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Episode
I The Corsair
Melissa Noble parried as the blunted blade
drove toward her breast. It was
a move that had skewered her on many an occasion, but not this
time. Instinctively she moved
toward her opponent, sliding along his blade and stepping inside his
guard. Her counterthrust caught
him full in the ribs.
“Ah,” her father cried as her point
drove home, “you have bested me.
I think that calls for a celebration.”
Melissa
smiled. It was the first time
she had ever won a bout with her father.
Placing her sword in its rack on the wall she joined her father while
he poured the wine. “To
the victor,” he said, raising his glass in salute.
“To my father, who trained me so well,”
she answered, raising her own glass.
They drank and then her father motioned that she should sit by
him. She sat, her green eyes
suddenly very serious. Something
about the way her father looked at her suggested that this was not going
to be the usual father-daughter chat.
Her father placed his hand on
hers. “Melissa, I have tried
to shield you from the details of my business, but now matters with the duke
have reached a point where I must take you into my
confidence.”
Melissa nodded, her red curls
bobbing. She knew a little of
her father’s connections with the
duke. Her father was the finest
armorer in Dakmora. She knew
that the duke had contracted with him to prepare a huge order of weapons
for the ducal army. Day and night
her father’s smiths pounded on the anvils, beating iron and steel into
the desired shapes. When her
father had first landed the contract he had been filled with
joy. “It will make us wealthy
enough to join the upper ranks of society,” her father had told
her. But since that time he had
said little of the contract. She
had, however, detected a growing sense of worry when she was near her
father. Only when he had a sword
in his hand, teaching her the arts of the blade did the cloud lift from his
features. As he spoke to her
the cloud was back again.
“You know, my daughter, I was promised
by his excellency, the duke that I would be paid as the work on his order
was completed. I borrowed heavily
on his word. But the duke has
been lax in his payment. I have
sent letters to him requesting that he honour the agreement, but have received
no reply. I am now faced with
losing everything I have worked a lifetime to acquire unless the duke honours
his word. Tomorrow the duke holds
open court. I will petition him
there before the assembled notables of
Dakmora.”
Her father paused in his
explanation. Melissa did not
have to be told what was unsaid.
The duke was well known for his erratic and sometimes violent
behaviour. To brace the duke
in his own court would be a most dangerous
act. “Father,” she
said, “you need not do this.”
“I must else I will be
ruined. More than that, my honour
and that of my family will be destroyed.
It may well be that the duke, when presented with the facts, will
see fit to act as he should.”
Pausing again, he hefted a small leather bag
onto the table. “If, however,
things should not go well, I want you to take this
purse. It contains thirty gold
sovereigns. It is not much, but
it will see you safely away. Later
perhaps you can arrange to have the rest of my property sold if need be,
provided the property is not seized.
Do not try and seek me out.
If I am not able to return, it will not be safe for you to remain
here.”
“Thirty gold sovereigns,” Melissa
thought. More wealth than the
average man made in a lifetime. She
wondered how her father had come by the money considering the enormous investment
he had made in preparing the duke’s
order.
She could not hold back her
tears. For all of her seventeen
years her father had been there for her.
The thought of losing him terrified
her. Her father had raised her
to be strong, but the shock of what he had told her went far beyond her ability
to contain her emotions. Her
father embraced her, holding her close for what might be one last
time. Then slowly pushing her
away, he got to his feet.
“Prepare now,” he said, “I will be away in the morning
and want you to leave when I do. If
all goes well we will soon be back together.”
Melissa spent a sleepless night and rose
early. She had packed as instructed
before she went to bed. She had
done it secretly, not even allowing her serving girl to aid
her. If anything went wrong the
fewer people who knew of it the better.
When she went downstairs, her father was already waiting for
her. “It is best if we part
quickly,” he said. Long
goodbyes become too hard.”
Melissa
nodded. She did not
cry. She had shed her tears the
night before. Together, she and
her father breakfasted. She noted
that no servants attended them and surmised that her father had sent them
away. Probably he had cooked
the breakfast himself. It was
something he occasionally liked to do, much to the annoyance of the
cook. This time, however, there
might be another reason, that of ensuring their safety.
