Email:
Lespion@msn.com
Episode
I The Corsair
Melissa remembered only some of the horrendous
journey to Slandor. She passed
through village after village and rolled down dusty road after dusty
road. During the ten days it
took to reach the capital city of
But worse than anything the crowd could have
done to her; worse than being exposed to the elements; was what took place
at the end of each day. Then,
she was rousted from the cage, fed, watered, allowed to perform her bodily
functions, and then given to the escort for their evening’s
entertainment. She was passed
from tent to tent and man to man throughout the
night. And then cleaned each
morning by being doused with buckets of cold water or by being thrown into
a nearby stream or pond. Always
she was chained and always she was
watched. So exhausted was she
from each night’s ordeal that during the day she slept even while standing,
and even while being screamed at and spat upon by crowds of citizenry, most
of whom were not fit to clean her boots.
The wagon at last reached
Slandor. She was taken to the
Duke’s prison, deep in the bowels of his fortress
home. There she expected to be
taken before the Duke’s inquisitor.
But there was one more trial awaiting
her. As she lay in her cell,
reveling in the fact that for the first time in eleven nights she had been
allowed to sleep, and not forced to taste the swollen members of her escort,
she heard the bolt of the iron cell door rasp
back. Into her cell, escorted
by three of his guards strode the Duke.
With him was a smaller man dressed in brown robes and carrying a leather
bag.
By now Melissa was too far gone to care whether
or not the Duke raped or tortured her.
She made no effort to move from where she lay in the relative comfort
of the straw on the floor of the cell, but instead watched him with half
closed eyes. She was about as
close to disinterest in her own fate as she could
be. The Duke prodded her with
his foot. “I see you have
survived, dragon bitch,” he said.
Then he turned to the brown-robed
man. “Inspect her,”
he ordered, as if he was speaking of a prize
cow. “See if she is fit
for her public humiliation.”
The man with the leather bag knelt next to
her. From his bag he took out
a number of instruments, and Melissa realized that he was a
doctor. Quickly the doctor laid
out his instruments. Then moving
with practiced efficiency and surprising (to Melissa) gentleness, he ran
his hands over her body, taking her pulse, and checking her cuts and
bruises. He took only a short
time before he looked up at the Duke and spoke.
“She is exhausted, my lord, and on the
verge of physical and nervous collapse.
I doubt that she would even know she was being punished if you chose
to display her now. She needs
at least a week to recuperate.”
The Duke
frowned. “Then she shall
have the week. I want her public
disgrace to be perfect. She shall
be exhibited and punished as a warning to my
enemies.” Without another
word, he turned and left the cell, leaving the doctor and the guards
behind.
As soon as the Duke had left, the doctor began
to administer to her. He took
from his bag some healing salve and dressed her wounds with
it. Then he took out several
herbs, and crushing then with a small mortar and pestle, mixed then with
water. Tilting Melissa’s
head back he helped her drink.
Melissa almost gagged as she swallowed the
foul-tasting medicine, but almost immediately, she felt a tingling in her
body as the herbs took effect.
Whatever the doctor had given her, it had a powerful
effect. She felt her strength
partially return.
The doctor fumbled in his bag for something
else. He took out a small pouch
and from it produced what looked like a dried leaf about half the size of
his hand. He held it to
Melissa‘s lips. “Take
this,” he said, “it will help you
heal.” Melissa took the
leaf and slowly chewed it. As
she finished the last of it, she felt very
drowsy. As her head dropped to
her breast she heard the doctor finish his
sentence. “And it will also
make you sleep.”
The doctor stood
up. “Remove her
chains. She cannot
escape. I will return every four
hours to re-administer the drug and to give her food and
water.” Then the doctor,
the guards, and the cell faded away as Melissa fell into a deep and dreamless
sleep.
True to his word the Duke gave her a
week. By the end of that time
much of Melissa’s strength had
returned. She was not as strong
as she had been before her capture, but she was well on her way to
recovery. She would have been
more pleased about her progress had she not remembered the Duke’s
words. As the week ended, she
waited with considerable trepidation for the Duke’s guards to come and
take her from the cell.
The guards came for her on the morning of
the eighth day. Still as naked
as the day she had entered the cell, Melissa was helpless to resist the dozen
men who came to escort her. She
was chained as before and hauled from the
cell. Then she was forced to
walk up corridor after corridor and staircase after staircase until finally
she reached the light of day. She
entered a large courtyard. In
front of her was a wagon very similar to the one that had carried her in
the cage on her journey to Slandor.
This time there was no cage on the
wagon. Instead a rectangular
frame of wooden timbers had been built on the wagon
bed. She was marched up a ramp
to the frame and then each of her limbs was chained to one corner of the
rectangle so that her nude body was stretched in the shape of an
“X.”
