Damsels in Distress

  Title Page

  DAMSELS IN DISTRESS

  by

  AMANITA VIROSA

  Publisher Information

  Damsels in Distress first published in 2003 by

  Chimera Books Ltd

  www.chimerabooks.co.uk

  Digital edition converted and published by

  Andrews UK Limited 2010

  www.andrewsuk.com

  New Authors Welcome

  Copyright © Amanita Virosa

  The right of Amanita Virosa to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Chimera - a creation of the imagination, a wild fantasy

  Advisory Note

  This novel is fiction – in real life practice safe sex

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.

  Introduction

  ‘Have you ever sucked a man’s John Thomas, young lady?’ he demanded.

  ‘Um, no sir,’ she whispered.

  ‘It’s time to learn, then,’ he decided. ‘Get on your knees.’ He enforced the order by pressing on her shoulder, and then Rose watched as if hypnotised as he unbuttoned his fly, his fingers working mere inches from her face, and then the thing he withdrew made her belly churn with panic. It was huge, much bigger than she’d expected, with an angry, glossy purple head.

  ‘Now the thing is to breathe through your nose,’ he advised, holding his cock with one hand and the back of her head with the other, pressing to encourage her to obey him and accept his erection into her mouth.

  ‘Lick it first, Rose,’ he said, his voice a little strained now.

  ‘L-lick it?’ she stammered, eyeing the purple thing with apprehension.

  ‘Yes, lick it, like you would a lollipop.’

  The People of the Birch

  ‘It is time!’

  Ceryddwyr was robed in white samite. The Arch-druid raised his golden sickle and Elen watched it glint in the full moon’s light. Her heart beat hard in her breast as he cut boughs from the sacred bedw that ringed the grove. She told herself to be glad she had been chosen, but fear tainted the joy. At least the sacrifice she would make would not mean her death, as it might at the hands of the druids of other tribes. The slender birch tree was sacred to Elen’s people. Slender and feminine, the way of the birch was the way of pain, but not of death.

  As he worked, murmuring incantations and beseeching the trees forgiveness for the injury he inflicted as he cut, Ceryddwyr handed the boughs to the maidens who attended him. Elen had performed this office many times, taking the boughs and fashioning the birch rods by binding the base of the twigs with flaxen twine. She recognised the brightness in the eyes of Gwyneffyr and Gwendolyn as they worked, lovely in their simple, pure white sleeveless robes. Gwyneffyr’s plump cheeks were flushed with excitement. Elen too had found the ceremony strangely compelling, before she became old enough to become the sacrifice in turn.

  Yours will come, you little vixens, she thought bitterly as she caught the two girls glancing at her with amused eyes.

  The last time she had done this, in her innocence, still unaware that it had been ordained that she be next, Elen remembered looking at the trembling sacrificial victim with that same delight. The girl was a captive taken from the people who lived down the river Tafwys. She was a lovely thing of about eighteen, a little slender for Elen’s liking but with beautiful long red-gold hair. The captive had stood, as Elen now stood, behind the altar stone, both arms held, as two hooded Ovates now held Elen’s. She remembered the girl’s tears glistening in the moonlight. She was a stranger, and perhaps did not know that the People of the Birch did not kill their sacrificial virgins. Then again, she might have known what they did do. Anyway, the girl quivered delightfully as Elen’s cunning fingers fashioned the birch rod ready for another tender captive bottom.

  Gwyneffyr was not as quick as Elen, but the little bitch knew her job well enough. All too soon she was kneeling and offering the rod to Ceryddwyr. The Arch-druid put his sacred sickle in his girdle and took the proffered implement. He swung in an arc and then another, producing an appalling whistling sound, almost like faint moaning that seemed to penetrate Elen’s very soul. Then he took the rod, offering it up to each tree that ringed the grove, as if for their inspection and approval. The people stood, crowded thickly between each sacred tree. Elen knew the rod was being shown to her tribe as much as more ethereal eyes, and her cheeks flamed in humiliation as she heard their murmurs of approval. Only when this ritual was completed did he turn his attention to the now trembling sacrifice.

