“In the future, after you’ve proved yourself.”
“Naked in my cage?”
“Yes. It’s that simple. At the moment I suspect you cherish loyalties to that absurd troop of chorus girls from which I’ve rescued you.”
“They aren’t chorus girls, they’re girls like me.”
“Abhad has dressed you as sexual exhibits of his monarchy.”
“You’ll both stay tied. Be grateful for the freedom you have. Ah, here we are! Your glass, madam.”
Trudy accepted her drink with pleasure. “What about poor Nikola?” she asked winningly.
“She can kneel beside your chair. You can hold sips to her lips as required. Remember, she is under the influence of concupiscence. Girls in heat are unpredictable. She stays tied. If you seek to free her again I’ll have her back on the hoist.”
Trudy shivered. Steel beneath the velvet! She offered her glass to the girl kneeling at her side. Nikola giggled and drank deep. She finished it off herself in a couple of gulps.
Their host replenished the glass. “Dutch courage, my dears?”
The two girls drained their second glass. Its effect on Nikola was instantly sentimental. “Do you think George really will marry me?” she asked wistfully of no one in particular. She fixed an inviting eye upon Nicholas Nykobe.
It was at that moment the rifle shot split the night. The door was flung open to admit a wide-eyed George. He was clutching a wounded arm, there was blood.
“They’re savages! Hellcats!” His wild gaze traversed the room.
“Who, man, who?” the leader demanded.
“Them!” George’s finger pointed at Trudy and then at his own startled girlfriend. “Them girls! They’re crazy! There’s hundreds!”
The guns appeared from nowhere. A flap was raised in the floor. Before he disappeared into the underground passage, Nykobe gestured fatalistically. “I live to fight another day,” he shrugged. He kissed Trudy’s hand. “Your cage will be polished and waiting . . .”
The flap closed above his vanishing head.
The rifles in the room barked savagely at an unseen foe.
Two men prudently bound Trudy’s hands and Nikola’s feet. There came the crisp rattle of firing and the splintering of the shanty’s walls. Two men dropped to the floor clutching wounds, then another. The bound girls, helpless and petrified, slipped to the floor and lay flat. When one more man dropped his gun and clutched an arm, the rest of Nykobe’s small force raised the flap and followed their leader. George muttered savagely at the hurt survivors and at the two girls: “We tells ’em we’s all there is. There weren’t no one else, see!” A bullhorn blared as the rifles died.
“If the girls are hurt you all die. Come out with your hands at the back of your necks. No guns! You are surrounded. You have one minute only in which to obey.”
It was unmistakably the voice of Warrant Officer Ringbolt.
7
Nude Courage
For eighteen troopers it was a triumphal march.
For two naked girls it was a Via Dolorosa. Two badly wounded prisoners had been taken away in the truck. George and one other, bandaged and bound, trudged beside the delinquent girls, upon whose wrists well-clamped handcuffs replaced rebel rope. For Trudy and Nikola there was, as yet, no mercy and no belief in any of their protestations.
“Yo’ big damfool, George,” Nikola hissed as they marched in disgrace. “Look what yo’ gets us into! I never marry yo’ now.” Disconsolately, she added. “I never gets to marry nobody. Maybe I gets shot for runnin’ off.”
“The worst yo’ gets is a flogging, love, It’s me who gets shot.” George sounded aggrieved.
“My back will be all scarred—and it’s all your fault! ’Sides, what gal wants to get herself a floggin’?”
“Silence in the ranks!”
It was Ringbolt’s stentorian bellow. He was enjoying one of the happiest days of his life. He was certain of commendation and reward, both for the magnificent performance of his troop under fire, and for his own perspicacity in guessing where the fleeing George was headed.
Trudy marched in mute misery. The too-tight handcuffs behind her back were a foretaste of what lay ahead. If only she had screamed at that one crucial moment! But she had kept quiet. She supposed the best she could expect was to be flogged shamefully in some public place. Most certainly in front of her fellow troopers! She envisioned the scene all too graphically: Herself naked and tied in some awful exposure, unable to move, waiting for the fatal command for the lashes to commence. What constituted a ‘flogging’! Twenty strokes or fifty—or more! And what kind of whip! A cat-o-nine-tails? A sjambok? Her back would be lacerated and they would rub salt in the wounds . . . ! She gave full rein to all she had ever read about such horrors.
And what afterwards! She had no hope of being expelled from Zindawba. The new republic would want its revenge. Most likely a term in prison. She shrank from such a sentence as cringingly as she did from the whipping of her back. A stone room and bars and chains . . . !
“I’se sorry—I sorry real bad—” George’s grief for them was real, as was his guilt.
“Send that man to the rear.” The W.O. knew how to deal with mutinous mutterings. “Take the other with him. The girls march alone.”
They were not alone. Around them was the troop. The girls would shed tears for their comrades fallen from grace, but would do nothing to help them. Justice would run its course. A court-martial lay ahead. At that moment in the President’s Guard ‘escape’ was a naughty word. Trudy marched to her doom beside her fellow prisoner in a maze of misery.
“I have to make an example of you girls.” Rulua was terse.
“Yes, of course.” To Trudy, at that moment, anything unpleasant seemed logical.
“The posts for the day so you’ll be in full view. No clothes. You don’t get your uniforms back until you’re acquitted or have served your sentence.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“I’m glad to see you’ve adopted a proper attitude. The sergeant will bind you. Don’t try and play on her sympathy.”
Trudy hated posts, but she obediently backed against hers. She saw Nikola back against another. Poor kid, she was bereft.
“I’m going to tie you tight, love. No hard feelings?”
“No, Sergeant.”
“You’ve got guts, Trudy. Not a single hysteric.”
“What’s the use, Galla! I haven’t a hope, have I!”
“There’s always hope, love. This here won’t be fun. But it’s not your court-martial!”
It was not fun! Trudy’s ankles were tied to the post, her knees, her waist, a rope came up through the lips of her vulva from behind and was cinched tight to her waist, rope below her breasts and above so they were framed and protruded by the stress, then her shoulders . . . Her wrists were handcuffed behind the post, then her elbows were circled and tugged back. “I can’t move an inch,” she said bitterly. “Is that what you want?”
“Not me, love, it’s regulations.”
“Is it regulations to cinch that rope into my pussy?”
“ ’Fraid so. It’s to shame you in front of the rest. They’ll all come and visit. They have to. It’s an order.”
“I hurt terribly. I guess I’m supposed to—?”
“That’s right, love. See you at nightfall.”
It was a long, long day! Both bound maidens wept. Sometimes a visiting trooper dried their tears.
When it came time for Trudy’s release the ropes were peeled from her skin in an agony of parting. Her lower labia lapped together gratefully when the cutting strand was withdrawn, but the burn of it would remain for hours. It was strange to be able to move, strange to draw a deep breath without the scalding ropes around her breasts. She leaned against her post in thankfulness that one day of punishment was past. She looked down. wryly, at the weals. The ropes were gone but the scarlet indentations in her skin were still vivid as though she was still bound by invisible restraints. To walk was a heady but unstable adventure.