The whip cracked and the wagon began to
move. Slowly it rumbled across
the courtyard. Before Melissa
loomed the huge gate tower.
Outside, she could hear a low rumble as if thousands of people were
gathered outside the castle walls.
The wagon’s iron bound wheels and the horses’ hooves echoed
as they passed through the gate tower and then rumbled across the
drawbridge. As she exited the
castle a great shout went up. She
saw that the noise she had heard was indeed that of thousands of
people. A huge crowd had assembled
to witness her final degradation.
The wagon and its escort rumbled through the
crowd. As it did hundreds of
voices were raised against her.
“Hang the bloody pirate!
Gut her! Draw and quarter
her!” There were others,
some extremely inventive. Melissa
was dismayed by the feeling against her.
She had fought only against the
Duke. Why did the people hate
her so? And then she realized
that it had probably not been difficult for the Duke and his ministers to
cast the blame for the high taxes and brutal oppression of the Duke onto
her. Not only had she failed
to avenge her father, but she had provided the Duke with a convenient
scapegoat.
Not everyone called for her
blood. Some, especially the men,
simply stared wonderstruck at her naked
beauty. A few, the very small
minority, wept as she passed, heartbroken to see such beauty subjected to
such cruel punishment.
Strangely, nothing was thrown at her, unlike
her trip in the cage, when all manner of objects had been hurled at
her. She remembered clearly the
time when a bucket of human waste had been thrown over
her. That had been the one occasion
when she had been washed by the soldiers before they had fed
her. She supposed that the Duke
had given orders that she was to suffer no indignity on her way to her
execution. He wanted her to be
in prime condition for her final public appearance.
At long last the wagon rumbled into the great
central square. A great shout
went up. It was the same square
where she had seen her father murdered.
Now it appeared that she was to receive the same
treatment.
The square was crowded with thousands of people
all pushing and jostling to get a better view of her naked and helpless
form. A low chant started and
then rose as people picked it up.
“Kill the dragon bitch!
Kill the dragon bitch!”
The sound swelled to fill the
square. Melissa looked out on
the sea of faces and was appalled at the hate in the eyes of the
mob. She had done nothing to
any of these people. In all of
her attacks on the Duke she had made every effort to avoid harming the ordinary
citizens of Dakmora, but the Duke had managed to poison the people against
her. He had made her into the
villain and himself into the hero.
Her defeat seemed complete.
Instead of destroying the Duke she had become his savior, a great
leader who would be remembered for his capture and execution of the dreaded
Red Dragon.
The wagon halted in the center of the
square. The Duke sat on a dais
just a few feet away. With him
was Khrag. The Duke’s chief
minister gave her a twisted smile and bowed mockingly in her
direction. To either side of
the Duke were four heralds. More
ominously, was the presence of a powerfully built man dressed all in
black. The executioner Melissa
supposed.
The Duke gestured and the heralds raised their
trumpets. Their sharp blare silenced
the crowd and Khrag rose to speak.
“Citizens of Dakmora, we are gathered here due to the grace and
guidance of his exalted highness, Roland Duke of
Dakmora.” Khrag had to pause
as a great roar went up form the crowd.
The Grand Vizier had to raise his arms to ask for
silence. As the crowd quieted
he continued, “Long has the ruthless and brutal pirate calling herself
the Red Dragon ravaged the duchy.
Many have fallen before her cruel
blade. Mothers have lost
sons. Daughters have been raped
and enslaved; and children have seen their parents tortured and murdered
before their eyes. Whole villages
have been burned to the ground.
Rape, pillage, and plunder have followed her everywhere she has
gone”
“None of this is true,” thought
Melissa. “I did none of
those things.” Her eyes
searched the crowd. She saw only
hatred and blood lust. The crowd
saw her only as a monster. A
hideous villain who had preyed on her own
people.
“Thanks to the bravery and sacrifice
of your duke,” continued Khrag, “this plague on Dakmora has been
captured and brought here for a public display of
justice. She will be required
to pay for her crimes. And she
will pay in pain and blood. The
people of Dakmora will be avenged.”
A huge shout went up from the crowd as Khrag
finished. The chant began again,
“Kill the dragon bitch!”
This time Khrag made no attempt to silence
them. Instead he nodded to the
man dressed in black. The black-clad
man jumped down from the dais and advanced to the
wagon. In his right hand he was
carrying a bucket, but no other instrument of
torture. Reaching the wagon he
clambered up and stood just behind
Melissa. He reached into the
bucket.
The screams of the crowd suddenly
ended. They were replaced by
a murmur. One of horror tinged
with awe. “A devil’s
whip,” a few voices said.
“He has a devil’s whip!”
An involuntary shudder ran through
Melissa. All citizens of Dakmora
had heard of the frightening instrument of torture known as the devil’s
whip, although most of them had never seen
one. It was actually not a whip
at all, but a living creature, a long snake-like organism that inhabited
the deep ocean. On occasion a
fisherman would snag one that had ventured too close to the
surface.
