THE LOINS OF ISHTAR | whip bondage stories

While his sister was learning about the dire penalties by which discipline was enforced among women, high and low, in the isolated city state, Marcellus was consulting the Governor on matters properly best discussed between men. In fact, how to satisfy those bodily desires that plague fit and healthy young men who do not maintain a marital bed of their own. As he explained to His Excellency, he felt inhibited this early in his residence among them to embark on a relationship with the wife or daughter of one of the men whose acquaintance he had begun to acquire, nor was he qualified to make use of army privileges, being only unofficially attached to the force at presence.

"Nothing simpler, my dear boy," the Governor declared. "Actually you need have no fears about tumbling another man's wife, providing she was in the position of having unofficial licence from her husband to widen her horizons, to

say nothing of her thighs. You may have Lavinia at any time for that matter, but I fancy she will be a little sore at present and, anyway perhaps she shouldn't be given such a sweet reward just yet. After all, she has only just completed her sentence, and should have a chance to demonstrate good behaviour before regaining her privileges, especially of regular shafting. Anyway, we'll come back to that later. What you need right now is a visit to the Temple of Ishtar."

Marcellus looked a little taken aback, but tried to remain polite in front of his patron.

"It is my body that needs comfort, Governor," he reminded his host, "not my soul. I doubt I will find what I seek in any temple."

"I think you will find it in Ishtar's," the Governor assured him, with a knowing look. "Any man, of high or low degree, free or slave, Roman or Barbarian, suitably sober and clean, may, for a small fee, couple with the Goddess, lifting her loin cloth and standing between her knees, her vulva at the level of a standing man's prick."

"The Goddess has a sheath soft and warm enough to give pleasure to a man?"

"Indeed yes, though it is a curious vulva, of veritable flesh and blood, but inverted, being that of a woman, bent over behind the image, her buttocks forming its belly."

"And this prodigy of a cunt is always available?"

"Yes, for the priestesses must keep the Goddess fit for action day and night, working in small groups that cover a period of hours, rotating frequently if there are many men waiting, staying in place for twenty minutes at a time in quiet periods."

"They are experienced whores, then?" Marcellus suggested.

"Not whores, either priestesses of the Goddess, or women sent to do her service. Who knows, you might even find yourself a virgin vessel for your lust."

"Virgin! How may that be?"

"All girls are sent on their wedding eves to lose their virginities in honour of the Goddess, and wives after seven years of marriage. The girls come away with a piece of linen bearing blood and semen, and the temple seal. Of course the men have no way of knowing who they have serviced, priestess or lay, nor do they know, until they thrust home, if they have drawn the more rare virgin sheath. It is the luck of the draw and one may speculate whether that warm and welcoming tunnel, into which one has spent one's seed, might not belong to the shy young wife of your neighbour, or the bold spouse of your commanding officer."

"And the permanent temple servants? Do they have husbands or lovers?"

"Strangely, though the priestesses are given to any man that asks within the temple, they must remain entirely chaste outside this service and are subject to horrendous punishments if detected in affairs with either men or women, ranging from being whipped to the blood for minor infringements, to being buried alive, if detected in the act of sex."

"How many are needed, then, to keep the Goddess ever wet and willing?" the younger man enquired.

"Normally there are twelve Priestesses in the College, meaning each must offer her parts for two hours each day, though not necessarily in one stint, and sometimes more or less, as monthly flows take women out of service, or brides and seven year wives provide reinforcements. There are legends of stupendous feats of endurance, as when a solitary priestess kept the Goddess potent for a day, from dawn to dawn, when fever had laid her sisters low, or the bride-to-be, who spent twelve hours pressed against the vulval opening through the malice of a relative, consecrated as a priestess, who falsified the rota to leave the girl to face either disgrace at leaving her post without relief, or a hundred raping penises in her sore, split, aching vagina, virgin until that moment."

Warmed by this talk of sacred vaginas in waiting, Marcellus betook himself immediately to the great marble-faced edifice in the city centre, dedicated to the Babylonian Goddess of lust and procreation. For no more than he might have paid for a cup of wine, he was shown into a small ante-chamber, a mere cell with another door at the far end from that by which he had entered. The walls were covered with striking murals, done with great skill, and showing the Goddess engaged in intercourse in every possible position, and some he thought might well be impossible. They were obviously designed to raise the lust and stiffen the members of the men who waited here.

His surmise that the room was one of a number to hold men apart from each other as they waited, giving them erotic food to chew on the while, was confirmed when, after ten minutes of perusing the sexual athletics depicted on the walls, the far door opened, and a female figure beckoned him to follow. She led him along a narrow corridor lined on both sides by doors similar to the one he had just come through himself, and then through a heavy curtain into the Goddess's sanctum. As she silently slid away to seat herself behind a light screen in a corner, he looked about him.

