THE GLADIATOR (4 page)

Chapter 4

The weeks following the first show were as hard as ever for the slaves. Training went on unabated and the guards began to make references to another show - and this time they were to be the ‘away’ team.

But Tara was completely happy with her lot. Every day was a test and she knew her trainer and owner were pleased with her because they personally took charge of her in the evenings. However gruelling the day had been, she and her stablemates were tested for their sexual performance under the whip, the cane and the crop. Tied down over trestles, fully extended in the frames or just bending over in the main body of the stable, the four star performers were beaten with a casual air of experimentation that she found thrilling. The girls were compared for the traces left on their skins, for how many lashes they could take before wriggling or moaning. And then the adored, imperious shafts of maleness would penetrate them and notes would be taken by the ever-present grooms as the men commented on the strength of their internal muscles and any improvements in their grip, or how patiently and cleverly their mouths worked on them. Tara was desperately envious of the three tongue-ringed slaves and longed to be able to tease and caress the two men who dominated her life so utterly, with the very symbol of her complete submission. So when either Carlo or her owner did consent to spend themselves in her mouth she was almost beside herself with pleasure and gratitude.

Finally, as she was chained on her straw for the night, her groom would kneel astride her face and, stroking her hair as she would a fretful pony, would encourage her to lick long and deep. So every night she fell asleep with her skin still singing from the beatings and her mouth still redolent of male and female sexes.

Their status had been underlined by the way the owner had reacted when the grooms had mistreated them on the night the staff had been allowed to celebrate winning the show.

Tara had heard the noises coming from the guards’ barracks, household slaves and grooms were obviously being thoroughly enjoyed. Very late, the four grooms had come into the stables, plainly drunk and determined to enjoy their superiority over their charges in their turn. They had taken the four inmates of the stalls out into the stableyard, where they had made them crawl on hands and knees, while they rode them and beat them, then made them eat pussy. As soon as Tara had nosed her way between the first girl’s strong thighs, she had smelt the male essence oozing out of both her passages and had set to work eagerly licking up all she could get. In fact it had been quite an enjoyable night, the grooms had produced some sizeable dildos afterwards and stuffed all four slaves, front and rear before riding them again.

But in the morning there had been hell to pay. Both trainer and owner had been outraged that the crops and whips had been taken to the most valuable slaves on the estate without any permission at all. And in the afternoon retribution fell. The four miscreants, still only clad in their ragged shirts which left their trembling legs naked, were lined up in the courtyard under a thick beam which had been slung from the roof of the horses’ stable right across to the slaves’ stable. They were sentenced to two hundred lashes each, to be delivered in two tranches of a hundred. The boss had passed sentence and had then asked if they accepted that the offence was grave and that therefore the punishment should be. All four of the condemned had murmured their agreement and had then slipped off their shirts and readied themselves for suspension and flogging.

Tara and her three stablemates were the only slaves who witnessed the punishment. They were tethered outside their stable, their hands drawn down in front, restraints clipped together and then a chain looped round the cleat, passed back between their legs and padlocked to a ring in the wall.

Like all stable hands the girls were strapping and healthy, and their wrist suspension revealed their fine contours as they hung in a row once the low stools had been kicked out from under them. Each girl was assigned two floggers, one stood in front; one behind and employed long, thin single lashes with frayed ends. In addition a third guard kept count on each victim, and as the lashes started to fall, Tara nearly fainted at the eroticism of the sight. The four bodies swung and twisted, four pairs of legs bicycled madly in the air; breasts and buttocks rippled and swayed under the lashes. There was only one thing she loved more than watching slaves taken to their limits and beyond, and that was being taken there herself.

On and on through the hot afternoon the punishment continued until at last all four girls fell silent and only the hiss and slap of the whips echoed round the courtyard. Tara was by then tugging at the chain between her legs, grinding her clitoris against it - heedless of any punishment she might incur. She knew that all of the whipped girls had come repeatedly. But she also knew that it made no difference. This length of flogging meant that even repeated orgasms became a sort of punishment in themselves; draining and exhausting the girls just as surely as pain would.