  ‘Maiden,’ he said in his deep, sonorous tones, ‘you have been chosen for a great honour and blessing. The way to wisdom is to be shown to you. The path of the birch which is the way of cleansing pain.’ He turned to the two girls who had taken up position to his left. ‘Prepare her!’

  Previously this had been Elen’s favourite part, but not this time. The slender captive had gasped as she and Gwyneffyr stripped the white gown from her. Naked, she had been even more appealing, firm breasts and flawless slender thighs, and a darling nest of red-gold curls between her legs. The little fool had tried to cover herself, perhaps involuntarily, and struggled futilely in the hands of the silent men who held her. Elen had been silently delighted at the sight.

  She would have liked to spit, ‘Your turn next, you little bitch,’ at Gwyneffyr, as the plump girl yanked off Elen’s gown with evident enthusiasm, but she held her tongue. The spirits of the birch were powerful, and might not like her marring the ceremony. Instead, as the gown fell to the floor, she tried to stand up straight and proud.

  It was hard. The moonlight was so bright it was like being naked in daytime. She felt Gwyneffyr’s eyes on her shapely body, though she kept her eyes downcast. There was another, louder murmur of approval from the watching people. Elen knew there were boys, men, even some of the women of the tribe who had been counting the hours to this day. Her cheeks burned furiously red and she felt tears of pure humiliation threatening.

  ‘Take her to the altar stone.’

  Elen went as willingly as trembling legs would let her. The strong hands that gripped her arms above the elbow and at each wrist permitted no options anyway. They steered her to the altar stone that sat waiting in the centre of the clearing.

  It was cylindrical, about three feet in height and twelve in diameter. In the centre was a vertical projection, a small standing stone about four feet in height, three feet across and two in thickness. The top of this little monolith was rounded, but it had a more dramatic feature; an elliptical hole, just large enough to take a female body, pierced its upper half. It was whispered by some of the old women in the village that the stone had been there before the coming of the druids. They said it belonged to the elder people who lived here in the time when women ruled. Rhonwen said it had been a time of peace and plenty, but old Ffraid had cackled at this and said, ‘Nonsense, we women made the brutes’ life a merry hell back then. We made them make this stone and then we used it to torment them!’ She cackled again and slapped her ancient thighs. No one knew how old Ffraid was exactly, but Elen was sure she could not be so old as to remember. Still, she had wondered about the days when women ruled the worl
d. Unfortunately it was not the sort of thing that one asked Ceryddwyr.

  Whatever the truth, those days were well and truly gone, as Ceryddwyr was about to demonstrate on Elen’s tender buttocks. The Ovates steered her over to the altar. Gwyneffyr and Gwendolyn took up their stations on the far side of the birching stone. Elen was guided to the thing and then bent and pushed her upper body through the opening. She stifled a gasp as her full breasts brushed the cold, rough textured rock. Then she was through, the stone cold against her belly. The girls seized her hands and secured them to ropes, which they pulled taut and secured to stakes driven into the ground beyond the altar stone. Then they passed either side of her and Elen felt them grab and tie her legs.

  The slender captive had cried when Elen did this to her. They had secured her so taught that her body was like a bow, only the girl’s belly touched the stone at the bottom of the hole, the guy-like tethers pulling her arms and legs out and down at such an obtuse angle that her feet had been suspended some inches above the lower alter stone.

  Elen could not get the image from her mind. In particular the way the girl’s legs had been pulled apart so that her sex lips were exposed to the gaze of Ceryddwyr and his maidens, his druids and Ovates, the people who crowded round, and most terrible of all, vulnerable to the coming birch strokes.

  Gwyneffyr might not have Elen’s skill, but the dark-haired girl was learning. Neither Elen’s feet nor hands could scrabble against stone. Her legs were pulled quite straight, and more alarmingly, every bit as far apart as the captive girl’s had been.

