Chapter 1

The Lords' Letter...

 

From: Lord Henry St. George Tucker, Director of the East India Company, London

To: First Sea Lord, Sir Thomas Baker, KCB

Date: 29-February 1844

 

My Lord,

 

As you are certainly aware, incidents of piracy in the Strait of Malacca have increased in the last year. In the past, these despicable criminals only harassed the smaller boats of local fishermen and Malayan/Javanese merchants. Recently, however, with the growth of the lucrative opium trade between India and East Asia, the villains have begun to attack larger unescorted merchantmen, including those of the East India Company flying the British flag.

This is an unacceptable turn of events.

Routing our ships west of Java to avoid the straits adds an additional 800 miles or five sailing days to the journey. Not only is this prohibitively expensive, it is an insult and an embarrassment to the British Empire. These primitive blackards are directly challenging our navy's ability to keep the sea lanes in this region open for trade. Many British ship's captains and those of our allies have expressed their concerns openly about the problem.

We humbly suggest you consider using convoys with naval escorts to foil the pirate chiefs, whose fleets lie in wait in the numerous rivers that empty into the strait to descend like wolves on our heavily laden merchantmen.

Our pecuniary losses to these savages are bad enough, but the depredations of the bloodthirsty Malays upon the crews and passengers of these doomed ships are even worse-too terrible for civilized men to recount or to fathom. Those who are not killed immediately, typically by hideous means as a lesson to others, are taken as slaves and sold in the region's still active slave markets.

The immediate assistance of the Royal Navy in protecting British flag carriers and those of our allies traversing these waters is requested.

 

Respectfully Yours,

 

Henry St. George Tucker

 

Chapter 2

Salangut Village

 

Lai Ning stared helplessly at the rajah's penis, unable to move. It was as if she feared its bite, as if it were a one-eyed cobra, a serpent with no heart, no soul, only the...

The rajah cuffed her hard on the side of her head.

"Fin-ISH...!" he exhaled loudly, exaggerating the last sound.

She wet the cloth again in the warm water; tentatively grasped the creature's head between her thumb and forefinger; and lifted it out of the way. The rajah insisted that his odalisque (harem slave) wash him after each royal ejaculation. It was a longstanding tradition in his bedchamber. She licked away a lingering drop of semen then used the cloth behind his balls.

He had taken her over his knee last night and paddled her with the polished English tawse-she could still feel the burning in her ass-but had not incapacitated her. She wasn't sure why...the rajah didn't need a reason. She thought it might have been a warning, an admonition to suck his cock with every ounce of feeling she had. She was grateful for the beating; it reminded her of her purpose in life, her duty. She could have easily slipped into a complacency that typically resulted in much more severe discipline-his paddling had been a kindness.

"Pants..."

She scrambled for his pants and held them open for him then rushed to do the same for his shirt and sandals. He moved to the room's full-length mirror-a prize taken off a fat French merchantman-and turned left and right. His vanity was part of his legend. He turned his head towards her; she lowered her sultry eyes and held her breath, scared of the whip. This was the moment when he often ordered his odalisque to report to the tangan for punishment.

"You did well, Lai Ning," he said, turning back to look at himself once more in the mirror. "I feel renewed by your talented tongue, by the strength and vitality of your clam shell. You will return this evening."

"Yes, my lord," she whispered, blushing wildly, relieved.

Being invited back by the sacred rajah was a dizzying complement. She would be envied today in the harem chamber by her six sisters.

He turned and walked to the doorway. One of his bedchamber eunuchs was holding it open, starring at her. She hated the eunuchs, hated the way they watched her worship the royal cock, as she writhed in time to his royal thrust. Mostly, she hated staring into a eunuch's eyes when the rajah bent her over his personal ram and used her ass. It diminished her to have a man without balls judging her.

The rajah reached the stairs under his residence and descended. Local craftsmen had built this bamboo palace for his grandfather, raising it on stilts 20 feet off the ground "to keep the rajah of the Soolo people safe from the jungle creatures that crept, crawled, and slithered on the ground." He knew this was a lie, a sop for the people-the real reason the old man wanted his house so high was to ensure that his head was always above that of any other.

"Cultivate the idea that you are different," he had told him. "Cultivate their hidden fears like rice plants in a paddy. Give them reason to pause when they have envious thoughts or when they consider rebellion. Power is self-sustaining but only if it is demonstrated occasionally."

Rajah Sindana Raga had taken his grandfather's words to heart. He never missed a legitimate opportunity to exercise his authority. Even slow-walking down the palace's high steps, oblivious to the impatient howling of the waiting throng, was useful for this purpose. He was fully aware that his behavior was antagonizing the rabble, but he knew it would also cement the idea that he was not subordinate to the will of the people...just the opposite.

