LSF have published a new story collection of mine. It is headed by a completely new previously unpublished story, This thing That We Do.

Polly and Michael have an unconventional relationship, neither of them quite sure whether part of their relationship is a game or for real. Polly is a proud, independent, professional woman whose education is every bit the match for her rather bookish husband – yet he is the one to whom she submits. Not that her submission is easy, but each of them know that she demands to be conquered only after a true battle. So, when she overspends again, and follows through with lies and tantrums, she gets corner time, and she gets spanked.

Also included in this volume are the following short stories: Apricity; Back to School; Girl on a Motorbike; I Won’t! Who Does He Think He Is?; It is All Good; The Lady of the House; The Last Spanking; The Master that Dwells; Ouch; Paying for It; The Road; Unlimited; Vanilla Twist; and What Can You Do?

Available now.

The room was moderately lit with red velvet curtains at each corner and an ornate table at one end. On it stood a single candle, an open book, a large globe with a brass mounting and a half-naked kneeling sorority pledge.

Out of the seven women in the room, four were collegians and three were pledges. The older girls, still known as actives in the backwater sorority of Abraham Heights, were immaculately dressed in skirts and blazers with Greek letters on the breast pocket.

Their leader Catherine Marks was a polished brunette with a cascade of hair held in place with a white broad hairband that framed her heart-shaped face. In one hand she held a long thin paddle, polished to a sheen from years of use on the proffered bare bottoms of a thousand rueful pledges.

Catherine smirked as she caught Amy Sothern’s eye as she tested the paddle for its weight.

Amy was a cool blonde with family connections that went all the way to Boston. Not that that had saved her bottom back in her pledge days. Just a year before it had been her bending over in the middle of this very room with her behind displayed to the room much as the hapless sandy-haired Tammy Jacob was now.

“Are we ready for the next question? That last one was far too easy,” Davina Davis drawled from a seat next to the red-headed Helen Hart.

Davina was another failed ivy-leaguer whose family had stumped up the fees for the more motivating Abraham Heights University. Her full bee-stung lips formed a pout as she cast her eye over Tammy’s bared bottom.

“Okay, okay, I’m just warming up,” Amy said defensively as she turned back to the globe on the table in front of her.

Next to the large ornate sphere the pledge on her knees and elbows had her nose just inches from the surface of the globe. It was a posture that elevated her uncovered bottom to an obscene effect as the T-shirts slipped into the small of her back. All three pledges had to contend with nothing more than oversized gift shirts that barely reached their thigh-tops. When they were standing upright that was. When they were bent over not much was covered at all.

“Speaking of warming-up, poor Tammy here must be getting cold waiting for you to ask another question,” Catherine chuckled, “You do like geography questions don’t you Tammy?”

“Yes Ma’am,” Tammy squeaked.

“Do you like geography Anna?” Catherine asked the remaining pledge who stood with her nose in the corner to the left of the table.

Anna was of Chinese descent and had been born in Abraham Heights just a mile from this very room. Corner time followed by a spanking held no novelty to her. Even now she faced the indignity of the corner with her small neat bottom polished to a cherry sheen peeking out from under the hem of her raised shirt. It had been the result of seven out of 12 possible swats from her previous test. If the rumours were true she faced at least another two rounds before the actives were satisfied enough to release her for further ordeals.

“Not so much,” she muttered tartly.

“What was that?” Catherine’s eyes narrowed.

“No Ma’am,” Anna said hastily, “I don’t care for geography.”

“Get on with it can’t you?” Helen said wearily, “We have another score of pledges to test.”

“Okay, okay,” Amy said in irritation, “Pledge, spin that globe.”

The pledge on her knees on the table extended a clumsy tongue and attempt to spin the globe. For a moment her wet appendage slipped on the cool tin surface and then the great ball began to turn.

“That will do Charlie,” Amy said to the girl. And then to the room she said, “Mongolia. What is its capital?”

“Ulan Bator,” Tammy said without hesitation.

Catherine sighed in frustration.

“Population of Mongolia?” Amy asked quickly.

“Eh…” Tammy wailed.

“Wrong answer,” Catherine said with glee and let the paddle land with a heavy splat across the girl’s bare bottom.

Tammy gasped and rocked her behind to shake out the sudden sting.

“Okay spin the globe again Charlie,” Amy said cheerfully.

Tammy didn’t know the capital of Wales, the largest country in Africa or on what line of latitude Berlin was on. The paddle was unmerciful in expressing its disapproval.

Charlie fared little better. Geography had never been her strong suit and apart from a question about Paris she got all her answers wrong. Helen was appalled and awarded Charlie’s sore red bottom an extra four swats for her ignorance.

“Thank you Ma’am, may I have another?” Charlie groaned, a tear spilling down her face.

The swat came in hard causing the girl to lurch forward in a dangerously sloppy way.

“Careful,” Helen warned.

Getting out of position was a paddling offence and she would be made to sit the whole test again.

“Thank you Ma’am, may I have another?” Charlie said again through gritted teeth.

“Certainly,” Helen said obliging her.

Anna was better much better and Amy had to resort to asking some creative questions to catch her out

“Is Han Sin east or west of Beijing?” she asked.

“Where?” Anna asked.

The paddle landed across her shiny red bottom in triumph.

“It’s one of your lot, surely you know,” Amy giggled.

Catherine frowned and shot her friend an angry glance so that Amy blushed.

“I only meant…” she stuttered.

“You are on a warning,” Catherine scolded her; “I mean it.”

“Sorry,” a mortified Amy replied.

“Anna forgives her, don’t you Anna?” Davina said gently as she patted the Asian girl’s bottom with the paddle.

“Oh yes Ma’am,” Anna said sourly, “But I have never heard of… what was it?”

Amy couldn’t remember what name she had made up but Davina saved her by bringing the paddle down hard across Anna’s bottom.

“No cheek now,” Davina chirruped.

It didn’t take long to find reasons to polish Anna’s behind a little more and she was soon back in the corner while Charlie again took up the position.

Half an hour later three moist-eyed pledges emerged from the room taking slow carful steps into the hall. The corridor was already lined down both sides by nervous girls all dressed in nothing but T-shirts. Most stood down the right hand side facing out as they waited their turn.

On the other side of the corridor facing the wall displaying a row of angry red bare bottoms was another line of miserable pledges who had already been tested. It was this line that Tammy, Anna and Charlie joined. Adding their own polished red bottoms to the penitent display.

“Next three,” Helen Hart called out.

*
All across the campus sorority pledges were nursing their sore bottoms face down on their beds. Not a fridge in halls had any ice left; on the other hand there were plenty of unused chairs. For those who lived in the likes of Carlton House with uncompromising housemothers like Mrs Main, early to bed had been the only thinkable option.

But on the darkening campus in the first days of autumn not all had yet retired. The more senior girls had gathered to discuss their day and play a few hands of cards.

Five-handed bridge was an old tradition at the sorority. It was both at once more dangerous and more fun than the more usual four-handed bridge. It was a game with a couple of hazards.

Initially one player always sat out of the bidding round while her fellows played a hand. After one round one of the losing players left the table and the remaining players changed partners so that only one losing player remained at the table.
This was where it got both interesting and dangerous. Once a player had participated in two losing rounds then her bottom was in jeopardy, but everybody had to play at least two rounds before any forfeits were paid.
The player who had lost most then received three swats on the bare from the player who had lost least. Furthermore she was not allowed to get dressed until the game was over.

To make matters worse for the second round of forfeits the penalty was six rising by three each time for a potentially unlimited number of swats.
The game kept actives on their toes; usually literally and after an ambitious game, sisters were sometimes left unable to sit down for a week.
“There were a lot of smart-Alecs among this new intake,” Davina Davis said imperiously as she studied the cards.

“My paddle is still warm,” Catherine Marks sighed.

She held a good hand and Davina was an effective partner. Useful if she wanted to keep a clean sheet for the game. Her eyes flicked to the paddle on the chair; a trusty heirloom made from thin springy maple infused with decades of delicate oils from polishing sorority girl’s bare bottoms. It was a true symbol of their sisterhood.

“Do I have to stand here like this?” Amy Sothern said wearily.

The girl was dressed only in her sweat top and bent over with her hands on her naked thighs. Her neat round bottom domed pertly from under the hem of the Greek-lettered marl sportswear, already stained red from a recent encounter with Catherine’s paddle.

“If I we win this round then Helen is up for swats and you can sit down,” Catherine said drily. “If not, I am afraid you have another round coming.”
The phrase ‘sit-down’ was not an inviting one just then, Amy thought ruefully, but she would bet her bottom that Catherine and Davina would win this rubber. From the apprehensive look on Helen’s face, Amy guessed that Helen surmised that too. Six was going to hurt.

“How many are you on now?” Melanie Crow asked pointedly.
She was only one defeat behind Helen and was facing Catherine next.
“Six isn’t it?” Davina smirked.

“I mean Amy?” Melanie pursed her lips at the sorry excuse for a trick she was holding.

“Oh Amy is on nine swats next,” Catherine said gleefully.

“Oh lord,” Amy whispered, her back beginning to hurt.

“You could always bail and go to the corner,” Davina said casually, “But I warn you I am hoping to play for a good while yet and you may be there quite some time.”

“Can’t bail until you are on 12s,” Helen sighed with genuine regret.

Why did she ever think she would get the better of Catherine or Davina?
Amy breathed gently through her open mouth and contemplated getting to 12. She had already had a total of nine swats. Another nine and then 12 would total 30 swats and Catherine, if Davina didn’t overtake her, would not stint. Ouchie, she thought ruefully.

Worst still, pride would not let her bail out at a mere 12. Crying off before at least 18 would get her a rep as cry-baby. That’s 63 bottom blistering whacks she had to take before she could even hope of retiring from the game. Her only hope was that Helen and or Melanie continued to lose.

It seemed like an age that Amy stood bent over, but in the end the Catherine-Davina partnership prevailed.

“Alright Helen,” Catherine said gleefully. “Let’s see those cute buns front and centre.”

“You don’t have to enjoy it quite so much,” Helen wailed as she stood up.
Having already had three swats, Helen was naked from the waist down and as she got to her feet her striking but neatly trimmed red-triangle of hair peeped at the other players over the table.

“Assume the position,” everyone but Amy said in enthusiastic unison.
Helen sighed and walked around the table to bend over with her bare bottom facing the small audience. As she did so Amy gingerly sat down in her place, relieved not to be up for another nine swats.

Catherine took up her paddle as she swallowed a small smile and then moved behind her friend’s proffered behind.

“Standby for six stingers,” she chuckled.

The first caught Helen unawares and she shrieked and shot bolt upright.
“Do that again and I’ll give you extras,” Catherine said sharply in full pledge mistress mode. “Do it twice and I will have a word with your big sis about etiquette.”

Helen gulped and steeled herself for the next five swats. She knew what that would mean. At Abraham Heights a sorority sister was always under the authority of her Big Sister.

The next swat was like a brand of fire and Helen was certain that it could have been heard over in the next county. Nevertheless she held position with barely a grunt. Not an easy task when the oval patch of flames on her bottom went on burning.

Helen didn’t have time to contemplate this as in less than half a minute Catherine blasted the maple blade down again as hard as anyone ever had. This game was played hard.

“Umh,” Helen gasped through tightly clenched teeth.
“Nice colour,” someone said.

Catherine didn’t wait but added another almost immediately. She would genuinely hate to go to Rachel Wentworth, Helen’s Biggie, but she would. But her true aim here was to get to give a penalty. If Helen bailed soon enough then the swats would come around again faster for the others and maybe, just maybe, Catherine could get the beautiful butter-wouldn’t-melt Davina Davis under her paddle.

The fifth swat caused Helen to take half a step forward and grunt. As it was she was already panting like a buzz-saw. And six was her own little purgatory.
“Now hold that position for me,” Catherine said evilly, “I just love the way you push it up and out. It’s soooo cute.”

*
Dr Donna Warren had left the faculty meeting 15 minutes early, braving some puzzled stares as she did so. There was no way she was going to run afoul of Mrs Main again, not after last time. At 28 the smart raven-haired English lecturer had found herself in the bizarre and not to say embarrassing position of being assigned freshman halls. What none of her colleagues knew or at least Donna prayed they didn’t know, was that Mrs Main the housemother cut her absolutely no slack as a faculty member and treated her the same as the students in her care. That is to say that one breach of the rules, one minute home passed curfew and Donna would find herself bare-bottomed across the housemother’s knee for a prolonged and very sound spanking.

Of course had tried to find alternative accommodation, but for one reason or another none had appealed to her. Instead she had reasoned that if she obeyed the rules and got home on time then she could enjoy the rather curious goings-on at Carlton House without suffering. It was a mantra she oft repeated to herself and sometimes she almost believed it.

“You won’t get out that door Miss,” a voice said from behind and breaking into her thoughts.

Donna rattled the doors and found them locked before turning back to the short scruffy janitor who spoke.

“Oh, how do I get out?” she asked, some urgency creeping into her voice as she glanced at her watch. It was already 9.49pm.

“All the doors are alarmed after eight,” the man said with a yawn. “You have to go out the front.”

Donna gave the doors one final accusatory glance and then hurried back the way she had come.

It took another four minutes to reach the way out and by then she was late.
It was a 10 minute brisk walk to Carlton House and even then she usually had to break into burst of light jogging. She now had seven minutes and she was on the wrong side of the building.

“Oh Donna,” someone called out.

Donna glanced back and saw one of her colleagues. The meeting she had ducked out of was over it would seem.

“I really have to go,” she said anxiously as she backed away.

“But…” the man began, but Donna Warren was already running.

*

The trees were dark silhouettes against the sky, with just a hint of yellow towards the west. Why does this keep happening to me? Donna was frantic. She was running at full tilt now.

Carlton House was up ahead, but annoyingly there was a fence from this approach and she wasted several moments doubling back to the side road some 100 yards down from where she had wanted to cross. Worse still the only door still open, the main door, was on the far side of the building: 9.58pm, said her watch.

“Shit,” she said as she put on another spurt.

This is so stupid, why can’t I…? Her mind raced as she turned the corner and made a break for the door. Her watch still said a minute to the hour and it was some relief that she crashed into the door. It wouldn’t budge.

“Come on, it’s still 9.59,” she wailed in rising panic.

Donna rechecked her watch and saw the hand touch the top of the hour. It doesn’t count she told herself, I was here on time. She hammered on the door.
Finally someone came and the door opened.

“I was on time,” Donna said insistently before she even saw who was there.

“Keep your voice down,” the girl inside hissed.

Then even as Donna stepped into the hall her rescuer was gone.

The hapless Dr Warren looked up at the hall clock and saw that it was two minutes faster than her watch, which now read 10.05 in any case. Luckily there was no sign of Mrs Main the housemother, so Donna allowed herself a sigh. If I can just get to my room, she thought.

As precaution she took the first floor passage to the backstairs and made her way to her floor from the long way round, perhaps if she stripped to her underwear in a bathroom on her floor she might just… this was bat crazy shit, she realised angrily. I am 28 and a member of staff.

As she turned onto her corridor the door to her room was tantalisingly near. She paused at the bathroom and gazed longingly at the haven of her study. It was stupid to linger so she bailed on the ‘I was just going to the can’ stratagem and broke into a trot for home.

Of course the door was locked and her keys were still in her purse; another delay, she thought as she fumbled for them. Just then a door opened behind her and Donna froze.

It was a bleary-eyed freshman stumbling off to the bathroom and Donna relaxed. She had her own shower so the bathroom ploy was a weak one, especially when she still had her purse and outdoor coat on. No one would believe she had just been visiting the john.

Donna finally got the keys in the lock and they jangled along with her nerves for several protracted moments before the door swung inwards. Donna’s heart leapt as if she had fallen off a curb and she shot a glance up the hall certain that Mrs Main would be standing there.

Was it bravado or something else that made her pause? There was some excitement in the risk. Then at another sound her courage failed and she ducked into her room and firmly closed the door.

“This is so stupid,” she sighed as she flipped on the light.

But she was safe.

Dropping her purse and coat on the bed she contemplated a shower before some TV on her small portable black and white, but a sound from the hall distracted her. Once Mrs Main had knocked on her door having seen Donna creep in; the stop-out lecturer held her breath. But the only sound was the fire doors closing followed by the clunk of the bathroom door, no doubt a student. The final indoor curfew was a few minutes away and even then girls would risk a dash to the toilet sometimes, which was usually tolerated by the housemother. Donna collapsed on the bed and finally relaxed.

