Meet Baron Harzel

 

The two girls were picked up and carried to a pair of identical wooden trestles. Their wild kicks, punches and writhing had the same effect as their shrill protests and threats, which is to say, none. Less than a minute after the Baron had given the order, they were spread side-by-side over a pair of wooden sawhorses, bound and defenseless.

Each girl was made to lie along the top of a plank which formed the long axis of a trestle, with their hands and feet secured by leather straps to the base of the front and rear legs. Their bodies were longer than the sawhorses, causing their heads to project out from the front and their bottoms from the back.

Baron Harzel approached the Princess from the rear, and picked up the hem of her long sleeping-gown. "No, stop it!" Victoria commanded. "I shall have you arrested!"

Not surprisingly, the Baron was not deterred by either her threat or her command from raising the robe and drawing it up towards her head, exposing first a pair of sleek thighs clothed in rosy-pink flesh, and then the twin hemispheres of the Princess' buttocks, clenching and jogging fetchingly from side-to-side as she squirmed in embarrassment under his gaze.

"A fine sight," the Baron declared. "I assure you, Princess, I see nothing of which you need be ashamed. For certes your ass is as pretty as any other in my experience, which is not inconsiderable."

Victoria turned her face away from him, tears leaking from her eyes. "I am but an innocent maiden, and never have I permitted any man to see me naked thus. I pray you, sir, will you not pity me and show mercy as a good Christian, by desisting from your cruel misuse?"

The Baron ran his hand up the back of one smooth thigh, and then slid it up and around the curve of her buttock. "I have done aught thus far that requires mercy, so your plea is premature at the least. Now open wide your legs, that I may confirm for myself your claim of virgin purity."

"No, oh no!" Victoria shouted. She twisted on the horse, pulling her bottom away from his hand as far as her bonds permitted, and squeezing her thighs together with all her strength. "You must not violate my maidenly treasure, I beg you sir! I have sworn to keep my purity in trust for my wedding day. Before then, I must allow no man to know my secrets and then, after I am lawfully wed in the sight of God, only my husband."

The Baron laughed again. "Who would have thought to find a modern noblewoman still cleaving to such antique notions? Surely Princess, you were born past your time."

With this, Ariel, unable to contain herself any longer, burst out furiously. "Leave her, foul Baron, lest you be struck down where you stand. She is a princess of noble blood, as far above your kind as the Moon is above a slug crawling in the mud. Dare you not touch her lest the Almighty speed you on your way to the fiery pits that yawn at your feet. The hand that presumes upon her virtue shall surely wither, and the... umph!"

Ariel's harangue came to an abrupt end when one of the servants, at a sign from Baron Harzel, crammed a handful of sponge into her mouth, securing it there with a piece of twine. "I have forgotten you not, my flame-haired vixen, and I promise to attend you after the Princess and I have finished our talk, never fear. I ask only for your patience for a short while, until Princess Victoria and I have resolved our philosophical differences." The stifled Ariel glared daggers at him, tested her bonds again by flinging herself about on the horse, then, lacking any better options, settled down to await the Baron's pleasure.

The Baron resumed his conversation with Victoria. "Now Princess, I pray you to be not so unreasonable," he said, as though trying to coax a wayward child. "You and the Lady Ariel remain alive only through my forbearance, for by rights you twain should be on your way to back to the Maker ere now. Would you begrudge one who has given you the gift of worth beyond all others, the gift of life itself, the simple pleasure of caressing your sweet girlish parts for a few moments in return for so notable a favor?"

"I would begrudge you, Baron Harzel, yes," Victoria answered, trying unsuccessfully to squirm away from the fingers that now rested lightly on the outside of her mons. "No man would I permit to take such liberties with my person, for it is a sin, but you less than any other would I so, for you are an evil man, cruel and heartless, in whom the love of God abides not."

The Baron sighed and removed his hand from her private parts, to the Princess' great surprise and considerable relief. "I must then bow to your wishes, Your Highness, ungenerous though they seem to me."

He gestured to the man who had gagged Lady Ariel, who promptly stuffed another piece of sponge in the Princess' mouth. Then the Baron reached under the horse and drew out a wooden paddle, and took a few practice swings with it while Victoria watched with widening eyes.

The paddle was cut from an inch-thick plank of solid oak. It was eighteen inches long, eight inches wide and an inch thick. It surfaces were polished smooth from use. The handle was covered in soft leather to provide a firm grip.