He paused dramatically at the bottom of the step and lifted his eyes at those Soolo in his path. They withered and stepped back, as if his gaze burned, and he stepped purposefully through the mob like a knife through water.

"The Soolo are brave and ferocious warriors, but they are also vicious pit-vipers," his father had told him once after crushing a minor rebellion and ordering a hundred men drowned for their disloyalty.

"Any resistance must be stamped out quickly and in a manner that people will remember," he had explained to Sindana as they watched the men die. "If you show weakness in the face of a challenge, the people will eat you alive. Ordinary men are driven by fear, pain, sex, hunger, and avarice in this order; address these and they will make you a god."

A god...

He was a god, Raga thought as he walked through the roaring mob. He had tripled their fleet of war-boats with his alliances and made the Soolo twice as effective against the larger merchant ships. He had introduced them to modern technology and weaponry. He had established trade with a score of local sovereigns and warlords to sell the booty they took plundering ships in the straits.

Most importantly, he had established himself as the absolute ruler, as a rajah who was more dangerous to them than either his father or grandfather had been. He had had hundreds of men executed for incompetence, weakness, or disloyalty, while increasing the distribution of the rewards they earned from "protecting the straits against foreign intrusion"-the party-line they espoused to justify their raids.

No one even thought about opposing him anymore. He truly was "rajah of the Soolo," a giant among his people. Not physically of course. He was slight with delicate features and short, even for a Soolo, standing just above five feet tall. He could handle a parang, the Malayan sword, as well as any Soolo, but he was not a fearsome warrior. There were dozens in his guard who could best him in one-on-one combat, but no one could match the hypnotizing effect of his eyes. They were black like a demon's and piercing; when he stared at someone it was as if he was looking into their brain. He was also lightning fast, mongoose fast, with his words and, if necessary, his decisions. He had had several men dragged away and killed while they were still thinking about their next words. Mostly, however, it was the momentum of his royal line, his imperious bearing, and the way he catered to the crowd's drives that kept him in power. For the most part, he simply acted as if he was in charge and the people responded accordingly.

Like today...

He reached the center of the village and climbed the steps to the royal viewing platform where everyone could see him then he gazed out over their heads at the village's formidable walls. On his order, Salangut, the Soolo capital, had been fortified with a tall wall, guarded 24-hours a day by the local militia. His warriors didn't need a wall for protection-they were fierce fighters especially when defending their homes-but the wall and the militia allowed them to leave the village for weeks at a time without concern about their families and possessions. The wall made them even more fearsome.

He turned back from the wall and stared at the rack in the center of the square, prompting a loud cheer from the crowd. The stare was his signal that their bloodlust would soon be satisfied or at least satiated for today.

The rack was a large rectangular frame made of bamboo poles crisscrossed and held together by twine...English twine taken off English sailing ships. Tied face down atop the bamboo were three young girls. They were naked, their brown skin shiny with sweat, their hard asses pointing at the sky. The men in the crowd were staring at their supine bodies, their eyes glazed with sadistic lust. The smell of leaking semen drifted in the air.

He nodded his head and a guard beat an enormous gong just once. The crowd quieted instantly.

"We are here to witness justice," Raga said in his most regal voice.

This was a lie of course-there was no justice in what they had done. His men had abducted the three innocent victims in a night raid on a fishing village in Cochin-China (Vietnam south of Gianh River). Their "crime" was to try to escape from their captivity, and his justice was to punish them for this. The self-serving law they had violated was that that once an enemy surrendered, as they had done, they were legally slaves and any attempt by a slave to escape was a crime-the theft of another man's property. In other words, they were stealing themselves from their masters. He planned to sell them as comfort slaves in one of the many slave markets open to their trade.

"Rather than die honorably as any Soolo would," he continued, "these slaves begged for their lives and surrendered thereby agreeing to their enslavement. After accepting our mercy, our food, our lodging, they tried to run away, to steal from us that which no longer belonged to them-their lives. This act of thievery must now be punished."

A loud cheer rose from the crowd. Punishments on the rack were frequent, but usually not with three luscious women. The crowd was looking forward to watching them suffer. Raga turned meaningfully away from the mob towards the slave pen where a hundred other captives were peering through the bamboo enclosure. He let his gaze run the entire length of the fence; Raga had the ability to stare at an assembled throng and make everyone feel as if he was speaking directly to them.

"It is with a heavy heart," he said in a low voice, "that I must blemish their perfect skin, but justice demands it..."