The room was quite small, but very high, soaring away into darkness above his head. The walls were hung with rich tapestries, again depicting the Goddess at erotic play, just visible in the soft light from lamps placed near the figure of the Goddess herself - a slightly larger than life-sized statue of a woman, beautiful in every degree, her great ivory breasts tipped with large red coral nipples which were pierced with gold rings, each hung with a huge ruby. She sat, crowned with a golden diadem on her heaped hair; it looked like tresses taken from real women. She was naked except for an embroidered loin cloth fastened round her narrow waist and hanging over her rounded belly and between her widely splayed thighs.

Marcellus felt his manhood rising. He unloosed it and advanced to stand in the spread of her fork, lifting the cloth.

The belly of the Goddess gleamed palely at him in the dim light of the lamps. It was a strange belly, deeply divided at its centre, with a chased and jewelled extension of the band from which her lap covering hung running down to terminate in a great gleaming red jewel which concealed what would otherwise have appeared as a second navel, brown and dimpled, low down in the base of the cleft. Lower still, framed by the tops of widely parted thighs, a very human vulva pouted fatly through a fringe of damp curls, matted and slick with moisture, a curious pudenda since it was inverted, a sticky trickle oozing from its puffy labia to run down the inside of one leg.

Aroused by this sight, he presented his weapon at the sliced fig, which seemed to flinch momentarily at the contact, then pressed back again to offer itself without further reservation. He probed for the entrance, than sank into it to the hilt in one stroke, until his belly slapped against the firm flesh of the bent haunches in which he was embedded.

He heard a slight gasp from behind the screen of the Goddess's body, which he clasped in his arms, his face between her gleaming breasts. For a second the flesh beneath him fell away, as the woman shied from the rigour of his entrance, then thrust back against him, until she filled the opening in the Goddess tightly, becoming one with her again.

Stirred beyond measure by the strange encounter, half fantasising he was engaged in intercourse with a deity, half envisaging the very real and desirable woman in whose flesh he worked, he thrust and thrust again. The bizarre nature of the coupling, the fearful beauty of the Persian Goddess, the dim light, the smell of incense and woman, the thrilling suction of the warm wet tube in which he rutted, brought him to shuddering climax in minutes only. He shouted and bucked, then lay against the statue, his lips pressed to one of the coral nipples.

At once he felt a tap on his shoulder, and turned to find a woman standing by him offering him a towel. As he stood and began to wipe himself, she tugged at his sleeve, drawing him from the Goddess's chamber by a door opposite to where he had entered it. He noticed that the first woman had already left by the other door, presumably to fetch the next man to take his place between the ivory smooth thighs, and seek out that hot moist opening below the Goddess's belly covering.

Ten minutes later, he was out in the street again. The woman had led him to a duplicate of the chamber in which he had waited for his audience with the Goddess, but on the other side of the sanctum, so that no man met any other, either coming or leaving. There she had washed him, and helped him adjust his clothing and straighten his hair. She had done all this without speaking, as had the other attendant who had ushered him in, and, when he was ready, had shown him out and gone back to deal with another client of the insatiable deity.

That evening the Governor asked how he had fared.

"Was she priestess or lay?" he enquired, when Marcellus had given an enthusiastic account of his experience with the Goddess's surrogate womb.

"My guess would be that she was lay, though no virgin when I got to her, for she shrank from the prick at first, as though fearing it, though she recalled herself to her duty quickly enough," he recalled, "but there was no means of telling, otherwise."

"Or the senior priestess murmured some threat in her ear that caused her to thrust out her bottom again. Still, even a priestess may shy, if she is but newly consecrated. Could you not see the Goddess's mark on her?"

"The Goddess's mark?"

"Put it this way," the Governor said, "could you see her bud of joy, or was she different in some way?"

Marcellus wrinkled his brow in concentration, as if to bring back the picture of the tight bent buttocks in the Goddess's lap, and the pouting purse of the vulva displayed in the gap.

"She was normal, I think," he said at last. "Yes, I remember now, it was a little large in fact, a gristly stub, like a baby's thumb, standing proud of the hood around it, though everything looked so strange in that weird opening in the Goddess's belly, and inverted too."

"Then you did,indeed, have yourself a shy young lay servant of Ishtar, you lucky dog. Somehow the thought that the handsome woman, or pretty young wife, you meet in the street tomorrow, on her way to the baths, or the market, may have under her robe that succulent flesh you rammed today, gives an added interest to every woman you see."

"What did you mean by the Goddess's mark?" Marcellus persisted.

"Oh, that. When a new priestess is consecrated, she sacrifices her bud to the Goddess. It is cut out of her and you would have found, not a swelling between her lips, large or small, but a flat silver scar, the Goddess's mark.