Then she saw the note on her desk. Even from across the room Donna could recognise Mrs Main’s handwriting. Her stomach lurched and she felt sick. The writing was large and clear. Visible even from where she sat were the words ‘come and see me at once.’

Donna snatched up the note and reread it. Over the fold Mrs Main had written ‘dropped by directly after curfew with a book left at the front desk for you. It seems you are still out. Mrs Main’

“Ooh, damn and blast,” Donna wailed.

*

All the way to Mrs Main’s room Donna thought about claiming she was in the bathroom, but somehow she knew the housemother would see through the lie in a trice. The woman could read the girls in her charge like open books. Girls, Donna thought bitterly, that’s all I am to her, just another naughty girl.

Dr Donna Warren, a member of the faculty, hated knocking and waiting for the words of doom to invite her inside. It was utterly ridiculous. She should just refuse. She should just tell Mrs Main where to get off… she remembered their earlier encounters and just how far that had got her.

As it was the door to the housemother’s room was ajar and Donna was able to push it gently open and tentatively call out, “Mrs Main?”

“Ah, another young lady who just will not learn,” Mrs Main said looking up from her desk, “Now the gang’s all here.”

Donna gulped. She could see two other girls standing to face the bare wall behind Mrs Main. It wasn’t the only thing that was bare. Both girls had removed their clothing from the waist and folded it neatly on a chair by the door.

Both freshmen had their hands on their heads, one a tall leggy blonde and the other a short Latino with an epic bottom on display. Both showed signs of a recent spanking, no doubt the sororities had been busy that day. Damn that meeting, Donna thought, I missed out on the fun.

She licked her lips and took in the bright pinkish red of the blonde’s bottom which had mottled purple tracery within the spanked zone especially on the right curve.

The Latino girl’s behind was a heavy russet and was still a little swollen around the tail end. Someone had really gone to town, but then with a bottom like that to work on who could blame them.

Donna shook herself. “Mrs Main eh… you’re busy I see. I’ll come back later. Tomorrow maybe?”

“You are not going to tell me you were in the toilet when I called are you?” Mrs Main asked pointedly.

“As a matter of fact…” Donna swallowed and saw the housemother’s eyebrow go up. “Eh… no Mrs Main, I was delayed at an important…”

“I so don’t care Dr Warren,” Mrs Main interrupted her. “You know the drill.”

The Latino girl made a half turn to look at Donna, no doubt surprise that a member of faculty was in the same boat. Dr Warren blushed. So far Mrs Main had been fairly discreet about the unusual set-up. God I hope they’re not students of mine; Donna was horrified at the thought.

“Dr Warren, you are not going to be difficult I hope,” the housemother said sharply.

“I really don’t think…” Donna began.

“Do you really want to spend Saturday doing corner time in lower stairwell that faces the front door?” Mrs Main words held stony conviction.

“But…” Donna’s eyes were wide and she looked pointedly at the two sorority girls facing the wall.

“You are a member of this house. You will obey the rules. That means you will now remove your skirt and panties and go stand next to Kelly and Maria.” The housemother enunciated every word.

Donna’s face flared red and she felt her ears melt. But after another short hesitation she began to fumble with her zipper and moved to obey.

*

Maria, the small Latino girl, took her spanking far more stoically than the blonde, Kelly. The taller girl had squealed from the first and before the spanking was half over had given out loud angry shouts at each impact of Mrs Main’s short paddle.

As the last of Maria’s spanking was concluded, some 15 minutes since it began, Kelly was still dancing on the spot as she sobbed her heart out in her place next to the as yet unspanked Donna.

Despite her predicament, the faculty member found herself regretting that she could not have watched both spankings, but the housemother had been quite explicit about what would happen if any of the girls took their nose from the wall.

Where Kelly’s spanking had been a noisy leg-kicking affair, Maria had just let out grunts as her breathing had become more and more laboured. It wasn’t until the end that she finally chuckled to a sob and had begun to cry.

“Quite a spanking on an already sore bottom,” Mrs Main said sympathetically, “You took it well.”

Maria got unsteadily to her feet and shook the sting from her heroic tail.

“Thank you Ma’am,” Maria said in a strained voice through her tears as she clawed at her bottom. “No disrespect Ma’am, but I get far worse at home, even now.”

Maria had no trace of her ancestors’ accent and was pure up State. Although that was somewhat challenged by her generous tears.

“I will bear that in mind next time,” Mrs Main chuckled.

Maria winced; sometimes she had a big mouth. And the part about next time was too close to certain for comfort.

“Now you two can go,” Mrs Main said cheerfully, “But mind me when I tell you I don’t like tattletales.”

Kelly was still crying for America, but nevertheless opened her mouth to ask what the housemother meant when Maria nudged her with an elbow and nodded at Dr Warren.

“No way,” Kelly said emphatically, her eyes bugging out of her head. The flow of her tears suddenly ceased.

Mrs Main frowned, not sure if that was a declaration of disobedience, but Kelly hastily drew her pinched fingers across her lips like a zip.

After they had gone Mrs Main turned her attention to Donna.

“What is it about obeying curfew you don’t get?” she said.

Donna turned around and found some courage.

“Mrs Main, please I have to be at meetings in the evening. It’s my job. I can’t always be here at ten. Now if…” she began.

The housemother sighed.

“Dr Warren, I happen to know you have been offered three separate alternatives to living here. I expect there have been other offers on top of that I don’t know about. Yet here you still are. I have to confess that the first time you and I had words I was genuinely in error, but it soon became clear to me that it was for the best.” Mrs Main formed a small wistful smile with her lips that just touched her eyes. Then it was gone. “While you live here you will obey the rules or accept the consequences.”

“But…” Donna blushed. The woman was right. Why hadn’t she just moved out? What was she looking for?

“Tell me, were you ever in a sorority?” Mrs Main appeared to change the subject.

“No I… not my thing really… I…” Donna was thrown.

“Ah ha,” the housekeeper said thoughtfully.

Then she turned and took up the small hand paddle she had used on Kelly and Maria. It was a harsher measure reserved for the diehards who persisted in testing her throughout the year. She knew now that Donna would be back again and again just as surely as the other two and three or four others in the house. It was always the way. Some girls were built that way and could not help themselves.

Donna, who had felt strange discussing sororities while naked from the waist down, shifted uncomfortably. But Mrs Main was ready for her. She flipped the doctorate-laden teacher firmly across her lap as expertly as she had any other resident of Carlton house and patted her exposed bottom with the small hole-drilled paddle.

“I will make you a deal Dr Warren,” she said, “I will strive to be discreet on your behalf if you make me a promise.”

The paddle came down hard and Donna’s eyes flew open in shock. The bite across her bottom was extreme and a whole new level of spanking.

“Do you hear me Dr Warren?” Mrs Main said spanking her charge again.

Donna could only growl angrily. Getting no answer the housemother brought the paddle down in four or five sharp blasts beginning at the crowns of Donna’s bottom and working on down to where the lecturer hoped to sit one day.

“Is that ‘no deal’ then Dr Warren?” the housemother scolded. “Do you think I was joking about putting you in the corner at the main doors?”

“What deal?” Donna wailed. There were already tears pooling at her eyes and her breathing was hard and ragged.

Mrs Main ran her idea through her head one last time. It suited them both not to undermine a member of the college’s authority.

“I will be discreet on your behalf, but if you have to go across my knee one more time then I will expect to see you once a week for a straightener regardless of your conduct,” she explained.

Donna would have said anything just then, but her mother didn’t raise any fools. This was insane.

“You mean…” she gaped, her throbbing bottom briefly forgotten.

“If you cross me one more time I will spank you once a week for the rest of your stay with us,” Mrs Main pressed her words home with a spank.

The housemother reasoned that whatever it was Donna was seeking, might be fulfilled by a regular spanking regime. Then these intermittent and hard to contain rule breaches might be kept to a minimum. After all, Donna was well able to keep out of trouble, but something in her kept bringing her back.

“This is crazy,” Donna gasped through an orgy of panting brought on by the swat.

But she reasoned, all she had to do was get organised and keep to the rules.

“Please just give me an extra half hour past curfew,” she pleaded.

Mrs Main had already contemplated and discarded that option. For one thing it set a dangerous precedent and risked disturbing the house at bed time. But what was clear to Main, if not Donna, was that the good Dr Warren would always come in just after curfew whatever time it was set at. The woman just needed it that way for some perhaps subconscious reason of her own.

“No,” the housemother said sharply and spanked down hard.

The volley that followed was an expression of anger at Donna’s stubbornness.

“Waaa,” Donna wailed, now resembling Kelly in her response to a spanking.

“Listen to me Dr Warren. Do you know what I do with persistent offenders? And you are a persistent offender. I spank them morning noon and night. I have many little public corners to put them in to take them down a peg,” Mrs Main rasped as she continued to spank, “Do you hear me?”

Donna was sure that she could keep to the rules. What did she have to lose?

“Alright,” she howled.

“Good,” Mrs Main said triumphantly. “Now where were we?”

The housemother brought the paddle down again with a will polishing Donna’s bottom to an astonished angry red bordered by rubbery welts. The holes she knew chaffed abysmally and had done much to contribute to the white dusting of distressed flesh that accompanied such a prolong spanking. But the woman’s bottom could take more. Much more and it was going to. Just to make sure Donna was incentivised not to comeback tonight the paddle would do double duty before a healthy midnight stint in the corner.

Maybe she would add a reprise just to drive it home. After all the two sorority girls had been spanked on paddle spore; it was only fair.

By now Donna had completely surrendered. There was neither fight nor anger left in her and she hugged into her tormentor for some comfort even as the spanking continued. Deep down she sensed that Mrs Main was only doing this for own good.

More Abraham Heights stories here.

Our story began here.

End of Days
The vast Western host had all-but overwhelmed the point of the wedge, but still more pike men came forward to offer some semblance of resistance. The steep angle of the formation continued to confuse the enemy forces of the west’s stretched-out lines while piles of their dead slowed their advance making them vulnerable to Eastern archers.

Sorties to the rear of the wedge fared little better, with counter charge after counter charge from Timbre and Precips cavalry checking the repeated attempts at envelopment.

Peron had twice had an arrow whizz past his ear and two of his staff officers had been hit and struck from the saddle. But he remained un-rattled and very much in control.

To his right, William Armarlon, continued to rally hard pressed pike men, who to a man had stood their ground. The Duke struck the pose of a hero, exuding the confidence that nothing would touch him.

Only the Grand Magus showed any sign that the battle had taken its toll. He looked sick and his eyes lolled in his head like a fish hurled onto dry land. As for the rest of the Magister, there was no one to be seen and Peron was rapidly coming to the conclusion that this battle would be won only by blood and steel.

Meanwhile the enemies repeated cavalry charges had thinned their ranks and Peron calculated that his forces now had parity with them. All this and none of his elite swordsmen had yet been committed.

The King was still pondering the positions and dispositions of the battle when the sudden deadly roar of battle died down. This evil hubbub was the kind of sound that fighting and dying men do not hear until it quietens and Peron had lived to hear it many times. It always meant a change of tempo amid the hostilities. He checked his lines.

Even Davidus had noticed the change and was looking around expectantly.

The moment of truth, Peron decided. His lines were sound so the shift in mood came from the enemy. They would either break or…

The rush of wind stunned many a novice in war. But for the likes of Peron and William it was an old friend. Finally after piecemeal attacks the enemy had fully engaged and their archers at last concentrated a volley.

“Shields up,” someone screamed. It was a gruff common voice; that of a grizzled captain or a sergeant-at-arms; the backbone of an army.

The well-drilled allies responded and almost every shield went up to form a partial wall skyward. But the blow never fell.

Instead a blast of heat blew back at them as every sinister missile burst to flame and feel harmlessly as ash. Peron shot a look at a smug Davidus. They could win this, be damned, he cursed, we could win.

As if to confirm his hopes there was no pause in the magic as dozens of fireball swept over them and into the pell-mell ranks of the Western army as it surged forward hoping to take advantage of the disarray their arrows should have wrought.

The little globes of silver-blue looked so small and seemed to move too slowly to be a threat. Almost like snowballs hurled by a child, they landed upon the bemused ranks of the foe.

Then where each touched, a plume of sparks like fireworks exploded followed by a wave of airborne fire that blossomed like great blue-white flowers.

The only screams were from the untouched men. For every man caught in the slow blasts shimmered but for a moment before turning ashen grey like statues. Peron gaped at the sight. Perhaps half a thousand men in disparate groups became as cloudy smudges where they stood. One or two even took a few stumbling steps forward on a cascade of dust that used to be their legs before falling to ash on the ground.

This mage fire was followed by a hail of mortal arrows that pin-cushioned the stunned survivors sending the entire massed ranks of the Western Host staggering back in disarray.

“Now your grace, now,” Peron screamed at William.

The Duke made one chop with his sword and ranks of pike men stood down by files opening up ‘gates’ in their ranks. No sooner had they opened when scores of swordsmen surged forward cutting swathes through the enemy lines and starting a rout along most of the lines.

Once the Peron was certain he sent a herald to the signal master and held his breath; it was all timing. King Peron waited.

In the long moments that followed whole days passed and unbidden thoughts of his life rushed into Peron’s mind as it might a man drowning. Then half an age later trumpets sounded followed by shrill horns. Even then time stopped and the King gazed in horror upon his committed swordsman. They are exposed to any rally. He bit down on vomit that had risen in his mouth.

Then a light rumble turned into a roar and the combined ranks of the Allied cavalry charged.

“Get them, get them, get them,” someone was screaming excitedly.

It wasn’t until the Grand Magus looked at him in surprise that Peron realised it was himself who was screaming.

*

The old nobleman on the horse looked exhausted. His armour was dented and smeared with blood and the way his right arm draped limply at his side told Peron that he had strained it almost beyond use in hacking down foes.

The king swept his gaze over his largely intact, but bedraggled army. Much the same could be said for it too. It would take days to recover, but they had done it.

Peron turned back to the officer on horseback. He was an old pro and waited patiently for the king to acknowledge him. Damn fine soldier, the king decided, not like some of the young popinjays over eager to please.

“Please report… colonel…?” King Peron said wearily catching sight of the braided rope that was wound around one of the man’s shoulders.

“De Lacy your majesty, Sir Mark De Lacy of Downley,” Sir Mark said crisply. “The enemy are in full rout. We pursued them to the river crossing south of here and I can report that most discarded their war gear to escape us. The rest…”

Sir Mark shrugged and offered the king a grim face.

“Losses Sir Mark?” Peron said graciously.

“Ours?” Sir Mark shrugged, “Very light. Theirs… well the reports aren’t all in, but I would say that we outmatch them now in all departments and overall by two to one.”

“Excellent work De Lacy,” Peron allowed himself to crow.

Then he saw that Sir Mark was frowning.

“Let’s have it,” Peron asked.

Sir Mark sucked in air through his nose in something not quite like a sniff. As child he used the gesture to disguise the fact that he might cry.

“Lord Mycroft and Colonel Vanpike are dead,” he reported, “And…

Peron didn’t know Vanpike, but Mycroft had been a poet before the war, a great loss.

“Who now commands the cavalry?” Peron asked to hide his own regret.

“Until it pleases your majesty… Sire, I do,” Sir Mark informed the king, “But Sire…”

Peron looked up.

“There were dust clouds reported to the west and a little north of here,” Sir Mark continued. “I sent scouts but…”

“You saw them yourself?” Peron’s voice was hard.

“I saw the southernmost elements,” Sir Mark intoned.

“And?”

“Another army Sire, a big one. A very big one.”

*

King Peron was still weighing up the options of defeating another large army when another of Sir Mark De Lacy’s scouts rode up and spoke some rapid anxious words into the acting commander of horse’s ear.

Peron flexed his hand unconsciously around the hilt of his sword still in its scabbard and time seemed to stand still. Sir Mark’s face was stiff and ashen grey as he heard the scout’s report. The King wanted to scream at the man to hurry up, but what was needed right then was a calm respect for the chain of command.

All at once Sir Mark broke from his brief conference with the scout and wheeled his horse so that it faced his king.