  She could not see much. Her long golden hair hung in waves around her head, blocking out most of her vision. Perhaps that was a blessing. Ceryddwyr was behind her now and she could almost feel his eyes feasting on her most vulnerable, secret places. Never had she felt so naked; exposed under the moon to all the people in the clearing, exposed to the very trees and gods themselves. It seemed the brightest night that Elen had ever known. She could almost feel the moonbeams shining on her naked bottom.

  It was a short, terrible wait. Elen writhed in the silence that had fallen on the grove. The creaking of the ropes that bound her and the hooting of a distant owl were the only sounds. It was uncomfortable; she was pulled taut and the stone was hard and rough beneath the soft flesh of her belly. It was appalling, humiliating, terrible. Elen could not quite suppress a sob.

  Then the whipping began. From the first stroke, almost from the first whispering whoosh as the birch twigs swept towards their target, she realised that the waiting had not been terrible at all.

  Ceryddwyr was a tall man. No longer young he was yet very strong. He lashed her naked bottom and thighs without pity. The first stroke made her gasp as hot pain flooded through her. The second stroke lashed lower, full across the middle of her hinds, and making her writhe harder in her bonds as the birch scalded its target. The third stroke completed the traverse of her nether cheeks and stroked her sulcal groove. Elen gasped and panted and fought the unyielding ropes, but still she managed not to cry out, as she had seen so many helpless maidens do.

  The next stroke took the top of her thighs and made her grunt with pain. Then he whipped the back of her right thigh. Hot tears blinded Elen as she gasped again, biting her bottom lip hard to stop herself from yelping like a snared leveret. Ceryddwyr whipped the back of her left thigh. She had seen this done enough times, and through the red mist she still knew what he was doing. Her lower thighs were too far apart to whip together. Somehow she endured the strokes that proceeded to scour her tender thigh flesh, first one side and then the other. The thrashing was as pitiless as it was methodical, stopping some six inches or so above the backs of her quivering knees.

  ‘Ooooaah…’ she gasped as she felt the druid’s calloused hand on her fiery bottom.

  ‘The flesh is warmed,’ Ceryddwyr said, feeling and kneading her sore skin with what seemed to be satisfaction, if not pleasure. ‘The cleansing can begin!’

  Begin! The word stuck her harder than the birch had. She had seen this done so many times and yet, somehow, in her extremity, she had forgotten, had persuaded herself that it might be nearly over. But now with horrifying clarity she realised the birching had barely begun.

  There was a whoosh, perhaps that snickering crack, Elen did not know. The first stroke on her already reddened bottom ensured all she knew about was pain. This time she howled. Any thought of enduring this with dignity was driven out on a fiery wave of agony.

  Ceryddwyr continued to flog his helpless victim, but now he was birching buttocks and thighs already scalded by his sacred rod. Elen fought the ropes, writhing as much as her taut bondage allowed, like a gaffed pike, shrieking, begging, blubbering for help. ‘Mercy… aaaaiiieee… oh, please help me!’

  She gasped in a brief respite as the druid paused to consider his handiwork.

  Once he began to thrash her again her cries became less coherent. Never had she imagined such pain. Her bottom and her thighs seemed scorched by tongues of fire. Ceryddwyr appeared in her mind’s eye as a demonic god, horned and black with fiery crimson eyes, wielding a rod of pure flame that blistered her defenceless skin with every merciless stroke. She no longer understood the words he spoke. He seemed to be uttering some strange language – perhaps the language of the trees?

  Then it seemed she was not the only person screaming. The sound of birch on her scalded flesh was mingled in her imagination with the sound of metal clashing against metal. The roaring of war cries mingled with her pleas for mercy. Then, as the pain began to subside a little, it seemed that the other sounds had gone and there was, once again, only the shrill sound of her shrieks.

