Chapter 1

 

"Disappointing really," Meg Anderson said, gazing about the courtyard of the ruined temple, evidently long since over-run and half-obscured by the jungle.

"What did you expect? Hereditary temple prostitutes and peasants still making human sacrifices, like a Hollywood horror pic?" her husband grunted.

"It's remote and eerie enough," Meg shuddered. "Though the locals hardly seem up to it, too wretched to be dangerous. Wrong sort of Indians!" she said, repeating an old joke as Tom Anderson patted one of the pockets of his bush jacket. Oklahoma-bred, he was in the habit of carrying a gun on long journeys, a habit that amused his English wife. Still she would have admitted that it gave a degree of assurance in these disturbed times on an unplanned side excursion.

"They are illegal squatters," Tom pointed out. "This is supposed to be a Forest Reserve with only a few tribal hunters living in it. There should have been a Forest Officer with a force of rangers, but I suppose with so much unrest and the army chasing rebels all over the place things have got disorganised. More disorganised than usual!" he qualified.

The Andersons had passed the Forest centre that morning, finding it stripped bare and unoccupied except for a passing patrol of government soldiers making a brief halt. It had been the friendly NCO in charge who had told them of this temple, hearing of Tom Anderson's particular interest as an anthropologist in survivals of ancient cults.

"We have an assured flight out of here," Tom had said reassuringly as they walked the short distance from the woodcutter's track where they had parked the 4WD. "We'll be safely home in two days. Then if the worst comes to the worst, we'll be somewhere that has organization enough to handle it!"

"That makes me feel like a deserter," Meg commented.

"Whatever happens-" Tom said, repeating a familiar argument. "The poor of the third world are sure to suffer worst. You don't owe them anything. Nobody in this country is worrying about how the poor will make out. A guy at the university told me outright that they would be better off in the long run if they lost a lot of population. The third world knows it already, hence all the crazy theories that it's a plot by the rich nations to get rid of them." Tom grinned. "Rioters are probably looting our apartment right now."

"They'll only allow hand luggage on the plane anyway." His wife shrugged off the recollection of the abandoned possessions. "Anyway, some of them claim it's a coming judgement upon the rich nations for our greed and that they're better able than us to subsist on very little." She repeated her side of the debate without thinking as they reached the temple ruins. It had been she who had picked up from one of the students, to whom she taught English, the tale of a lost temple called Annagaruyah where, her informant claimed, rituals of an ancient form of Kali worship still survived. His father and uncles had been contractors on the construction of the new highway that had opened up access to the forgotten site.

There had seemed to be no harm in making an inspection of the temple, now that it lay so close to the road with its regular army patrols. They had been assured that their route was safe, all this area had been declared 'pacified' long since. This might be the last chance to see the place in an undisturbed state. It was worrying that they had seen signs of forest clearance and little illegal settlements of huts by the wayside, apparently tolerated by the military. Nevertheless Tom took the gun with him when they left the 4WD, prepared, as his wife remarked, half-deprecating, for any trouble.

Meg was right, however, in that the temple proved a disappointment. Their attempts to question the locals met with blank incomprehension, whether real or feigned it was impossible to tell. Annagaruyah had evidently lain neglected for centuries until the cutting of the highway had revealed it. The outer walls of the enclosure were broken fragments almost lost in the undergrowth, obscuring its ground plan. Here and there a stretch of carven frieze survived, but worn almost to formlessness, writhing figures in barely distinguishable sexual couplings, no more than vague lumps where once had been heads limbs and torsos. The Andersons managed to trace the square of the enceinte and from that to work out where in the overgrown interior the central shrine should be.

The trees that grew there pushed up from a great mound of stone and earth seemingly with special vigour, so that enormous slabs had been up-heaved, broken and toppled by the interlacing of root systems. Within this central grove was dank darkness but the two explorers had found a definite path that led them into a small cleared space at its heart. Where the deity's statue should have been was a mossy stone plinth, its top swept bare and supporting a deep brass bowl of the sort sold cheaply in any bazaar.

"A little mess of dried blood and bits of feathers," Tom reported and all that Meg found, poking about, was a couple of blackened clay bowls that seemed to have been used for lamps, nothing more.

"Maybe a local hunter, praying for a full trap," she suggested. They pushed back through the trees, duly disappointed, discussing the nature of the stone carvings and joking about the possible sexual postures now lost to learned research. As they emerged from the temple and came within sight of the 4WD, Meg groaned. "Even in an uninhabited jungle!" In the interval of their absence, one of the ubiquitous beggars of the country had arrived from nowhere and taken up his position, like a bundle of rags squatting by the roadside, where they had to pass.

"How many people come past here, for heaven's sake!" Tom said irritably.