“Your Majesty,” Sir Mark called before he had even ridden to the king’s side, “To the north,” he could scarce get the words out, “Another report of dust; a large force moving fast, Sire.”

“How large?” Peron murmured, his head bowed.

He dreaded the next words.

“It’s another army. At least a match for ours,” Sir Mark said gently, now having pulled his horse to a stop. “But given the speed and numbers of their outriders I would suggest that this may be their main force.”

Peron nodded. He sucked air in gently through his nose and glanced at the enemy he was already about to engage. With the Magister’s help he could defeat it, but not without severe losses. But it was a virtual certainty that this new threat would close with them before he could rout its fellow and disengage. And then what? His army would be decimated and exhausted. He doubted he could outrun the new host, let alone defeat it.

Breaking into his thoughts the Grand Magus chose that moment to ride up for a conference.

“Not now Grand Maestro,” Peron said wearily.

“You have heard about this new threat then?” Davidus said sharply.

Peron nodded dejectedly.

“There are strong signs of magic among this new body of troops. Many priests, witches and much else besides,” the Grand Magus said confidently.

“Could you neutralise this new threat? Delay it even while we deal with this lot?” King Peron nodded in the direction of the assembling hoard to the south.

“We might level the playing field magically speaking but…” Davidus’s voice was heavy with regret.

“We would still be outnumbered what… four, five, even six to one?” Peron groaned, “And caught betwixt the two.”

The Grand Magus nodded.

Peron wondered how many more men Timbre could offer to the war; in time, another army such as this perhaps. He sighed. But apart from the garrison at his capital and a few marines with the fleet Precips, his entire force was committed here. His plan of taking the war to the West had failed. In fact if he could not extract himself from this trap then the war was lost.

William Armarlon, the Duke of Timon knew something was amiss now and discarding his usual indefatigable bravado he closed with the small group of leaders huddled around the king.

“We cannot win here can we your majesty?” he said grimly.

Peron shook his head.

“Can we retreat?”

No, thought Peron.

“Oh yes,” said the Grand Magus brightly. “We have a few hours yet and I have the means to contact the fleet to extract us from a supply beach a league from here.”

“The entire army?” Peron said incredulously. “What about them?”

He looked at the host to the south which was now dangerously near.

“Now they can be delayed,” Davidus smiled grimly.

To be continued.

Recently an article on birching from this blog was republished over at Well Red Weekly. So in my quest for recovering lost material from my hard drive it seemed possible that some unused original source material was to be found.

This threw up two separate, mysterious and yet interesting snippets. The first was a reference to the birching of maids on the Isle of Wight. Curious, a search revealed the picture above from the Branding Wax Works Museum on that island. The naked maid getting into bed has definitely been thrashed. Now there is an exhibit some of us would want to see.

The other find was this standalone passage in a single text file that may be from one of my aborted stories. It really is impossible to remember. It was on the partially recovered hard drive in a file from 2006.

-

Emily risked a peek over her shoulder at the birch rod waiting for her. It lay long and menacing on the table, the result of many hours of labour on her part. It was well made and stout and if it hadn’t been destined for a prolonged application across her exposed behind, she would have been a little proud of it.

A sound in the hall beyond the door encouraged her to snap her head back around so that her nose was back in the corner. It was mortifying to stand thus with only a thin blouse and bloomers to cover her. And the bloomers were now down at her ankles where cook had put them so that her neat prominent bottom was bared to the gaze of any who would chance by.

At least the Mr Graham the butler had some decorum and usually absented himself to his parlour at such times. But Herbert and Tom the pot boy would take every chance to enter servant hall while she awaited her chastisement. Emily only hoped that Susan the House maid could keep them at bay. A task she undertook not so much out of sympathy, but out of self-preservation as she herself was not immune from such treatment.

It was bad enough to have to fetch the makings dressed only in one’s underwear. She had heard them sniggering in the bushes. She blushed for the shame of it.

Emily sighed. It had been hour since she had completed the rod and had been sent to the corner. Now there was a light chill around her exposed nethers even as her face continued to burn with shame.

Then finally the door opened and Mr Charles entered.

Emily sucked in a breath, knowing s she did that he could see her bare bottom. But it wasn’t the first time.

“Well my girl, what have you to say for yourself?” he chided her.

Emily was tongue-tied.

Mr Charles gave a heavy sigh and took up the birch.

“Very well, let’s get this over with,” he sounded disappointed. “Come on girl, bend over the table.”

Emily clapped her hands to her naked forward parts and with a strawberry red face scampered across the room in a crouch and bent over.

“Get your bottom out a bit more,” he growled.

It was so embarrassing, but she quickly obeyed, parting her thighs a little for a more secure posture. The table was a little shorter than her legs so that her bottom was well elevated for the coming rod.

“You’ll take three dozen this time and you had better not get out of position,” he told her.

“Yes Sir,” she squeaked.

Mr Charles inspected the target for a moment and then gave a little cough of embarrassment at what she had revealed.

“Legs together a little more,” he said gently.

Emily gaped in horror and quickly closed her legs, an action that elevated her bottom even more.

Satisfied Mr Charles tapped the exposed backside thrice and then brought the rod down with a vengeance.

“One thank you Sir,” she shrieked.

The passage of the rod across her arse left a trail of pain like a million bees. The second stroke was no kinder.

“Two thank you Sir,” she grunted.

It took four more strokes for the first of the tears to come and by then her breathing was ragged and she gently shook her bottom as if to throw off the pain.

“When I am done with you here you spend the rest of the day in that corner, do you hear me,” Mr Charles said in a dark voice.

Then he struck in hard again.

“Yes Sir,” she wailed, “Seven thank you Sir… ooh.”

“Feeling it now I’ll be bound, looks like you are,” he observed.

“Yes Sir,” she sniffed, a tear strolling down her face and off the end of her nose.

The eighth, ninth and tenth strokes really hit home and Emily broke to sobbing.

“I trust you are sorry girl,” he scolded her.

“Ooh, yes Sir,” she wept and then as he struck again she announced, “Eleven thank you Sir.”

Just a third of the way through and she was already broken. Emily doubted that she would ever sit down again.

-

It seems more than a little rough in places; I hope I have come on a little since then. I wonder what else I will find.

Lady Jane Larch’s cousins and other young men had left for the hunt and she had been determined to go with them. Legends were made from killing and especially capturing trolls and she wanted part of the glory. Besides, the castle was dull and beyond the forest was magical creatures of all kinds and trolls were the best she could hope for.

There were however a few obstacles to the slender golden haired beauty’s plan. Firstly the hunt was forbidden to women by law. A stupid law made by a faraway king who had no business making laws for the people of the March Lands in the first place, but it was a law nonetheless and one which was strictly enforced; very strictly.

Lady Jane’s second problem was that she had been caught at the first hurdle, a forbidden sword at her hip and dressed in boy’s clothes in the castle courtyard with a horse. The possession of a sword and the wearing of male clothes by a woman were strictly forbidden by other laws that were strictly enforced. It really did not look good at all.

“I was just going for a ride,” she had told her guardian’s chatelaine.

Dame Mary was the keeper of Lord Garand’s house and the young crone had the eyes of the black hawk she resembled.

“That, young lady, is a lie,” Dame Mary had scolded her.

Under Lord Garand’s direction, Dame Mary had a way of dealing with liars. The maids would take a whipping every Sabbath for a season rather than be caught out in a lie by the Chatelaine.

Lady Jane had hastily tried to retract her falsehood but Dame Mary had grabbed her by the ear like the naughty boy she was dressed as and hauled her off to see her guardian.

That had been some hours before and now she stood naked but for her shift in the main hall where Dame Mary had left her. The linen blouse was too coarse for her station and one she wore to ride in. But unlike her more feminine under shirts, this one was short and barely covered her hips. Thank God Lord Garand had dismissed the guard from the hall, she thought with unbridled gratitude.

Jane reached around to the back of her shift and felt the exposed lower curves of her bottom peeking under the hem. It wasn’t that much better in front, she thought ruefully as she tugged it down over the silk golden triangle of hair that was little fingernail’s width from being exposed as well.

At least the damn shirt came up high to cover her large breasts, but that did not stop the nipples from visibly hardening against the linen in front. Thank God, there are no guards, she prayed again silently and please let them not come back.

Her eyes darted to the corner by the high table and a little behind it. She remembered when her young cousin Eloise had stood there dressed much as Jane was now. The 19-year-old miscreant Eloise had faced the wall with scarlet welts displayed on her bottom for the edification of the entire castle. Up to now Jane’s own suffered indignities had been more of a private affair, although a very sore bottom and many corners had played their part in them.

This time it was different she knew. She had not only disobeyed her guardian but was in open breach of the law. She shivered. Please, please, please let him just spank me, she prayed, but she knew that the best she could hope for was being handed over to Dame Mary who would no doubt remember the lie as well.

Her speculations were interrupted by the arrival of four maids carrying a large curved stool. They were led by the chatelaine herself as they half carried and half dragged the great oak and leather throne-like furniture to the middle of the room in front of the great table. Jane’s heart sank, especially when she saw the large governess birch cradled in Dame Mary’s arms.

At least there are still no guards she consoled herself, but the smirking maids marred her hopes somewhat. Then even that consolation was completely crushed.

Lord Jerome, her guardian’s eldest son, swept into the hall accompanied by Jeffrey, his gallowglass and Jane swallowed. She had thought Jerome out on the hunt, one of the principal reasons she had wanted to go. Oh don’t let him see me like this, she quailed inwardly. Jane hugged at her breasts with one hand and tugged the hem of her shift down in front with the other.

Jerome was tall and dark with his hair cut in a military style. He carried himself with broad-shouldered pride and even in just his shirt he looked powerfully broad with unwavering chestnut brown eyes that were almost black. Garand’s son was eight years her senior and she supposed that now he was near 30, he was no longer so well disposed to frolicking with his brothers when his father needed a strong right hand.

“Why are you such a trial to my father?” Jerome said impatiently. “Why couldn’t you have sneaked out side-saddle in a dress like my sisters do on troll hunts? Everyone knows what you intended and this can’t be settled with just a sound spanking.”

Eloise was to be spanked then, Jane thought gleefully, forgetting for a moment her own fate. She glanced at the corner and pictured her cousin standing there with her red bottom on show.

“My father has given your punishment over to me foolish girl,” Jerome sighed, “So come here.”

Jane gulped and blushed to her golden hairline tinting even that a momentary pink.

“Later you will be confined to your room until further notice under the direction of Dame Mary,” Jerome told her, “Frankly I hope she uses your tail end for spanking practice for the rest of the summer.”

Jane gaped and shot a glance at the row of smirking maids. The rest of the season would be much worse than that now that the chatelaine owned her bottom. A semi-public spanking in the upper salon would just be an amuse bouche for some extensive bottom-centric adventures, she thought grimly.

Jerome sat down on the throne-like stool and patted one knee.

“A spanking first,” he said.

Jane’s cheek’s coloured and she looked in horror at Jeffery. Surely he wouldn’t get to watch, he was low born she bridled. But Jerome didn’t wait and in a moment she was hauled over his lap with her bare bottom uppermost.

“Decorum, appearances and respect for the law,” Jerome chided her as he brought his firm paddle-like hand down on her exposed behind.

The sting robbed her of breath and compared favourable, that is to say unfavourably, with Dame’s Mary’s hairbrush.

“Please my lord,” she squealed.

“You don’t please me,” he scolded, “You enjoy all the trappings of this family and bear none of the responsibilities.”

He spanked her again hard with great smooth sweeps, turning her pert white bottom to a peony red in moments.

“I’m sorry,” she wailed. Sorry she was caught, she thought, her teeth clenched tight.

“You will be. When I am done here I am going to birch you raw and be thankful I don’t hand you over to the beadle,” Jerome barked at her.

The young lord spanked her for a goodly while before he was even close to being satisfied.

“You can have a stint in the corner to think about what you have coming next,” he said once he was done with her.

Jane was lost in tears and past caring about her shame. Just then the corner sounded like a welcome respite.

*

At that moment far across the Evergreen Forest another youngster was meeting a similar fate. The elven folk were just as exacting when it came to keeping youth in line and one particular youth was the thirty-sixteen Aerin.

This particular juvenile elf was also keen on the troll hunt, and had sought some magical help in her would-be pursuit. Her obsession with trolls was ingrained deep. Any that knew her would say it was because she held her dignity in high esteem and craved the status that went with being a great troll hunter. But that was only part of her story.

True she had been drawn to tales of heroism from an early age. Also she had a need for status in a world where her elders were often a thousand years or more her senior drove. But that was only part of it. There were after all many ways to gain status.

Aerin’s obsession with trolls had begun years before when she was still sneaking into taverns to hear hero’s tales. One day two hunters had come in from the wild with stories of their adventures. They claimed to have been captured by trolls and held as prisoners for weeks. They claimed to have traded their lives for sexual favours. This had drawn great hawking of mirth from the tavern goers. An older wiser elf girl might have suspected some embellishment was the order of the day, but Aerin was neither old nor wise.

“Trolls have male parts like horses,” said one of the hunters holding her hands widely spaced. “And their favourite sexual sport is buggery.”

“And when they want a lick,” said the other with glee, she made a motion with her fist and mouth so that her tongue pulsed her cheek as she spoke; “A girl can scarce get her lips around it.”

The pub drinkers all howled with laughter while a young Aerin had sat wide-eyed and squirmy.

“Do they have you by the mouth ‘fore or after the buggery?” asked one mirth filled customer.

“They have you anyway they want or they tan the skin off your arse worse than my gaffer ever did,” the second hunter girl threw back merrily.

The ribald tales continued until Aerin’s head had spun. Later she had retired to her cot to experiment with various vegetables while contemplating a spanking form a troll.

Now as an older if not wiser elf girl and would-be troll hunter she had hit upon the idea of borrowing a little magic to aid her. The street door to the Sorceress Glandrith’s house had been tantalisingly open and beyond it the library door had been ajar. What harm could taking a little book or two do anyway?

Unfortunately her experiments had gone a little awry. The books that she had chosen had been put under a trivial but inescapable forbidding spell. Some of the tomes had burst to fire with such a sound and fuss that Glandrith had appeared at once. The consequences were embarrassing, painful and immediate.

“Not here, please not here Glandrith,” Aerin pleaded as the Elder plucked a razor switch from the prerequisite tree.

‘Here’ was an upper concourse outside Glandrith’s house near one of the main bridges leading to the main thoroughfare.

The Elder ignored Aerin’s pleadings and easily bested her with a light justice spell that enabled Glandrith to put the reluctant elf across her knee without a struggle. For good measure and to thoroughly make her point, Aerin had been hastily half-stripped the girl until she was almost naked with her small but prominent bare bottom made even more prominent over Glandrith’s knee.

The sorceress then tapped Aerin’s bottom with the switch and considered her next move. This was going to be a lesson the girl would remember for a thousand years she decided. Theft and illicit magic dabbling were not to be tolerated.

Both being Forest Elves, they both had yellow-white hair and crystal blue eyes. But where Glandrith was pale in complexion, Aerin was sandy red from an outdoor tan. Her bottom, although small, was a good one and the Elder was determined that it would be well-serviced.

“Now my little one, do you want a chafing spell for your relish or a compulsion?” Glandrith grinned mischievously.

She had suffered both as a student of her master, neither was to be envied or ever forgotten.

“Oh please, please, please,” Aerin wailed, “Not here, please don’t.”

Already one or two villagers had gathered on account of the commotion and one of Aerin’s companions gaped in wonder at the scene. I’ll never live this down, she thought bitterly.

“Chafing or a compulsion?” Glandrith pressed the bare-bottomed girl over her knee. She was in no hurry. “Ask me nicely for one or I will employ both.”

A chafing would ensure that Aerin’s bottom would be too sore to cover let alone sit on for at least a month and a compulsion would compel the hapless younger elf to seek Glandrith out for a top up as soon as her flesh was half healed. The elves were a hardy long-lived race who could recover from almost anything non-fatal. Such sanctions were both commonplace and necessary.

Linking the two spells would put Aerin’s bottom at Glandrith’s pleasure almost indefinitely.

How to choose, Aerin wailed inwardly.

“Is it to be both then?” Glandrith teased.

