Damsels in Distress (5 page)

‘Well, we cannot have disobedience.’ The mask disappeared as his face took on a cruel smile. ‘In that case, good dwarf, you must whip her till she begs for mercy.’

Dagonard proved only too happy to obey his master. The dwarf opened the cell door once again, swinging Eleanor with it as if she were but part of the ironwork. He stepped into the cell and swung the door, and the naked damsel, back again. Lady Eleanor found herself facing Sir Peris again, who stood a few feet back, frankly perusing her naked charms in a way that brought colour to her cheeks. Her attention was torn, however, between the hungry gaze of the wicked knight and the movements of his dwarf behind her. She could hear Dagonard chuckling, and then she tensed as he cracked his whip, the sound echoing around the dungeon like a veritable thunderclap. An amused smile played on Sir Peris’s lips as Eleanor flinched and let out a little wail of apprehension.

The tension was terrible. There was silence in the chamber. Beyond Sir Peris, in their cages, the imprisoned maidens stood still and wide-eyed, awaiting Eleanor’s fate.

There was a crack and pain blossomed in a line across her bottom. Eleanor bucked and twisted helplessly in her bonds, trying and failing to prevent a tormented hiss escaping her lips.

Sir Peris stepped forward and took her chin in his fingers, raising her head and making her look up into his tiercel gaze.

‘Did you feel that, my pretty dove?’ he murmured.

There was another crack, this time diagonally across her back, and again she gasped as her body was wracked with unendurable pain.

‘I’m afraid there is no use in struggling,’ Sir Peris said, still gripping her chin, then leant forward and licked the tears that were beginning to meander down her cheeks. ‘Dagonard’s knots never fail.’

The next stroke took her across the back again, in the opposite diagonal. It was too much too endure. Eleanor stiffened in response to the scorching sensation and let out a shriek that echoed around the dungeon. Sir Peris took a breast in each hand and began to knead them roughly, and as the agony subsided a little, Lady Eleanor was mortified to feel her nipples stiffen in his grip.

Another crack of leather on tender flesh, and the tops of her thighs seemed to be sliced by lines of fire. Through tears she saw the smirk in Sir Peris’s face. He let go of one nipple and dropped his hand to fondle her cunny through the iron bars, and wracked with shame Eleanor found her pelvis moving unbidden in response to his fondling. Pain and a strange and terrible pleasure mingled in her tormented body.

Dagonard cracked the whip across her bottom once again. How long the whipping went on for, Lady Eleanor could not have said. The dwarf flogged her back, bottom and thighs, methodically and quite without pity, as she bucked in her bonds and begged fruitlessly for mercy. His master fondled and pinched her nipples, nether lips and clitoris until she writhed furiously in her restraints in quite helpless response.

Then suddenly something strange began to happen. Eleanor felt her body shudder and she was engulfed in waves of pure pleasure. It was as if the dungeon disappeared in a delightful flash of pure white light for a moment.

But the moment soon passed.

When she came to her senses her back and buttocks and thighs were still inscribed with lines of fire, and Sir Peris was still looking at her with cruel and hungry eyes.

‘Well, we are the lucky girl,’ the dwarf said with a chuckle. Eleanor and Lynet, both still completely naked, shrunk against the back wall of the dank little cell as he hobbled in, shut the iron door with a foreboding clank, then turned to face the trembling prisoners again. ‘The master usually prefers his maidens brought to him welt free.’ The disgusting man pointed a stubby finger at Eleanor. ‘It seems, however, that he cannot wait for those pretty stripes to fade before he has you.’ He leered at her. ‘I think it is true lust!’

He stumped over to one of the two narrow wooden cots and sat on it, placing the little pot he carried on one side. Then he slapped his short and stocky thighs.

‘Come here, my lady, and put your lovely self across my knee.’

It was not so long before that Eleanor would have slapped away such insolence, but the weals of Dagonard’s whip were still as fresh as the memories of that terrible flogging, and the offending whip was coiled in his belt like a sleeping snake, waiting to be woken. So, after the briefest little quarrel with herself, Eleanor’s fear bested her pride and she reluctantly shuffled over to the loathsome little figure.