The duke was known to take his
rage out of not just those who displeased him, but on their servants as
well. She cursed the fact that
the duke’s power had forced her father to work for
him.
She forced herself to eat knowing that she
needed food. Accompanying her
father to the front door she gave him one last kiss and a hug and watched
him ride away. As soon as he
was out of sight, Melissa went to the stables and saddled up her
horse. She rode well, her father
having ensured that she learned that skill as
well. Within minutes she was
on the road, but she did not ride toward the borders of
Dakmora. Instead she followed
her father.
She felt no guilt at disobeying her
father. It was simply something
she had to do. She had no plan;
she only knew that she had to see her father when he went up against the
duke.
It was a two hour ride into the Slandor, the
ducal capital. Her father’s
armory was located on the outskirts of the city, near plentiful supplies
of wood for charcoal. She kept
well back from her father in order to make sure that her disobedience was
not discovered. On reaching the
city, she rode to the central square, knowing that the duke’s public
court was always held there. She
attracted a few stares. An unescorted
young woman on horseback was most
unusual. However, the excitement
over the duke’s court distracted people enough that most of them paid
her no attention. When she arrived
a large crowd of people had already
gathered. She did not see her
father, but knew that he would be on the far side of the square where the
petitioners gathered. Dismounting,
she led her horse to the edge of the
crowd. She would be able to see
well enough from there.
It took quite some time for the duke to
appear. He arrived late, no doubt
to emphasize his importance. There
was the usual fanfare and ceremony, and then the court
began. Duke Roland, the
35th Duke of Dakmora took his place on the raised platform that
had been erected in the centre of the square for the occasion of his
court. There were quite a few
petitioners on this day. Although
Melissa was too far away to hear what was being said, all of the proceeding
went smoothly.
“Perhaps,” thought Melissa, “everything will turn out
well after all.” So far
the duke seemed to be a reasonable man.
But she knew that the duke’s nature was erratic in the
extreme. He could be charming
and considerate on occasion, but his disposition could change in an
instant. His reputation for brutality
and spitefulness was well earned and one never knew which side of his personality
he would show from second to second.
She
tensed. Her father had mounted
the platform. Back straight,
he approached the duke and bent his knee in
homage. The duke said something
and then her father rose and began to
speak. Even at the distance she
was, Melissa could make out the sound of his voice, although she could not
determine what was being said. He
father spoke for what seemed like a long
time. Then suddenly, the duke
was on his feet. Melissa’s
heart skipped a beat; he had not done that for any other
petitioner. The duke leaned forward
and raised his hand as if to strike her
father. Suddenly, there was a
flash of steel. Melissa’s
scream of horror was drowned out by the noise of the crowd as her father
was struck down. And then the
court was over, the duke’s guards pushing everyone from the
square.
Melissa fought against the crowd, but she
came up against the duke’s guards.
She faced cold steel.
Suddenly remembering her father’s wishes and her potential danger
she ran from the square. Somehow
in the confusion, she had lost her horse.
Probably someone had stolen it or perhaps it had simply run
off. In any case she found herself
on foot. Stunned, confused, and
heartbroken over what she had witnessed, she wandered the streets for several
hours, until she finally regained enough of her senses to realize that Slandor
was probably the least safe place for her to
stay. The duke had killed her
father. Her life was almost certainly
in danger. Duke Roland did not
like leaving the relatives of those he had wronged
alive. They sometimes stirred
up trouble. Making her way to
a livery stable, she used two of the precious gold coins her father had given
her to buy a horse and tack. The
horse was a bit of a nag, and the tack was in less than prime condition,
but Melissa had no time to bargain.
Mounting up, she rode hard for her home.
In her somewhat bewildered state, it did not
occur to her that she should have followed her father’s instructions
and ridden for the border. She
wanted the security of familiar
surroundings. Her plan was to
take one of the other horses in the stable and then with a fresh mount and
better gear she would head for the neighbouring
duchy.
