Prelude

 

Gelderis City

 

Brenn Machin climbed out of his limousine and surveyed the scene of devastation lit by the sullen flares of half put out fires scattered around the street which was filled by the stench of scorched wood and rubber. The news of the disturbances had reached him as he had been having a late supper with his wives. A chance to escape the icy silence between the two women - even if it meant dealing with a civil disturbance - was welcome. The fact that Seanne, his first wife had had her breasts enlarged and be-jewelled to his specifications and the gems were winking and glittering as the naked breasts moved, just like Wenfell's his official consort's did on the opposite side of the table, could not ease his mood. He had troubles enough without enmity in his own household.

However when the guard captain in charge of that area of the city, behind the temple of Chora, the god most Gelderians chose to worship when they could be bothered to, showed him around, his mood only worsened and the prospect of dining with two semi-naked women regained some of its appeal.

There were burned out cars, looted shops, and tenement buildings were still on fire. But worst of all was the smouldering wreckage of a petrol powered limousine - the preserve of the wealthy in fossil-fuel-starved Gelderis - beneath it lay, trampled and burned but just discernible, the flag of Fyrnath.

But there was worse.

"I'm sorry, Your Majesty," the captain said nervously. "By the time we got here, it had already been done. All we could do was disperse the rioters and start to fight the fires."

Brenn looked up at the lampposts. Three of them carried the pathetic corpses of the Fyrnath ambassador and his two bodyguards. Several lengths of cable tie had been used to hang them with and the results were not pretty.

The bodyguards had sold their lives dearly though and the mangled remains of many civilians lay about the streets, the pulse rifles had made a terrible mess of them before the men had been overpowered.

"Who? Why?" Brenn asked helplessly.

"They were supporters of Quin - the last emperor, Your Majesty," the captain told him nervously. The bearers of bad news to the mighty had often suffered horribly for it throughout history.

The Emperor Brenn's face tightened. "Did they all escape?" he asked.

"We managed to detain some of them but the majority just melted away back to wherever they came from. You know how it is with these riots, Your Majesty."

Indeed Brenn did. He had administered this district of the brawling, sprawling capital city of Gelderis for years and he knew how drink could fan the flames of dissent very quickly. And if enough of the citizens still blamed him for the old emperor's death, in which the Fyrnathians were involved on the battlefield, then even an ambassador wasn't safe. But the guilty parties would just have slunk off around a corner and gone home.

Further down the road, beyond the flashing lights of the fire engines and ambulances he could see the brilliant, actinic light of TV vans. It was already far too late to try for any cover-up. He quelled a violent surge of fury that erupted in his throat and which nearly had the captain impaled for not having stopped the news stations butting in. It would serve no purpose now and besides the impaling stakes could be better employed - it occurred to him as he calmed down.

"Cut them down and hand them over to the embassy with full honours and all dignity possible," he snapped, gesturing to the corpses. The captain ripped off a crisp salute, relief pouring from him as he strode away calling out orders. Brenn held out a hand for his equerry to place his mobile in it, but as he did so it began to ring and Brenn knew exactly who was on the line, without looking.

"Hello, Mattias," he said.

"What the hell's going on? I've just seen something about the Fyrnath ambassador having been lynched!" the newly created duke of Tir-Angerlath shouted as soon as the mobile was answered.

"It's true I'm afraid. I'm at the scene now."

"But Darrena and Caris are in Fyr-Lanth now! If Adal's got wind of this, they're dead meat!" Mattias' voice rose to a furious peak and Brenn knew that if he let his most staunch ally down now and lost him his wife, then he himself was lost because Matthias would defect to the rebels instantly.

"I know it's not good news." He held the mobile away from his ear as Mattias' rage exploded and he let it blow itself out. "Mattias, I'm going to put a call in to Adal in no more than an hour from now and I think I know how to calm him down. Trust me, Mattias. We've never let each other down! I'll get Darrena and your whore back in one piece, I promise. And I'll get what we need from Fyrnath as well."

Mattias subsided slightly and calmed further as Brenn outlined his plan. It was one of uncompromising brutality but that was what one needed when dealing with the Fyrnath emperor.

Brenn returned the mobile to his equerry, took a deep breath and called over to the captain who came scurrying back.

"How many prisoners do you have?"

"About a hundred I believe, Your Majesty."

"Not enough. I want a hundred more!"

