by Karl Quentin
The town of Dorlin shimmered white in the desert sunlight: white-washed mansions, colonnades interspersed with palm trees, fountains playing in courts, rivulets feeding cool arbours. Gram the Barbarian and Sandra the exiled Warrior Queen reined in their horses and looked down upon Dorlin from the hill just above.
"The first town in the Republic of Gorst," said Gram, "after you pass through the desert. I have a powerful thirst."
"I also," said Sandra, wiping the sweat from her high forehead and swinging her long sand-dried auburn pigtail back over her shoulder. "Should we be wary when we go down to this rich-looking little town? What know you of this land?"
"I know little, save that it is ruled by Mocatu the Tyrant. What manner of man he may be, I know not."
"The clue may lie in his name," replied Sandra tartly.
Gram turned to look at her with a glint in his eye. "Were you perhaps exiled from your kingdom for excessive sarcasm, my lady?"
"No indeed! I was exiled for always being right. Last one into Dorlin buys the beer!" And she urged her horse down the slope. Gram watched her bottom in tight leather trews bouncing in the saddle for an appreciative moment before chuckling and pounding after her.
They made a striking couple riding into town. Gram sat high upon his white stallion Skyrmir. Unlike many professional barbarians, who look more like bodybuilders, he combined knotted muscularity with a lean grace and an intense, single-pointed physicality. His long blond hair, matted in locks and barely restrained by a head-band, cascaded over his shoulders and down his powerful back. He wore a white cloak to keep out the sun over a chimera skin loincloth and high brown soft leather boots. Slung over his back was his broadsword, Blood-drinker. A two handed sword was attached to Skyrmir's harness on one side, while a mace and a bow and arrows hung on the other.
Sandra rode a bay mare, Lucy. Her stately bearing and tall poise belied both her mischievous nature and the intensity of her battle lust. Green eyes glittered with amusement and wonder as they surveyed the cruel world around her. Her royal nostrils were held high above the common stink, though when need arose she could wallow with the best. Beneath her shimmering cloak she wore ample breastplates of gold, and the aforementioned knee-length skin tight trews on legs like muscular scissors. She glistened with sweat from the desert crossing, for which skin tight leather was probably not the best outfit. However, she was not given to compromise, as the matching broadsword, Skullsplitter, over her back demonstrated. From her pommel hung a bolas, a net, and a double headed Argelian death stick.
They rode steadily through the town, ignoring stares and comments from the plump prosperous townsfolk, until they came to a bar with its striped awning and clustered vine leaves to keep out the sun. They dismounted, baited their horses, tied them to the hitching post, and lounged at a table nearest the street but in full shade. The tubby little barman was assiduous in his service. Soon they were enjoying a cool pitcher of Ribernian white wine and plates of bread and sardines, and gumfle on the bone with roasted peppers.
Opposite their table, across the broad sandy street, stood an opulent mansion, dazzling white like the rest, but with a garden full of shady palms and fountains in the form of nymphs, griffins and flying fish. A perfect merchant's dream house, thought Sandra snootily. It lay silent in the hot sun of afternoon. Slowly, however, they became aware of the clink of mail jarring against a strange hush in the street. Into their view came a group of a dozen horsemen in jet black armour with stark white skulls blazoned on their tabards. Gram and Sandra looked at each other. Behind them the bartender gasped and fell to his knees.
Two of the soldiers dismounted and hammered on the gates of the mansion. A servant came out and instantly grovelled too. The leader of the horseman yelled at him, and he got up, ran forwards and opened the gates for them. They dismounted and marched through the garden into the house with an ugly tramp, and jingle of steel on steel.
"Oh, it's come to pass, it's come to pass!" moaned the barman. "He was warned, he was warned!"
"What are you talking about, man?" said Gram.
The tubby fellow wiped his shiny forehead. He was clearly terrified. "That house belongs to Ser Raffaello, a member of the Regional Council. Last month the council was called upon to ratify a decree by Mocatu the Most Benevolent. Ser Raffaello refused to sign; he leads a group of merchants who think the rule of the merciful and beneficent Mocatu is bad for business. He was told what would happen, and here it is, happening!"
"But what is happening, fellow?" asked Sandra.
"When Mocatu the Lenient, the Tender, needs to punish a family or grandee who have taken a stand against his most solicitous rule, his custom is to punish the offender by making him witness the thrashing of his womenfolk - to have to stand helplessly by while their modesty is violated and their bottoms ravaged with leather! It emasculates them more surely than the knife ever could!"
"I see that," said Gram thoughtfully. Sandra cast a quick look at him.
"Thank goodness that Ser Raffaello no longer has a wife! But he has three beautiful daughters..." moaned the little barman. Sweat stood out under his armpits.
Sandra's eyes shone cold. She smiled the smile that has been the last thing many men have seen in this life. "I should like to have a discussion with this Mocatu!" she said. Gram raised his eyebrows. What next!