She rode around the back of the house to the
stables when she arrived. She
saw no sign of the stable boy nor were any of the servants visible when she
entered the house. It seemed
quite obvious that all of the servants had been told by her father to stay
away for a few days until events had resolved
themselves. No doubt he would
have summoned them if his interview with the duke had gone
well. But
now… She fought back tears
and headed for the main room of the
house. It was not the smartest
thing she could have done, but she wasn’t thinking
clearly. She realized her mistake
when she entered the hall. A
soldier wearing the duke’s tabard stepped out of a room in front of
her. From all appearances, he
was engaged in looting the house.
He had already found the wine
cupboard. A half empty bottle
was clutched in his left hand.
“Well, what have we here?” the soldier
asked staring impudently at her.
Melissa did not like the way the man’s gaze lingered on her
bosom.
“What are you doing here?” Melissa
countered. She forced herself
to sound outraged. The situation
was exactly what her father had wanted her to
avoid. She had no choice but
to try and bluff her way out of it.
“This is my house. You
have no right here.”
The soldier
grinned. He was a huge man and
towered over her. “You must
be the armorer’s brat. Well,
so much the better. We were having
a party and a party is always more fun with a pretty girl
around.”
Melissa stepped back, suddenly aware of her
own brazen stupidity. She was
a young girl confronted by a man who was not only drunk, but who had probably
been sent to kill or arrest her. It
was hopeless to attempt to intimidate
him. She was best away from the
house as soon as possible. But
as she stepped back, she bumped into something solid and a pair of powerful
arms closed around her. Too late,
she realized that another soldier had come up behind
her. She must have passed him
in one of the other rooms when she entered the house.
“Let me go!” she
shouted. “How dare you lay
your hands on me?” She tried
to sound infuriated as she protested her treatment, but the man who held
her simply laughed.
“Lay hands on
you? I’m going to lay more
than hands on you, you uppity
bitch.” Melissa gasped as
the man’s hands closed over her ripe
breasts. Then she screamed as
the first man grabbed her ankles and lifted her feet from the
floor.
Her shriek of alarm brought a third man
running. “Well, if it
ain’t a little chickadee,” he
exclaimed. “You sure picked
the perfect time to show up.
Ain’t had chicken in a week, and you sure look like you’d
be fun to pluck.” All three
men laughed at the man’s crudely mixed
metaphor. It was clear they were
all agreed on what they should do with her.”
“No,” Melissa screamed, kicking
her legs and striking out with her arms, “put me
down!”
“As you wish, highness,” said the
man who had grabbed her from behind.
He plunked her down on top of the table where she and her father had
breakfasted that morning. But
he shifted his grip to her arms, twisting them behind
her. He was a big man, and he
held the struggling girl easily.
“Please,” said Melissa, changing
her tack, “let me go. I
have gold.”
“Gold?
Where?” asked the third man.
“On my
horse. It’s in the
saddlebag. Just take it and let
me go.”
“See if there’s anything there,
Drax,” said the man holding Melissa’s
ankles. We’ll keep hold
of the little chickadee here. And
don’t be thinking of cheating us.
If there is gold we all want an equal
share.”
Drax just laughed as he hurried from the
room. The men with her kept a
tight grip on her until he returned.
Melissa could not have escaped their grasp if she had wanted to, so
she relaxed, conserving her strength.
She hoped that the gold would be enough to satisfy the three
men.
A few minutes later Drax was back, waving
the small leather bag containing her twenty-eight gold
sovereigns. “She weren’t
lying,” he said triumphantly.
“Almost ten years’ pay.
That’s gonna buy a lot of whores.”
“Why buy what we already got?” said
the big man holding Melissa’s arms.
All three men grinned.
“Yeah,” said the man holding her
ankles. “I’ll bet this
little bitch will give us a good
workout.” He started to
pull her legs apart.
“No,” protested
Melissa. “You
promised. I gave you the
gold. Now let me
go?”
“We didn’t promise nothing, did
we boys? You just told us where
the gold was. But we might let
you go for more gold.”
“There isn’t any more gold,”
said Melissa almost on the verge of
tears. “I gave you all I
had.”
“No gold?” asked Drax, his voice
disappointed. “How about
jewels?”