Permanent exposure and standing up for meals at the communal table would be a shame beyond measure. A switching every three or four days until the spell wore off was marginally preferable even if some of her punishments were public like this one.

“Consider your next words very carefully,” Glandrith warned Aerin.

“Please Elder Glandrith, I was wrong to take your books and I am sorry. Please punish me very severely and lay a compulsion on me to return for further correction for as long as you decide is just,” Aerin said miserably.

“Are you sure young Aerin? I usually like to ply my switch to a bottom well-seasoned with stinger oil and bite crystals. My students find it most instructive,” Glandrith explained.

She hadn’t resolved yet to be quite so cruel, but she would definitely employ the technique once or twice if Aerin was contrite. More often if she was not.

Aerin’s eyes went wide and she considered pleading again. Damn this do-gooder sorceress. School, bah, it was strictly for goody-two shoes and nasty swats.

“Might I ask if my punishments will be in private?” she whispered.

She hated that there was a small audience and that they could hear her beg. Some were already laughing at her.

“Most of them I expect, so long as you call on me before the compulsion is upon you and you bring your own switch, stinger oil and bite crystals. I will teach you how to blend them if you are good,” Glandrith teased.

“Ooh,” Aerin wailed, hastily adding, “Yes of course lady, I am so grateful.”

She tried to sound respectful and earnest as any hint of sarcasm or bitterness would be punished. It was the elven way.

Aerin had been spanked once or twice using bite crystals or stinger oil. But her mentor had never used them together. Oh well, her tight doeskin breeks would be in her wardrobe for a while and as for sitting down… well at least she could keep her tail covered in public if she were careful. If she wore very light short skirts, she pondered. At least she hoped that would be the case or else her surrender was for naught. As it was her switching would be the talk of the village for days.

The switch sliced across the crowns of her bottom and Aerin knew she was in the hands of an expert. The fiery gift was one that went on giving and as the pain built. The line of searing fire continued to saw into her until Glandrith laid another stroke neatly below the first so that the two stinging welts could sing together.

Aerin was a tough girl, but by the time the duet of pain had become a choir she was drowning out the chorus with an unseemly song of her own and one that could be heard across the elven village.

“Oh please my lady, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she wailed, little pearls of moisture tumbling down her shame-red cheeks.

For the watching audience the sight of a bawling mewling elf-girl had them cackling with glee.

Glandrith took no notice of any of them as set in to administer a long, long sound switching on behalf of her books; a switching that could take up much of the afternoon if she crafted it just right.

*

The coming and going in the hall for the evening meal was almost disconcerting in its normality. There was the usual hubbub of chatting and the clink of pottery jugs brim-full of ale. And yet for Lady Jane it was possibly the worst night of her life.

She was standing in the corner of the hall still dressed only in her short shift. Only this time it had been tucked-up well clear of her bottom exposing the red rash of birch rod spore that expansively stained the curve of both cheeks. The relentless throbbing fire that mercilessly pulsed there showed not least the hint of abating, so much so that it had taken most of the afternoon for her to bring her rather copious tears under control. Even now her bottom felt twice its normal size with a million hornets all crawling and stinging as they made a home under martyred skin.

Earlier after the spanking and a long and embarrassing enough time in the corner, Jerome had summoned her again and bent her across the stool in a crudely obscene arse up posture as if she were nothing more than a maid servant. Then he had thrashed her slowly and hard for a time beyond counting until all her defiance had fled and she cried like a baby and promised to be good.

Even compared to the first time, her return to the corner had been a blessed relief and she could have kissed Jerome’s boots in gratitude for his small mercy. But that had been hours ago. Now she was acutely aware that she was shamefully exposed to the mirth of the court and unrelenting rasp pain in her bottom promised to make sure she never sat down again.

Once, after the evening meal in the hall seemed to have no regard for her, she stole a glance over shoulder. The gruff guards were bad enough as they stood as silent witnesses to her shame and the idle yet admiring glances of her male cousins was mortification admixed with an unnamed thrill. But worst of all were the women who huddled together giggling in loud whispers as they made no effort to disguise their mockery of her. Lady Jane wanted to melt into the floor.

Nor did it get better as the evening wore on. For as the hall emptied Jane became ever more conscious that she was again the centre of attention. So much so that once the cousins had retired for the night she had another little cry.

Finally Dame Mary came to remove her to bed.

“My lady, you are in such trouble,” Mary chided her as she led the way with a single candle. “Your tom boy days are over my girl. By the time I am finished with you, you won’t dream of trolls or troll hunts.”

But that was the trouble, she did dream of them and she was more determined than ever to hunt one.

*

The Evergreen Forest was haven for all her kind and the night sounds and music of the trees soothed her. The gentle throb in her bottom even seemed to match that of the elf song that rang through the forest. And perhaps because she was still under the influence of Glandrith’s justice spell, Aerin felt cleansed and could not find it in her heart to resent the Elder or her harsh punishment.

The sore-bottomed elf shifted on the bed where she lay face down naked and pondered her next move. She could not possibly stay around the village until her punishment was over. She had trolls to hunt. Even her mentor Paris, an ancient elder from the distant sea, had said as much.

Well he hadn’t exactly said she should evade punishment or that she should actually hunt trolls. But he had said, “When will you amount to anything girl? Why are you always so late?”

He had said this while she was bent over the mushroom stone in the yard while he belaboured her bare welted bottom with his belt for being late home.

He didn’t ask where she had been. The whole village was talking about her punishment and even if he hadn’t heard, the welts on her behind told their own story. Paris took no notice of these as he beat her with his belt to the full measure. She didn’t mind much, not beyond the shaming pain as anyway. He was entirely within his rights and she deserved it. Damn that justice spell, she cursed. How was a girl ever going to get up to mischief?

“Whatever you do or don’t do in this life,” he always told her, “Don’t get caught.”

It was sage advice and in this at least she had failed him.

Now she had the same problem as before. How did she escape Glandrith’s compulsion? She could try stealing a book again, but that hadn’t worked out too well for her so far. Maybe she could work out some sort of deal with the elder, she pondered as she listened to the sound of the music of the forest.

In a day or two, three or four at most, she would have to gather a switch and the other ingredients for her torment and report to Glandrith for another prolonged tail blistering. There was no getting around that. But she had to come up with some sort of deal by then.

*

Four days later Lady Jane knelt at the prie dieu with a bottom that felt like it had been kitchen roasted. Only it was not only the surface of her hinds that gentle throbbed with a soreness that rasped even against the air of the room. The small bud between her cheeks glowed like a hot pepper stone with an intensity that burrowed deep. The chatelaine was nothing but thorough in her cleaning as the soapy taste of loam testified. Both were a fraction of the consequence for her lies.

She had been counselled, no commanded, by Dame Mary to kneel there with her bottom exposed and read the advanced encyclopaedia of etiquette for noble ladies. It was an almost impossible task as she had to memorise the long boring passages she had been set, but failure to do so would result in another spanking and some lengthy corner time contemplating a gruel supper. That’s if she got any.

She remembered when Eloise had been so treated. She had been as meek as a kitten for months. Jane had found it highly amusing to see the immaculately turned out Eloise routinely made to ask for spanking just to teach Eloise her place. It wasn’t so funny now.

“If I could only escape and capture a troll,” she said aloud, “Then even Lord Garand would listen then. That would wipe the smile of their faces.”

Beyond the Evergreen Forest another young woman harboured similar thoughts of escape.

Earlier that day Aerin had stood at the back of one of Glandrith’s classes. It had been a dull complex lesson right up until the time a 22-teener girl had been called out for her inattentiveness. Aerin had joined the class in laughing as the young woman was turned over Glandrith’s knee for a prolonged bare-bottom spanking as a prelude to being sent to the corner still exposed for the rest of the lesson.

“Ah, young Aerin,” Glandrith said brightly after the young elf woman was dismissed.

“I have come for my appointment,” Aerin said ruefully as she held up the razor switch, a bag of bite crystal and a bottle of stinger oil. “I traded for the best and the merchant assured me that the young lady I had in mind to punish wouldn’t sit down for a year once she had experienced his goods. I suspect he was exaggerating a mite, but…”

“Only a little,” Glandrith said evenly. “I must say your attitude has improved.”

Aerin blushed.

“I am sorry about before, really I am. I deserve all I got,” she said sheepishly.

“And all you are going to get,” Glandrith smiled humorously.

“Yes my lady,” Aerin chewed at her lip, “I agree.”

Damn the woman, Aerin thought.

“Had you come tomorrow and dragged this out I would have punished you in front of my class,” Glandrith said casually, “They are a cruel lot, as am I. We would all have enjoyed that tremendously.”

Aerin blanched.

“It is very useful in my studies you see,” Glandrith explained, “I seldom get the chance to so thoroughly test my methods.”

“Why not capture a human, aren’t they fair game?” Aerin suggested conversationally.

“Human women are so hard to come by and few ever venture into the forest,” Glandrith said with regret.

“You could trade a half share in a troll for a dozen human girls,” Aerin suggested gently.

“Is that so?” the Elder smiled, she sensed an offer in the making.

*

Aerin’s bottom had been polished for long minutes with a paste made from bite crystal and stinger oil. The acid gunk had felt both abrasively sticky and harshly dry by turns as it had been applied, but that unpleasantness was nothing to the slowly growing rasping pain as the intense itching first prickled and the began to burn. The concoction lived up to its name and the hapless elf-girl felt as if her bottom had been peeled back with flaying clout and birched for a year.

Then she had been required to kneel on a bench at the back of the open class and bend over with her elbows on the floor and her bottom uppermost. The undignified semi-public position would have been enough by itself to cause the tears that sprang to her eyes, but the paste liberally applied to her bottom made her feel as if she had already been switched.

“Feeling tender?” Glandrith asked as she tapped Aerin’s bottom with a razor switch.

Aerin gritted her teeth and struggled with her breathing as she replied, “yes ma’am, thank you ma’am.”

“Now let me see if I have this right,” the elder elf said in a considered tone.

The switch cut the air and landed with a satisfying thwick. Aerin’s eyes flew open and she hissed with pain.

“You wish to be temporarily released from your debt to me in order to hunt a troll. In exchange for sharing half your stake in this creature, you wish to be released form my thrall altogether,” Glandrith pondered aloud. “What if you don’t capture or kill this troll?”

The switch plied its trade vigorously for several strokes actually making Aerin yell out and squeal. It took several moments for her to compose herself. Then in a tight voice she managed, “Well… then I will return to face the music, so it were.”

Yeah and snow don’t melt in summer, she vowed quietly.

Glandrith nodded imperiously and then studiously and firmly resumed the switching.

“Nyah,” Aerin groaned and then even more incomprehensibly began a litany of pleading like yelps.

“So if you don’t get this troll, then what is in it for me?” Glandrith said in a pause.

Aerin was trembling now and she struggled with great heaving gasps. The elder elf waited patiently. She understood.

“The combination with the paste is rather effective isn’t it?” she murmured idly.

“Oh yes ma’am,” Aerin’s voice strained.

“And so, you were saying?” the Elder urged her switch hovering menacingly over Aerin’s raw behind.

“Y-you get the chance to gain the troll,” Aerin was struggling now.

“How confident are you of besting a troll?”

“Oh I can do it ma’am, really I can,” Aerin sniffed.

Glandrith pursed her lips and then focussing carefully on Aerin’s bottom she began a long and thorough series of swipes that sent the elf maid to wild gyrating and bucking.

“You’re a thief and therefore untrustworthy,” Glandrith decided.

The switch continued its work.

“Nooo ma’am, please…” Aerin tore at her lower lip with her teeth and swallowed back a banshee wail in her distress.

“On the other hand,” Glandrith momentarily suspended the punishment, “You are under my thrall and I can always summon you.”

“Yes ma’am, yes,” Aerin said eagerly through her tears.

“If you fail then you agree you will come and serve me in any way I see fit for… seven years say,” Glandrith decided.

“Agreed,” Aerin shrieked.

“Good,” Glandrith nodded in satisfaction.

Aerin sagged in relief and was ready for a thoroughly good cry.

Behind her Glandrith had turned away and picked up a small bowl.

“Oh look there is some unguent left. Pity to waste it,” she said cheerfully.

Then carefully she applied a fresh smear of the mixture on Aerin raw and blistered behind, making a determined effort to smooth it into every crack and crevice of her bottom before taking up a fresh switch.

“I will free you tomorrow,” she chuckled.

“Yes ma’am ,” Aerin groaned.

*

To be concluded on Tuesday.

Part one here.

Lady Jane dared not even contemplate sitting on the horse’s saddle. She hadn’t even been able to put on her forbidden riding breeks. Instead she had opted for a loose green gown more befitting her station, which was just bearable as it brushed against her raw bottom. But she winced all the same. Drawing glances from the men at the gate.

As it was, the guards had no way of knowing she was forbidden to ride. But she did wonder if she might be questioned for leading the horse and not sitting astride it, but then she was their lord’s ward.

In the event she reached the edge of the forest without incident. So once out of sight of the castle, she led the mount off the well-beaten track towards the far hills that marked the edge of troll country. She had ridden these glades for most of her life and even at walk she could be far from the best known routes in a few hours, especially if she risked standing in the stirrups and going easy.

In fact it took most of the day to reach a small lake where she could bathe, a distance that was but an hour or two at a canter. But the water looked inviting and she wondered if she might risk a swim or whether Dame Mary would have missed her by now.

“The water would certainly ease my…” she coughed and looked around.

Then following another of her usual reckless impulses she pulled the green gown over her head and dived headlong naked into the pool.

The water was cool on her poor seared bottom and she felt better than she had for days. Leaning back in the water gazed up at the sky and wondered if trolls were as large and dangerous as they said. For in truth she had never seen one. Well not unless you counted the severed head that she had seen once in Castle Brass on a visit there.

That had been an ugly shrivelled thing that was twice the size of a man’s head. She had been assured that the creature was a small one compared with some.

Jane’s splashing around hid the sounds of the forest and for a long while she was oblivious to the wild wood all around her. So she didn’t hear the crack of a branch from the undergrowth. Nor did she see the two greenish brown eyes watching her from the shadows.

The troll stood nearly eight feet tall and was a sturdy as a tree. But for a troll he was considered ugly on account of his small nose and narrow brow. Some said his grandsire’s mother was a human and other’s that she was a half-elf. Bran didn’t care about such things, not because they hurt his head like it did with others of his kind, because it didn’t. He was remarkably clever for a troll. But what did it matter if part of his line was descended from elves or humans; troll-kind accepted him where no human or elf would. All the same he tended to venture nearer to human lands than many of his kin for humans and elves fascinated him.

Perhaps that was why he had been drawn to the pool and now lingered to watch the small naked human female splashing about in the water. The curves of her form and the smoothness of her flesh drew his eye and the massive horn under his sackcloth kilt tingled. Then as he watched her, it began to grow until rose and pressed against his firm lower belly as thick as the forearm of a man and near half again as long.

His inconvenient erections and obsession with all thing s sexual was another reason his kind told tales of his possible human heritage. Most trolls did not breed as mammals did and few of the males sported such vigorous appendages as his.

Bran took a step forward and snapped another branch under foot. He froze.

This time Jane heard him and stopped her frolicking.

“Who’s there?” she called out.

Bran wondered if the woman was dangerous and reached nervously for his club. The humans had put a bounty on his kind and as a result they were nearly as dangerous as the elves.

Jane stood up in the shallows and cupped one hand to her sex while the other cradled her breasts.

Should he say hello, he pondered and took half a step forward. For a creature his size it was hardly creeping and trees crashed around him.

Jane bolted from the pool and snatched up her bow. It took her a moment to find an arrow and then it caught on the scattered quiver so that she cursed and stumbled amid her clothes.

“It’s alright little one,” Bran soothed.

Jane notched an arrow and whirled around to face the huge dim shape in the shadows that had made the noise. It was a hard bass sound, like a bear’s growl only she could have sworn that it had carried words.

Bran extended his empty hand and took another step forward.

Jane startled and took a step back, horrified at the shape. It was like a man, but not a man. He was as tall as an upright bear for one thing and for another his thick grey flesh was like living stone and almost entirely without hair.

“Get back,” she screamed.

Her voice was too shrill for him to discern her words and he tried again to calm her as he took a tentative step forward.

Jane heard the creature issue something like a roar and loosed an arrow.

