The Devil's Surrogate (3 page)

'I have
decided to allow a little more time for that witch, your
grandmother, to see sense,' he growled, his fingers moving to her
other breast.

Harriet felt
her stomach tighten and her blood turn to ice in her veins, but
knew there was little point in risking antagonising this lunatic
further by trying to draw away from his touch.

'The old woman has sent word that she wishes to barter,'
Crawley continued, his lip curling back in a grin that revealed
misshapen, yellowing teeth. 'I sense she is simply trying to buy
time and seeking to trick me. However,' he muttered, 'one of the
village men tells me he saw her with the young Calthorpe lad, which
may well explain the apparent disappearance of my man, Jed Mardley.
The crone is planning something, I can feel it, but if she thinks
to outwit me, she'll live to regret it, if only briefly. Jed tells
me that dropping you whore-spawn on the end of a rope makes for a
painless end, but it also makes for a quick one with no time for
intervention. I discovered, many years ago, that even the most
cowardly soul may be stirred to action by the sight of a loved one
dancing on the end of a gallows rope, but with this new way there
is no time. Jed pulls his lever, and
bang
, down you go.' He snapped his
fingers and cackled to himself. 'Just like that, the neck is broken
and you're no more than carrion. Not so much as a twitching toe,
Matilda, dear.' He moved his other hand up to the side of her neck,
fingering the narrow steel band that kept the old scold's bridle
from being removed. 'This is even thin enough that it won't
interfere with the rope,' he snickered, 'so you'll meet your death
with nothing more than a garbled whimper. No witching curses from
the scaffold from you, my dear child, no indeed.'

He
straightened up, and with an awkward gesture managed to throw his
cape from his shoulders, letting it cascade to the floor behind him
in a crumpled heap. 'But that is all for later, my precious.' He
fumbled with the buckle of his belt. 'Now that most of the devil's
work has been scourged from you, it's time again to at least
welcome your physical body back into the fold.' He drew the front
of his breeches apart and Harriet saw that his shaft was already
growing erect. To her horrified astonishment, she saw also that it
appeared to be inordinately long, making it appear thinner than she
might have expected, like the neck of a rearing serpent. 'Let's see
if you still have the strength to wriggle as you did before,' he
challenged, leering. 'Up on your feet now, whore girl, and let us
dance together!'

Kitty realised
resignedly that she was now even beginning to think of herself by
her new name. Miranda Parkes, after all, belonged in a world so
different from the one in which she now found herself that she
would probably have killed herself rather than submit to the
appalling indignities now inflicted upon her with such cold
detachment. It was easier to imagine she was indeed Titty Kitty,
and that she had lived no other life before this.

As she trotted dutifully along - wrists bound tightly in the
small of her back, waist cinched by the cruel girth strap, her
breasts bouncing, their size exaggerated by the thin leather bands
that had been drawn tightly around them at their base - the
crack-crack
of the whip
seemed to echo inside her head as if from another world, its sound
muffled by the restraining hood encasing her smoothly shaven head.
Alongside her trotted a similarly garbed girl, distinguishable from
Kitty only by the fact that her breasts were considerably smaller,
whilst behind her she could imagine the cool yet interested
expression of their groom, the ginger-haired Ross who had taken
over her training now that the man Adam seemed to have lost his
earlier interest in her.

Perhaps, she
mused, chewing on the wad of leather that served as an immovable
gag inside her hood, the fact that Ross himself seemed far more
interested in the newly arrived Sarah might mean that she, Kitty,
would get an easier time of it for a few days, but she was not
pinning any hopes on that. The men who ran this terrible place all
seemed to have an insatiable appetite for their charges - they were
all so young and undeniably fit, as she had seen immediately - and
seemed able to go from one to another with barely a break in
between.