Did you notice the loin cloth?" he asked by way of after thought.

"The loin cloth? Why yes, it was a rich red covering embroidered all over with patterns of golden beads, hundreds of them in a design of rows and circles, although it did not seem to represent anything in particular. What of it?"

"Only that the excised buds are dried, then gilded and made into beads to adorn the cloth. What you saw there were the accumulated pleasure buds of generations of Ishtar's priestesses, each donated with exquisite pain, then carefully saved, and sewn by its donor to the cloth that shields the Goddess.

7 - A PRODIGAL RETURNS AND ODDS ARE EVENED

Claudia continued to learn from the leading ladies of the city. Her time passed pleasantly enough. Days slipped away in listening to gossip, visits to the baths, and flirting with handsome men.

She had been engaged in these diverting pursuits for some thing over two months, when there came the return of a prodigal. The women were lying on their couches, discussing the scandal of a senator's wife who had created a sensation by appearing in a tunic of the new fine fabrics that had reached them from Mosul, via Persian traders, material so fine you could see through it. It became almost invisible if it got wet, which was how the lady had worn it on her voluptuous form - her breasts and belly, even her fine triangle of tight curls between her thighs, had been clearly visible...

A slavegirl appeared, holding the door for a visitor.

They all looked up, then broke into cries of welcome as Livia, the flogged adulteress from that first day in the arena, walked in. She looked a little weary, and her gait was very stiff, as if she was holding herself in to avoid limping, or showing any other sign of weakness. What she could not conceal was the shamingly short toga she wore. It was the dress of prostitutes and adulteresses, but even there she'd shown spirit, decorating it with a couple of flamboyant brooches instead of the discreet pin usually used to keep it in place. Somehow she managed to carry it off with a flair that suggested it was the latest fashion, and not a badge of shame. Claudia could not help but admire her resilience and fortitude in adversity.

Lavinia leapt to her feet and embraced her warmly.

"Darling," she cried, "when did you get out? Where have you been? We knew what sort of things might happen, but didn't like to press your family for details."

"Don't ask," Livia replied, throwing up her hands in a dramatic gesture.

"I never want to see another man's prick as long as I live. Well, not for a while yet. I expect I'll get over it in time."

"But what happened?" they chorused, taking her request for no questioning as the mere rhetoric is was.

"They sent me to be a bum-girl down on the docks," Livia told them baldly, with an assumed air of detachment that the slight tremble in her lip belied.

"I've been taking sailors up my arse for eight hours a day for nearly two months."

More cries of sympathy and horror, and more questions.

"What was it like? When did you get home?"

"They let me out yesterday," she told them. "They said I had to stay until I'd had a proper monthly flow twice, to prove I'd escaped the soldiers without anything embarrassing in my belly. I'd had my last not long before I got my dose in the arena, so it was a while before I could tell, and then I was late the first time, and you can imagine I was sweating more than a little when it didn't come at first, but it was all right in the end. I've just finished the second, and they let me out."

She gave a little groan, and turned to ease herself on the couch Lavinia had set her on.

"Oh Gods, I must have taken a thousand men up my poor behind in that time.

I'm so raw I nearly scream when I need to go, but at least I'm alive and free, and Scipio has been awfully kind. Yes, he welcomed me back and told me I was forgiven, but no more fooling around in future. Well, I certainly don't intend to go through that again."

"Oh Livia, you poor thing. I could hardly bear to look when they did those dreadful things to you," Petronia gushed.

"I suppose you all went to see me punished," Livia accused her inquisitive friends. "I'd have done the same in your place, I suppose. The thing is, I could have borne the whipping on its own and come up smiling, it's what a woman needs from time to time, if we are honest about it. Scipio should have had me flogged long ago. It would have saved us both a lot of grief. As it was, by the time he took a stick to me, it was too late.

"It wasn't the whipping that defeated me, it was that line of soldiers. To walk down the line, knowing they were all going to stick it to me, and then feel their great pricks battering against those fiendish pine cones up my arse!

You've no idea how those hurt. I just can't think of it without shuddering, even now. I know I had to be taught a lesson, but Scipio needn't have been quite that cruel. It was sheer torture, you know, and he knew very well the family intended I should have to do a spell as a bum-girl. I tell you, later, away from the crowds, I screamed and screamed, with those great pricks battering me in the brothel, I hurt so inside.

"And those soldiers in the arena, spurting their juice into you! No sponge to protect your womb, and no douches afterwards, knowing you could be getting a fat belly from any one of them, let alone forty. That was really what made my guts turn. And the walk back afterwards! I hurt so I could hardly stand, and they made me go back down the line, while all those brutes that had rammed themselves into me grinned and smirked all the way back to the gate."