Closer-to the beggar turned out to be a limbless man strapped to a little flat cart like a shallow tray with wooden wheels, his bowl set out on the ground before him.

"He deserves a reward for effort anyway," Meg sighed. "He must have spotted us when we passed that last bunch of huts. Are you going to give him anything, Tom? Maybe he knows something about the temple."

"It's your turn," Tom said firmly. "Give me your purse, Meg."

The beggar had begun to chant in an unexpectedly deep voice at the first sign of their interest, his voice becoming more sonorous and impressive as they approached, so that Meg found the hairs prickling on the back of her neck. Legless and armless, wild of hair and beard he sat like a solid block of carved wood, loosely wrapped in his rags and immobile on his little cart.

"He might not be a local," she ventured. "He might be a refugee, a land mine victim." She had noticed that the rags had once been military camouflage cloth.

The man fell silent, lifting his face as Tom approached him. Only a beaked nose, glittering dark eyes and full red lips were visible amid the luxuriant growth of glossy black hair, head and beard, moustache and eyebrows. Tom stooped, a handful of coins outstretched towards the bowl. Then to Meg's astonishment and then horror, an arm appeared like magic out of the ragged garments, bare, brown and knotted with muscle, wielding a brass bound club that whirled down upon Tom's bent head.

Meg heard the sickening crunch and Tom toppled forward without a sound. The beggar's bowl rolled away, spilling a few coins into the road. Tom lay crumpled so completely that she knew instinctively that he was dead. Before she had even drawn breath to shriek, the beggar, suddenly double-armed, propelled himself swiftly forward with long sweeping thrusts. Caught up in the emotion of the moment, Meg was slow to realise that he was after her and not the spilt coins, that she was the obvious next victim. The hurtling combination of man and cart was upon her in an instant and, as she turned to run, her legs were taken from under her. Down upon all fours she tried to scramble away but a large and powerful hand arrested her and then a second held her immobilised, despite her desperate threshing. The beggar's deep-chested bellowing almost drowned her frantic screams, until suddenly men had materialised all round them and further escape became impossible as they laid ungentle hands upon her.

 

Later that day the bandit gang, leading Meg as captive with them, approached something resembling a destination. Her hands had been tied behind her and she was being led behind the men like a baggage mule at the end of a halter, bowed under a backpack full of loot. It was a most wretched place, a dozen bedraggled huts about a square of beaten earth, but it seemed to the floundering prisoner to offer at least some temporary relief.

Her captors entered the hamlet with every sign of being at home there. They had been walking non-stop for hours over the most rugged country, by narrow jungle paths in a maze of forested hills and Meg was exhausted, not sorry to have reached an end, supposing herself to have been preserved for the purpose of ransom. Though who would pay it in the present state of affairs she wasn't at all sure. The 4WD, rolled into a brush filled ravine, might not be found for years and with it all traces of murder and robbery concealed.

Women and children greeted the men's arrival with shrill cries and shrieks. The pack was carried into the largest of the huts, empty of furnishing except for a couple of logs and a fire smouldering in the centre of the earth floor where its contents with the rest of the booty was piled up. Every soul in the village seemed to have crowded in to paw it over and to examine the prisoner. The women giggled among themselves, fingering the clothing and eyeing Meg, the miserable pot-bellied naked children clutching at their skirts or squabbling over some edible item thrown them by the men. Presently the women and children were chased out, Meg remaining, apparently as part of the loot and directed to remain kneeling in one corner.

The men squatted in a circle about the fire eating food the women brought to them. A woman brought drink of some kind in a gourd that the men passed round, smoking and spitting on the bare floor, rubbing out the result with a casual heel. There seemed to be a lively debate going on. The mock beggar, who had made the long journey carried on the back of a younger man with the vacant look of a half-wit, seemed to hold the floor with great effect. The others seemed reluctant to agree to whatever it was he advocated but unwilling to oppose him outright. Sometimes in a pause their eyes would all go to Meg as if she were the principal subject of discussion. The drink was replenished several times before the other men seemed all of a sudden to give up the argument, as if the cripple had carried his point.

The bandits all rose. The legless man was back aboard his wheeled trolley and rolling out of the door ahead of them. Meg, who detected a note of lewdness in the laughing and joking of the rest of the men, tried uneasily to hang back and had to be forced to follow. Women hung about in the background giggling and squealing as the men followed the swiftly moving cripple to a smaller hut. Inside Meg was pushed into a sitting position with her back against one wall, facing the beggar on his little trolley. The rest of the gang trooped out, exchanging sallies as they went with the half-man who busied himself with the straps that secured him to his appliance.