Bran ducked as the fletching scraped an ear and went twanging into a tree by his head. He yelped and dropped his club and then extended his two empty hands as he backed away.

“No, no, no,” he said calmly, “I won’t hurt you.”

Jane was now certain it was a troll and was encouraged at the way the creature was now cringing.

“Cowardly brute,” she cajoled him. What was all the fuss about over these creatures?

Jane let go with another shot and the arrow struck the troll in his shoulder just above his heart.

“You bitch,” he growled.

Bran glanced back at the forest and considered running. But his unnatural intelligence told him he would present a good target if he fled, while his brutish side, often to the fore when he was angry, urged him to attack. Both sides of his nature in agreement, he charged.

The naked Jane notched another arrow but was suddenly panicked.

“Stay away,” she screamed and backed away even as she took aim for the troll’s head.

Jane stumbled and the arrow shot harmlessly skyward. She was still on her back when the troll closed with her and slapped the bow from her hands. It broke as it spun away and Jane looked up in wide-eyed terror at the huge creature. Then rolling over she scrambled away and tried to get her sword.

Meanwhile the bemused Bran pulled the arrow from his shoulder and cast it aside. The woman was no threat now, not even if she reached the sword. Well he presumed not. But she did look comely on all fours as she offered him a clear view of her naked behind as she grabbed for a sword. On second thoughts, he mused as he rubbed at his sore shoulder. Then he reached down and seized Jane’s ankle. Her grasp was just inches from the sword hilt as she felt his surprising warm paw on her leg and then she shot backwards and into the sky.

Jane had a momentary vision of being tossed like a salad and was certain that she would land into the troll’s gaping jaws to be eaten. But instead she landed belly down on his right undamaged shoulder so that the world was suddenly upside down. Then naked with her bare bottom pointed at the forest roof the creature took off in a fast lumbering gait deep into the woods.

*

Lady Jane did not know what bothered her most, the fact that she had been captured by a troll or the fact that it had left all of her clothes behind. Why did she ever think she could best a troll she wondered? The damn thing had taken an arrow and it hadn’t even slowed it down.

Just then a tree branch whipped across her still exposed and upturned bottom; it was like a swipe from Jerome’s birch and she yelped. The troll made no sign that he had noticed and continued to jog on through the woods with the great strides of his lumbering gait. Jane swung helplessly down its back with nothing to see but the train of the damn creature’s sackcloth kilt and the broken undergrowth the troll left in its wake. No, far from slowing it down, the damn beast could jog through the dense woodland as fast as a horse could trot in the open.

As for Bran, he had started off being nothing more than curious. It was one of his rules to have as little do with the high folk, human or elf, as he possibly could. Well sometimes it was. But there was a higher law. He had been attacked and he had triumphed. Now he was perfectly entitled to take his captive.

His shoulder still throbbed from the impact of the arrow and his anger had yet to subside. In time the clever half of his brain would take over and he would know what to do, but right then he was in a rage.

It took several hours to reach one of his people’s stopping places; the healing pool being the safest place on this side of the mountains. So as he went he couldn’t help noticing that the woman had a vivid rash across her tail end. It looked too sore to just be a consequence of a long ride for a rider short on experience, so he concluded that she had been punished for some reason. Well that was to the good, Bran was willing to bet she deserved it. Still he felt he should heal her as well as himself before he acted on his next plan.

Lady Jane was exhausted from the long uncomfortable trog through the forest and wondered what the Trollish for surrender might be when the interminable jogging came to an abrupt halt. The ceaseless and not to say occasional painful whipping of tree branches about them fell silent to be replaced by another sound. An old hunter had once told Jane that wherever a troll passed in the forest the birdsong died. But now that the creature had stopped running Jane could hear chorus of birds singing in such profusion that she doubted any human had before enjoyed it.

Also there was the silver tinkle of running water as it splashed over rocks into a pool. The captured noble woman lifted her head with difficulty to try and look around. But before she could garner any reward for her struggles she was lifted from the troll’s shoulder and unceremoniously dumped into a large rock pool.

“What the…” she spluttered as she splashed around in the water trying to touch bottom with her feet.

It took her several moments to gain a purchase and lumber coughing to the rocky side of the pool. By which time the troll had stripped off his kilt and begun wading into the water a short distance from Jane. Her eyes were like plates of dainties as she gaped at the size of his grand manhood swing freely between his thick trunks of thighs. Or should that be trollhood, she thought without humour as she swallowed down her awe.

The beast ignored her for the moment as he reached down and scooped up handfuls of water to gently trickle over the inflamed wound on his shoulder. But Jane’s eyes were still fixed lower down on his body.

“Oh my,” she gasped.

Then all at once a feeling of wellbeing surrounded her and all the small scrapes and cuts form her long haul through the undergrowth began to fade and she had never felt so clean. Then after a moment more the insistent rasp at her bottom that had troubled her for days began too to fade and she felt more at peace than she ever had.

“What is this place?” she asked in wonder.

Bran cast a glance in her direction and silently mouthed back her words as if rehearsing them. Then he said, “It is called the Healing Pool.”

His voice was deep, gruff and slow, but she understood him perfectly.

“It’s marvellous,” she said despite herself and her predicament.

Bran considered this and then smiled. Yes it was. He had never thought of it before.

Jane’s jaw dropped open as with one grin, the monster was transformed into a friendly giant.

“What are you going to do with me?” she asked.

Bran studied her for a moment before saying, “Who are you?”

“I’m… Jane,” she answered shyly. She felt silly putting on airs while siting naked in a forest pond with an equally naked troll.

“Jane?” the troll nodded thoughtfully. “I’m Bran.”

Then he returned to cleansing his wounds. It was deep and still hurt him.

“You didn’t answer,” Jane spoke again, “What are you going to do with me?”

“You are going to be my little pet. A good little pet,” he told her.

“But…” Jane was aghast.

“Only you haven’t been good at all have you,” Bran growled as he continued to prod at his wound.

Jane gulped down a spoonful of fear and lowered herself deep into the water.

“How is your wound?” Bran asked her.

“My…” Jane blushed, a hand straying to her much improved bottom under the water. “Oh, it’s… eh… fine.”

“That is as well for now I am going to teach you some manners,” Bran told her.

Jane frowned and was about to let slip that it was a ridiculous idea that a rough old troll like him could teach her anything. But before she could speak she was lifted clear of the water and dumped face down across Bran’s huge lap.

“Oh no, you can’t,” she protested.

But holding her firmly in place Bran brought his laundry-paddle-sized hand down with a carpet beating splat and Jane grunted in surprise. Thrice more his hand spanked down as Jane howled like a banshee and kicked up her heels in distress.

“You can’t do this to me,” she wailed, but already her voice was tainted with childish mewling tears.

Bran didn’t stint. He admired the dark red bruise that stained both curves of her heroic goddess-like bottom. He had seen the curves on a statue in a ruined temple once that had held him spell bound, but it was nothing compared to this.

Jane thrashed and sobbed across the troll’s lap until her bottom was one hard swelling of leathery raw pads and she was spanked as spanked could be.

“Now I have a trick for you,” Bran chuckled.

Reaching down he scooped up some water and delicately soothed it over her sore bottom as she sobbed helplessly over his lap. The effect was miraculous and after only a few minutes her behind was only slightly sore.

“Tell me little Jane did you mean to kill me?” Bran asked.

Jane didn’t reply, but they both knew the answer.

“Just as I thought,” Bran chuckled and with another great blast of his hand began again to spank the helpless Jane silly.

It was a game they could play all afternoon without any harm coming to the girl.

*

Lord Jerome was furious that his father’s ward had run off. It was not only a mark of cowardice to evade a lawfully sanctioned punishment, but it was downright dangerous. He felt sick and anxious as he studied the deep dark forest. That foolish girl, when I catch her… his mind dwelt on all the elaborate scenarios that would not only put her in her place, but would leave her standing at supper for weeks. Why did the girl think she could hunt trolls? Very few of his warriors had ever done so successfully. In fact most of the so-called troll-hunts were shams, intended only to distract the young men of the castle from doing anything so foolish as to go hunting the damn things. In his experience, if you left a troll alone then they would leave you alone anyway. As for trolls eating people, well he had never known a true account of it ever happening. Most people who messed with the creatures got what they deserved.

Jerome chanced upon Jane’s mount around noon. It was drinking by a small lake that he knew well and knew that his quarry visited regularly.

“Beyond here there be dragons,” he quipped quietly to himself as he studied the endless green canopy ahead.

Then he saw the broken branches cut in something like a swathe leading away from the water into the forest. In another day or two the trees would have swallowed this trail and he could see that already bracken and small branches had reasserted themselves. He frowned. Why would she go that way and leave her mount, not to mention her… then he spied her clothes and weapons obscured by the undergrowth and his heart did a flip. He felt as if he were falling from a great height.

“No, no, no, no,” he wailed, tears pooling at his eyes.

He had a host of visions of bears and wolves, none of them good and he rode frantically around in circles for clues. Then there by the water in soft wet mud was a single footprint; a troll. It was hardly an improvement on a bear.

The horse followed with difficulty, but in places the path was still clear and he was able to make good time. But with every lurch of the horse and with each of its steps he drew closer to the mountains where the trolls were said to live.

*

Lady Jane had lost count of the number of times Bran had spanked her. Her whole bottom ached and it was so blister sore that she could not even touch it with her fingertips. Even the air on her flesh seemed to chafe rather than sooth.

The sky had turned red and after one final spanking Bran had laid her face down on some moss to cry herself out.

“We can play that game tomorrow if I like,” Bran said with a grin.

Jane swallowed hard and began to realise what being a troll’s pet would involve. More worryingly was Bran’s huge erection which was as plain as a pikestaff and almost as large. She found herself dreading and thrilling at a closer encounter by turns. What was the creature going to do to her?

Bran saw her looking.

“I don’t think human women can cope with… me,” he said sheepishly, “But the spankings are fun.”

“They are not,” she protested.

Jane was beginning to look fondly upon Jerome’s birch and her cosy place in the corner at the castle.

“They are for me and you did start it,” Bran said dismissively as he lowered himself into the pool for some relief.

“I only…”

“You tried to kill me,” he said decisively, it was true he knew and that was definite. “And even if you hadn’t and had had me hauled away to your castle, what would have happened to me there? Nothing good I bet.”

Jane blushed it was true. In fact his treatment of her was playful compared to his fate back at the castle.

“How… how long will you keep me?” she said shyly.

Bran shrugged.

“I don’t know, for a while probably. Then I’ll sell you I expect. If you are good I’ll sell you to the humans beyond the mountains,” he yawned, “If not then maybe to another troll.”

“But I want to go home,” Jane wailed.

Bran considered this and then shrugged. It was unimportant what she wanted just then. In fact they had better get a move on soon after dawn before her people came for her.

The arrow came as a surprise and struck him squarely in the forehead. For a moment he was puzzled and looked around for the cause of such an interesting phenomenon. Well he would have, if he had known the word.

Then he saw the small human warrior running at him with his sword drawn. He fended off the first blow of the man’s sword with is forearm and the blade bit deep. Rage took over.

Bran seized up his club and smashed it down next to the warrior and the shock of it knocked the man sideways. The next blow battered at his attackers shield sending it crashing across the pool.

“God’s teeth and snake poo,” Bran bellowed.

These humans were more trouble than they were worth.

At least his attacker was prone now and seemed to be alone. Bran’s vision went blurred and he saw double. That arrow had nearly done for him and the cut on his arm was deep. This warrior was much more dangerous than the girl. But he was alone. Usually troll hunters came in packs.

Bran knew there was nothing for it and raised his club high above his head to offer the warrior a merciful end.

“No,” Jane screamed.

Bran paused to look at her.

“He is my cousin of sorts,” she explained, “His name is Jerome,” she added as if by naming him the troll would be more inclined to spare him.

“Bah,” Bran spat as he looked upon Jerome, “You are no good as a pet. I’ll leave you here when I go.”

With that the troll swung his club lightly and tapped Jerome to unconsciousness on the side of his head.

*

Aerin had found the human hunter first. He was definitely on the trail of something and given the direction of his travel and the obvious troll sign of broken branches, she had a definite hunch as to what that was.

But by the time she caught up with him at the pool, the hunter was already trussed up in some rocks. He had been captured by a striking, if rather small male troll. Although he was half again as tall as she was.

The troll had a wound on its head and arm and was attempting to heal himself in the water. But that wasn’t what took Aerin’s attention. For naked in the rocks tied at the wrists was the most beautiful human Aerin had ever seen.

A human and a troll, Aerin thought, Glandrith was going to be very, very pleased and Aerin was going to be rich with more kudos than a girl could stand. She rubbed her hands together in anticipation.

But Aerin wasn’t the only one to be on the hunter’s trail. Glandrith had set off a few short hours after Aerin. After all she would have been a fool to trust such a devious little elf. Now she too was secluded in the trees watching the troll, the elf girl and the treasure of a human woman all naked and secured for collection. This would need some delicate handling, she considered.

*

Bran had just got his arm and head fixed from the magic healing pool when he heard the sound to his right. For the second time that day an arrow sped from the undergrowth and straight at his head. Only this time he had the presence of mind to put up an arm. The arrow pieced it and kept going until his forearm was thoroughly skewered.

“Melty mountains and orc shit,” he yelled.

He knew at once that this was no ordinary arrow and had he not put up an arm he would dead or at the very least knocked prone on the ground. Bloody elves, he cursed, what had he done to any of them?

“What is your problem?” he bellowed, “Can’t you see I am busy here?”

Aerin was also annoyed; the shot had been off centre and had nearly taken the creature out of the game permanently. She wanted him alive. But luckily the troll was distracted and there was still a chance. Leaping form cover Aerin threw a bag of fairy dust that landed with a rainbow burst to envelope the troll.

In response, Bran dived for cover into the pool, the magic waters flushing away not only the effects of the dust, but went someway to restoring his arm.

For a long moment Aerin paused at the water’s edge to notch another arrow, but the residual dust still glinting in the air tickled her nose and she sneezed.

Bran chose his moment and lunged, seizing the elf by her ankles he dragged her in. After several seconds of thrashing the troll emerged with his hands around Aerin’s throat as she coughed up water.

“Now give me one reason I shouldn’t wring your neck?” he roared.

“I can give you one,” said a voice.

For a moment he thought the elf he had by the neck had spoken and then he saw the elven woman in white standing on a rock above him.

“Do you have a bow too?” he sighed.

“Yes actually, but I am not going to need it am I?” the elf woman smiled.

“Aren’t you?” Bran asked looking from his captive to the smiling sorceress.

Glandrith wrinkled up her nose with a smile and shook her head dismissively.

“I shouldn’t think so,” she said with a giggle to her voice. “Not if you put her down unharmed.”

Bran shrugged and after a pause tossed the sodden elf girl onto the bank and then folded his arms. If he was dead, he was dead.

“Now I have a proposition for you,” Glandrith said breezily.

Bran threw up his hands and snorted.

“That is the most reasonable thing I have heard all day,” he sighed.

Then as Glandrith’s grin grew broader she slowly turned her gaze to the naked and wide-eyed Jane. To the now very nervous human woman the elf’s smile resembled a cat that had just captured a very creamy mouse.

*

“So you are saying that if I give you the human,” Bran said as he puzzled it out, “Then I can keep the elf?”

Aerin frowned and she sat by the pool to consider this. Was she horrified by the idea? What was Glandrith playing at?

Jane was rather more startled. She was sitting cross-legged now with her hands cupped to her breast trying to make herself look as small as possible. Was she being rescued by the elven sorceress or…?

“Just for one year,” Glandrith said silky.

Bran rubbed his jaw and cleared his head to think. As trolls went he was smart, but he wasn’t used to so much thinking in one day.

“The human is a delicate creature; she won’t cope well as a slave to a troll. Aerin is much tougher and far more entertaining,” Glandrith said seductively.

“What if your elf girl doesn’t agree?” Bran asked, “She will have kin and anyway and unwilling elf is more trouble than it is worth?”

A year away from the village in the company of trolls, I could escape Glandrith, Aerin thought eagerly. A year would be like a holiday.

“I’m not sure I like this idea,” Aerin said carefully, “But we do seem to be at an impasse…”

Glandrith’s smile vanished and she turned a cold gaze upon the naughty elf.