The captain spread his hands helplessly. "But where from-?" he began.

Brenn pointed to the blocks of flats nearby. "You know how local trouble usually is in this city?" he said and the captain nodded. "Then sweep every apartment building for two blocks around. Don't pussyfoot about it, break in, grab anyone whose clothes smell of burning or who looks like they might have been out of doors this evening. Do it now! Men or women, it doesn't matter! Bring me lots of prisoners in one hour to the palace!"

He marched back to his car and the captain was suddenly aware that if he failed in this, his own future could be as brief as he suspected the prisoners' was going to be. He ran off to summon every man in his company and to hell with anything else.

 

Fyr-Lanth

 

After an hour or so of being left in their cages, Caris and Darrena had tried seeing if there was any way the bars could be loosened from the rock they were set in. Then when that proved futile they spent another hour straightening out their hairpins and trying to pick the locks but it was to no avail.

They had no choice but to sit and wait to die, horribly and slowly, and for the entertainment of the court of Fyrnath.

They had a brief interlude of elation when Caris suddenly remembered that she was carrying the diplomatic papers wrapped around her thigh but that soon evaporated when they remembered that the ambassador to Gelderis had been murdered and no one was interested in any diplomatic mission now - if in fact they ever had been.

The two cages were set far enough away so that the two could converse but not reach through the bars and touch each other for comfort. A small but significant torture, Darrena realised.

The only way they could track time was by watching the bar of sunlight strike through the one tiny window set high in the cellar wall. By the time the sun was clearly setting it was obvious that the Fyrnathians didn't believe in offering condemned prisoners a last hearty meal.

"They probably think it's a waste of good food," Caris concluded bitterly.

"The emperor and his cronies are probably going to scoff it while they watch us die! I hope it chokes them!" Darrena snarled.

Eventually, as the light was beginning to fade, the door crashed open and the High Torturer strode in accompanied by a squad of soldiers.

He came up to the bars of the cages and saw the papers that Caris had laid out on the floor in front of her. She explained what they were and he looked thoughtful for a moment.

"I shall show them to his majesty. I doubt whether they will save your lives, but I do not wish to risk swapping places with you for not having informed him fully. Now, strip, ladies - or be stripped, it makes no difference to us."

The women exchanged glances and resignedly unfastened their loose gowns and stepped out of them then peeled down their knickers before stepping defiantly out of the cages once the doors had been opened. They studiously ignored the lecherous stares of the soldiers. However the Torturer stepped close to Darrena to examine her jewel-encrusted breasts.

"Well at least we do know you are an aristocrat, as your documents claim. It is highly illegal in Gelderis for a commoner to be jewel-set, is it not?"

"It is," Darrena replied.

"Whether his majesty will pay that any heed, I cannot say. Bring them!" He turned away abruptly and the women were dragged up some steps and back into one of the maze of subterranean corridors under the palace, where two large rectangular steel frames, mounted on platforms with castors awaited them. Caris saw the chains and shackles at each corner and knew that once she was secured in them, she would probably never leave them alive.

She was trembling so violently as she was fastened in full X shaped extension that she hardly noticed the hands on her breasts and the fingers poking into her between her legs.

Darrena looked spectacular when she was hoisted up and shackled, her glittering breasts stood proud and jutting on her chest and her full, rounded curves were perfectly presented by her bondage.

"Seems a shame," one soldier said, standing back to survey the prisoners.

"Yeah, but there're plenty more once these two are finished with," another replied.

The High Torturer stepped forwards again with a hypodermic syringe in his hand.

"His majesty ordered adrenalin for you. It will stop your heart from failing as the agonies grow and you will die only when we are ready for you to do so," he told them with chilling calmness.

Caris could bear it no more and pleaded brokenly and in vain for her life as she was injected and the frames were wheeled towards the place of execution. But she was simply ignored.

For what seemed an eternity they were jolted and bumped along stone-flagged corridors in the bowels of the palace before making their way up, via lifts, to the airier regions above ground. And finally they were wheeled into the formal dining room.