"Rather than caresses of my hand, I must conclude that you prefer rather the kiss of oak," the Baron said. Victoria shook her head and made frantic mumbled noises, trying to communicate the idea that she preferred no such thing, but Baron Harzel either did not understand her or pretended not to.

"Anything worth doing is worth doing well, as the old saw has it," he continued, ignoring her incoherent protests, "and so it is with this. I shall apply ten strokes to your royal bottom, and you will receive them with your legs straight and buttocks held high. If you do not position yourself to my satisfaction or you fail to remain as I have placed you, the stroke shall be repeated as many times as need be. Understand you my instructions, Princess Victoria?"

Her response, a high, thin whine and some futile thrashing as she tried to pull free from the trestle, was ambiguous, but the Baron chose to interpret it as a "yes."

"Excellent," he said. He swung his heavy wooden weapon sidearm, and it made a wet, smack! when it met the base of the Princess's bottom globes, printing an interrupted rectangle of pink across the pale flesh of both cheeks. Victoria mewled in pain, and hopped rapidly back and forth from one foot to the other. "If you do not resume the position for correction, Your Highness, I shall be obliged to administer additional strokes." By way of demonstration, he swung the paddle again, this second blow landing a little higher on the girl's bottom, making the flesh jounce and quiver from the impact.

The beating Victoria had received on the soles of her feet earlier was her introduction to a new world of which she had previously known only second-hand before: the world of pain. The closest she had ever come to corporal punishment had been when she had observed erring servants being whipped in the castle once or twice, but of personal experience with such things she had none. Never had anyone in Neustadt dared to so much as lay a finger on the Golden Princess, who was beloved of one and all. In any case, she was such a gentle, sweet tempered girl that there had been no occasion to punish her even had the King been so inclined, so she had never even been spanked.

Baron Harzel had chosen to apply the strokes of the bastinado mildly and with a light switch, because he preferred to introduce his victims to the milder corrections at the beginning rather than commencing with the most painful ones, so that they would understand that there was always something worse he could do to them. The wooden paddle, for example, was far from the most potent disciplinary instrument in his arsenal. Princess Victoria would have been surprised to learn that, on the contrary, it was one of the mildest. All she knew for certain was that two strokes had set fires in her soft flesh that hurt more than anything else in her experience. She could not endure ten more blows like those, even if that meant voluntarily subjecting herself to the Baron's vile attentions.

"Mercy! I surrender! Touch me where you will, only cease to punish my poor flesh, I pray!" she shouted as loudly and clearly as possible after the second stroke. Since her mouth was still filled with sponge, none of this speech emerged in any readily comprehensible form, but instead was no more than a series of cryptic sounds: "Mmmm, uhhhh ahhhh eeee..." and so forth.

Baron Harzel again either did not understand, or else chose not to. "Get thee into position straightaway, Princess, if you desire not more strokes in addition to the ten."

Weeping bitterly, she submitted, locking her knees and arching her back to present her lovely hemispheres to the paddle. She tensed, waiting for the impact of the next stroke, then raised her head and looked back when nothing happened.

"No, no, Your Highness, that will not do, not at all," Baron Harzel said, shaking his head. "You must hold yourself as I have said, with your legs extended to the full, the cheeks of your fundament high, for an effective correction. Do so now." He swung the paddle down underhand, aiming this stroke directly between the first two and overlapping the marks made by them. Victoria screamed and momentarily lost contact with the ground, leaping into the air as far as the thongs around her ankles would permit, propelled by a fiery explosion of pain.

For a short time, she lost control of her body and her hindquarters wagged madly back and forth several times before she could still them. She did not know what to do, or where to turn. She had offered him her obedience, or tried to, and yet he would not relent. She could think of nothing to do now but show him that she was ready to submit and hope that he would be merciful. Having met Baron Harzel just this morning, the Princess did not understand how forlorn a hope that was.

"Now, Your Highness, I pray you get into position, unless you require a further refresher," he said.

Forcing her burning buttocks to obey, she did her best to demonstrate her full-hearted compliance. She strained to stand as tall as possible, going up on her toes and extending her legs so drastically that her hamstrings stood out from the backs of her thighs like taut cables. She forced her back into an upward curve so sharp that she fancied she could hear her vertebrae creaking in protest.

"That will suffice for the present," Harzel said grudgingly. "Mark me well now: move not, but remain just so, else the stroke shall be made again." With this, he raised the oak paddle high and swept it down on the twin pale moons the Princess held up so obligingly as a target.