“There’s my jewel box,” answered
Melissa, desperate.
“Already checked that,” said the
man holding her arms. “Just
a bunch of cheap junk. Might
get a few coppers for it.”
The man holding her legs started to push them
apart again. Melissa panicked,
fighting hard to prevent herself from being spread; wrenching her arms and
legs in desperation.
“No! You can’t
do this. Please let me
go.”
“We’re gonna do it,” said
Drax. “So you might as well
lie back and enjoy it.” He
placed his hands on the neck of her
dress.
“No!”
screamed Melissa as Drax ripped
open her bodice, revealing her breasts.
“By the
gods! She’s certainly a
woman!” exclaimed Drax.
“Like a pair of ripe
melons.” He closed his hands
over her breasts, squeezing the soft flesh between his
fingers.”
Melissa screamed as the man fondled what no
man had gazed upon before this moment.
She thrashed violently as she tried to
escape. But she was helpless
against the powerful men who held her.
Drax ripped her dress lower, exposing the velvet triangle between
her thighs. He tangled his fingers
in the curly red hair causing Melissa to cry out with
pain.
“Stop,” she begged as he fingered
her crimson bush, inserting a finger into the tight fissure that concealed
her treasure.
“Please,
no,” she sobbed.
“I’ve
never been with a man before.
Please let me go.”
“Never had a man?” Drax
crowed. “This just gets
better and better. I think we
ought to draw lots to see who gets to be her
first.” The other men laughed
in agreement, watching with interest as Drax continued to remove her clothing
until she lay naked on the tabletop, the ruins of her dress lying on the
floor. The man holding her arms
pushed down, pinning her wrists to the tabletop, while the second man griped
her legs just above the knee, keeping her spread while Drax held up three
straws.
“You first Fenwick,” Drax said,
presenting the straws to the man spreading
her. “Longest straw
wins.”
“Damn,” Fenwick
cursed. He tossed the short piece
of straw he had drawn onto the floor.
“Now Lubin,” Drax said,” holding
the straws in front of the third man.
The man drew and
grinned. “Damn, the gods,”
Drax cursed. “Well, at least
I’m second.”
Lubin’s grin
widened. He began to unbuckle
his belt.
Melissa screamed in sheer
terror. With all of her remaining
strength she fought to escape, but her struggles were completely uncoordinated
and she succeeded only in exhausting
herself. For a few seconds she
lay quiet, her body trembling from exertion, and then the man between her
thighs dropped his pants.
She screamed again at the sight of the man’s
erect penis. She had never seen
a naked man before and the sight terrified
her.
“You hear that, Lubin?” Drax
laughed. “She’s
afraid. Go ahead and bust her
cherry. Then it’s my
turn.”
“Aaaahhhhaahh!” Melissa screamed in fear and agony as Lubin lanced
into her. Then she kept on
screaming. She had expected pain,
but nothing like this. She was
completely unprepared for the entry of the man’s thick phallus, her
virginal treasure dry and tight.
The excited soldier pumped her like a butter churn and pain ripped
through her ravaged vagina as she was raped in as brutal a fashion as the
man could manage.
She made less noise when Drax raped her, her
cries reduced to whimpers. And
she only sobbed when the third man took
her. Fenwick was the biggest
and it was well that he was last.
Her love canal was slippery enough to permit him to penetrate
her. Had he been first she probably
would have been torn apart. But
it was a long and horrible ordeal and her once virgin body was racked with
pain. It took two hours for all
of the men to satisfy themselves.
Melissa was left sobbing on the tabletop, her legs and abdomen covered
with her own virginal blood and her nether region throbbing with an intensity
she would not have believed possible.
But her ordeal was far from finished.
Drax, grabbed her by the hair and pulled her
to her feet. “That was great
for starters, honey bee, but now I want you to suck my
stinger.”
He forced Melissa to her knees, and pulled
her ruby lips toward his stiff penis.
Melissa almost gagged at the thought of taking Drax in her mouth,
but knew full well what he wanted.
