terraces, and where they stopped, the familiar video screens were mounted, looking incongruously modern.
Although the days were warmer than the nights, it frequently rained and Tara and her companions were given short shifts of rough wool to wear before training warmed them up. They itched and scratched unbearably, and Tara found herself resenting the clothing for its own sake. To her it didn’t seem fitting for a slave to be dressed at all - except for fighting gear, pony tack and maybe some lingerie to look pretty in before fighting a cane duel.
The whole estate seemed to occupy a valley in the otherwise bleak uplands which surrounded it, and like her owner’s estate it had a river running through the bottom. However the assault course here was built on dry land and consisted of a circuit almost a quarter of a mile in circumference and was dotted with obstacles like climbing nets, greasy poles, and most wickedly, a place where the running track narrowed and passed between thick thorn shrubs.
The river itself seemed to be reserved for a complicated wooden construction. From each bank, long piers stretched out and met in the middle. But there they widened out into a very large platform. And just upstream there seemed to be some sort of weir. Tara eyed the arrangement suspiciously; she had a feeling it would play a part in the show, and after Carlo’s finale at the first one, she didn’t underestimate the owners’ and trainers’ ingenuity or cruelty.
But to make up for the looming presence of that ‘bridge’ there were the fighting pens. And she thoroughly approved of those at least. They were underground, under the arena. Whether they had been reconstructed or merely adapted, she couldn’t tell. But they consisted of a series of sawdust floored squares with high wooden partitions surrounding them, and in between, mighty stone pillars held up the floor of the arena itself. Here the audience would be able to get really close to the action. There were no fewer than fifteen pens in the low ceilinged area, the only light came from pitch torches in brackets on the stone pillars. There were enough of these to give a reasonable amount of light, but it was a flickering and eerie one. In her imagination, Tara saw the crowds pressing tightly around the pens, urging on the naked contestants and she considered that the crush of bodies in this large but claustrophobic area would produce a sexual charge which would far exceed that of the arena itself.
Chapter 5
All the girls knew when the show was due to start because one afternoon the air was full of the noises of helicopters and planes once more. Trucks and cars roared through the estate and past the barn they were housed in. That evening they were all fitted with the metal decorations they had worn before and were displayed for the guests. Again they were staked out and got a first glimpse of the opposition. They were tough looking girls, Tara thought, quite a few were black and many of the rest looked Eastern European. But what really amazed her was the sheer number of girls now standing at the stakes and being assessed by the crowd of guests. Seventy eight of them. And she was also perfectly well aware that each girl was now a willing gladiator. However brutal the discipline, if there wasn’t a part of her which wanted to submit, the best the guards would get from a girl would be sullen obedience. But she knew that every girl here would fight till she dropped for the honour of her stable.
By the next morning their barn was doubling as dressing room and surgery. Guards brought in several tables and piles of boxes containing plasters and liniments for patching up and relieving injuries and strains. And with them came the cameras. Once again the cameramen zoomed in on every detail of the chariot harnesses as the devilishly studded straps were tightened into crotches and around breasts, and dildos eased up into anuses and vaginas. And once again Tara felt
Although the days were warmer than the nights, it frequently rained and Tara and her companions were given short shifts of rough wool to wear before training warmed them up. They itched and scratched unbearably, and Tara found herself resenting the clothing for its own sake. To her it didn’t seem fitting for a slave to be dressed at all - except for fighting gear, pony tack and maybe some lingerie to look pretty in before fighting a cane duel.
The whole estate seemed to occupy a valley in the otherwise bleak uplands which surrounded it, and like her owner’s estate it had a river running through the bottom. However the assault course here was built on dry land and consisted of a circuit almost a quarter of a mile in circumference and was dotted with obstacles like climbing nets, greasy poles, and most wickedly, a place where the running track narrowed and passed between thick thorn shrubs.
The river itself seemed to be reserved for a complicated wooden construction. From each bank, long piers stretched out and met in the middle. But there they widened out into a very large platform. And just upstream there seemed to be some sort of weir. Tara eyed the arrangement suspiciously; she had a feeling it would play a part in the show, and after Carlo’s finale at the first one, she didn’t underestimate the owners’ and trainers’ ingenuity or cruelty.
But to make up for the looming presence of that ‘bridge’ there were the fighting pens. And she thoroughly approved of those at least. They were underground, under the arena. Whether they had been reconstructed or merely adapted, she couldn’t tell. But they consisted of a series of sawdust floored squares with high wooden partitions surrounding them, and in between, mighty stone pillars held up the floor of the arena itself. Here the audience would be able to get really close to the action. There were no fewer than fifteen pens in the low ceilinged area, the only light came from pitch torches in brackets on the stone pillars. There were enough of these to give a reasonable amount of light, but it was a flickering and eerie one. In her imagination, Tara saw the crowds pressing tightly around the pens, urging on the naked contestants and she considered that the crush of bodies in this large but claustrophobic area would produce a sexual charge which would far exceed that of the arena itself.
Chapter 5
All the girls knew when the show was due to start because one afternoon the air was full of the noises of helicopters and planes once more. Trucks and cars roared through the estate and past the barn they were housed in. That evening they were all fitted with the metal decorations they had worn before and were displayed for the guests. Again they were staked out and got a first glimpse of the opposition. They were tough looking girls, Tara thought, quite a few were black and many of the rest looked Eastern European. But what really amazed her was the sheer number of girls now standing at the stakes and being assessed by the crowd of guests. Seventy eight of them. And she was also perfectly well aware that each girl was now a willing gladiator. However brutal the discipline, if there wasn’t a part of her which wanted to submit, the best the guards would get from a girl would be sullen obedience. But she knew that every girl here would fight till she dropped for the honour of her stable.
By the next morning their barn was doubling as dressing room and surgery. Guards brought in several tables and piles of boxes containing plasters and liniments for patching up and relieving injuries and strains. And with them came the cameras. Once again the cameramen zoomed in on every detail of the chariot harnesses as the devilishly studded straps were tightened into crotches and around breasts, and dildos eased up into anuses and vaginas. And once again Tara felt
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