Turning on his heel, the merchant turned to leave, ordering his bodyguard. “Take
the coin, we go!”
“Is there a minerla or two noble Master?” Interjected Carla hurriedly.
“For what girl, theft?” Asked Pallistarchus in his deep bass.
“I returned the coin Master,” Carla offered in a submissive tone.
“Only because you value the cheeks of your arse you did,” snarled Pallistarchus,
adding. “Quick, have the slut return the coin in your purse. We go!” He said to his aide
and left. The aide offered Carla the purse and he felt the coin drop in and followed
Pallistarchus.
There was something in the hurried manner that he saw Carla whisk away her things
and melt in the crowd that made the merchant suddenly suspicious. Grabbing his bodyguard
with a massive hand he stopped.
“Look in your purse!” The bodyguard looked at Pallistarchus quizzically, but
complied. “Is there a ten, minerla piece in there?” He asked, grinning knowingly. The
bodyguard shook his head.
“No sir, just this” and he held up a blank copper disc. She had foolishly switched
coins on the guard without him suspecting a thing. Unfortunately for her, the wealthy
merchant was not so disarmed by her seeming harmless look. Pallistarchus gave a sly grin
of pleasure, as if his best-laid dreams’ had come to fruition.
“Get her!” He demanded. Carla was about to find out just how hard it was to hide
from Pallistarchus’s men, when he had ordered them to find her. Suddenly, it was as if a
many tentacled beast had stirred from rest and was already shooting its arms’ out and down
the labyrinthine streets of Batu in search of her.
It had taken little more than an hour for Pallistarchus’s men to track Carla down
and arrest her. It was a frightened and sweaty girl that was dragged over town and stood
in the open, light and well appointed residence of the wealthy and influential
Pallistarchus. Carla was dragged before him and when presented, wrested her wrists’ from
the vice like grip of Pallistarchus’s guards.
He looked the sweaty, dishevelled girl up and down with superior disdain. Her
loose, red, cropped leg trousers hanging on her hips, left a broad band of midriff showing
beneath her green and yellow wrap, amidst the disarray of her capture.
Suddenly, without a word, Pallistarchus snatched the body wrap from her, taking the
scarf that covered her shoulders’ and arms’ with it. Carla flinched momentarily, but then
regained her posture.
“You made a grave mistake,” Pallistarchus warned in his deep, gravel like tones.
“I will return the money. I will make amends, I swear!” Blurted a frightened Carla.
He looked her up and down again. He was not disappointed by the sight of her body, which
the pretty countenance had promised. Neat, well shaped breasts, a curvaceous body, well
rounded, yet trim. This girl was indeed pretty and as Pallistarchus observed her closely
now, he felt almost as if her were gazing on the double of the sultana he knew.
“The money has already been returned,” assured Pallistarchus “and you are right,
you will make amends. The money is of no import. What matters is that you saw fit to steal
from me, Pallistarchus, a man of stature and position and you are going to learn that.”
With that, he took some leather thongs that had been on a nearby table and seemed
placed there, ready for this deed, for he began tying them firmly to Carla’s wrists. She
winced as he tugged the first, tightly around her wrists’.
She looked at him, hard and strong, his cold, narrow eyes a steely blue. Even
though she was at his mercy, there was no denying his masculine attraction.
“Have you ever been whipped?” He asked her coldly. Carla gave a haughty toss of her
head.
“I have followed the cart and tasted the chief of police’s cane. A good enough
measure for any girl!” She said proudly. It always puzzled Pallistarchus, how girls who
had suffered the shame and ignominy of a public stripping and flogging, always seemed
somehow proud of it ever afterwards.
“Good!” Replied Pallistarchus in a matter-of-fact way. “Then you know in part what
to expect, but I warn you, the cane and the birch are but caresses when laid alongside the
horsewhip.” Carla felt a strange stirring as the strong man bound her wrists, standing so
close to her and she, stripped to the waist for a flogging he was about to impose and
order on her. Amidst her fear, she felt hot and sticky. As Pallistarchus bound the thongs
to her, he could smell her hot, sweaty body.
Seemingly unbidden, a short, but extremely wiry looking soldier entered the large
open hall Carla and Pallistarchus were in. He was wearing nothing more than a pair of
loose, crop legged, red breeches. Carla saw the furled horsewhip in his hand.
Pallistarchus had finished tying the long, leather thongs to her wrists’ and with a curt
nod of the head, he allowed the stocky brute to take her.
All of the interior of Pallistarchus’s large, palatial residence was pure white
marble. It had a wonderful, open plan arrangement that made it feel cool and airy and as
the soldier led Carla from the large hall, she found herself in a large, round sort of
piazza, stoned in the same white marble and open to the heavens, though they stood under a
sort of stone pergola. Flanked as they were on all sides by large columns, it was apparent
that this was the place where Pallistarchus had his errant slave-girls whipped, for two of
the columns opposite each other, had iron rings inset at just above head height.
As they came upon the area, another guard was standing, seemingly awaiting them.