“It looks like troll is off the agenda, so if I don’t get my human then…” she left the words to hang like a threat.

That was just what I was thinking, Aerin thought. Seven years of bite crystals and stinger oil.

“Well I suppose I could spend a year with the troll,” Aerin sighed.

“Now look here,” Jane wailed.

Glandrith silenced her with a glare.

“You want to stay with a troll,” she said wearily.

Jane opened her mouth and looked at Bran and then back at the brighter-than-life elven woman in white. She felt something like longing. And then she remembered Jerome.

Lord Jerome had a glare that rivalled any elves and he had been getting steadily angrier and angrier as the exchange had taken place.

“But I want to go home,” Jane said weakly, not at all sure that she did.

For one thing once she did get home her bottom would be mince. And for another she would spend at least a year under the thrall of Dame Mary and that didn’t bear thinking about. She wouldn’t even have dreams about troll hunting to console. Her troll hunting days were well and truly over.

“You should have thought about that before you run away,” Glandrith countered impatiently.

“Lady Jane is my father’s ward and under my protection. If you take her you will answer to me,” Lord Jerome let his true menace show now.

Glandrith pondered for a moment. The man was clearly of some note, even if he were a minor noble there would be trouble. It might even mean war with the humans.

“And besides, you love her,” Glandrith played her card.

“I…” Jerome was gobsmacked, the damn elf was right.

Jane’s eyes were wide and she shot a calculating glance at Jerome.

“But let’s face it, she is a rather wilful girl and hungry for adventure,” Glandrith continued. “Give her to me for one year and I will return her as a fit and dutiful wife.”

Jerome reached for his sword as he always did when he was out of his depth, but it was gone and in any case his arms were still bound.

“If I don’t return with Lady Jane my father will…” he said at last, not at all certain what his father would do.

“Surely you are man enough to make your own bargains and decisions,” Glandrith countered, “Besides, if she doesn’t come with me then she will be over the mountains with the trolls before you can ride home, even presuming I would permit that. A year, on my oath and you will have her back. And if you cannot keep your word or your father overrides it then… well you can have your war. Perhaps my Lord will send her back to keep the peace. If she goes with the trolls however…”

She didn’t have to say anymore.

“Jerome,” Jane said gently, “It is alright, I can go with the elves. It is only a year.”

He nodded.

“Jerome, do you really love me?” she gushed.

Lord Jerome returned a lopsided grin and then it vanished as he looked at the troll.

“Alright sorceress, you have a deal,” he said reluctantly.

Bran shrugged. He was past caring, they could all bugger off for all he cared, but the elf girl was rather cute and she appeared to be smiling at him.

*

Aerin was naked and on her knees by the pool. Glandrith had furnished Bran with a silver collar that she said would ensure that the little elf kept to her end of the bargain. Aerin had heard of such things, they prevented elves from using magic and compelled the wearer to return to their masters if they strayed too far. Well it was only for a year and her trollish master would be fascinating to serve.

Bran too was naked and fully erect and for the first time in his life he did not feel awkward about it. Not that he knew what to do with a maleness that rivalled his club.

“Are you really going to bugger me with that?” Aerin lisped.

She was a little nervous and in awe of what she saw. Also she was not a little excited.

“I don’t think…” Bran was uncertain, but the idea, now spoken caused his member to spontaneously twitch.

“Suppose you let me worry about that. I am after all here to serve you,” Aerin said in a hushed voice. “I am not human remember.”

Bran found he liked the idea, but he rather resented that the elf had taken the lead.

“Here let me…” Aerin whispered dreamily and then on impulse she leant forward and with some difficulty took his member in her mouth.

It was huge and it was all she could do to get her lips around it. She wondered what would happen if Bran came. Would she choke? What would he taste like? Could she even make him come with such a small mouth? She was willing to try, very willing. In any case her spittle would ease the passage if he fancied the more usual troll sport.

The engorged crown of his cock was larger than her own fist and Aerin was amazed that she could fit it and some considerable portion of its length into her mouth.

Bran was overtaken by things he had never felt before and for long, long minutes he stood lost in himself as the little elf pleasured him with her lips. Then he remembered he was supposed to be in control and there was another game he could play first.

Taking Aerin by the ear he pulled her off of him and sat down on a rock. She was left bereft for a moment and gaping like a fish.

“Hey, I haven’t finished,” she wailed.

But Bran wasted no time in lifting her with one hand and depositing her across his knee.

“It is time to learn who’s boss,” he chuckled and as he had with Jane before, he began to soundly spank Aerin until she yelped and kicked and her bottom was the colour of a summer sky at sunset.

“Alright, alright, you’re the boss,” Aerin sobbed.

She had rather hoped to have escaped this kind of thing.

“And now we will try that other thing you said,” Bran gasped.

His appendage was hard now, and tight between Aerin’ hip and his belly. It was throbbing even more urgently than the elf’s polished bottom.

“Oh please,” Aerin wailed.

Lifting her up and taking her hips in both hands he pressed his freed-up horn at her narrow orifice and aided by beads of dew from them both, he pressed himself home.

The elf’s eyes went wide in surprise and she gritted her teeth in shock and determination. The rasp of rough skin where you would think a girl would least want it contrasted happily and interestingly with the sore throb form her spanking. She was no stranger to all manner of random insertions in that particular office, it was a favoured vice of hers, but this was something else. The cucumber she had once toyed with just did not compare and she gave out a long anxious groan.

“Shall I stop?” Bran said in concern. “I don’t want to harm you.”

“Don’t you dare,” she snapped at him impatiently.

“Don’t give me orders,” Bran growled back as he took another few inches.

“Aieee,” Aerin screamed, she had never suspected that a girl could come this way.

Bran was not far behind and Aerin had never felt anything like it.

It was a while before either of them could speak and then Bran reached for a scoop of water to wash off the surplus troll juice he had spawned.

“Don’t waste it,” she chided and enthusiastically took him again deep into her mouth.

“There you go again giving me orders,” Bran scolded her.

“Sorry master,” she mumbled with her mouth full, “Spank me afterwards.”

“I-I-I will,” he groaned.

And then I’ll bugger you senseless he vowed.

*

Lady Jane did not remember much of the journey through the Evergreen Forest after saying her tearful goodbyes to Jerome. Glandrith told her it was usually that way with humans as the elven village was under a glamour as was much of the surrounding forest.

She had been given Aerin’s clothes to wear for the journey, although the doeskin breeks of the much taller elf had been far too long in the leg and did not fit. Luckily, for the same reason the short jerkin had served as a brief dress that at least reached Jane’s thighs. It was little enough for a respectable woman, but already she had seen elves wearing less and besides, the magic of her adventure filled her mind with too much wonder to over worry about such matters as modesty.

“What will I do here?” Jane asked.

“Call me highness or my lady,” Glandrith said kindly, “It is not seemly for a stranger to forget the formalities even among my people.”

“Elves you mean?” Jane asked.

“We prefer Fey, but by my people I meant the wood folk who are renowned for their informality,” Glandrith explained indulgently. “And I told you once, address me as highness or my lady.”

Jane tried to take it in, but the city was magical. There were high towers seemingly carved from stone although they were intertwined with great trees on which stood houses linked by bridges to the spired columns that sprung up between them. There was an ethereal glow to everything and far from being in a haze or milky focus she had seen on human paintings of so-called elf cities, everything had a crisp more-real-than-life sense to it.

To further confuse her Glandrith had referred to the city as a village, yet no city she had ever seen compared with this veritable metropolis.

“How big is it?” Jane asked in wonder.

Glandrith sighed.

“How many elves… I mean fey are there?” Jane continued babbling excitedly.

Glandrith offered Jane a sharp look and took her arm. Then she sat on a low wall at the side of the path and pulled the surprised Jane effortlessly across her knee. The jerkin was easy to flip up off Jane’s bottom and the elf brought her hand sharply down in a sharp smack to her naked behind.

Jane gasped; the spank was as hard as she ever received with just a hand.

The spanking continued with vigour for some long minutes until Jane’s bottom was dark red and she was blubbering like kitchen brat caught stealing cookies.

“I can do this all day,” Glandrith warned.

“What did I do?” Jane wailed.

The Elder fey did not answer but picked up the pace and spanked even harder.

“Oh please, what did I do?” Jane pleaded, kicking her legs and giving herself over to unrestrained bawling tears.

“It will come to you,” Glandrith said wearily and continued to spank the really by now rather sore bottom.

“My lady, please, my lady, I am sorry,” Jane said in a wheedling whine as she pouted.

Glandrith spanked for a little longer and then set the heavily panting and tearful Jane back on her feet.

“We like space and there only a few more of my kind than you would find in a small town back in your world,” Glandrith continued as if nothing had happened.

Jane sniffed and regarded her host sullenly and then seeing that Glandrith wasn’t waiting, the human girl scurried after the elf as she rubbed at her bottom under the hem of the jerkin.

“You should have seen our cities of old,” Glandrith sighed nostalgically.

“My lady, what am I to do here?” Jane sniffed.

“Among our kind there are few offspring, an effect of being so long-lived. The fey do not mature fully until they are 50 or 60. Oh, I don’t mean mentally or physically, but spiritually and to a lesser extent emotionally. Much like your people, only they don’t have the time,” Glandrith spoke with little regard for Jane’s questions, although she offered answers if the girl would hear. “There are four stages of youth, the first two you would recognise. You won’t see any of that age. But then comes the dreaded third youth.”

Glandrith shuddered.

“Aerin was one of those, as are you I suppose,” the sorceress continued. “They need so much handling and are so troublesome.”

“I am not…” Jane began in an indignant tone.

Glandrith shot the girl a hard glance.

“When we get home, you will go to the wood spinner and obtain a razor switch,” she said sharply, “You need a very firm lesson.”

Jane was used to idle threats like this, but blushed all the same. This was too, too much.

“Now among our kind we must earn our position. We do not favour inheritances, in fact no one under 100 can be left anything by will deed. You will be permitted scraps form my table and a mat to sleep on. Otherwise you can eat in the communal hall. Lectures in school are also free, but mind your manners if you go and learn what you will. Most of the youth will be female as the males are sent away least we have riots on daily basis. They are trained for war and the like I suppose, I never had sons so…” Glandrith shrugged. “Anyway, any elder can discipline any youth as he or she sees fit. Remember that. But do not fear, no real harm will come to you.”

“But… I mean my lady,” Jane amended, “How…?”

“You barter for things. You have a labour and your wits. You can trade anything you don’t need and over time… well you’ll see. The only exception in your case is that I will train you in etiquette and household management in return for help with my researches,” Glandrith’s words had a finality to them, the reason for which became clear when she added, “My house.”

The house was a tower that nestled alongside a road that was really a bridge between two trees.

“It’s lovely my lady,” Jane gasped.

Glandrith didn’t reply and just gave her a look until Jane frowned. The elf responded with a sigh and again took hold of her charge and hauled her across her knee as she sat on the windowsill to her house.

“My lady… your highness… what…?” Jane wailed.

Her bottom was quickly bared and another sound spanking ensued until Jane was again bawling like a chamber maid. The vigorous sting of Glandrith’s hand reignited the earlier spanking and Jane prayed for a healing pool.

If Jane had thought the spanking would soon end, then she was in for a hard lesson indeed. The spanking went on and on until raw leathery patches formed on her bottom cheeks as they had when Bran had spanked her.

“What did I do?” Jane sobbed.

“How stupid are you?” Glandrith said in disbelief and spanked on.

“My lady,” Jane howled, “My lady,” she offered again in case she had forgotten one.

Then finally she remembered.

“The switch, you wanted… what was it?” she gabbled, adding hastily, “My lady.”

Jane was immediately set upon her feet.

“A razor switch from the wood spinner,” Glandrith said with an edge to her voice.

Jane gulped and rubbed at her sore behind. There were twittering giggles all around her and she had a horrible feeling that her spanking had been witnessed.

“My lady… where is the wood spinner?” Jane sniffed.

Glandrith pursed her lips and looked as if she was about to resume the spanking.

“I’ll find it,” Jane said hastily, “My lady.”

And then set off down the nearest pathway through the trees.

Behind her Glandrith began to laugh like a bell in a summer breeze. There goes the last of the troll hunters, she thought.

Ends

Our story began here.

Fire and Water
The bay was open on one side with only a wide flat beach and soft dunes between the ships and the approaching enemy from the south. At least to the north where from the greater threat came there were high cliffs with one steep narrow pass leading down from the high ground.

By now most of the allied army had successfully retreated to the beach and an impromptu camp with aid stations had been set-up just above the shore line. It had been hastily erected from whatever had been to hand and even the king’s tent had been drafted into use as a hospital.

Sir Mark snorted in amusement at the degradation of the fine purple and gold silk trappings of the royal quarters. But as Peron had said, there would be no space for it on the ships and they would even have to leave many of the lesser horses.

“Might as well use them up in the rear-guard then sire,” Sir Mark had earlier remarked.

“Horses can be replaced, men cannot, so take a care that you spare the riders for a voyage home,” Peron had replied gruffly, “I will need such men again before this war is done.”

“And too their wives and children,” Sir Mark added.

“I stand admonished,” Peron said wearily and bowed gently at the grizzled old baronet.

Sir Mark returned the gesture with a lower bow of his own and muttered, “Forgive me sire, I spoke out of turn.”

“If only you had,” Peron murmured, but his attention had already turned to the ships. Will there be enough? It was an anxious thought and the king could feel his heart in his chest as if he had been running. Damn it, I am running, he silently cursed.

Before the sun had risen the mist had been thick and dark like a wall. Nor had the fog lifted with the sun, but little by little the dank air had taken on a translucent glow and here and there the fleeing army on the beach had glimpsed the waves.

Then as they watched the silhouettes of spars and angular masts had been seen, just smudges of dark on grey at first. But then whole craft had taken shape hard against the morning which blustered around them.

“You should get aboard as soon as possible your majesty,” a voice from the mist said.

Peron glanced at the approaching man and saw it was William Armarlon.

“I can take command here sire, you must not perish here,” the Duke continued as he drew close.

King Peron cast an eye over the beach and saw that a few men who had previously lain prone in the sand as if to die were now on their feet. One or two were even cheering and all had a sudden hopeful demeanour. Until then many had doubted the ships would come.

“My place is here,” Peron whispered. And then with more authority he commanded, “Place the pike men in ranks from the water’s edge right up to where the high dunes meet the cliffs. And place archers on the high ground in support. Sir Mark will rally sorties against their skirmish lines and protect our flanks.”

Duke Timon shot a glance at the cliffs behind them and the direction from which the foe’s main army would come.

“And the pass?” he asked eyeing the cliff tops nervously.

“Send scouts to give us advanced warning and meanwhile detach two cohorts of pike men supported by swords and a few archers to guard the pass just in case,” the king ordered.

The duke nodded thoughtfully and glanced at the ships.

“Do you think it can be done sire?” he asked.

“That, your grace, is up to Davidus Grimm,” Peron sighed and added, “Now see to your dispositions.”

*

Many of the horses had been corralled ready for departure alongside the injured men. However in the grim reality of military triage they would have to wait until the bulk of the army was embarked before their turn would come. Peron had ordered that the professional and elite troops would form a perimeter, so it was the levies and mustered men who had discarded their weapons and were to depart first. These were men who usually divided their time between farming and the occasional weapons drills in their respective shires.

King Peron and Duke Timon had reasoned that the professional troops would make a better stand and were less likely to panic if things got too hairy. They could also be counted upon to retreat in good order under fire.

These better troops were now drawn up in long lines along the exposed edge of the beach while their comrades formed long lines for the boats behind them.

“As soon as the queues go down I’ll order the first of the rear-guard to peel off from formation and follow on,” Duke Timon reported.

“Excellent, and tell the officers that the pike men should leave their pikes and heavy gear. They move too slowly with them and there is not enough room on the ships as it is.” Peron yawned as he spoke.

He looked a decade older and his eyes where bloodshot and bleary.

“You have not slept since before the battle, have you Sire?” the Duke said gently.

“And nor have you,” Peron shot back.

The Duke of Timon wanted to point out that he had a small opportunity to doze in the saddle. And that he was more than 10 years younger than the king, but neither seemed politic just then.

“We will all sleep well enough once at sea Sire,” Peron continued, “Now, please see to the men.”