While Livia was describing her fate to her assembled friends, Marcellus was with the Governor, inspecting the gladiatrices scheduled to appear the following afternoon in the amphitheatre. Apart from the inevitable duel between two jealous women, the local females seemed capable of sustaining a fair programme on their own account with their competition for men, and desire to avenge what they saw as robbery by the 'other woman', there were also several professional acts down to appear.

The Governor consulted the list he had been handed.

"Zinnia," he mused. "That woman's a sure bet, Marcellus. Trouble is everybody knows it, not least herself. You can't get any odds on her, and her pride's so stiff you can cut it with a knife."

He turned to an aide.

"Tell the games master I want to see Zinnia up here."

They chatted on for a while about matters associated with the games until two guards arrived escorting a bold looking woman, very strongly built, a mass of black hair hanging down her naked back, wearing only the short skirt in which the women trained. In the ring they wore nothing at all.

"Are you going to win this afternoon, Zinnia?" he asked.

The woman looked him squarely in the eye, with no deference to his gender or position, and addressed him without any of the usual courtesies.

"Of course. That cow Thalia has let herself get too fat. I'll run rings round her, then cut her cunt out."

The Governor frowned slightly, but otherwise seemed to ignore her lack of respect.

"And you think your speed will make it easy for you?" he said without expression.

"Just ask in the ring," she replied. "The bookmakers have me at three to one on, and they are right. She may be half as heavy again as me, but my legs will dance where hers will plod!"

"Three to one," the Governor reflected thoughtfully, "that's no price. How if your legs were not so supple? Do you think I might get better odds then?"

A shadow crossed the woman's face, but she kept a bold front.

"If I were lame, I'd still fix this one," she declared. "She tried to get me cut the last time we met, and I need to straighten her out."

"Well, I think we'll make it more of a match, and remind you that a woman's tongue can earn her much grief if she lets it hang loose."

He signalled to the guards, who threw the woman onto her knees, then bent her forward so that she lay on her belly. She did not struggle when one pulled her arms in front of her and knelt, pinning them to the ground. The other took a rod from the lictor's bundle, the fasces, or formal badge of office of the magistrate, and stood to one side. The Governor nodded,and held up four fingers.

With great deliberation the guard lifted the rod and brought it down with heavy force across the prone woman's thighs, three or four inches below the buttock. Zinnia kicked slightly, but made no noise other than a gasping intake of breath. Again the rod fell, striking a little lower, with the same result.

Now there were two thick welts across the pale olive skin, darkening and swelling even as they watched.

The guard moved across to the other side. Zinnia groaned. She had no way of knowing what the Governor had ordered for her, since she had been face to the ground when he had lifted his four fingers, but the guard's movement evidently meant he was not done yet. Added to her fear of the rod's bite was possibility it might injure her enough that she failed to overcome the gigantuan Thalia, and this time there would be no escaping her vengeful knife. Twice more the rod descended, this time from the other side. When it was done the woman's thighs were bruised to the bone, the hamstrings inflamed, and likely to get worse over the next few hours.

"You may go and show those to the bookmakers," the Governor advised, "and let us see how they rate your chances then."

The woman struggled to her feet. She did not appear to trust herself to speak, but bowed to the man who had had her lamed before a crucial fight, then turned and hobbled off, trying to walk without betraying the state of her thighs, but unable to overcome the soreness in the tendons and muscles there.

"She certainly paid dearly for her impertinence," Marcellus remarked, "and she'll pay even more dearly this afternoon, when Thalia whips her legs from under her and then takes her vengeance."

"Don't you believe it," the Governor corrected him. "That one won't be put off by a few cuts to her thighs. She's as tough as nails and as fast as lightening. Thalia is a giantess but Zinnia knows how to deal with her. I pride myself I'm a fair judge of woman flesh and I picked four as enough to look bad as far as the gamblers are concerned, but not so much that she couldn't move.

She'll limp into the arena as if she couldn't move an inch, but once the heat of battle is lit she will hop around as fast as she always does, just you wait and see. My advice to you is to do as I shall do. Accept all the money you're offered on Zinnia. She'll be odds against now, and we'll both make a sack full of gold."

It was worth consideration. Marcellus had been here nearly three months now and, although he'd managed to carry a fair sum in gold away from the disaster in Dacia, their expenses had been high. He'd had to re-equip himself for service for a start and then Claudia had persuaded him she hadn't a thing to wear, and must purchase a complete wardrobe in the latest local fashion, if she was not to disgrace him for, of course, it was not of herself she thought, but of the family honour! The treasury needed replenishing, and now was the opportunity.

The fight that afternoon attracted a lot of attention, for the two women were well known for their personal animosity and the divergence in their physiques and styles gave scope for much male punditry on the advantages of weight against reach and speed, and the relative merits of the two women seeking to incapacitate each other with the heavy whips they carried.