As they sat digesting this news, the armed men reappeared dragging three ravishingly beautiful young women. They were all clad in dresses of flowing white samite. The eldest, perhaps twenty, was a tall blonde who struggled in their grip, desperately begging the soldiers to let her sisters go. The hem of her dress swished and rustled on the sand. Her big eyes looked imploringly at her grim captors, and her full red lips were parted in distress. Her sisters appeared to be twins, perhaps two or even three years younger. Their dresses were more like chitons, swirling just above their knees. Both were dark, sultry girls, but they seemed very different; one had given as good as she had so far got, and the two men dragging her along had a split lip and a black eye respectively, and though she was powerless to put up any more resistance she still tried to kick their armoured legs with her delicate sandals and cursed them heartily all the way to her flogging. The other seemed frozen in terror, limp between the gauntlets of Mocatu's enforcers. Tears streaked her soft cheeks.
Behind them and before them and from side to side danced and skipped an older man who must be their father. He pulled at the soldiers' tabards and wept and implored them to let his daughters go free, to take him instead and torture him as they chose. "But please not my daughters! Oh not my daughters!"
The soldiers' leader took the father by the hair and pulled him away. "You will watch and listen, Ser Raffaello! You will see what happens to the loved ones of those who dare to question the bounty of Mocatu the Tyrant!"
Sandra rose. "I'm going to have a quiet word with those fellows!" she purred.
But Gram took her by the forearm. "Are there no men in this town?" he asked the tubby barman. "Do you not protect your own womenfolk?"
The barman wrung his hands. "Some towns did resist, once upon a time. They no longer exist. Mocatu in his mercy burnt them to the ground and sold all the people into slavery. If we lift a finger against his servants, we know the same will happen to us. Please - I beg you - do not interfere. Mocatu will blame us. Please!"
Gram nodded. "Sandra, we will sit this one out."
"But-"
"We will move on. These folk have to stay here." She looked at him angrily then slowly nodded and sat down. She seemed to thrum like a bowstring. "Sandra, these poor soldiers have many miles to go before they can return to their master."
She scowled, but nodded, and then smiled wolfishly.
The girls were being forced through the main gate out on to the street. A little further along the road split, and circled a huge bronze statue of Mocatu, which showed him showering blessings upon his people. Gram and Sandra had passed three or four of these on their way in. At the base of all the statues was a long tent-like stone erection, with angled grooves in its angled sides. Its purpose rapidly became apparent, as the soldiers dragged their captives up to it, their father stumbling behind, still begging and pleading. The cowed distressed twin was roughly bent over one end of the structure, her legs fitting into two of the grooves, her arms down the other side. She was writhing as steel restraints were unlocked from the stonework and used to secure her. Her father's cries rose to heaven. His oldest daughter pleaded loudly with the soldiers holding her to be allowed to take her sisters' punishment as well. The other twin twisted round and spat into the eyes of the nearest available soldier, and shouted to her father to be silent, to not give these animals the satisfaction of witnessing their anguish. "Bear it with pride, father! Mocatu is a dangerous beast. We are human beings! Let us act like men!" Her last words were choked by pain, as the spat upon soldier pulled her head back brutally by her raven hair.
"Elyssa! Elyssa! What have I done to you?" the old man wailed to his gasping daughter.
"Nothing... father!" she said. "It is... Mocatu's... doing!"
The leader of the men strode up and took Elyssa's jaw in his mailed fist. "Mocatu is a beast, eh? Then we shall bring him a titbit! After you have been well flogged, you will come with us, my girl! We'll see how much pride you have left when Mocatu in his mercy is done with you!" She glared into his face, refusing to show her fear. Her father's cries rose to howls. Her older sister wept and begged to be taken in her place. "As you wish! You shall go too, and while we are about it, why not all three of you! Lash them down and bare them!"
"Be brave, but not foolish, Marta!" Elyssa cried as she was hustled to the block. Then the soldiers doubled her over the stone structure, despite her futile squirming struggles, and secured her. The twin bottoms stuck up, ludicrous and pitiful, beneath the folds of their ridden up white dresses. Finally the weeping Marta joined them, her bottom slimmer and higher. A bare quarter hour before, they had been laughing and playing a string trio together in their music room. Now their three bottoms were rudely thrust up before the slowly gathering crowd of their fellow townsfolk, most but by no means all compelled by their fear of the tyrant to attend these public humiliations.
Gram looked on without expression; he had seen worse. Sandra's lips were drawn back from her teeth, her nostrils flared. She had done worse. She planned to do worse again, in the very near future.
Ser Raffaello was hauled into a position where he would have a grandstand view of his dear daughters' flagellation. His eyes were cruelly held open, and a dagger put to his throat. Then, while the leader took out a long thin lash from his horse's pack - half a strap, half a whip - a burly mailed man walked down the line, lifting the girls' dresses one by one.
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