Alone with her original captor, Meg stared at him, aghast. It was clear now that the cripple, having killed her husband, had put in some sort of claim to possession of her. How did he propose to make it good she wondered, a legless cripple? Stun her with his club? She looked at his abbreviated figure, and then with more misgiving at the long arms, corded with muscles and ending in hands big and gnarled like tree roots. He began shedding his rags, revealing what lay beneath them; shoulders as broad as a wrestler's and a hard, muscular, brown torso, like something rough-hewn from a tree stump. Upon the thick neck his head was an explosion of glossy curling black hair amid which dark and lustrous eyes burned in deep sockets. They met hers with such lust and cruelty in them that she quailed instinctively, her nerve failing her.

Stripping the last of his rags the man flopped his penis out before her with a gesture, red lips curling as if to say: In this I am normal! In fact, lolling there on the little wooden platform between thigh-less stumps, without legs beside it for comparison, the appendage looked unnatural and almost inhuman in its grossness.

Meg took a grip on her fear, resolved to make a fight of it. She still shied away from meeting his eyes however, and perhaps in consequence his speed of movement took her by surprise once again. As she rose and sprang towards the doorway, his arms swept down and the wheels shot him forward. A large hand shot out and grabbed her ankle, her legs were swept from under her and before she could recover she was sprawled flat on the floor.

His terrible strong grip dragged her to him and then slammed her down as she tried to rise. A big hand took her by the hair and shook her this way and that, her legs flailing. Her head was banged again and again on the hard packed dirt floor until her own grip loosened on his thick wrists and she was forced to concentrate upon protecting herself, overwhelmed by his violence.

She was across his lap; or where that should have been, up against his belly, her nostrils full of his smoky rancid odour. She felt strong fingers on the neck of her dress and screamed in denial trying to prise him loose. Her small white hands tugged ineffectually at his great dark fist, his strength was far beyond hers. Grinning, as if enjoying the comparison of their relative power, the cripple stripped the dress from her in one continued savage wrench. Meg tried to bring her legs up far enough to kick him away but there wasn't enough of him to reach and the straps holding him to the trolley gave him a solid base that she couldn't upset. She realised that she had no hope of defeating him at such close quarters.

The bandit's red-rimmed eyes amid the tangle of greasy black hair gleamed with predatory intent like a beast from a thicket. Meg wriggled in his grip half-naked as the great hands, brushing aside her feeble resistance, ripped her lace bra apart like a thing of tissue. Her white breasts tumbled into his big hands and were mauled with relish, the soft flesh oozing between his squeezing fingers like dumplings.

He bounced them on a hard palm, thumbing the dark buds of her nipples while Meg writhed in humiliation, unable to restrain him.

Grunting a few words incomprehensible to Meg, the brute shoved backwards a few inches, dragging her further across his body and reaching a hand down to her waist. She fought wildly, aiming blows back at his head, which he disregarded, until at last she got a grip on a handful of his disordered curls. Her fierce tugs sparked a fiercer reaction. Swinging in his harness he slapped her hard, a teeth rattling smack, then another, and another slamming her head to and fro until she shifted all her efforts to defence, both arms up against the blows, blinded by tears and strands of hair and dizzy with the impacts. She had reached the limit of her resistance.

Satisfied as to that, Meg's captor reached again to the waistband of her knickers. Despite her lack of opposition, he didn't bother with pulling them down but literally tore them off. Tucking her body firmly under his arms, his two thumbs hooked in at either hip and ripped the flimsy material apart at the seams, tossing the remnant aside. Meg's hands went automatically to her crotch but the cripple using one of his like a chopper, struck them away in swift downward sweeps, numbing them with its force.

He swooped quickly before she could recover again, hoisting her by the thighs and tipping her on her back in front of him, legs in the air, arms flailing wide, still dazed and half surrendered.

Using his brawny arms as powerful levers the cripple lifted himself and his tilted trolley together and hurled himself bodily upon Meg, slamming her flat, flinging her legs wide and driving most of the breath from her. His arms held her in a vice-like grip pinned down beneath him, while his legless torso arched with incredible muscular control to bring his rigidly thrusting penis into position between her splayed thighs. Without the leverage of a pair of legs the cripple had to rely upon sheer weight and strength of arms to achieve his aim, but his powerful grip restrained and manipulated his victim's own instinctive struggles. He had Meg by the upper arms, crushing them together beneath her body and forcing her to arch upwards, thrusting her breasts against his barrel chest. She kicked wildly as she felt him penetrate her, heels and ankles coming into painful contact with the solidly planted wooden tray, finding nothing human to kick against and all her threshing merely leaving her more open to his thrust.

They struggled for a long time, the beggar plainly enjoying her resistance, but quite confident that his strength would prevail, Meg unable to believe that she could be subjected so easily to rape by a legless cripple. Stubbornly she refused to accept total defeat. She managed by a great effort to heave him over, only to be lifted up on top of him as they rolled and find that she was still impaled there.