There had been rumours sweeping the stadium all afternoon that something was up, and the price on Zinnia fell steadily but, when the two naked women entered the arena, there were groans and catcalls.

The fickle public swung the odds from three to one on, to five to two against, and Marcellus began to accept bets from his fellow nobles sharing the privilege of the Governor's box, putting on a carefully cultivated air of reluctance, but appearing to feel that he somehow owed it to his hosts not to be a spoilsport by refusing their wagers. By the time the contest started, he had committed virtually all their remaining funds.

Claudia, all unknowing that her brother had hazarded the family fortunes on one match, was seated with her usual cronies in the section of seats reserved for upper class women, directly above the Governor's box. She turned to Petronia, seated beside her, and pointed along the row of seats to a point a little behind and to one side of where they sat.

"Who are those two?" she asked, "I don't remember seeing them before."

"Ah. That's Messalina and Poppea. They came to Pityus a month or two before you arrived, though they were out of sight for a while. Actually they were more or less refugees as well, another of these interminable Barbarian raids. They come from Rome, but Messalina's father, who was also Poppea's uncle, insisted they accompany him on a visit to relatives. Well I don't know about insist," Petronia amended, "they learnt very stubborn and contrary ways in Rome I'm afraid but, at any rate, they went along for the ride, thinking they might have some amusement showing off their sophisticated City ways to the Provincials."

"And they got caught up more or less as we did, I assume," Claudia filled in, "seeing that they arrived here at around the same time."

"I imagine so," Petronia agreed, "but I haven't heard much from them.

Messalina's father was very ill when he arrived, and has since died."

"So who is their guardian now, if they have no male relatives here, or don't they need one, under the circumstances?"

"Oh we all have to have someone," Petronia assured her. "They petitioned the Governor to let them place themselves under the guardianship of the High Priest of the Temple of Isis."

"Isis! I didn't know there was a temple here. Besides, her priests are usually eunuchs."

"Yes, you're right; they are. The Temple of Ishtar is the paramount centre here, being so near to her home in Babylon, but there is a small following for Isis. Actually I hope the Governor doesn't live to regret his decision. The few people I've talked to who've met those two say they are very wayward and unruly, and talk nonsense about women being oppressed by men, and how we should throw off the male yoke. Utter nonsense, of course, every one knows we'd all be out of hand in a moment without strong male guidance, and very unhappy too, I'm sure."

"But those girls should be alright now that they have guardians?"

"That's the trouble. The priests are notoriously lax, and I hear they are more or less free to do whatever they like. They'll be straightened out when they are called up to do state service, but by then it may be too late. The Governor should have put them with a good strong man, but he was sorry for them, having just lost their only relative, and gave in to their pleas."

"I think you have a point," Claudia agreed. "We all need someone to guide us - and to lean on too," she added, "I know I am sometimes not as grateful as I

should be to Marcellus, for taking care of me, but I do appreciate him underneath."

"Yes, we all realise it deep down," Petronia admitted, "though it must be a little difficult for some. I'm thinking particularly of women like Amanita."

"Amanita?" Claudia said. She was puzzled. "I thought, being a widow without close male relatives, she was a ward of state."

"She was, but her son became of age to take over recently, and now she must bow to her own child's will."

"But he's only a boy!"

"He's sixteen, and old enough to have right of rule and rod over her, even though she's thirty-four, and I'm afraid she's going to have a difficult time.

He's a headstrong boy, and she brought him up very strictly. She always insisted that it was necessary to be cruel to be kind, and she may well find that the tables are turned now."

8 - A SON MAKES HIS MARK AND A BROTHER HIS FORTUNE

Amanita was already regretting the day she'd become her son's ward, and her own strict rule that had preceded it. In a room of their villa, not half a mile from the stadium, she faced her son, Marcus, not as his mother and tutor, but as his ward and dependent.

"You shall and you must," he was telling her.

"But, Marcus, it's too shaming and, besides, I have done nothing to deserve this," she pleaded.

"Must I remind you, Madam, that I expressly forbade you to go out without my prior knowledge and approval of your errand and, moreover, that I let it be known that you were not to pledge my credit at any of the dressmakers, perfumiers and jewellers you so freely spend with?" he reproved her. "No, Madam, I intend that we should start as we will continue. It will save much trouble and grief for us both in the long run."

"But bare, Marcus!"

"Correction is always on the bare," he retorted, "as you very well know, since you were quick enough to have me flogged when you thought it appropriate.

No, Madam, you must strip and bend, like any other wilful woman, and take your stripes on your bare flesh."