She clenched her hands in fists, gritted her teeth and closed her eyes, willing herself to remain stationary after the blow landed. But, however willing her spirit, the Princess had never trained herself to withstand pain, and her mind was not equal to the challenge of mastering her body.

The fresh impact of the paddle set new flames alight in her slowly cooling buttocks, making her shriek and hop up and down, in spite of her determination to remain still. "I cannot!" she cried, twisting her head around to face the Baron. "I would do as you wish, but I cannot! Have pity!" Again, her pathetic plea emerged as so much muffled gibberish.

The Baron was merciless. "You moved again, Princess," he said. "I cannot but believe that either you prefer the kiss of my paddle to touch of my hand, or you are a paragon of maidenly virtue beyond any I have before known. Whichever is the case, the reckoning stands still at ten. Let us continue."

"Nnnn! Nnnn!" the stricken princess mumbled, shaking her head frantically as the paddle rose and fell again. Baron Harzel expertly applied the instrument with cold-blooded calculation, timing each stroke to extract the maximum suffering from his writhing victim, striking only when he judged her pain began to lessen.

Poor Victoria was never able to control herself well enough to remain in position for even one stroke, and after a half-dozen or so (she quickly lost count, being fully occupied with screaming and writhing in agony), she stopped trying. She shrieked with abandon, danced about as vigorously as her restraints permitted, and gave not the least thought to the immodest way she displayed her body to the Baron and his retainers as she capered under the paddle.

By the time he relented, after twenty strokes of the heavy paddle, her bottom and upper thighs glowed cherry-red, like the coals of a blacksmith's forge. This was appropriate, for it felt to the Princess as if she had spent the previous thirty minutes seated on hot coals. Baron Harzel stood back to admire the effect of his work.

"Come, Princess Victoria, your obstinacy shall keep you from sitting for a week, if you persist in it," he said. "Are you even yet not prepared to grant your favor?"

Victoria's head hung down in defeat. She felt certain this was yet another repetition of the Baron's cruel game, pretending to offer a chance to surrender while not allowing her any way to actually do so. She was therefore surprised when she felt the Baron untie the string around her neck and then pull the sodden sponge from her mouth. She could speak again!

"I... er... understand now the force of your arguments, noble sir," she said, trying to phrase her capitulation in a way most likely to gain his acceptance, for at that moment she cared about nothing beyond making certain that the terrible paddling was not resumed. "I can see that you ask but little return for preserving my life, and I confess that it was most ungracious of me to deny you so small a token of my favor. Please, My Lord, know that I regret my earlier selfish answer, and I encourage you to feel free to touch, caress and fondle any of my parts you would to your heart's content, saving only I ask you to do so with your hand, and not with yon oaken implement."

"Well and generously spoken, Princess Victoria!" Baron Harzel exclaimed. "Let none hereafter be heard to say that you reward not those who have done you service with open hands, or legs, as in this case. Kindly elevate your noble posterior and spread wide your legs, that all here may appreciate these royal treasures."

Victoria obligingly arched her back, and spread her legs as far apart as the thongs binding her ankles to the horse would permit, and the Baron's retainers crowded around behind to see. They were treated to an excellent view of the ripe, pink lower lips of the golden-tufted mound between her legs and the winking, brown asterisk of her bottom hole. She retained the pose, standing as high up on her toes as she could for as long as she could maintain the position, her only thought to impress Baron Harzel with her sincere desire to follow his commands.

The thought that she was voluntarily exposing herself to strange men (and commoners, at that) in a manner that would have been unthinkable only a few minutes earlier did not occur to her. Her bottom globes still throbbed angrily, providing a constant reminder of the price of defiance. The oak paddle had imparted a lesson that she took to heart and would never forget. In short, the Princess Victoria who had been deposited on the floor of Castle Hildesheim at the feet of Baron Harzel only an hour before bore only a passing resemblance to the one who now disported herself for Harzel and his retainers as boldly as a Paris streetwalker hawking her wares. Her friend Lady Ariel, who had not yet been through the fire, looked on in shock and amazement.

"That will be enough for now," he finally told his men. "Let us not presume upon the Princess' generosity." The men returned to their posts, while the Baron began a manual inspection of Victoria's charms.