The dwarf grabbed her wrist, and she shrieked as she was abruptly hauled over his lap. A stout arm clamped her waist and she found herself pinned there, arms flailing and legs kicking quite helplessly. She caught sight of Lynet looking at her with fearful eyes as she struggled, to Dagonard’s evident amusement.

‘Ho, I have caught a lively little wriggler!’ he wheezed. ‘That’s it, my lady, please do squirm away; my fellow likes the feel of soft flesh rubbing on him. Do you feel him, Lady Eleanor? I declare your perturbations have woken the old chap up again.’

To her surpassing shame, Eleanor could feel it. Under the dwarf’s leather tunic something was getting larger and harder by the moment. So fighting panic, and the urge to struggle harder, she stopped squirming and lay prone across his sturdy legs, then gasped as she felt the ointment cooling her welted bottom, tensing as a disgustingly rude finger probed down into the furrow of her bottom and began gently circling her rose hole.

His penis pressed with increasing eagerness into her side, too imposing an appendage for her to ignore. Clearly Dagonard’s short stature was not reflected in the size of his cock, and the thought caused her anus to contract quite involuntarily around his inquisitively probing finger.

‘Ha, I felt that,’ the dwarf murmured, then roughly seized her hair and hauled her off his lap to kneel on the cold flagstones before him. He lowered his head and pulled her towards him so he could whisper in her ear. ‘Once my lord has had his pleasure with the other passage, I shall have to punish that saucy morsel and teach it the proper way to receive guests, eh?’ He put a dirty foot against her shoulder and sent her sprawling back in the dust and grime.

‘Lynet, come here,’ he ordered the other girl, snapping his fingers. ‘On your knees and suck the cream from my cock. It’s the whip for you too if any spills on the floor.’

Eleanor watched aghast as her cellmate edged, with all too evident reluctance, towards the monstrous grinning creature. He lifted his jerkin as the dark-haired beauty got closer, and Eleanor gasped with shock. His penis was seven or eight inches long, standing upright with a large glistening purple head that made her feel quite faint. But it was the girth of the thing that really took her breath away. It was at least as thick as her wrist, but then her sight of it was blocked by Lynet’s naked back as the girl knelt before him and lowered her head towards his shadowy groin, from whence the fearsome column of flesh sprouted.

Dagonard grabbed the girl’s dark hair and pulled her head down, as Eleanor looked up and found herself staring directly into the dwarf’s wicked, challenging eyes.

‘Don’t worry, your ladyship, your turn will come, I promise,’ he grunted, and winked lecherously.

Eleanor blushed crimson and hastily lowered her gaze to the floor just before her, unable to block out the sucking sounds and murmurs of protest from the poor girl, and the evil chuckling of the dwarf.

‘The Lady Eleanor, my lord,’ Dagonard said portentously, giving a low bow.

Eleanor had been taken to a chamber where half a dozen maidens bathed and prepared her. The dwarf’s ointment had worked almost uncannily well; the welts left by the whip faded in a few hours to but faint pink lines on her otherwise flawless flesh. The girls brushed her long golden hair until it glowed lustrously and put her into another clinging gown of gossamer muslin. Finally a gilt collar with a long chain was locked around her throat and her wrists were secured behind her back with a silken cord.

‘By all the saints you’ll rouse my ol’ man again, madame,’ Dagonard had chortled when he returned to collect her, fondling himself lewdly under his tunic as he molested her beauty with bulbous eyes.

The dwarf tugged her chain and led her, like a tethered sheep going to slaughter, through the damp and gloomy corridors of the castle.

The privy chamber of Sir Peris occupied the top quarters of one of the castle’s great towers, a circular room, lit by dozens of thick and twisted candles. Tapestries hung from the walls, some depicting hunting scenes, at first glance seeming quite respectable, but a closer look showing the portrayal of huntsmen and hounds chasing fleeing, naked girls.

In the centre of the room was a large bed, covered in a mass of luxuriant furs. Sir Peris lay upon it, wearing nothing but a long silk cloak, which was open, and he fondled his erection blatantly with one hand whilst holding a golden goblet of wine in the other, from which he slowly sipped.