“Suck it, bitch,” repeated Drax, pulling her toward the
tip of his throbbing phallus. With
a sob, Melissa parted her lips, and then she saw the
dagger.
It was only inches from her
eyes. Drax had dropped his pants,
but not his sword belt. She did
not even think about what she was doing.
His belt knife seemed to materialize in her
hand. Her other hand closed on
Drax’s penis.
Drax’s scream curdled her
blood. She had never heard anyone
make a sound like that. Instantly
she was drenched as blood fountained over her, covering her from head to
foot. For a second, she was almost
sick, but with cries of rage, Lubin and Fenwick charged toward
her.
Melissa remembered her
sword. It hung on the wall next
to her father’s where she had placed it the previous
evening. Rolling across the sweat
and semen stained table, she got to the sword before the enraged soldiers
got to her.
“Bloody bitch wants to fight,” screamed
Lubin in rage. “You see
what she did to Drax? I’m
going to cut off her tits, and I’m going to do it
slowly.” He drew his sword
and closed with the naked girl.
Across the room, Drax had stopped screaming as his life’s blood
drain out of him. Weakened by
loss of blood and the shock of his wound, he collapsed, his severed member
still pulsing blood.
Fenwick was right behind Lubin, but neither
was a match for Melissa. A fierce
rage burned within her, but she remembered her
training. The soldiers might
be bigger and stronger than she, but her father had trained her to use speed
and skill, not brute strength.
Lubin found his attempted thrust parried with an ease he had not
expected. Unable to recover,
Melissa’s blade pierced his groin.
A look of stunned surprise crossed Lubin’s face,
then with a scream he dropped his blade and clamped
his hands over his wound, sinking to his knees.
“Fenwick, the bitch stuck me,” he
gasped. “Get
her.” But Fenwick had witnessed
Melissa’s quick blade work.
Instead of attacking, he backed away, his sword held defensively in
front of him. But Melissa had
no intention of letting him get away.
Like a panther stalking a hog, she closed with him, determined not
to let him escape.
“Get away from me bitch,” Fenwick
threatened. “I cut you like
a dog.”
Breathing heavily, Melissa did not reply,
but the chilly stare of her emerald eyes made Fenwick
shudder. A coward at heart, he
depended on his size and strength to deal with
opponents. He had never met a
woman who dared stand up to him, and the cool way in which Melissa had dispatched
the moaning Lubin filled him with fear.
He lunged at the advancing girl, feinting
an attack to keep her at bay. Like
a striking snake, the tip of Melissa’s blade sliced his
wrist. With a shout of pain,
he dropped his sword and backed away, not stopping until his back hit the
wall.
“Get away I said,” he
repeated. And then changed his
tune. “You wouldn’t
kill an unarmed man would you?” he
pleaded. “I’m
wounded. I give
up.”
“No I wouldn’t kill an unarmed
man,”
Melissa replied. “But I
have no problem killing the sort of scum who preys on defenceless
women.” Her blade flicked
out. Fenwick screamed, his guts
pierced. Contemptuously, Melissa
wiped her blade on the writhing man’s
tabard. Both Lubin and Fenwick
had intestinal wounds. They would
die, but it would take them a long time, and it would be a most painful
end.
Moving to the door, Melissa surveyed the bloody
mess in the main hall of what had been her
home. Lubin and Fenwick lay writhing
on the floor, their hands pressed over their brutal
wounds. Drax lay still, a vast
pool of blood spreading slowly out from his
body. Toppled chairs and broken
bits of pottery littered the room.
As the reaction to the horror of her rape and set in, Melissa pressed
her hands to her stomach. Not
wanting to break down in front of the dying men who had ravished her, she
staggered from the room, into the vestibule lying off the main
hall. She was so violently ill
that she was barely able to stand.
She retched until her stomach was empty and stopped
heaving. Then, still clutching
her sword she made her way to her room and collapsed on the
bed. There she
wept. Wept for her lost
virginity. Wept for her dead
father and destroyed dreams. And
while the tears poured from her eyes she vowed bloody vengeance on the man
responsible for the destruction of her
world. One day she promised herself,
the Duke of Dakmora would pay for his crimes.