  ‘Stop squealing, you saucy little bitch.’

  She understood the words but the accent and the voice were unfamiliar. Blinking away tears she saw feet in unfamiliar sandals in front of her. She had never seen such footwear, but she’d heard of them. The druids and the warriors had said that the Romans had come back, and were advancing from the east.

  ‘She had bad been?’ The words sounded odd, unfamiliar. There was a brief exchange in a language that meant nothing to her, and then a roar of laughter.

  ‘Virgin, eh?’ A rough hand slapped her throbbing bottom, and Elen squealed with pain.

  ‘Well, we’ll have to see what we can do. Marcus, send some good men to scour the heath in case any of those druids got away. Send the captured men back to camp. Kill them if they give you any trouble. Strip those pretty little minxes, but chain their legs. I don’t want them escaping.’

  The man gave Elen’s thigh a squeeze, provoking another sob of pain.

  ‘So,’ he said in a low growl, ‘a virgin sacrifice, eh?’

  Elen gasped as his rough hand felt right up the fiery back of her thigh, then slipped between and probed.

  ‘Yes, the little bitch is still intact,’ he growled, and then chuckled. ‘It’s a wonder, though, the slut is fairly dripping. Seems she liked that druid’s fond caresses. Good, she’ll get plenty of such wooing where she’s going.’

  Elen gasped again as he gave her bottom another meaty smack. Then he walked around her, and her hair was grasped and pulled up. A man with a cruel face looked down at her. He was clean-shaven but far from a boy, which to Elen was terrible and strange. His eyes pierced hers, somehow both cold and hungry. The man’s free hand fumbled at the strange skirt of leather straps he wore.

  ‘So you were due to be deflowered, my little barbarian bitch?’

  Elen sobbed, but gasped an affirmative as the movements of his hand drew her attention from his terrible eyes. Pushing his skirt out of the way he revealed a sturdy erection. Elen swallowed hard.

  ‘Well,’ the man said with a leer, ‘we Roman’s always try to respect the local customs.’

  ‘Have they been bathed?’ Paulus, the major-domo demanded. He was a stocky, balding man with a belly that bore witness to the comforts his position afforded. There were, Elen
now realised, many sorts of slaves.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Petra said, bowing her head. The four girls stood in a row, Elen bowed her head submissively, all too aware of the switch Paulus always carried, and that he was playing with as he looked her up and down.

  Elen had, in fact, been bathed with worrying thoroughness. Petra, the pretty little Greek girl, and Zana the Persian, had spent most of the morning preparing Elen and Gwyneffyr. The two new slave girls were shaved of their pubic hair, their legs waxed and eyebrows plucked. They had been steamed until Elen feared she would be cooked, strigilated and then plunged into a pool so cold she thought her heart had stopped.

  Next they were scrubbed with towels until their skin glowed pink, massaged and rubbed with scented oils so delicious and expensive smelling that Elen wondered if it were a libation, and she was to be sacrificed again.

  Petra had then rouged Elen’s nipples and her nether lips, the girl’s cunning hands causing Elen to bite her hand to prevent herself from moaning aloud. Then her long blonde hair was brushed, two small braids made at the front and these tied back to loosely gather her luxuriant mane out of her eyes. The same, she saw, was done to Gwyn’s raven tresses.

  ‘Take those rags off them, I want to see.’

  Elen swallowed hard and tried not to blush as her single garment was moved by Petra. This did not take long, for after the preparation Petra and Zana had simply taken two diamond-shaped pieces of peach-coloured silk, tying one end to the iron ring around the slave girls’ necks. Two corners were then gathered under the chain that ran down to Elen’s left wrist and tied in a loose knot at the small of her back. Thus the garment left her quite naked behind, not that the thin silk did much to mask her form from the front. Petra did not even take the silk piece off altogether, simply untying the back knot and draping it around her neck like a scarf, before standing back to allow Paulus an unimpeded view.