He and Eleanor regarded each other for a few tense minutes. Eleanor wished desperately that the muslin of her gown was less diaphanous and that her hands had not been tied behind her, as his hungry gaze raked up and down her body. She longed to cover her breasts and shield the shadow of her sex from his piercing eyes.

But for all that she blushed under his scrutiny, she could not quite stop herself from peeping at the place between his legs, for the cock of Sir Peris seemed to grow even as she stared at it, astonished. It was less thick than that of the dwarf, but when it stopped growing she thought it must be longer. It curved back in a graceful arch, blue veins etched along its underside.

Sir Peris looked down ruefully at his erection. ‘Damn me, Dagonard, look at the effect this minx has had on me. I hardly need to nettle these two beauties to get myself in fettle. What do you say?’

A gesture with his goblet brought Eleanor’s attention to two maidens cowering to one side. Naked, with their wrists chained above them to an iron candelabrum, they were both slender. One was pale with long, ash-blonde hair. The other had the darkest skin Eleanor had ever seen, and black hair made into plaits tight against her head. Tall and elegant with small breasts, she had almond-shaped eyes that blinked anxiously between Sir Peris and the dwarf, who was leering at the pair.

‘Sire, you clearly have no need of your usual stimulation, but it would be discourteous to Princess Shamira and Lady Iseult to deprive them of their promised treat,’ he replied.

Sir Peris guffawed. ‘Damn me, Dagonard, if you are not right, as usual. Tether this pretty lamb to the bed, then go back to the dungeon. Our guests there must not be deprived of their portion, either. I will not have it said that Sir Peris is a niggardly host.’

Sir Peris rolled off the bed in a fluid movement, and one of the chained girls gave a frightened moan. Dagonard then tugged the chain and pulled Eleanor to the vacated bed. On the great oak headboard was a heavy iron ring, and the dwarf made her lie on her back, produced a padlock and secured the leash to the ring.

A squeal dragged Eleanor’s attention from her own fearful predicament to the two maidens. Sir Peris was now naked except for a pair of leather gauntlets he’d put on, and he was lashing the bottoms of the two naked girls with a cruel bundle of holly. Shrieking, they both leapt and struggled to get away from the cruel needles, but as both were chained with their arms stretched high, there was very little defensive movement they could make, and as they tried to evade the holly they inadvertently struggled against each others’ efforts, frustrating them and adding to the sadist’s delight.

Dagonard watched the performance for a moment with evident relish, then patted Eleanor on the cheek and took his leave as ordered.

Sir Peris seemed not to notice his departure, thrashing the two girls with pitiless vigour. His cock, arching upwards from his muscled belly as he flogged them, seemed to pulse and quiver with eagerness to get at its prey.

Eventually he flung the bunch of vegetation down and took hold of a cord. Eleanor had not noticed it before, but the alarmed gasps of the chained maidens suggested that they knew what he had in store for them. The cord depended from the centre of the candelabrum, and as he hauled it pulled a small bush along the floor. The chained girls had turned around and both tried to back away as the bush was pulled, first between them and then up off of the floor.

With a sudden shock Eleanor realised it was a bundle of stinging nettles. The cord pulled them up until the stems were between the weeping damsels’ faces, and thus their tender breasts and bellies were nearest the fresh leaves in the most abundant part of the cruel bouquet. There was room for them to evade the nettles, but only if they strained on tiptoe and pulled back on their chains, but clearly their outstretched arms could not endure such strain for long. And to guarantee avoidance of the nettles, which were gently swinging and turning, the girls had to co-operate, pulling against each other with equal tension to keep the whole arrangement in balance.

Sir Peris gave a satisfied nod and dropped his gauntlets to the floor, then gave Iseult a hearty slap on her holly-prickled bottom, with produced a hiss of anguish. ‘Wait there for me, my loves,’ he said, and then turned to the girl who waited trembling on the bed.

Eleanor watched him walk towards her, fondling his proudly arching cock.

‘Do you want this, pretty maiden?’ he asked as he crept onto the bed.

She stiffened, but said nothing. Indeed, she had no idea what to say. Sir Peris moved alongside her, regarding her with amused curiosity.