At long last the hundreds were called and the girls were taken down for watering and a rest. Their bodies were tiger-striped by then from shoulders to knees and even though the guards were consummate whip masters, Tara was certain that blood would be drawn before the end. The interval was long enough so that arms and shoulders could recover before being stretched again, yet even that was a further torment as was testified to by the groans and squeals as the girls were hauled up all over again.

During the rest the girls had been allowed some water to drink and several buckets had been poured over their bodies to revive them, so that they could fully appreciate their punishment, and now, as the whips began to swish and crack again, the bodies gleamed in the sun and each impact of the lashes sent up a fine spray of droplets. And once again Tara found herself urgently tugging on her chain, pulling it up and sawing her hips back and forwards as the girls, now a little refreshed, cried and twisted and danced while the lashes wrapped lovingly around the shining curves of hips, breasts, backs and thighs.

And when finally the two hundred was called and the nearly inert bodies hung limply, the owner stepped forwards once more. He congratulated the girls on their hardiness and said he hoped they would never do anything like it again, but just to make sure, they would take ‘one for luck’. The guards who had been wielding the whips now moved forward and each grabbed a girl’s ankle, pulling her legs apart, whilst their owner picked up one of the whips. Taking his time he positioned himself in front the girl farthest from Tara and took aim. There was a hiss through the hot air, a smack and a strangled shriek from the girl as the leather curled up between her legs and the frayed end of the lash bit deeply between her buttocks.

Tara was panting with excitement by then and her chain was slick with her juices, she jerked it even harder up into her slit, deliberately crushing the tender sexflesh, as the final three lashes were delivered and the four girls were taken down. She was leaning back against the warm stone wall, her eyes closed when she heard her owner’s voice right in front of her and she started upright.

“Now my beauties, after that little show you’ll only ever feel the whips
I
want you to.” He was addressing all four of the slaves and smiling as he observed how they had all been trying to bring themselves off during the punishment. “Carlo,” he said, “leave them here and let them finish.”

Tara would gladly have kissed his feet in gratitude and she heard her stablemates’ chains begin an urgent rhythm of clinking as they too took advantage of the offer. Before them the four flogged bodies, laced with slight runnels of crimson in places, but literally covered in thin red lines and splotches of deeper scarlet were eagerly bucking under the bodies of the guards as all the participants in the scene sought to dissipate their excitement.

The four grooms called themselves ‘the two hundred club’ from then on, and were justifiably proud. Tara envied them and wondered how it would feel to be tested that severely under the lash. She couldn’t deny that she wanted to find out.

Soon after that Carlo disappeared for a couple of weeks and reappeared with a new group of slaves. This time there was no segregation of the squads. Carlo simply led the new girls out onto the training ground and let them meet the twenty four battle hardened veterans. Inevitably there was a mass cat fight as a pecking order was established. Outnumbered and with so much less experience, the new girls were soon battered into submission and the more experienced ones were queuing up to sit astride their faces and enjoy their submission.

Carlo kept Tara literally on a tight lead beside him as they watched the spectacle of naked female aggression, and only let her off when there was one new girl still standing. She was a black haired, gypsy looking girl who was wiry and tough, and was surrounded by a ring of downed and groaning opponents. Jet, Cherry and Pinky amongst them Tara noted with interest.

Once her lead was unclipped, she needed no further order. It was plain that Carlo wanted her to take this one down. But she soon found out what her troops had already discovered - whatever she lacked in experience and technique the gypsy girl made up for in raw courage and strength. Tara threw her again and again, but every time the girl staggered back up and charged. When Tara applied nipple holds, the girl wrenched herself free and accepted the pain without flinching. And even when the dreaded crotch hold had her teetering on her tiptoes, she still tried to kick. Eventually Tara got her down onto her face and twisted one arm high up her back, then reached round and twisted and pinched a hard little nipple until with one final shriek of defiance the girl went limp under her. For a moment Tara stayed where she was, savouring the feel of the sweating body under her, the thrust of the muscular buttocks up into her stomach, the soft fullness of the breast under her hand, but then Carlo arrived.