The soldier leading Carla, pushed her into the centre of the piazza.
“Tie her!” He curtly ordered and the waiting guard set about tying the long,
rawhide thongs about her wrists, to the iron rings set in two of the pillars opposite one
another. The tying set her arms wide spread and raised to somewhere above head height, so
that her back was conveniently presented for the lash. As the soldier bound her, the first
took his position behind her and let the long, braided, leather and whipcord lash fall
free to do its heart stopping duty.
There were tense seconds of delay, as the soldier who had tied Carla, stepped clear
of the flying lash. She stood, stripped and bound, helpless before the strong, hard,
soldier. Her back spread, open, available. She could smell herself as a sticky film of
sweat, made her voluptuous body glow. She knew the next seconds would bring sickening
agony, but this wait, these few seconds of delay, with her open before hard, cold men, was
intensely erotic. She thought momentarily, of Pallistarchus. The inscrutable, implacable,
yet handsome man who had brought her to his home and was responsible for her being whipped
in this fashion. Would he come to watch? She hoped, so emphatically that he would.
Suddenly, just as she could have predicted, all thoughts of eroticism, of
Pallistarchus and of strong soldiers, were dashed from her mind as the blinding flash of
pain, filled her body and mind so completely, that nothing else existed for her but that
flying lash, that ripped across the middle of her back, its speeding, whipped end,
slapping spitefully at the side of her right rib.
“Have you ever been whipped?” Pallistarchus had asked her airily and she, with
equal indifference, even pride, had told the hard merchant of her ordeals’ to date. How
fatuous that seemed now, when levelled with such blinding pain as this.
Another lash was sent, swingeing, just inches below the first, its arc, crossing
over the former, crisscrossing her broad, spread back..
“Aaaiee!” Carla yelped, unable to suppress a cry of pain, as her body was taken
over by the biting, speeding whipcord and its unholy snapping at her tender, offered
ribs.
Lash followed lash, working down her back and then another, ripped wide and full
across her shoulders. Carla threw her head back, tossing a mass of blonde curls high, as
she writhed in her shackles, yelling in agony. The lash ripped the full width of her back,
terminating in a thick slap across the top of her right bicep. She stamped a sweaty leg,
as her loose, red, crop legged trousers stuck to her hot, sweaty buttocks and thighs’.
Her trousers loose and low, hung on her hips, baring a broad mass of Carla’s back
for her flogger to work and work her he did, for as lash followed lash and the deep, welts
overlapped and crisscrossed, so her tender skin began to split and bleed.
Back in the cool, white confines of Pallistarchus’s palatial residence, he had
retired to his inner sanctum and reclined on his chaise-longue. There, wafted by the
cooling feather fans of his two dusky, scantily clad, buxom slave-girls, he listened to
the unholy howling of the street slut out on the piazza. He enjoyed listening to her
complaints and the harsh, meaty slap, as the horsewhip bit into her back.
As he reclined, one of his aide’s came forward with a bow. “The street dancer is a
girl named Carla. She dances for coins and conjures in the market for as long as the men
she cheats will stand her” he informed him. Pallistarchus, as phlegmatic as ever, nodded
and let his head fall back onto the couch. The aide strode out and the wealthy merchant
continued to enjoy the impromptu entertainment being afforded him.
Pallistarchus lived his life with all the trappings and finery of a Sultan. As well
as dozens of slave-girls and servant girls to do his every bidding, he also boasted a fine
and well stocked harem, housing some of the loveliest and most exotic women any harem
could boast; with slave-girls from all over the empire.
Still others worked his many farms and mills, quarries and galleys, that ensured he
grew wealthier every second he lounged in his luxurious palace residence.
Pallistarchus never asked a woman to do anything, he always told them. Owning so
many slaves as he did, he was used to girls jumping when he spoke and hanging on his every
word.
He listened as the flogging slowly, deliberately, but with great force, continued.
He smiled quietly as he eyed one of the buxom slaves fanning him, her skimpy, powder blue
harem suit revealing all of her voluptuous curves. He used many and any of his slave-girls
and servants, not confining himself to his harem and with the sound of heavy flogging
coming from so close a distance that he could almost smell the blood and the sight of the
delicious slave-girl, impassively gazing into the middle distance, as protocol demanded,
the stirring in his loins was going to need cooling soon enough.
Out on the piazza, the heat of the day was nothing when levelled alongside the heat
the soldier was pouring on the sweaty, broken Carla. Nobody counted on the strokes,
indeed, when the Master had nodded for the soldier to take her and whip her, he had
announced no number of strokes and Carla’s body was ablaze as the whip wrapped around her
yet again, licking broadly, her pert, ripe, right tit, adding another stripe to those
already torn into it.