There was one contingent of the army that had not yet either evacuated or taken part in the defence posture. The Magister up to now had supervised communications and the treatment of the sick; roles which they and their adepts were well suited to. But as the King and Duke had spoken a line of mages had taken up position on the open beach behind the lines.

It was too far off to see or hear, but if one had drawn near, they would have seen that the assembled magi were muttering to themselves and some had their eyes closed. It was this conclave that may very well settle the army’s fate.

“What are they doing?” Peron asked a senior journeyman who was passing.

The man was a startled redhead who carried himself with a haunted look. There was blood spattered on his green robes and from the way he blanched at being spoken to by a king, it was obvious that he was not used to high matters.

“My King? I mean… majesty?” The man stuttered.

Peron never stood on ceremony on the battlefield. Good men of peasant stock were just as likely to yell out ‘hey Peron’ or refer to him as ‘yon king fellow’ for him to even notice a lack of protocol.

Instead Peron nodded impatiently at the Grand Magus and the small gathering of mages in a line on the sand.

“They are communing Sire,” the journeyman explained, “Lending each other their power.”

Peron perked up with interest and shoved out his lower lip as if pondering. Then realising that this magic fellow wasn’t going to say any more, the King made a vigorous and impatient gestures with his hands to convey that the green robed fellow should continue.

“Most mages and adepts can head talk over distance. After a fashion anyway,” the journeyman told him. “Together this ability is amplified so that they can communicate all the way to Pandoria if necessary. By the same means a water magus can lend energy to a fire magus and vice versa so focus on the best gifts and not tire either.”

“Vice what?” Peron said suspiciously.

“Vice versa, it means ‘or the other way about’ in the classic tongue,” the young man explained.

“Ah…” Peron nodded, “Excellent, very good…” He dismissed the journeyman with his thanks.

*

The scouts reported that the army to the north was still some hours off. It was much too scant a report to bring much cheer, but for Peron every slither of good news was a feast. He looked to the ships and saw that some had moved off station, already full to the gunwales with evacuated solders.

The queues on the beach were no smaller, but now at least they consisted of regular troops. Also the wounded men had also been largely removed from the tents. Those remaining would die where they lay, hopefully before the foe got to them, Peron prayed. But he had no real reason to think that they would be particular evilly treated as captives. Not by regular Westerners anyway. He didn’t dwell on what might be done to them by priest-witches.

Two thirds of his army were either on ships or waiting in line for the next boats to take them off. At a pinch the last men could throw off their armour and swim for it, he thought. Himself included he realised.

The King finally allowed himself to feel hopeful.

Then a horn sounded, followed at once by another. From the pitch and tone he knew it was not one of his and he spun around to take stock.

Enemy lancers and mounted archers were racing for the dunes that overlooked his right flank; too many for Sir Mark’s remaining cavalry to counter. Worse still, a vast array of spearmen had begun to form ranks opposing the dwindled line of pike men he had at his disposal.

Peron looked back at the men in the water. They did not break form their places in the lines and there was as yet no sign of panic. If they had been levy men then things would have been worse. Thank the gods for small mercies, he prayed. But these mercies were small enough.

“Sire… sire… your majesty,” an insistent voice urged him, “It is time to go.”

The sword captain of his bodyguard was all but tugging on his arm and looked like he would face an executioner’s axe rather than allow his king to be killed.

“Where is the Duke of Timon?” Peron asked anxiously.

“He is with the lines Sire,” the captain replied, “His guard will see him safe.”

“He will not leave yet and nor will I,” Peron responded. “Go and bolster our lines, we must give our men a chance to get away.”

The captain signalled two of the largest guardsmen Peron had ever seen and bid them step forward.

“These men will stay with you sire and at the end they will get you to a ship.”

It was a statement of fact and seeing the man’s eyes Peron could only nod.

Then once again a horn sounded and ranks of pike men and warriors began to brace themselves to receive a charge.

For the moment neither King Peron nor the Duke of Timon were concerned about the enemy’s chances of breaking through with a single charge. Any general worth his salt would not use his best men to test their lines and any attack would face the very best troops Timbre and Precips had to offer.

The real threat came from the mounted archers on their flank. Some of them had dismounted and had taken up position on the higher dunes with a commanding position overlooking their lines.

Peron took another glance at the queues of men waiting for the boats. They were no shorter and even further out to sea nothing was stirring as if the fleet had been becalmed in the fading fog.

“Move it damn you, move it,” he cursed.

Then ahead of him and to his right the familiar cry of “shields up” was heard and the King his attention back to the standing cohorts. The attack had begun.

*

As expected the first charge was repulsed easily and the only real casualties were as result of harrying fire on the right flank. Peron knew how to handle that. He would shorten the line and leave the opposing archers marooned on the top of the dunes out of range. They would have 10 or 15 minutes at least before they could regroup and find the horses to reposition themselves.

“Have the men fall-back one hundred paces on the right, it is time to close the gate,” he said to an aid. The he shot another look at the boats. The lines were shorter now and he could see four or five craft coming ashore for the next batch. “Oh and dismiss the two right hand cohorts with the wounded.”

After acknowledging the order the man sped off on foot.

Then as Peron watched, the whole line of pikes did an about turn in good order and marched a short distance from the dunes so that the great rank of men behaved as a great hinge on a gate. To the right of them dozens of men were peeling off, some carrying stretchers, but all were running now.

As they bolted past him, men dropped their pikes and some divested themselves of chain and plate so that sound of iron clanked eerily on the hard damp sand. There was now fear in their eyes and they stank of it. For one horrible moment Peron was afraid that if he had given any order to them he would have disobeyed and trampled into the beach.

The gorge rising to his throat he looked back at his retreating lines as if they too would be break now that they were facing the waiting ships. He held his breath.

At that moment the sun broached the clouds and warmed his face. He could have been on a beach in Precips or Timbre on summer’s day. He closed his eyes and he was there. If they run I will draw my sword and march at the enemy; this day is done and I have failed. The thought crushed him with its truth.

For a moment the only sounds were the waves and the crunch of boots on sand. That and the incessant muttering of the damn mages lined up behind him. What in the name of the gods are they doing?

The crunch of the boots came to a halt together and a voice screamed out “About turn.”

Peron opened his eyes in time to see 15,000 men come about as if on a parade ground. Except this was no drill and each one was ready to face certain death. Tears pooled at the king’s eyes and he grinned.

It hasn’t been so bad, he thought. We came across an ocean and destroyed an army near four times our size. And before we go down we will take another with us. Peron looked again at the ships like toys on an artisan’s sea. It was a peaceful image, especially knowing as he did that the fleet would escape and with it two thirds of his army.

A light breeze kicked up and for a moment carried the sound of war away from him. Then from behind came distant drums and a cacophony of horns; ugly and shrill like bitter seagulls. Their main army had come as he knew it would and Peron looked to the men he had left guarding the only pass down to the beach. They held steadfastly under Sir Mark’s command.

Then he heard the chanting. Low and indistinct like the buzz of a fly caught in curtains. The sound was punctuated by the sound of a bell; a single dead clank of a peel like a death knell at a funeral.

“Sagy-sah, sagy-say, ompoomi-da; saggy-say sagy-sah ompoomi-da,” he made out.

Let them come, Peron thought bitterly, assailed on both sides are we? Then he laughed openly and loud.

“Let them come,” he yelled with vehemence, “All the more to die.”

Then 15,000 voices called out in one voice of acknowledgement, “Hurrah.”

King Peron drew his sword.

*

Across the sea in Pandoria Fear’s eyes blinked open and he got out of bed. It was as if a thousand voices had spoken in his head. Naked he went to the window and stared out as if expecting to see the speakers bellow his window.

Instead he saw only the mountains dissected by silver streams so that it appeared that drop-by-drop the great shiny rocks were melting. The voices were real, for when the Magister spoke one such as he could hear it right across the world.

He let his eyes rest on the peaceful green of trees and bushes that dotted the ravines bellow him. It was beautiful.

He looked back at Katrin sleeping on the bed. She lay face down and uncovered so that he could see all of her nakedness. The curve of her bottom held the polish of last night’s spanking as if her behind had been dipped in beet juice.

He smiled at her and could not even remember why he had punished her so. His thick member, which a moment before had slept heavily between his thighs engorged a little and the still trailing head throbbed to life. He wanted to crawl inside of her and never come out. He could cry. Today the world was beautiful. And it was a lie.

Somewhere across the world the Grand Magus had melded himself with his friends and they stood on the abyss. A true battle had begun.

On the bed Katrin stirred and Fear watched her as she worked her mouth and tried to focus on his manful silhouette framed by the window.

“Arlon?” she said tentatively.

He was fully erect now, his member demanding a taste of life in the face of death; or an illusion of life. But on days like this you took what you could get.

“I’m coming,” he whispered as he strode across the room to her.

“Not yet you’re not,” she teased.

“Do you want another spanking,” he countered.

Katrin caught her breath.

“No,” she sighed longingly, “But you are going to spank me anyway aren’t you?”

She could already feel the fire in her tail; the fire and the water.

*

The clamour of the battle rang up down the beach and not a man on the sand had escaped the grip of terror. Not a natural fear of war, but something preternatural fed by the priest-witches on the cliffs above.

“Sagy-sah, sagy-say, ompoomi-da; saggy-say sagy-sah ompoomi-da,” they sang, a monkish intoning marked at its changeover with a bell.

Peron shuddered and feared for his men. Even so the allies were giving a good account of themselves and were falling back in good order towards the ships.

King Peron could feel the terror but he was removed from it as if something was holding his hand. He glanced at the Grand Magus some distance away on the beach. The man was looking right at him, lending him his strength.

“Peron,” a voice whispered in his head. “Listen to me, we don’t have much time.”

The voice was familiar, but it was no more than a whisper. Nevertheless it was clear in his head above the rage of battle and the priest-witches wild magic.

“On my signal you must recall your men and run for the ships.” It was the Grand Magus’s voice.

Peron looked at the edge of the beach by the water. There were few men waiting now, but there were no boats. The ships were standing out to sea becalmed. It was at least two furlongs to the nearest.

“Trust me King Peron,” the voice urged, “When I give the signal.”

The King’s mind raced in confusion, if they broke and run for the beach…?

Just then a great yellow bird flew over his head and he looked up. Only it wasn’t a bird, it was a man. The Magus called Gort hovered above the battle his arms outstretched with is his staff in one hand, the great rod describing a circle of fire in the air.

Peron could only gape as the mage’s mustard robs flapped in the breeze.

To the King’s right and behind him he saw a swirl of sand and then another. Sand devils were everywhere marching like soldiers away from the sea towards the dunes where the foe had again pitched archers to shoot at the allied army.

Some magic then to clear the archers, Peron thought, well it helps but… then he saw he was wrong and the devils began to line up to form a wall. No sooner doing so before it expanded in both directions towards the pass in the cliffs and the gap in Peron’s lines.

He looked again at the archers on the dunes but they were no longer shooting. In fact they had trouble holding themselves upright as the sand hills began to move under them and reshape themselves.

Above him Gort had finished making a fire ring and had now set it spinning. Then as Peron watched it shot away from the battle into the sky before hurling back at them. Only instead of returning to the War Mage, it dropped to skim the ground in front of the allied lines. Not just in front, but into and through the assailing ranks of the foe.

Whole columns of men were engulfed as they screamed, voices strangling off in mid scream and as before ranks of men fell to ash where they stood. Only this time the fire was clean and stripped the entire army down its length back to the first four ranks.

In its wake came the wall of sand rising now to 20 feet to stand between the allies and the two opposing armies in a great semi-circle open to the sea.

“Now Peron, fall back and run for the ships, we do not have long,” the Grand Magus’s voice urged him.

“Fall back,” Peron yelled and he pointed to the ships.

It took a moment and then captain’s and other officers took up the cry and the entire army and rear guard broke ranks and ran.

Still above them Gort swept over the battlefield lobbing great fireballs into the foe so that it for a moment it looked as if he could defeat them all without aid.

“Sagy-sah, sagy-say, ompoomi-da; saggy-say sagy-sah ompoomi-da,” came the chants again and the Magister, who had yet to break their line staggered back as if standing in a wind.

It was little enough, but the great wall of sand fell away leaving the fleeing army exposed to a routing attack.

“Saggy-say sagy-sah ompoomi-da, sagy-sah, sagy-say, ompoomi-da;” the song continued.

Peron was in the grip of the unnamed terror now, as was every hero in his army. So when he reached the edge of the waves he did not stop. Nor did he even wait to shed his armour. He just strode headlong into the waves. Drowning was a preferable death now.

If he had been in his right mind and not in the grip of the priest-witches song he might have noticed that his legs sank no deeper than his ankles and that the water was like sponge under him, holding him up like faintly soggy mud.

As it was he had run halfway to the ships before he realised.

Behind him both enemy armies surged onto the beach to join-up, yelling in triumph as they closed with the stragglers and the line of mages who opposed them.

Davidus extended his staff in both hands and sent a volley of fireballs at the charging foe, smashing dozens down and sending others back in panic. All along the line of mages, those that knew the same trick did the likewise, while others more versed in Earth Magic threw up dust devils.

The others broke into a run and fell back to the waterline.

By now the first of the fleeing allies had reached the ships and were scrambling aboard using nets thrown over the side and were being helped up.

Peron himself took to the ropes like a pro and having quite recovered himself, took up position in the prow of the war-cutter he had boarded to watch the conflict on shore.

The mages were falling back in organised lines out on to the sea itself, which now resembled a lake of ice, although ships still moved in the water as they always had.

In fact a stiff breeze had kicked up off the land and was even now conveniently driving the ships away out to sea.

That was not all. To either side of the escaping fleet the ocean surged and like a tidal wave on both sides it swamped the beach, both under the cliffs and across the open sand where the pike men had formerly made their last stand.

“Drink that you bastards,” Peron yelled.

Next to him stood an adept in grey who trembled as if he would burst.

“Have no fear son, we have done it,” Peron laughed.

But the man, no more than a boy, had blood shot eyes and every fibre of his being was melded to the sea.

“Are you doing that?” Peron asked in wonder.

“We are all doing this fool,” the boy shot back; he was oblivious to whom he spoke as blood trickled from his nose with the strain.

The last of the men were scrabbling aboard ships and even several mages had gained their sides. With all the sails billowing with an offshore wind the rigging strained as the ships pulled away.

Just one man stood on the glassy sea conducting the music of their escape. Peron knew at once it was Davidus Grimm.

“Get aboard you fool,” Peron screamed.

An arrow came from nowhere and hit the Grand Magus in the chest. It was just a little thing and on a better day Davidus could have brushed it way with a thought. But this day he man slump onto the watery floor in a heap.

A moment later the great waves on the back met and merged into one and released to nature, tumbled back on the sea dragging with it men and tents, sand and horses, and everything the Western Host had put in its path.

At the last moment a great mustard bird swooped down and snatched the fallen Grand Magus from the glassy water just moments before it departed magic’s thrall. His limp body hung lifeless between Gort’s arms as the War Mage used the last of his strength to land upon the deck of a ship.

“Damn,” Peron cursed.

All around him the water and wind combined to sweep the fleet to safety.

To be continued

Our story began here.

It was a few days later when Gerald was finally due home. Sylvia had been on the edge of her seat all that morning in anticipation, eager to begin what she was increasingly thinking of as her new life. She had had much to think about since her recent adventures and she had rapidly come to the conclusion that she had slept through much of her adult life chasing after material trappings that bored her as soon as she got them.

Like so many people she had pursued a life and an attitude to life that she thought she should rather than what was good for her. More than that, she had gone after what she wanted, or thought she wanted rather than what she needed. Strains of the Rolling Stones went through her mind and she rifled through Gerald’s record collection to find the song she was think of.

It was all vinyl, so old fashioned, like Gerald, but he didn’t have the song. He’s not that old I suppose, she realised. After all he had come of age in the 1980s not the swinging sixties, which was a million years ago now. Sylvia didn’t care, Gerald was coming home and she couldn’t wait. So to pass the time Sylvia had ambled into the hall on the way to her room to read.

Mary was still in the corner by the door where Drake had left her. She wore no skirt or undies, but in all other regards she was dressed as if she were going away on business with a neat business jacket and stockings up to mid-thigh. Her exposed bottom held ample evidence of Drake’s wrath and the rounds of her behind had that purple grazing and swelling that would make sitting down a trial for days to come.