There was nothing for it. He was obviously determined, and the law was on his side. As her only male relative, now that he had come of age, he had absolute control of her. Trying to retain what dignity she could, she unpinned her tunica and shift and drew them off. Her fascia she left bound tightly about her breasts. She would not show him those, she'd rather die, and her face flamed as she unwound the strophium from around her hips and drew it out from between her legs, to leave herself quite bare below the waist, and but little covered above. In particular she was horribly conscious of the thick dark bush that sprouted between her thighs, something she had never thought to show a man again, let alone her own son.

To hide her shame she went quickly to the high stool that stood to one side of the room, and laid herself across it. There was shame enough in that, for it was usually reserved for the whipping of delinquent serving girls, but at least she could press her luxuriant pubis against it and cover it from her son's gaze with her own body. Her relief was short lived.

"Lean further," he directed. "Lift your buttocks higher, and open your legs. Place your feet much wider, so your nether cheeks are less clenched."

And my fig showing behind, she groaned to herself, but mutely obeyed.

Having come this far, it would be useless to protest further, and might only earn her extra stripes. How many would he give her, she wondered. He had not said, and she'd not tried to calculate, thinking only of the shame of the strokes. Their number had seemed inconsequential but, now she was bent and bare awaiting the rod, it suddenly became a matter of much frightened speculation.

Surely he wouldn't extract the tariff she had imposed on him, when she had commanded his comings and goings, and his extravagances outside the home. She'd gone out without asking him first, and bought clothes, perfume and jewellery.

Surely he wouldn't insist on six for each offence. That would be two dozen! No, no, he couldn't possibly do that to her. But he could!

Marcus looked as his mother, still a young and attractive woman, her youth and health reflected in firm well-shaped buttocks. Their creamy flesh was full and smooth, no sag in sight, just a rounded over-hang at the tops of the thighs, womanly fattiness that spoke of padded muscles and sinews, and an ability to absorb a heavy rod's utmost power without lasting harm. He contemplated the feminine seat, with its secret purse pouting in the gap of the thighs, and resolved to discharge all the resentments and bitterness that had built in him at having to submit to a woman's will. She should have her full measure, twenty-four strokes, and the Gods help her if she tried to rise or protect her stricken cheeks before he gave her permission to stand.

He laid the rod across the bent bare buttocks, which cringed slightly at the touch, but soon stilled as his mother steeled her resolve to endure this with dignity. His arm drew back, then returned and the rod thrummed through the air to impact the succulent female flesh in its broadest part. Instantly a vivid stripe appeared to mark the track of the venomous bite. Amanita's breath exploded in a grunt of pain, but she made no other reaction at first. Then, slowly, the air hissed between her teeth as the full agony of the cut sank in, though she held her position without movement.

His arm drew back again and brought the rod flying down. a second stripe appeared just below the first and Amanita groaned.

Again the boy's arm rose and fell. After the third appalling slice Amanita writhed in anguish.

"Oh, Ishtar!" she moaned, "You are killing me, Marcus. I cannot take more like these."

"Nonsense, Mother. Under my rule you will learn better ways, and be a better bargain for any man who offers for you. I intend that you be well disciplined from now on, and to hand you on to a man with a strong rod, and the mind to use it, when the time comes. You shall have your full twenty-four."

Some twenty minutes later the group of women behind the Governor's box received an addition in the form of a rather flushed Amanita, escorted by her son, and seemingly having some small difficulty walking, for she moved with stiff legs and a slight limp.

"Greetings Ladies," Marcus saluted them, "I have brought mother to join you, and I shall leave her to sit with you and enjoy the games. I must go and pay my respects to the Governor."

Amanita had flushed an even deeper shade of pink at his mention of sitting. She had received her instructions before they reached the stadium. She sank slowly until her bottom rested on the hard bench, a pained twist to her mouth registering the actual moment of contact.

Lavinia raised one delicately plucked eyebrow.

"Your son seems to have become a man overnight," she remarked. "You will have to take care you do not offend him in future."

"Too late for that," Amanita sighed ruefully. "Though I shall certainly take care to avoid anything further from his hand."

"Does that, perhaps, explain your late arrival, and your distaste for sitting?" Petronia asked without malice. The women were all subject to male authority of one sort or another, and none of them wished to rub salt in another's wounds, only to satisfy their natural feminine curiosity.

Amanita accepted the query in that spirit, and satisfied that universal female need to probe.

"You're right, Marcus came of age today, and lost no time in asserting his authority. I can't blame him, I suppose. He's had to bend for me enough times when he was younger, though his tutor has done the actual execution of my sentences for some years now."

"He was prompt to take you in hand. Was he very severe?"

"You might say so," Amanita replied wryly, "Two dozen strokes on the bare.

I'm like raw meat underneath."

"On the bare! From your own son!" Claudia exclaimed, "It seems lacking in, in decorum."

"It is an affront to all women," a voice declared roundly.

The circle around Amanita looked up to see that Messalina and Poppea had moved over to join them, abandoning their usual aloof stance.