At least, she
sighed to herself, they weren't superhuman and she had eventually
been allowed to rest when they finally retired to wherever it was
they slept, although Ross had reappeared at dawn to stir them from
their slumbers and curse and kick them back into consciousness.
Kitty risked a covert glance to her left, peering sideways through
the vision-restricting slits in her hood, in an effort to see how
her companion was faring. There was little to indicate Sarah's
state, the leather-masked features betraying nothing, her breathing
as laboured through her nostrils as was her own.

'Eyes front, whore!' The whip cracked out again, but this time
the tip caught Kitty exactly between her shoulder blades and she
leapt, a sharp squeal of pain forcing its way past her gag.
Damn him!
she cursed in
her head, her eyes burning with tears, for it had only been the
briefest of glances and she could have sworn she had not even
turned her head, certainly not more than the merest fraction of an
inch.

'Pick it up
there now!' Ross snapped. 'Let's see those bubbies bounce. Or shall
I get some bells to hang on those teat rings?'

Kitty blinked
to clear her vision and desperately tried to obey, for the thought
of anything being hung onto the rings that now adorned her recently
pierced nipples was almost too much to bear. Ross had demonstrated
the previous evening just how painful even the smallest tug could
be, and how by means of even two of the thinnest leather thongs
attached to the twin metal circles a man could exert total control
over her.

'That's
better!'

Kitty stifled
a sigh of relief. At least for the moment she was to be spared that
indignity, though she knew there would be others and that it would
not be long before one of the men, even if it were not Ross
himself, would take advantage of her helplessness. Both she and
Sarah had been brought out without thick dildos strapped into them,
and Kitty had discovered this meant only that their sexes were
being left that much more available for a human phallus.

'Left now...
left, I say!' Ross flicked the whip in an arc that allowed it to
merely kiss both sets of shoulders. 'There!' he cried. 'There, onto
that path, you idle sluts. Let's get some blood running in those
legs and pussies.' The ground beneath their bare feet began to rise
slightly, but even this gentle gradient imposed considerable extra
strain upon muscles that were already screaming in protest.

This way,
Kitty now knew, lay two smaller barns which the grooms used to
house their charges on some nights when the main barn was
particularly crowded, or when they decided it was time to impose
some particularly wicked discipline on certain of their charges.
Both buildings had been equipped with a bewildering array of
punishment and torture devices, ranging from simple trestles - upon
which a girl could be painfully mounted - to stocks and pillories
that must have tested the ingenuity of their designers, and which
could be employed to secure a victim in almost any position of
pain, degradation and availability for either punishment or sexual
gratification.

She sucked in
as deep a breath as the constricting girth would permit and ground
her teeth into her gag. At least, she tried to console herself,
whatever indignity their coldly efficient trainer decided to
inflict upon them, it could be no worse than this constant trotting
uphill with lungs already threatening to burst and sweat now
pouring from every pore of their bodies. Also, she had discovered
almost immediately upon her arrival, the pain and indignity would
eventually become partially assuaged by the waves of pleasure even
such inhuman treatment somehow managed to generate in her
treacherous body.

Jacob Crawley
gripped the writhing girl's buttocks hard with his bony fingers,
delighting in the way her body squirmed helplessly against his own,
and in the deep heat gripping his throbbing member as she hung
impaled upon it, her bare toes inches off the stone floor, her legs
kicking helplessly as she strove to free herself; a fruitless
struggle, for he had her firmly and would not release her until he
had sated himself.

'Bitch...
whore...' he hissed. 'Try to seduce the Lord's appointed hand with
your lewdness, would you?' He barely suppressed a chuckle, for even
his warped mind knew well enough that Matilda's desperate twisting
and turning was no attempt to stir his lust but merely the
instinctive struggling of a trapped creature, the way a fly might
twitch and twist in the helpless grip of a spider's web.

