Bondmaiden by B.A. Bradbury

although all too briefly, for Dagna obviously had other ideas.
    ‘She shouldn’t get off so lightly,’ she muttered crossly. ‘Anyone can see she’s a troublemaker. She should take a turn on the horn with the rest.’
    ‘How can she?’ Holmann snorted. ‘She’s a virgin, as you well know.’
    Dagna gave a nasty laugh. ‘The way Durwin’s been sniffing around I’m not so sure. I’d check her if I were you; you might be in for a shock.’
    With a curse and a look that promised the direst of consequences if Dagna’s insinuations were true, Holmann pulled up Lia’s skirts, but as a crude finger probed her his face cleared. ‘Still intact, thank the saints,’ he sighed. ‘And make sure you remain so, girl. I’ll be having a word with that cockroach on the subject, never fear. The rod’s as well suited to a boy’s rump as a girl’s.’
    Dagna’s disappointment at the news was plain to see, but she didn’t give up so easily. ‘It’s just her word against ours when and how she lost it,’ she said. ‘Who’s to know what she was before tonight?’
    ‘Plenty of people,’ Holmann said. ‘Tilda warned off the guards; the sergeant told me so. By now half the castle must know there’s a new virgin in the kitchen, and it’s only a matter of time before Prince Baran finds out and sends for her.’
    Dagna frowned, and for a moment it seemed her desire to see Lia on the horn had been thwarted. But then her face cleared. ‘We could turn her around, couldn’t we?’ she suggested hopefully. ‘She could take it up the back passage.’
    Holmann stared at Lia thoughtfully, clearly weighing the possibility. He nodded slowly and her hopes, having been raised a second time, were dashed once more. ‘We could,’ he said, ‘though even that’s not without risk. She might tear her hymen by straining, what with the pain and all. I don’t want to chance it, so she’ll just have to watch this time. Watch and learn…’
    Dagna still wasn’t happy, but the final decision had obviously been made. She shrugged, and Holmann proceeded with the business at hand.
    ‘You all know how this works,’ he said. ‘You’ll each do fifty squats, and I mean proper ones, not half measures. I want to see your arse touch the stool on the way down and your legs straighten on the way up, is that clear? Jarold will count for you, so you don’t need to worry about how many you’ve done. Keep your hands behind your back and your head up so we can see your face. Clady, you’re first.’
    While the plump girl was undressing, Dagna picked up a wooden pot and scooped out a handful of grey paste, which she proceeded to spread thickly on the horn. When she was done Clady went forward, though with obvious reluctance, so at a nod from Holmann Jarold set down wooden blocks on either side of the stool. Then with a hand on the youth’s shoulder for support, Clady stepped onto the nearest block with one foot, swung her leg across and planted her other foot on the other block. She reached down and grasped the horn, then lowered herself slowly, guiding the tip into her vagina. She gasped as it breached her, but continued to sink down till she was properly impaled. Carefully, and still relying on Jarold’s shoulder to steady her, she took first one foot then the other off the blocks and set them down flat on the flagstones. Jarold then took the blocks away and Clady stood up straight, her hands clasped behind her back, the tip of the horn, Lia noticed, still just inside her.
    ‘Very well,’ Holmann said gravely, ‘begin.’
    Clady began to raise and lower herself, with Jarold counting aloud as she did so. By the time he’d reached fifteen she was gasping, though whether from her efforts or the burning of the pepper paste Lia didn’t know. On she went, her face growing redder by the minute. ‘Twenty-nine… thirty… thirty-one… thirty-two…’
    By this point Clady was groaning loudly, her mouth hanging open and her eyes shut. Her