Just as this pleasant thought occurred to her, Launie caught another glimpse of the girl darting out of a clump of tall reeds up ahead. The princess stopped, glanced back, and Launie saw her mischievous grin. Then—
With a thrill of pure horror the handmaiden saw a brown figure step out of the reeds behind Ashtarta and clamp a hand over her mouth. The child struggled wildly for a moment, was dragged viciously backward into the reeds and out of sight. Launie opened her mouth to scream and a sinewy, hairy forearm came over her shoulder and clamped across her face. She kicked backward, feeling her sandaled feet connecting with shins, then felt something else ... the razor edge of metal at her throat!
V
Red Rape!
In that same instant, the handmaiden knew she was done for, but even then she would have screamed a warning if she could. She could not, for her throat was full of blood and all of her strength was fast flowing out of her. Her last thoughts as she was released to flop to the soft earth of the riverbank were of the princess, and of Melembrin’s grief when he found his daughter dead. If he found her.
Gon watched Launie’s eyes glaze over and stood astride her until her body had stopped quivering. Then, wiping his blade clean on her skirt, he stared long and hard at her bare breasts and cursed the fates that had forced him to kill her. The woman had been big and strong and would have made a lively ride. Still, she had been about to voice a scream, and being as close as they were to the Kushite camp, that was out of the question. He bent from the waist to slap her breasts with caloused hands and grinned as they wobbled back into immobility. Then, hearing Athom’s low curses from the clump of reeds where he had dragged the girl, Gon’s eyes narrowed and the corners of his large mouth turned down.
The girl had been a young ’un, little more than a child. She would be much more easily handled than a full-blown hill woman. And anyway, young or old, large or small, they’d have to kill her afterwards.
Afterwards….
Gon grunted and stepped over Launie’s body.
Crouching low and using the cover of the river’s greenery, he made for the clump of reeds where they shivered and rustled from the unequal struggle within. Perhaps he wouldn’t go short of a ride after all.
Athom was having a hard time of it. He could have cut the girl’s throat as Gon had done with the handmaiden. Or he could simply break her neck with a twist of his wrists. But no, he had decided that he needed a woman, and it just wasn’t the same with dead ones. He had worked as a lad for old Tuthtor the embalmer in Therae, where even with his lusts the freshly dead had soon become unappetizing. No, a man might just as well stick it in a dead pig as a human corpse, no matter how lovely and vibrant the woman had been in life. Also, according to his old master, diseases proliferated in the dead like scum on a stagnant pool; and certainly the embalmer had spoken from experience. Old Tuthtor, with his syphilitic scabs and eyes full of pus. Worms had lived in the old ghoul for years before he himself was dead.
Yet again the girl bit his hand where it was clamped over her mouth, and again Athom cursed under his breath as he tried to pinion her hands with his free arm. Then Gon had crept into the clump and trapped the girl’s legs. The grinning, big-mouthed lout forced himself between her knees and grabbed her thighs, pushing them outwards. The hem of her dress rode up as her legs parted, showing the Theraens her nakedness.
Now Athom used his free hand to grab the girl’s throat, squeezing until she could no longer draw breath. Exhausted and suffocating, she began to black out. Releasing his grip, Athom tore a strip from the neck of her dress and quickly gagged her, then used a second strip to bind her hands behind her back. Finally, he slapped her face once or twice until she recovered her senses. With wide, darting black eyes, she stared fearfully at her captors.
The newcomer was the younger of the two, but even he was all of thirty years of age. Staring at him, Ashtarta thought: “He’s so hairy!” And indeed, Gon was hairy. His bearded face, his chest, back, arms and legs, all were a mass of black hair. With his red eyes peering at her from beneath bushy eyebrows, he might well have been a demon called up by some black magician. The other man, who leaned over her and breathed his bad breath directly into her face, was some five years older than the other, much less hairy and burned brown by the sun. When he grinned, his rotten teeth showed full of raw fish. “By all the gods!” whispered Gon hoarsely, staring between the girl’s spread legs at her small tuft of pubic hair. “You’d think she’d known we were here and came out specially to entertain us. Naked as a whore under this rag!” “A child,” grunted the other, tearing Ashtarta’s dress down the front and parting it to bare her small breasts. “Look, I’ve seen boys with bigger tits!”
“Oh?” Gon licked his lips and stroked the inside of the girl’s thighs with both hands, then gripped the flesh there and forced his hands apart until an opening showed. “And did those boys have a sweet little hole like that?” “Depends where you looked!”
Athom chuckled. The grin quickly slid off his face and he went on: “Well, are we to stay here all day then? Get on with it, man, since you’re already on her.” He grabbed Ashtarta’s shoulders and pinned them to the ground so that her breasts stood up a little rounder.
Positioning himself so that his knees held Ashtarta’s legs down and open, Gon quickly tugged his loincloth to one side until his penis sprang into view. Staring at the thing the girl was galvanized into one last desperate fight for freedom, which only resulted in a heavy cuff on the side of her head from Athom. Trembling in every limb, Ashtarta found herself hypnotized by Gon’s penis. It reminded her of the small hill ponies of home when they were about to mount the mares. Except that this time, she was the mare!
She wriggled frantically one last time and heaved her bottom up off the ground—at which Athom immediately stuck his leg under her, forming an arch of her back. Now Gon started to lower himself onto her, grinning in her face as she felt him throbbing against her quivering leg. Tears began to wash her face and she squeezed her eyes shut.
Seeing her tears, Athom said: “Now, now, madam, don’t cry. Why, if you think Gon’s a big lad, just wait till it’s my turn! All he’ll do with that little thing of his is open you up a bit for—” abruptly he stopped his throaty whispering, gave a little cry, withdrew twitching hands from her shoulders.
Something warm splashed Ashtarta’s face and she looked up to see Athom struggling to his feet and tugging at an arrow that transfixed his eye. Gon saw this too, and he was off Ashtarta in a flash, his knife seeming to grow in his hand as he turned in a crouch, snarling his shock and fear.
A figure stood not six feet away, just outside and partly obscured by the fringing reeds. As Athom fell at last on his back, his hands still gripping the shaft of the arrow in his eye, so Gon sprang straight at the intruder—and took a second arrow full in the chest. He fell to his knees, jumped up, staggered to and fro for a moment in complete silence, then toppled and crashed down among the reeds.
Unable to believe her good fortune, Ashtarta simply lay still and stared as her rescuer slowly pushed aside the fringe of greenery and stooped to enter her cave of reeds. He stared at her for a long moment, mainly at her nakedness, until she began to struggle and kick, flashing her eyes at him in anger. Why, he was only a youth, albeit a very strange youth; a youth with a bow and a quiver of arrows. His skin was so fair, his hair too, and his eyes… they were blue! And now that she knew she was safe, those blue eyes of his irritated her inordinately—especially where they were looking.