"Such things should not be allowed," Messalina went on. "Women should be given the respect they deserve, not be the slaves of brutes of men. They're all just animals waiting to use and abuse us, and we ought to take power into our own hands."

"Well," said Amanita, evenly, "if I am honest, I believe I did get what I deserved. Old Theodotus, who was my state guardian before Marcus came of age, was too soft with me. I had only to look sorrowful, and let my tunica slip a little lower than was decent, and I could get him to agree to anything I liked.

I spent all the family income on clothes, and in the perfumer's booths, and did pretty much as I pleased. The more rein he gave me, the less I was satisfied with what I'd got. What woman is?"

The others nodded in agreement.

"You're quite right of course," Livia agreed. "But don't tell the men about it. They might go too far the other way, thinking just to please us."

There were giggles all round, except from the two cousins, who merely sniffed.

"Anyway," Amanita continued, "I'm glad in a way, Marcus has been so strict, so early. I know where I stand now or, rather, sit." She squirmed on her bench. "I feel like Hades underneath, but I have a sense of being in someone's hand, that is very reassuring."

"As to taking power," Petronia chimed in, "do you really think we are as powerful as men? All we could do is get them to allow us power of some sort, or, horror of horrors, manoeuvre them into enforcing power for us. It might work in the short term but, mark my words, we'd raise a breed of men who were no use to us or them."

"Well said, Petronia," Lavinia declared. "It sounds like a female Elysium fields but it wouldn't last. Apart from the fact, we'd be most unhappy and unsettled. If we didn't have a man's strong care there'd be no-one left capable of mounting a defence against the barbarians. The state would collapse."

"I spit on the state," Messalina declared heatedly. "I don't care if it does collapse. It never did anything for women."

"And the barbarians?" Livia asked.

"It's just a tale to keep us all in subjection," Messalina asserted.

"There will be just as many men to do the fighting for us anyway. Besides, I don't suppose the barbarians are as bad as they're painted." She simpered slightly. "Actually, some of them are quite handsome."

The other women looked at each other in amazement at the girl's flawed logic and hopeless inconsistencies. They were spared further embarrassment by the entry of the naked Gladiatrices for the main contest.

"Zinnia is fighting this afternoon," Lavinia confided to Claudia, "and Gaius tells me your brother has backed her heavily. Come to that, he has himself. I wonder what they're up to?"

"Is there something out of the ordinary about this Zinnia?"

"Well, she's not the biggest of these fighting women, there are some giantesses among them, but she's very fast and athletic. Her speed keeps her out of their reach, and she's seldom marked at the end of a bout, which is more than you can say of the others."

"If she's so good, how is it they can get odds?"

"It seems the rumour has got around that she is injured, and her legs lamed. She was three to one on yesterday, but this morning you could have had two to one against her, or better. She's fighting Thalia, who's huge."

While they had been talking the contestants had entered, and bowed to the Governor's box. They made a contrasting pair, Zinnia tall, well-formed, a lithe feline woman, Thalia enormous, as tall as her opponent, but weighing twice as much, a third of it blubber, an elephant to Zinnia's tiger. They were armed with vicious leather whips, longer and heavier than those Claudia had seen used between the female rivals during her first visit to the arena. The hand grips were a foot long, serrated for better grip and ending in pommels about the size of a woman's fist.

As they turned and advanced towards the centre of the stadium it could be seen that Zinnia bore four livid purple bars across the backs of her thighs which, try desperately as she did to ignore, caused her to walk with a distinct stiffness to her gait. There were groans from the crowd, especially those who had backed her at short odds, and her price went out to twos, then threes as

they tried to cover their commitments made earlier. Claudia could see that Marcellus was talking animatedly to the men around him, apparently accepting wagers from them all. She felt a small twinge of panic at what might befall if he was so rash as to lose all their money, and they were to become destitute on a strange city. A man could engage himself in the army here, and be maintained at the state's expense. The only fate for a woman was to be sold into slavery to pay her male guardian's debts!

Now the women were ready. Unlike the amateurs who had fought for jealousy and rivalry over a man, these were professionals and were not secured wrist to wrist. At a signal from the Governor they began to circle, each ready to strike out with her deadly weapon as she saw opportunity, first the lumbering Thalia, launching her great bulk with surprising agility.

Zinnia leapt to avoid the lash, which passed harmlessly an inch or so from her naked breast but, though she was not touched, the careful observer would have seen her face contract momentarily at the soreness in her thighs and tendons.

The contest proceeded in the style that Zinnia had made her own, her athletic quickness taking her out of Thalia's range, while making darting attacks of her own, which caught the woman mountain across her putty soft back, and pillow-like breasts, leaving angry red welts in the puffy flesh, but the cognoscenti observed that her movements were not quite as sure, her attacks a little slower than of old, her feints and evasions less quick. Gone was the light dance of a stinging bee, and in its place a more desperate and forced performance.