The tables had been set in a U shape on the marble floor and the men and women seated at them actually applauded as the condemned prisoners were wheeled in. Caris surveyed the audience in terror and disbelief. She knew about arenas where public executions were held, but had never been to one. However this seemed so hideously up close and personal. They would see every detail of the tortures about to take place and it was clear from the eagerness on their faces that they couldn't wait for them to begin. Sickened, she turned her head and saw that in the centre of the killing floor was a wheel, easily greater than the height of a tall person in diameter and supported by a triangular frame on either side that held its axle. There were two sets of shackles on the rim and two more set in the floor, close under the rim. Beside it there was a huge sledgehammer. And beside that was a table which was piled high with long flesh needles, tongs, pincers, pinwheels, knives, clamps and whips.

Darrena was nearly sick as she saw the wheel. She had never attended an execution where someone had been broken on one, but she had heard about them and now she faced it herself. She knew that at some point later on, after Gods-knew what torments, she would be stood with her back against the rim, her feet shackled to the floor and her wrists shackled to the rim. The wheel would be turned until she was stretched and curved backwards, exposed and helpless, to the limits of her joints and then the hammer would be swung again and again. Broken on the wheel meant exactly what it said...

"His majesty has decided against some of our more refined, modern procedures and gone for the more primitive methods," the High Torturer whispered to his victim. "Rather messy for my tastes but the result is the same... eventually."

He left her almost gibbering with terror and went to stand before his master, holding the papers.

"Majesty, we found these on one of the prisoners and on stripping them we found that one is indeed an aristocrat," he waved his hand behind him to indicate Darrena's shuddering breasts.

Caris saw the hawk-like and dispassionate face of the emperor turn to the papers and an elegantly manicured hand stretched out to take them. The room was silent as he perused them.

"Tir-Angerlath is a fly speck on the map, and it is now under the sway of Gelderis where my dear friend Rothan Al-Suddur was lynched. So why would I now want to treat with you who represent nothing worthwhile on the one hand and a lawless and treacherous country on the other?"

"Please! Oh, please!" Darrena sobbed, "We came in good faith, we didn't know what was happening in Gelderis! You can't hold us responsible-Aaaah!"

Caris never saw where the whip had been taken from or who was wielding it. The lash shot out from behind her and caught Darrena right across the peaks of both breasts. In other circumstances she would have applauded it as a masterstroke, but here she yelped in shock as the lash whistled past her, smacked across Darrena's chest and left her arched rigid in its wake as the blinding pain robbed her of speech and left her only able to scream.

As the echoes died away and the soldier behind Caris coiled the whip again, the emperor in his odd, harsh whisper said, "Do not attempt to tell me what I may or may not do, Countess. Begin."

Immediately there was a relieved rustling and fidgeting amongst the guests, this was what they had been waiting for and the emperor would be in a good mood if the tortures lasted for the whole meal of ten courses.

Caris screamed in her turn as the whip that had struck Darrena now found its target across her midriff. The braided tail wrapped her so completely that it struck low down on her left middle-back, before biting right across her stomach. She tried to hunch forwards but couldn't and could only scream as Darrena had. And while she was struggling to cope with the second, third and fourth lashes, she saw the long needles taken out and presented to Darrena's breasts. As the lash scoured Caris for the eighth, ninth and tenth time, she saw the long, gleaming shafts begin to sink into the tops of Darrena's quivering breasts. The High Torturer's assistant taking the left breast while he took the right. A trembling, warbling scream left the victim's lips and was applauded by the audience who lapped it up as eagerly as they were enjoying their oysters.

By the time the steel shafts had exited the bottoms of Darrena's breasts, Caris had taken nearly twenty lashes and she was left to recuperate in readiness for her next bout of pain as Darrena's breasts were subjected to two further transpiercings and the audience savoured her whimpers and cries along with the wines they were served with.

Once the sizeable hemispheres sported two lengths of shiny steel at their tops and two below, the High Torturer left Darrena and came over to Caris, carrying yet more of the long, thin, menacing shafts. Caris had been subjected to them before but always in the context of sex, during and after the procedure - if it was a good session. But here the intention was to wear her down, bit by bit, until her body could take no more. They didn't want to see her orgasm, they wanted to watch her die. In her mind's eye she pictured herself, bloodied and torn by hours of brutal whipping, her head hanging down and lifeless as she was wheeled out and probably her body would be dumped in the city's landfill site.

Tears were blinding her as suddenly she saw a blurred figure run in and whisper to the emperor.

One of his long, pale hands was raised and he beckoned to the soldiers to bring the two torture frames closer to him. Then he turned to the wall as it flickered into life and the image of Brenn Machin filled it.