He was stripped to the waist, and as he pulled Tara up, there was some cheering from those girls not involved with the squirming and writhing on the dusty ground, where the fruits of victory were still being enjoyed. They knew a challenge when they saw one and so did Tara. Joyfully she threw herself at him, determined to make him work for his inevitable victory. Usually he was keen to demonstrate his expertise at not only defeating any girl he took on but also making an exhibition of his prowess; lifting her high over his head and spinning her before throwing her, lifting her bodily on a crotch hold or twisting her arm to make her squirm at his feet. It was that which Tara always enjoyed, but on this occasion she walked straight into a forearm smash which left her reeling drunkenly and Carlo simply grabbed her between her straddling legs, up-ended her and smashed her down so hard she had been winded and had writhed helplessly for a moment or two. But once she was able to sit up she saw why he had been keen to dominate her so completely. The gypsy girl was on her knees before him and sucking eagerly at his erect cock while he stood arrogantly over her.

“El Tigre here needs to know who is boss, Blondie,” he told her as she sat up, dazed and still panting. “She needed to be beaten by the best and then see the best beaten. Now she will submit fully to the whip and make a good fighter. Maybe as good as you soon, eh?”

As a reward for her part in Carlo’s display, he had ‘El Tigre’ as all the men called her delivered to Tara’s stall that night and he leaned on the half door, watching indulgently as the girl paid homage between Tara’s widely spread legs.

With the squad up to thirty six girls, nicknames were abandoned and instead each girl wore a numbered disk at the front of her collar. Tara’s was number one, but despite that, hers and the gypsy girl’s names stuck.

Training soon settled back into its gruelling routine which was only alleviated by the guards’ increasingly frequent references to the next show. And then finally there came a day when no slave was taken out and guards and grooms alike had scurried about on mysterious errands.

It occurred to Tara to wonder during that day how the men would set about transporting a total of thirty nine slave girls. And when she found out, she once again marvelled at the excitingly cruel and yet elegantly simple solution.

Of course the slaves were no more than cargo. Valuable cargo, but cargo nonetheless. So only the slightest of nods in the direction of their being human merchandise was made. The girls were simply crated up for the journey.

To begin with, the day started normally. Food was swilled into the trough which ran down one side of the stall and Tara’s hands were clipped together behind her back which meant she had to kneel down and plough through the gruel face first until she had lapped up everything. One of the stable hands then returned and wiped her face before leading her out to squat over the channel cut in the floor which ran in front of all four stalls. There she voided herself, her motions were examined, notes taken and then she was cleaned. All this was perfectly normal and Tara had come to enjoy the care which was taken over her well-being; she had come to accept fully that she liked the idea of being a purely physical creature - a beautiful animal - kept by her owner to be tested and exhibited, to be admired and desired. And to be submissive to his will at all times. And from conversations she had overheard between her owner and her trainer, she knew that if she did well at this show, she would be promoted to the rank of solo fighter and wear the heavy tongue ring as the badge of her complete enslavement.

So when she saw the crates, her immediate reaction was one of admiration rather than horror. They were simply wire lockers about three feet high by six long. Four of them were laid out in the courtyard, ready to be stacked onto the waiting truck, where a pile of already occupied crates was already loaded. The slaves had simply been hogtied and then slid in through the top-hinged flap at one end of each crate. It seemed that no one had been bothered about noise because no gags had been employed and the crates’ occupants were already whimpering and groaning as Tara was made to lie down while her groom folded her arms and legs up neatly behind her then tied her ankles and wrists together, before two of the guards lifted her easily and slid her into her crate then picked that up and tossed it casually onto the truck. She found herself above one of the new girls and alongside Carrot. In short order the other three crates were stacked and the truck jolted off, to the accompaniment of outraged squeals from its cargo as breasts were painfully squeezed against the harsh wire every time it lurched or dropped a wheel into a pothole.