He folded his arms and nodded his head as if the validity of his argument were self-evident. The gong sounded again signaling the start of the punishment. The young rajah knew how to work a crowd. He had said just enough; applied just enough logic to assuage the conscience of anyone who felt there was any unfairness in his decision.

One of the girls on the rack began to plead unintelligibly through the cord in her mouth and the others joined in, creating a piteous whine that further excited the crowd. Raga smiled and shrugged as if to say "weaklings," as if to imply that all weaklings deserved to be punished. The new terror on their beautiful faces was also part of the show. The crowd could see it clearly-the cord in their mouths ran back between their legs and around their waists, keeping their heads high, their lovely faces in full view of the crowd.

"Place the spikes," Raga ordered over the general din.

One of the militiamen placed a spiked board under the breasts of the girl who had cried out first. She screamed and arched her back higher trying to prevent the spikes from digging into her tender flesh, into her nipples. The crowd screamed its approval, taunting her. Everyone knew that the arching of the back was only a temporary reprieve. There was nothing she could do to prevent the tit scourging with her four limbs spread open in an "X" and lashed to the bamboo.

The other two watched, too terrified to continue their wailing then waited stoically for their spiked boards to be placed. They were new; they had never seen the spiked boards and the rack used before for a serious crime. Raga waited until all the boards were in place and the three were all struggling to maintain their arched backs before continuing his speech.

"Slaves, especially beautiful female slaves such as these, must obey their lawful master."

He was speaking to those in the slave pen now rather than the Soolo crowd. The slaves were all female and comely, the result of selectively choosing who would live and who would die during the raids. Strong men, who they took occasionally, brough a good price as slaves, but they were hard to handle and always a danger. Young females were easier and brought the highest returns on the block.

"The more beautiful the slave," Raga said in an exasperated tone, "the higher her price; the higher her price, the more exalted will be her future master; the more exalted her future master, the easier life will be for the slave. It makes no sense for us to punish these beauties, to make them endure the pain, the possible disfigurement, the debasement caused by the rack."

He shook his head as if genuinely confused.

"They tried to escape so they could return to their village, to live their lives as fish wives rather than pampered odaliques...?"

A chorus of laughter and guffaws rose from the Soolo crowd. The logic seemed irrefutable.

Raga shook his head again. By his argument, once enslaved, a woman should embrace her fate, even thank her captors for the life of extraordinary privilege she would lead as a concubine to a wealthy potentate. The girls were writhing now, trying to stay off the spikes, and it looked as if they were nodding, taken by his wise words, by his undeniable argument. He shook his head once more, sorrowfully, then nodded to the man at his side. The gong sounded once again.

Three muscular men stepped to the front of the platform and took their position behind each girl. They wore three-quarter length britches but were otherwise unclothed. Each carried a sturdy looking rattan cane about four feet in length. Their leader raised his implement then swung it down on the quivering flesh at his front. The others followed his lead.

The caning was terrible to watch. Not an inch of visible skin was spared. As their suffering increased, the girls forgot the spiked boards under their tits and bounced painfully on its sharp metal tips, sometimes poking their tender nipples. It wasn't long before their perky asses were trembling, shaking with the pain coursing through their slim bodies. The leader of the cane-men looked towards Raga, signaling that they had had enough. Rajah Raga shook his head and the caning continued. He and the crowd were enjoying the screams, the hideous jerking of their young and nubile bodies. It was only when they showed signs of losing consciousness that Raga held up his hand.

Turning back to the slave pens, he made his final remarks.

"The people of Salangut have made a significant sacrifice this morning to show you the consequences of crime. We have reduced the value of these luscious creatures, our legal property, to demonstrate what every one of you will face if you defy us, if you resist our training. Please, I beg you, do not force us to do this to you."

He sounded sincere. He was asking them to respect their enslavement so that he would not have to punish them, so that he would not need to diminish their value.

The sentiment was absurd on its face, but several of the slaves, especially the most beautiful were nodding their agreement. They had no real hope of escape, no real hope that they would ever return home. Their only hope for a tolerable life was to comply, to become the odalisques, the harem sex slaves, the Soolo intended them to be. It was a subtle transformation of their attitude, one that the rajah, an experienced slave trader, knew would pay dividends once he had them on the block.

Raga turned and walked back through the cheering crowd to his bamboo palace at the edge of the square. The three Cochin girls would have a soothing salve applied to their razed skin to minimize the scarring, but they would stay tied down on the frame until sunset as an example to the others. It would be a long day for them with their cane strokes burning in the hot sun, with the spike board digging into their tits.