He clung to her like a limpet, her own weight bearing her down onto his rigid penis, his strength of grip preventing her from levering herself off. His penis was now solidly inside her, thrusting up, feeling as stiff as a flagpole. Every time her muscles were forced to relax, she sagged a little deeper upon it, and was penetrated a little more and every time she gathered herself for a fresh effort, she found that she had that much further to rise.

At last she collapsed, panting and exhausted, onto his muscular chest, then impelled by a feeling of humiliation in that position, she summoned her failing strength for a last effort. Panting she threw herself this way and that, rolling over, her long legs threshing, but her clinging burden only followed her, chuckling, sometimes on top sometimes below, until she fetched up solidly against the hut wall, this time underneath him.

She subsided at last with a groan of helplessness, pinned into a corner. Grunting pleasurably, his lust only sharpened by the delay in her conquest, the cripple began to drive into her again, using all his incredible muscularity of waist and hips. His shortened torso became a lever lifting and thrusting, with his arms as the hinge. Meg was already well penetrated and in six or seven quick thrusts he had buried himself to his balls in her softly resistant sheath. A moment or two to catch his breath and then he began to fuck her hard with long, deep, strokes.

It was both noisy and vigorous but it didn't last long. Meg held herself rigid and perhaps the extended battle to counter and the subdue his prize had built up too much excitement, for he came, sparsely and evidently prematurely after a mere dozen or so thrusts.

In evident chagrin, he cursed and spat. Helpless underneath his weight, Meg could only groan with obvious relief. She was still half-dazed and had hardly credited her defeat. Surely a healthy full-grown woman should be a match for a legless cripple! She felt she would be better prepared if he tried that again.

Seeing her expression, her captor levered his torso back from her, using his long arms like human spider, cursing steadily under his breath. Meg started to sit up, but if she had thought he would accept his disappointment, she was about to learn another lesson.

He moved fast, one massive fist yanking her with him, rolling her over and sending her sprawling face down. Before she could reorganize herself his other hand had unshipped the broad and heavy belt like a weightlifter's cinch that formed part of his securing harness. Meg had hardly grasped his intentions, held in an iron grip with her arm doubled up between her shoulder blades and his dead weight pinning down her head and shoulders. From under his black eyebrows dark glittering eyes were fixed upon the squirming pink rounds of her upturned bottom. The belt was short thick and heavy; gripped in his fist by the buckle end it left the flat tongue free for business. He used it upon her unprotected behind and at once restored her painfully to full awareness of her position.

It was wholly unaccustomed treatment. Meg jerked her head up her blonde curls flying, her legs kicked wildly at nothing. She greeted each stroke of the belt with a piercing shriek that must have aroused the whole village. She humped desperately upwards, knees driving at the dirt floor and only succeeded in making herself an easier target.

"Hah! Achaa!" The brute grunted in satisfaction at her reaction. He balanced skilfully upon her back and shoulders, pinning her down and using every ounce of his weight to best advantage. As the blows multiplied, Meg's shrieks took on a piteous note, her kicks declining in power and direction.

"Achaa! Good! Good!" He dropped the belt then with powerful wrists and expert balance, threw his squirming and disheartened victim over onto her back again. Meg squealed as her well-flogged rump hit the hard earth floor and again on a rising note as her legs were parted, knees doubled back and thighs spread wide by his thrusting torso and muscular arms. This time she recognised her inevitable fate. The weals the belt had left on her behind were stretched by this treatment into fresh striations of pain that served to demoralise her further.

The brute seemed as demonstrably rampant as when he had started. She had been given a harsh lesson in the consequences of resistance and surely she could only expect more of the same if he found her unsatisfactory a second time. So by inexorable logic, Meg found herself compelled to submit to a renewed assault.

"Hai! Achaa!" He accepted this admission of his victory over her with an ignominious assumption of its inevitability.

This time, despite Meg's reluctant humiliated co-operation and her abuser's solidity of penetration, her rape seemed to go on forever. Going up and down above her, the plunging brute grunted incomprehensible exhortations. The effect of the rough floor grinding under Meg's wounded bottom served her as an added incentive to do her best to help him on to success. Panicking at the growing ferocity of his tone, she spread herself to the limit and arched herself upwards. Her heels, which had been waving high in the air above the man's head, widening with each stroke, buckled slowly at the knees, the heels coming rather uncertainly at first, to rest in the small of his back. In a few more strokes though, she was desperately thumping his buttocks with them in time to each downward thrust.

Soon both parties became more urgent, though from very different motives, creating between them nevertheless a noisy collaboration of lust and encouragement. When at last the amputated rapist rammed his last fast strokes into his shapely female victim, pumping victoriously into her, both of them gave tongue in the uninhibited expression of their quite contradictory reactions!