Several times she misjudged her leap and allowed Thalia's whip to catch her. The bigger woman's strokes were in proportion to her bulk, the leather seeming to cut its way into the flesh it caught, and Zinnia carried several deep furrows on her back and breasts, some weeping a little blood where they had bitten deepest. It was obvious to all now that she would not come out of this unscathed, as she was usually proud to boast, and Claudia began to fear she would not come out of it as victor in any condition. Dear Gods! she thought, is this the end for me? Will I have to stand naked on a block in the market place while Marcellus's creditors have me sold to the highest bidder?

It seemed she must, for at that moment, Thalia launched an unexpected blow, low and aimed at Zinnia's knees. The unexpected angle caught her off balance. If she had been at her best she would have made light of it, jumping in the air, and letting the thong pass innocuously beneath her flying feet, while she took advantage of her bulky opponent's vulnerability to cut her cleanly across her exposed nipples, or even bring in the whip up between the fat parted thighs to bury itself it the dew-lapped vulva, but she could no longer spring lightly and her pained and stiffened response was too little and too late. The thong caught her round the ankles and, with a cry of triumph, Thalia yanked on the leather strand and brought her crashing to the ground.

Another scream of victory from Thalia, and she had hurled herself at her downed opponent and began to thrash her unmercifully across the back, the buttocks, the thighs, any part she could reach, hoping to pin her to the ground by the sheer weight and number of her blows, something that not even a trained fighter like Zinnia could sustain for any length of time without being beaten to the ground and left vulnerable to being turned on her back and thrashed between the legs and across the breasts until she surrendered.

Claudia watched in horror as the woman's ruin, and her own, seemed to become reality before her very eyes. Zinnia was down, and on her knees, her thighs pressed together to protect her vulva, her head between her arms, taking the blows on her back and buttocks, but she still kept her grip on her own whip.

Thalia came to stand wide legged at her head, preparing to bring the whip down two-handed along Zinnia's back, hoping to force the thong between the closed thighs by the sheer weight of the blow. Zinnia seized her chance. She reversed the whip, holding it in both hands. For a moment she seemed struck to stone by the force of the blow along her back, the tip penetrating to her sex then, accompanying the movement with a scream of desperate effort, she rammed the pommel of the whip into the gaping vagina between the parted thighs above her head, driving the fist-sized ball that crowned it deep into the moist gash.

As Thalia in her turn screamed at the assault to her womb, Zinnia heaved up on the handle, throwing the great white bulk onto its back. Now the positions

were reversed. Wrenching the whip from the agony filled vagina, she lashed it down across the great flabby breasts. Thalia's fall had stunned her momentarily, leaving her spread like a starfish on the sand of the arena, exposing breasts and belly. Moving with all the speed her desperate last effort could call forth, Zinnia lashed her again and again until she was streaked with rope-like welts and trickles of blood.

Defeated now, the woman turned on her side and curled her self into a shuddering ball of lard, trying to protect her tenderest parts, screaming

"Enough! Enough!" and throwing away her whip in surrender. As Zinnia stood above her defeated rival, looking to the Governor and requesting permission to mutilate her, Claudia let out the breath she had been holding and felt suddenly faint, as the picture of the slave block receded from her.

The crowd cheered its approval. Zinnia had been their favourite for months, and her bold good looks attracted them more than Thalia's gross bulk.

The Governor hesitated a moment. It was usual to spare a woman who had fought well, and Thalia had given them their money's worth.

"Still," he confided to Marcellus, who stood by his side, "Zinnia has won us a small fortune today. Let her have her piece of flesh," and he held his thumb pointing downwards for all to see.

Zinnia signalled to the guards who stood near the entrance to the arena and they hurried over, accompanied by a slave baring a bronze pot full of charcoal. The soldiers grabbed Thalia's great flaccid limbs and turned her on her back again, the arms and legs once more stretched out, the fat white thighs widely parted. Zinnia took a wicked looking little knife from concealment in her hair and knelt in the vee of the fallen woman's fork, searching in the thick forest of the golden bush for the shy denizen of the blonde jungle, a small red finger of whorled gristle that the nearest watchers could clearly see as the victor drew it out, gripping it tightly between finger and thumb, stretching it like untanned leather.

She looked up at the crowd, who screamed back at her, "Cut! Cut! Cut!"

The knife flashed, once, twice. Thalia screamed, her body bucking, then Zinnia was kneeling upright, waving something small and bloody between her fingers. As she got to her feet, still waving her trophy, Thalia screamed and bucked again. The female slave with the brazier of glowing embers, had extracted a hot iron from the coals and laid it to the wound, cauterising it and stemming the flow of blood.

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