Trudy was trembling. Upon her slender naked shoulders rested the fate of twenty chained and naked girls. Yet she was as confined as any of them. She wrenched bitterly at the cuffs on her wrists. If only they had been locked in front! Behind her back they could do nothing. But she had devised a plan. Whispered instructions to Daphne and Maisie had left the two of them as excited as herself. The congestion within the truck was an ally. The coffle had become a tight-wedged confusion of damp femininity who remained upright by falling against each other as their vehicle swayed and bumped. Their guard, standing at the rear, was amused by their fleshy instability and the jouncing of breasts. His perception was for all. He focused on no single girl. When the end of the coffle gravitated to its most distant point from his observation, Trudy nudged her companion on the chain and whispered: “Now!” She slid to her knees in an excusable stumble, thrusting her head against Maisie’s prisoned hands. She held position long enough to feel the fumbling fingers find their treasure in her hair. Sheepishly she rose and leant back to back with the girl who now held the keys to their freedom—perhaps even to their lives!
It was agonising. All three of the white girls were breathless as Maisie’s fingers sought the metal on Trudy’s wrists, and in the metal the tiny orifice in which a key must fit. Against the pounding of the wheels and the sway of naked girls, relying solely on the sense of touch, it was a task well-nigh impossible.
“The little one! The little one—oh Maisie . . . !”
Trudy had never known such life and death anxiety. She held her arms as best she could for Maisie’s convenience, and prayed. “It just turns one way—just one way . . .”
It happened! The tiny thrust as the bit of metal entered its socket. Both girls tensed desperately as fumbling fingers strove to turn. When the metal band opened and released a captive wrist they sighed in unison. From that point the battle was won.
Two keys and a whisper. Freedom made its way around the truck’s human cargo. One key for handcuffs, the other for the collar. Five girls had released themselves by the time the guard grew suspicious. But five against one, and a chain dragged round his throat disposed of him, his gun disposed of the driver. A jubilant Sergeant Galla turned the truck around and headed back whilst excited girls fumbled with keys and fervid exclamations.
The rendezvous was joyous. A Zindawban military vehicle driven by a soldier. Inside it, the W.O., and Captain Rulua. When the handshakes and the hugs were done Warrant Officer Ringbolt came into his own. “Lousy wogs,” he said disgustedly. “The ruddy nerve of ’em—!” He lined his troop up into its familiar formation. Twenty naked girls, all happy, all imbued with purpose. When the driver broke open boxes and handed out sleek new uniforms there were cheers and handclaps. Within minutes the President’s Guard was resplendent. When the latest issue of automatic rifles was passed around they were ecstatic. The W.O. set up targets which were annihilated with unerring accuracy.
“Just to make sure,” he said jovially, “we’ll wipe the floor with those blighters at Moghata.”
“The main force is moving on Botswalla,” Captain Rulua explained. “The honour of subduing Moghata is ours.”
Militarily, their task should have been impossible. Under W.O. Ringbolt it was not. The girls adored this eagle-eyed and aging warrior. They thought nothing of odds, but listened shining-eyed to swift commands. They clambered back into the trucks jubilant in freedom and confident of victory.
Approaching their destination they beheld a strange and lonely figure standing in their path upon the road. It was a woman, wearing soiled panties and a torn bra. Her arms were behind her hack, wrists crossed and tied tight with rope. She could not wave, but looked up at them with wide and appealing eyes.
It was Caroline Dowling.
Captain Rulua took her President’s Mistress in stride. Waving away pathetic explanations, she attired the newcomer in a new guard’s uniform and presented her with a gun.
“I’ve never fired one of these things,” said the bewildered recruit.
“Hit ’em on the head with it then,” the Captain said tersely. “Stay with us, we’ve a job to do.”
The winning element was surprise. A truck roared down upon an unsuspecting garrison from each direction. From them came a withering rifle fire of deadly accuracy. Swiftly mobile and wise with knowledge, the roaring vehicles sought each pocket of Moghata’s defense and destroyed it with ease. In thirty minutes Moghata was theirs. Nykobe’s one hundred and fifty troops were dead or captive. The populace stayed indoors until the shooting stopped. They had seen this all before, and were prepared to cheer for any victor when the time seemed ripe.
“Unreliable bastards!” said W.O. Ringbolt.
To Caroline Dowling it had the air of a recurring dream. Not a nightmare, since she was where she was by her own choice, but a trembling fear with which she must now come to terms. She looked up the taut stretch of her naked arms to where her wrists were roped and raised to expose her body to the lash. From time to time she flexed a tentative knee: it was tiring to stand almost on tiptoe. Her wrists hurt, her shoulders protested, but she did not mind. The beloved possession of Khalief Abhad was happy.
“Once is enough.” Khalief had said firmly. “But, darling, I wasn’t really whipped at all that day at Tulabe!” She knelt beside his chair in her favourite pose and rubbed her cheek against the back of his hand. “Your Nicholas Nykobe made a fiasco out of that one. Moghata’s going to expect a bit of entertainment.” She giggled. “They’ve just been conquered and they’ll expect you to come up with something good. Publicly whipping the decadent white witch—that’s me—will show ’em you’re a jump ahead of Nykobe. The best he did for their day off was have darling Trudy do a confessional and sell her off as a slave.”
“You are a treasure beyond price.” Khalief stroked her hair.
“I’ll put on a good show, Khalief, I promise! All the time Assad whips me I’ll be a female snake, writhing lasciviously. Isn’t that a lovely word! I’ll harden every cock in the crowd. They’ll all love you.”
“Yes, they will,” the President of Zindawba agreed soberly. He looked down with love. “This is something you have to do, isn’t it?”
“Yes. A woman thing I can’t explain,” she laughed delightedly. “But remember my training! All those stripes Assad gave me so I wouldn’t howl at the wrong time—! Damn shame to waste my sufferings.”
“You are very wise and very beautiful,” said the father of his people gently. “It shall be as you wish. Afterwards I will make love to you forever.”
The woman to be whipped returned from reverie as Warrant Officer Ringbolt’s barking commands and the cadence of marching feet heralded the arrival of the Troop. Looking down she managed to catch Trudy’s eye and to make her smile as reassuring as she could in the brief moment before the President’s speech demanded she look contrite and altogether ashamed of herself and of the colour of her skin.
“You are very brave, madam. I will spare you nothing.” Assad’s voice was as gentle as his master’s.
The naked girl clenched her teeth and closed her eyes.
It was far, far worse than her training. But that was to be expected. Caroline was thankful for those other encounters with Assad’s whip in which the measure of the thong and of her own endurance had been matched. Almost joyously she writhed and contorted against her bonds so as to make the tethering rope from her bound hands sway and quiver as a thing alive. The populace beheld her agony in awe.
Whatever an onlooker’s views might be on the subject of whipping naked girls, there could be no denying the erotic beauty emanating from the two players on the stage. The fluid sweep of Assad’s arm as he impelled the leather’s snicker through the air: the shocked flinch of the naked back on impact: and then the flowering into vivid life of the etch mark upon the skin as its owner tore against her rope but made no sound louder than a moan. The lovely nudity twisted and turned and trembled but was forever tautly open for the lash. Panting with her pain, Caroline knew herself as the most vulnerable flesh in all of womankind.