When he cupped the delta of her sex, Victoria trembled, but remained as she was, suppressing a powerful instinctive urge to draw away. When the Baron's calloused palm rubbed back and forth over her lower lips, lightly at first but with gradually increasing pressure, she felt a strange sensation begin to flow from the place he caressed her. Soon, the feeling became so strong that without any conscious intent on her part, Victoria's body began to respond, her hips moving along with the Baron's hand, pressing down to increase the contact and the attendant sensation.

"Could it be that you are no more a maiden chaste than I, but are in sooth as randy as a Viennese courtesan?" Baron Harzel asked, as the princess' pelvis went around in uninhibited little circles on his hand. His forefinger dipped into her slot, drawing a sudden gasp. He held up the hand in a shaft of sunlight, and it was plain to see that the finger now gleamed with a coating of liquid. "Surely a virgin who produces the juice of love so readily is no more often found than the fabulous unicorn, the legendary manticore or the mythical griffin. Tell me of your amorous experience, Princess Victoria, and conceal not the truth from me, lest I punish you well for deceit." His hand returned to her sex, spreading apart her swollen labia and exploring the interior of her girlhood, which now flowed with slippery cream.

The threat of further punishment threw Victoria into a state of near panic. "Oh, please, My Lord, never would I attempt to deceive you! I pray you credit me when I vow that of amorous experiences, I have had none," she insisted hurriedly. "No man ever has touched me as intimately as you now do, nor even so much as seen my privy parts. I beg you My Lord, punish me not for speaking but the truth." Her desperation and fear were obvious, as was her sincerity, and in any case, Baron Harzel had not really doubted her. Moreover, he had by now determined that Victoria's hymen was intact, further evidence of her chastity, if any was needed. He had made the suggestion primarily to gauge the effect of the paddling from her response, and he was not disappointed.

"That is well for you to remember, Princess," he answered, as his finger encountered the stiff nub of her clitoris and began to toy with it, flicking the little nub of flesh back and forth as he spoke. "Any attempt to conceal the truth from me will be discovered and severely punished."

The new sensations of pleasure emanating from Victoria's sex were more powerful than anything she had ever before experienced, and she was being overwhelmed by them. Her mind became clouded, her thoughts submerged in increasingly stronger waves of lust. She moved her pelvis sinuously on his hand, her hips turning, lifting and dipping to follow the lead of the fingers gripping her swollen love bud.

"Virgin you may be, but no less a hot slut for that," the Baron said. "No other man's hand has been here before, perhaps..." he twirled her clitoris, now as hard and slippery as pebble in a stream, drawing a gasp from the girl, "...but do you maintain that you refrained from pleasuring yourself with your own hand? Hard it is for me to credit a wench who ignites so quickly and burns so fiercely, but yet has never stoked her own fires."

Victoria's answer revealed anew the extent of her sexual naivety. "I know... know not what flame... you mean, sir," she said haltingly, her mind clearly distracted by Harzel's activities. "I had in... my rooms a fireplace... and I would throw a log on... oh, the way you touch me, my lord... of a cold winter night, ...ah, rub me there harder, I pray you, sir... if that is what you wish to know."

Baron Harzel shook his head in wonder. "Your ignorance is higher than a mountain and deeper than a well, Princess Victoria. No convent-bred virgin could know less than you of the arts of the bedchamber. It falls to me to provide the education you so utterly lack, and doing so shall be my pleasure, and possibly yours as well."

His fingers now began to saw in and out of her slot, as he rubbed her slick little love button faster and faster. Victoria lost what little control she still had, bouncing up and down with each stroke of his fingers, moaning as her hips oscillated upon his hand. She felt that some tremendous event was building up inside her body, like a river on the verge of suddenly overflowing its banks, or the preliminary tremors of an earthquake.

"What are you doing?" she cried. "What is happening to me?"

"Nothing that has not happened to every woman since Eve," he assured her. "You are about to learn what keeps the human race from extinction."

"Oh, oh, ohhh!" she moaned. Her body moved sinuously on Baron Harzel's hand. Her eyes were half-shut, her mouth slightly open, as she gave herself wholly over to the demands of her body. She shuddered, and made soft sounds deep in her throat, in the throes of a massive orgasm, and it seemed a long time before she finally sighed and came to rest on the horse, her nude form sweating and depleted from the experience.

Baron Harzel removed his hand from her slot, and wiped it clean on Victoria's tattered sleeping gown. "I deem you missed your true calling in life, Princess Victoria," he remarked. "Had you been born in other circumstances, I doubt not that you would now be one of the highest priced and most sought-after whores in the Empire."