“Yaagh, urgh!” Gasped the broken girl. Although no soldier counted the lashes as
they were applied, the soldier knew well enough his duty was to break the girl, hurt and
bleed the sorry wretch, but not destroy her. Twenty lashes was enough aplenty for him to
do all this and it was a gasping, panting wretch that hung in her bonds after the
twentieth lash had ripped across the middle of her back. By that time, Carla was only
dimly aware that her whipping had stopped, though the lashes were ablaze violently, all
over her body. It was as though no inch of her upper torso had been spared the whip’s
fury. She looked down at herself and was horrified to see her front, littered with loud,
dark and even bloody, weals.
It was as Pallistarchus had promised, the cane and even the searching, swinging,
birch, were but caresses, when drawn alongside the agony of the horsewhip.
The soldier cut the thongs from the pillars that held her up and although she kept
her feet, she was slumped and bowed from the flogging. Wet with sweat and forlorn, the
soldier pushed her back the way they had come. Clearly, Pallistarchus wanted to see the
town thief after she had been bent by the whip.
She was taken to his inner chamber, where the broad, brooding merchant, was
reclining on his chaise longue , his fan slaves, wafting air gently around him. He was the
picture of calm and serenity; a stark contrast to the dancing, writhing, sweating wreck he
had made of her. The soldier stood Carla, still bowed, and left. Pallistarchus surveyed
her quietly. Sweat trickled down her rounded and now, bruised and bloody, curves. He
tossed a towel that landed at her feet, before her downcast eyes.
“Dry yourself, you miserable wretch,” he scowled, “ I find sweating girls disgust
me.” Carla, with a grimace of discomfort, stooped and picked up the towel and began wiping
the sweat from her curvaceous, sweat soaked, body.
“I did not ask to be whipped!” She replied dryly and started to dry her arms,
picking her way carefully when she reached the whip marks around the tops of them.
Pallistarchus watched her for a while. The more he gazed at her, the more she started to
look like the Sultana, looks that had so attracted her to him in the market place. He
watched as she dabbed the sweat from her stomach and under her arms, her face and gently
around her whipped, loudly marked, tits. If her hair were dressed and trimmed, her shabby
attire replaced with the favoured silks of the sultana; forsooth, their own mothers’ would
not know them apart, Pallistarchus would swear.
The sultana was a little taller, perhaps even a little older than this Carla and
the whipped girl’s arms bore no brands, whereas the sultana’s chequered past had put them
on her, but such differences were of little import.
“I find pain is the best way of teaching a girl respect for her betters’ and I
trust you have suffered pain in abundance.” He enjoyed the way she squirmed with a
grimace, as she tried to pick her way around her bruised and riven body as she wiped
herself. She threw Pallistarchus a disapproving look.
“Scant benefit to you Master; my pain I mean,” she said in an almost scoffing tone.
The merchant raised his eyebrows.
“On the contrary, if it is my wish, then I benefit from it on that count alone” and
he continued to watch her. “A common street dancer and trickster,” he mused, as if talking
to himself.
“It is a way of earning a living, nothing more Master,” Carla replied.
“Aye, and a way of earning stripes too I’d wager. What if you were given a chance
to do a job of real worth and earn some real money in the bargain?” Pallistarchus chanced.
Carla looked at him, her head on one side, still the leather thongs were tightly bound to
her wrists’ and standing there, stripped and dripping with sweat, Pallistarchus began to
feel a true desire for her course through his veins’.
“Job? Money? Forgive me Master, you talk in riddles.”
“I mean just what I say, that you will have the opportunity to display real talents
and earn money, not from sweating in the street with no clothes on, but by thought and
thereby, earn tens of minerla, rather than odd coins tossed by aged men with erections,”
Pallistarchus scoffed.
He poured her a goblet of water and motioned for her to join him.
“You don’t have much regard for me do you sire?” She chanced as she took the drink
and sipped it greedily, it was exactly what she needed.
“Is one supposed to have a regard for street dancers?” For the first time, there
was something akin to humour in the large merchant’s voice. Carla stared into his eyes,
her own looked like deep, blue pools to Pallistarchus.
“I would guess that you own dancers, but because they are slave-girls, they do not
attract the same disdain as I,” Carla replied.
“Then look at yourself! Standing before me, stinking like a used she camel and
covered in whip welts. Hardly an image of desire or admiration, wouldn’t you say?” Carla
felt her cheeks flush red with shame. She did feel very low and worthless and she could
smell the heavy musk rising from her hot, sticky, body.
She put her drink down and wrestled with the thongs that still gnawed into her
wrists, finally freeing herself with a gasp and began rubbing the deep furrows that the
thongs had driven into her skin. Pallistarchus clapped his hands and almost immediately,
two buxom and very pretty slave-girls, in traditional peach, court attire rushed to
attend.
“Take this girl away, see she is fed and given all due care. I will see her after!”
Ordered Pallistarchus. The girls took Carla gently by the wrists and she suddenly felt any
desire to resist, ebb away from her, as she realised the sea of pain that continued to
crash upon her, had quite drained her of the power to stop anybody doing anything to her
that might be against her will and so, almost willingly, she let Pallistarchus’s
slave-girls lead her away.
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