It would be the lucky fisherman who
did. A devil’s whip was
worth ten times its weight in gold.
It was a creature capable of creating the most fiendish
pain. Along the length of its
snake-like body were thousands of hair-like
barbs. And behind each barb was
a sac of poison. A single drop
of this poison injected into the skin of its victim produced almost unimaginable
agony. Victims had been known
to hack off their own limbs rather than submit to such intense
pain.
The devil’s whip had only two
drawbacks. As a living creature,
its use brought about its own death.
It could only be used once, and therefore, was used only in the most
unusual of cases. In addition,
the pain generated was so extreme that the torture victim was usually rendered
either incoherent or unconscious.
As a result it was useless as a device for extracting any useful
information. It could be used
only to punish, and its great cost meant that it was seldom used for the
punishment of ordinary criminals.
“So,” thought Melissa, “I am
to be honoured by being subjected to the most painful torture the Duke can
devise.” Somehow, she did
not feel that her “crimes” deserved such a
tribute.
The crowd hushed as the black-clad man raised
the devil’s whip. He was
dressed in leather from his gloves to his boots as protection against any
accidental contact with the instrument of
torture. Melissa held her
breathe. She hoped that she was
too far from the crowd for anyone to see the sheen of sweat that coated her
body, and the slight trembling of her
limbs. “Sera give me
strength,” she murmured, in a prayer to the Goddess of
Mercy.
The raised arm of the torturer came
down. He swung the devil’s
whip slowly. It did not have
to strike its victim hard in order to inflict pain, and eventually repeated
blows would result in its death.
Then it would be no longer capable of inflicting
pain.
The devil’s whip struck the centre of
Melissa’s back.
“Aaaaaaggggghhh!!”
Her scream of agony ripped out of her
lips. She had not intended to
scream. On the contrary, she
had intended to hold out against the devil’s whip for as long as she
could, to deny both the Duke and the crowd any pleasure in her
suffering. But she had never
experienced such pain. It surged
through her body like a bolt of lightning, and it did not stop just with
the blow. The poison injected
into her flesh remained after the devil’s whip was drawn
back. It burned into her like
the heat from a white hot iron.
Melissa did not stop screaming after her first
shriek. She screamed again and
again and again…
The flogging with the devil’s whip lasted
less than a half hour. The poor
sea creature was not intended for such violent
use. Its death ended its
effectiveness and thus the flogging.
Melissa hung limp. The
short interval of pain she had endured had seemed like an eternity to
her. Time almost seemed to
standstill, and it was a time filed with agony such as she would never have
believed possible. She had screamed
louder than she had ever done before in her twenty two
years. The man wielding the whip
had done so expertly. He had
been careful not to lay too many lashes on her at
once. The pain would have overwhelmed
her nervous system, leading to
unconsciousness. He had struck
her and then waited for the effects of the poison to
diminish. Fortunately, for all
the pain it caused, its effect was only short lived, lasting only a few
minutes. The torturer waited
until Melissa’s screams subsided and then struck
again.
For the first part of the flogging, the huge
crowd had watched in almost reverential silence, but as it proceeded it began
to scream its encouragement. By
the end it was in full cry, demanding Melissa’s blood and her
head. Melissa was
unconscious. The repeated infusion
of pain had overcome her at last, and her body shut
down. She hung from her chains,
the only sign of life being the slight rise and fall of her
chest. Her back was striped with
over a dozen cuts where the devil’s whip had touched
her. Each blow had raised a vicious
welt as the poison was injected into her
body. To most of the crowd she
appeared dead. Only those nearest
her knew otherwise.
The fanfare sounded again as Kharg raised
his hands for silence. The crowd
quieted and he spoke. “The
evil pirate known as the Red Dragon has received part of her punishment,
and you, the people of Dakmora have borne witness to
it. But she must suffer further
punishment. From here she goes
to the dungeons beneath the ducal palace.
There she will writhe in pain and suffering as great as can be
inflicted. Only then will she
be returned to this square for public
execution. The Duke has decreed
that her death will be as long and agonizing as is
possible. Three cheers for his
highness, the Duke of Dakmora. Long
may he reign.”
The last words seemed to catch the mob off
guard, but a few people responded to the command with a ragged
cheer. The next cheer was louder
with most people participating, and the third ended in a thunderous roar
as the crowd howled its approval of their heroic
duke. To deafening applause the
crowd parted as the Duke and his escort moved back toward the palace, the
wagon holding Melissa’s inert form
following. The Red Dragon had
been publicly punished, now her private hell was about to
begin.
PREVIOUS
CHAPTER WIZARD'S
LAIR MAIN PAGE
L'ESPION'S
STORY PAGE
NEXT
CHAPTER