He moved one
hand up, pressing against the small of her back so her naked
breasts were crushed against his own bare chest. The smell of her
was overpowering; sweat, fear, and yes, even that smell of lust.
These ungodly sluts simply could not help themselves. Weakness, the
weakness that was woman incarnate, the same weakness that had led
Eve to sample the forbidden fruit, and all at the behest of a
serpent. Now another serpent was summoning this Eve's whore, the
stiff serpent that sprang up from his loins and upon which she was
now so totally impaled, repenting and repaying the treachery of her
sex to the Lord God their maker. Crawley ground his broken teeth
hard together, feeling the first waves of his own surrender
beginning to build, knowing he must soon spurt his seed deep into
her faithless womb and yet wishing to prolong the moment of deep,
agonising ecstasy for both of them.

'Bitch...' he
groaned, butting his head against the leather covering of her
cheek, forgetting the steel band that crossed it and yet oblivious
to the pain as his forehead slammed into it. 'Bitch!' he roared
again, and holding her writhing body even tighter, exploded a
torrent of semen into her with a ferocity that threatened to buckle
his own legs beneath their combined weight.

Very dimly,
Sarah Merridew was aware that something had happened inside her
head, something she could not explain and yet something for which,
in a curious way, she was grateful.

It was as if
some part of her brain had simply shut down by refusing to accept
that any of this could actually be happening to her. Now she found
herself blessed with the ability to experience everything as if it
was happening to someone else, as if she was viewing it all
dispassionately through a smeared and smoky glass. It was not as if
she could do anything about it anyway. These terrible people,
whoever they were, had seen to it that she was kept in a state of
total helplessness ever since they seized her, wasting no time in
reducing her to a condition that was at best animalistic, and at
worst...

She peered
down through the eye slits in her hood at her breasts, which bobbed
up and down as she trotted dutifully along, the early morning sun
occasionally glinting on the metal rings that now hung from just
below each of her nipples. They really did look quite pretty, she
mused, and then castigated herself fiercely for entertaining such a
thought. It was one thing to accept a certain inevitability about
her situation, but quite another to consider it anything but
terrible. And for a young lady to even enjoy the sight of her bared
bosom, especially one that had been handled in such a crude and
summary fashion, had to be a sin on a level no Christian woman
could begin to contemplate.

So why did her
nipples tingle so pleasantly in the fresh, warm breeze? Why did she
continue to feel that heat deep inside her groin, the same heat the
brutal Ross had kindled and which refused to cool even though she
had since managed a few hours of very uncomfortable sleep? Why did
she, knowing that Ross would soon be thrusting into her again, not
view the prospect with terror and abhorrence? Why, she was forced
to ask herself, did she feel almost as if she were looking forward
to it?

'Damn all of them to hell!' Thomas Handiwell slammed his
tankard down onto the bar of the
Black
Drum
and glared at the small assembled
company. 'Call themselves men and talk about freedom, yes,' he
sneered, 'but ask any one of them to go against their so-called
lords and masters, even when we have evidence of their guilt, and
they run and hide their faces!'

'My men report
that at least four of them have joined up with this Crawley
fellow,' Captain Timothy Hart said quietly. 'It would seem they
respond to gold rather better than they do to duty, but then I
cannot really blame them, those who'll not join us, that is. The
Graylings are a rich and powerful family, by all accounts, and they
doubtless have rich and powerful friends.'

'Aye, that
they are, and that they surely do,' Handiwell muttered, 'but I'm
damned if I'll stand by and let any man's supposed birthright or
wealth flout basic laws and human standards. They can't simply
snatch innocent people from the roads as if they were no better
than common slaves!'

'And what of
your friend, this Mistress Merridew?' Hart enquired, blinking his
watery eyes as the first shaft of sunlight suddenly penetrated
through the east facing window like a bright sword shaft thrusting
into the gloomy barroom. 'Should we not have heard something from
her by now? I fear they may have taken her as well.'

'Damn the
foolish wench,' Handiwell snapped, but there was a note of tender
concern in his oath. 'I warned her against the venture, and warned
her to stay back and run if there was trouble.'