By her side against the wall a bag had been packed for her and she even had on a good pair of shoes. The reason for these unusual arrangements was that Drake had arranged for Mary to be retrained at a place he knew and her shameful attire was to make sure she was in the right frame of mind.

As Sylvia understood it, Mary was in for a difficult month and her bottom was on its way for a small ration of its own personal hell. A pang of excitement clawed at Sylvia’s tummy and she wondered if Gerald would ever give her such a holiday. God it would be horrible and thrilling at the same time.

“Looking forward to it?” Sylvia teased.

Mary worked her throat and coloured a little. It so embarrassing, but that was an important part of it. Drake meant it for her own good.

“You have forgotten the basics,” he had told Mary only that morning. She knew it was true but she didn’t need Sylvia to rub it in.

“What time does the transport come?” Sylvia tried again.

“I-I don’t know… Ma’am,” Mary said uncomfortably, wishing Sylvia would go away.

“No rush eh… I was thinking of asking some of the hunt people over to lunch,” Sylvia teased. “Do you think you will still be here then?”

Mary shifted uneasily and blinked hard at the wall.

“I really couldn’t say Ma’am,” Mary sighed.

Just then there was the crunch of gravel outside and the sound of a car. Both women’s heart’s leapt in unison, both certain their individual moments had come.

When Gerald came through the door Mary didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relived.

Sylvia did. She ran at the man and wrapped her arms around her.

“Have you been good?” he asked once their long kiss was over.

Sylvia shrugged. It wasn’t for her to say. But her blush promised definitely possibilities for him to uncover on that front.

“I see Mary is still here,” Gerald chuckled, “Had an interesting time too by the looks of it.”

Sylvia grinned. “Do you know where she is going?” she asked.

“I have a pretty good idea. Somewhere she has been before,” he said in good humour, “Haven’t you Mary?”

“Yes Sir,” Mary said sullenly.

Gerald nodded and then took off his coat. He didn’t bother to hang it, Tatiana would see it to it and he would leave it to her to see that it needed a dry clean. Instinctively Sylvia went to take it, but he took her hand and led to into the open lounge.

He was careful to leave the door open where he could still see Mary, although it was more important that she could hear what was said.

“You have a decision to make don’t you?” Gerald asked Sylvia seriously.

His wife frowned.

“Do you want to be part of this life, this very strange life, or shall we set-up another house. Something more vanilla?” he poured himself a drink and fixed his eyes patiently on the glass.

Sylvia’s eyes darted back and forth in her head and her face took on the expression of one who had been slapped.

“Why do you think I went away? You needed time to think,” he told her.

Sylvia opened her mouth to speak and closed it again. It wasn’t fair to ask her. She didn’t want choices, not anymore; she wanted to be swept off her feet.

“I want you,” she said. It was one thing she would admit to. Then to help him she added, “And all that you are.”

“A life of spanked bottoms, yours and other women’s,” he said seriously, “That is who I am, or at least who I have been.”

“I want to learn the ways of Spankmanship,” she said picking up on something Drake had said.

“It will mean discipline and a tough life for your bottom. I want to train you to take over Mary’s role here at the house and take responsibility for that life and all that it entails.” Gerald took another sip of scotch and raised his eyes to watch her response.

“Oh yes, yes,” Sylvia gushed and rushed into his arms.

But then she held back, her mouth forming an O-shape.

“But what about Mary?” she asked.

“Oh Mary,” Gerald smiled and glanced at his housekeeper at her place facing the wall, “When she comes back from her little vacation she will marry Drake and set-up a house of her own. No doubt he has in mind taking her into the business.”

Mary wanted to jump for joy. But another thought crossed her mind. That bastard, he hasn’t even asked me, but her glee was not contained and part of her knew that Drake would never ask her permission to do anything. She risked a glance over her shoulder at Gerald and her eyes seemed to say ‘is it true?’ There were tears pooled at her eyes.

Gerald smiled back at her and nodded and then made a turn back gesture with his finger. Mary obeyed.

Outside wheels on gravel announced that the minibus to take Mary off to training had arrived.

“Can I say goodbye to Mr Drake?” the housekeeper asked excitedly.

“He will come and see you settled in in a day or two,” Gerald said as he put down his glass. “Now cut along.”

Mary suddenly felt exposed again and stood awkwardly by the door. Her hand strayed to cover her front.

“Submission is as submission does,” he said archly, giving her a sympathetic look.

It was a fundamental of the creed of spankmanship and she was ashamed that he should have to remind her. She needed this training, Drake was right.

“Come on, I’ll bring your bag.” Gerald told her as he moved towards it.

Mary felt like a shy teenager as she took hesitant steps outside. The driver was already out of the car and despite his detachment; she knew he was studying her nakedness. To make matters worse there were several other women in the bus all looking at her.

Then she seemed to recover some of her dignity and drew herself erect and began to walk to the car. The driver winked at her and opened the door.

Only one of the women appeared fully clothed. The exposed thigh of the woman sitting nearest the door suggested she was similarly attired as Mary. The girl kneeling on the floor wither back to Mary was completely nude with her bare bottom facing outwards. Mary was in good company she thought grimly.

*

“Now what you need is a good sound spanking,” Gerald said suddenly as he poured himself another scotch.

“Wh-why, what have I done?” Sylvia blustered, her face suddenly red.

“Oh I am sure I can think of something and besides you need putting in your place, you enjoyed Mary’s predicament far too much,” he chuckled. Then he called “Tatiana.”

Sylvia felt a tingle of excitement admixed with fear until Tatiana entered and then she flushed.

“Tatiana, your mistress here needs a jolly good spanking. Run along and fetch her hairbrush from her room.”

“Very good Sir,” the maid said, her accent thick, but she cast a smirk at Sylvia and went away with an expression like the cat that had all the cream.

Gerald watched her go in equal amusement and then turned back to his wife.

“Well?” he said, “Knickers down and turn and face the wall. You know the drill.”

Gerald was really home, she thought ruefully. Still it was better than being spanked by Mary, even if the maid was around to enjoy her shame.

By the time Tatiana returned five minutes later Sylvia was already naked below the waist and standing to face the wall.

“You may leave us,” he said to the girl as he took the brush. “My wife will be in the corner for a while before I will begin.

*

“Now young lady, come here,” Gerald beckoned at last.

Sylvia turned a regarded him for a moment with apprehensive eyes as she bit her lip. This would be her life now, no this was her life, she decided and the fear, embarrassment and excitement were all bundled up together.

“Here now and get over my knee,” he said impatiently.

Sylvia pouted and then reluctantly crossed the room. She was over his knee almost at once.

“Now where were we?” he said gently, as he patted her bare bottom with the brush.

“Gerald I…” she began, but he wasn’t listening and brought the flat surface of the hairbrush sharply down on her bottom.

“Ooh…wch,” she squeaked.

Gerald spanked her again harder.

“God I have missed you,” he said with a sigh.

And I have missed this, she decided silently.

The brush landed again and Sylvia cried out with pain. Somehow she knew he was in no hurry and this was going to take quite some time.

“Yah,” she gasped, her breathing now becoming laboured as he let fly with another quick round of swats.

Yep, she was definitely in for it, she thought ruefully.

The doorbell ringing took them both by surprise, Gerald frowned.

“Were we expecting anyone?” he asked.

Sylvia was about to say no when she remembered the hunt people she had invited in a moment of mischief.

Seeing her face he said in a sharp voice, “Who is it?”

“I… eh… might have accidentally invited one or two people to lunch,” she squeaked.

“On my first day home… Jesus Sylvia,” he groaned, “You are in so much trouble.”

“Yes Sir,” she admitted ruefully.

And then to her surprise he continued to spank her even as she heard Tatiana answering the door. He wouldn’t, she thought in panic. But she knew that he very well might.

To be continued..

Our story began here.

The Flight of the Doves
The Scroll Keeper, Sejanus Jacelon, stood patiently waiting in the middle of the admiral’s quarters that had been turned over to King Peron. Although his majesty had acknowledged him on his entrance he was still deep in conference with the Duke of Timon and other senior officers.

The fleet was three days out from battle on the beach and with a mage wind behind it was making good time across the Southern Sea.

Sejanus coughed and looked across at the small group expectantly.

“My good fellow, Scroll Keeper Jacelon,” Peron said at last. He had no idea how to address a scroll keeper, so tentatively he ventured, “Maestro is it?”

“You honour me your majesty,” Sejanus bowed.

“How is the Grand Magus?” the King asked.

The babble stopped and all eyes swivelled to the Mage.

“He is…” Sejanus shrugged, “… yet to awaken. His condition is grave. If he lives…” the scroll keeper’s voice strained as if he might break to sobbing, “He will take no further part in this war.”

“And you are now Pandoria’s leader?” Peron said gently.

“Until Davidus again takes up the reins or a Grand Magus pro temp is appointed. Until then I will attend to all civil matters and Gort will lead the fight,” Sejanus informed him.

“Gort the High Hand, the one who can fly,” Peron nodded thoughtfully, “A useful fellow to have around,” he added.

“Can I enquire as to where we are going?” the Scroll Keeper asked.

Peron bristled for a moment; he wasn’t accustomed to accounting to anyone. But then he realised that Sejanus represented his most powerful ally after the Duke of Timon and he had been remiss for not inviting the fellow or this Gort chap to the council of war.

“As to that you have me,” the King’s voice softened. “Every fibre in my being says we should head for Precips, but as his grace points out, given the strength of the enemy we should consolidate our forces in Timbre where no doubt the main attack will come.”

The Duke of Timon leaned across the desk and pounded on a map. His eyes were wild.

“With what we have gathered here added to the main Timbre army we might have a quarter of a million men,” he said eagerly.

“So you have heard,” Sejanus said with an emphasis on the word ‘have.’ Then from the quizzical expressions he realised that they hadn’t. “We really must organise our intelligence better. You do understand that Pandoria misses nothing that happens in this war,” the Scroll Keeper said impatiently.

“What has happened?” Peron asked.

“An invasion force has landed on Precips. Castle Maelon is under siege,” Sejanus informed him. “As for Timbre, another force is headed for Motra Mundy.”

Peron sunk into himself and looked aghast at William Armarlon, the Duke. Then with a cold steady glare he seized some papers form the desk and tore them into quarters.

“You had better tell me everything Maestro,” he said wearily, and then to an aide he said, “Oh and can you ask Maestro Gort to join us.”

*

People had been pouring across the bridge spanning the River Renton all morning. The bridge that led to the castle gates was wide enough on any usual day but the threat of war and news of the invasion had led to widespread panic and crowds of jostling folk began to form a panicked knot as they pressed across.

To an outside observer the refugees presented a living image of every section of Precips society. Among them were whole families pushing carts together with noblemen a horse, dejected retreating warriors and an assortment of rag-tag skulking ne’er-do-wells who hoped to profit from the coming hostilities.

High above the crowds from the main tower a woman looked down with strain etched on her face as she clutched her cloak to her neck against an imagined chill. Word had reached Castle Maelon that Aspen was already under attack and that any hope of escape from there was closed.

“What other intelligence is there?” Shula asked the captain of the guard without turning away from the window.

The captain, Euan Stand, sighed and shifted uncomfortably. He wasn’t used to be held accountable by women, but with King Peron and his brother Prince Jason away at war, Prince Cygwin, the king’s son had left Princess Shula in charge while he rallied Precips remaining forces across the sea in Timbre.

If Shula noticed Euan’s slow response she didn’t show it. Instead she continued to watch the streams of refugees crossing Renton Bridge for the dubious safety of the castle.

“We can’t let them keep coming,” Euan said, taking a step forward, “We should send them north.”

“Perhaps I will,” Shula said with a sharp emphasis on ‘I’ to counter the Guard Captain’s ‘we.’ Any decision would be hers. “That is if I get any answer to my question,” she continued.

Euan wasn’t exactly quaking at her rebuke, but at least Princess Shula was in charge and not that ditsy mother of hers.

“Aspen’s defences will not stand. The town may already have fallen. The defence fleet retreated as soon as the city was attacked from the land,” Euan explained.

“Eminently sensible,” Shula agreed, “But how were the enemy able to effect a landing in the first place? I thought we had them on the run at sea?”

Euan shrugged.

“Your uncle and our main fleet have performed with valour, but it was decided to tie up Challis and the armies there with a blockade,” Euan told his lady carefully.

You never knew with women if they understood strategy.

“We never expected an attack here, not with the king’s invasion to support the free cities of the Western Plain and our naval victories,” he continued.

“We assumed that they would move on Timbre,” Shula nodded. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Yes and no, your highness,” Euan said bitterly, “Timbre has been attacked we hear. Motra Mundy may already have fallen.”

“What?” Shula at last took her eyes from her fleeing people and wheeled around to face the captain. “But if the enemy is engaged in the West and at Challis, how are they able to attack here and in Timbre?”

“Oh it is worse Ma’am,” Euan said patiently as if lecturing a child, “I am afraid our king may have had to retreat from the West after encountering overwhelming resistance. I have it from an adept left here to facilitate…”

“We must overpower them somewhere, they cannot be this strong,” Shula accused Euan as if it were his fault.

“The report from the West is unconfirmed,” Euan said placating, “This magic is… unreliable. I don’t trust it.”

“Well I do captain,” Shula sighed dejectedly, “And I want to know every detail of this adept’s information. Send this… what’s his name, this adept?”

“Crane, Ma’am,” Euan said, he hadn’t liked the man at all.

*
Only the north gate to the city was still open, the rest having been closed to the advancing enemy. But smoke to the East and South was too close now and the old man suspected that the city walls had already been breached. At that moment, as if to confirm his suspicions a great wail went up from that direction. The screams that followed made him shudder.

Varius, spared a thought for his grandchildren on the road to Timon. He hoped that they would make it. He prayed they would. They had begged the old man to flee with them, but he had told them his duty was to remain and tend the birds. He had always loved the pigeons and doves he kept in the city’s service more than them, so they believed him.

It was not true of course; he had ever loved his family more. He just didn’t like them very much. No the reason he had not fled with them was because he was too old. As it was they had little chance of outrunning the invaders, but with him wheezing along behind they had none.

Varius heard another scream and he scanned the city rooftops and squinted for its source. His Loft was not the highest in a city of squat brick buildings, but it was high enough. He glanced around the room as if he seeing it for the first time; or the last. It smelled of pigeon shit and musty damp wood. Even in high summer the damp got into his bones and this time of year the smell was worse.

“I must make haste,” he croaked to himself and tuned back to the small scrolls of paper on the table.

He had few notes left to write and he prayed that at least one would reach Timon in time.

There was a crash in the street below and horses came at a gallop across the stone cobbled pavement. It was followed by the clash of steel and the sound of fighting nearby. Already Varius’s loft might be within arrow range and if the enemy suspected that it housed message birds on the king’s service then all would be for nought.

What to do, what to do, he pondered? If he let one bird go at a time with a single message the foe might catch on and place archers to intercept. But if he waited until he had finished attaching all the messages… What to do?

Bellow a fat ageing city watchman hacked a western warrior to the floor and split his skull. He had always suspected that he wasn’t up to the job as a guard and that if this day ever came he would desert his post and run.

He might have considered the irony of such thinking, but there really was no time. Another enemy scout swung around the corner set on plunder ahead of his comrades. Brian pierced the man’s mount in the oncoming guts and then hastily stepped back to let the horse’s body fall kicking to the ground.

The rider looked confused and nudged the horse with his knee as if to confirm it was actually dying. A horrified Brian took the rider’s head with a sweep of his sword and swallowed back the bile at his throat. After all it was only the third man he had ever killed. And it was nothing at all like picking-up drunks.

He was still considering whether to flee or throw-up when another clatter of horses’ hooves came up the street from beyond his line of sight. I should flee, he decided. But his sword posed itself to receive an attack and he moved forward and not back.

This time there were nine of them. All battle hardened and eager for the kill. The comedy warrior with armour that didn’t fit didn’t even stand right. The cocky western rider at their head laughed and turned to share an insult with the man at his right; it was his last ever action in that life.

Brain couldn’t reach the second rider so he hacked at his horse and took them both down. One down and seven to go, he thought idly as if he believed it. The blow that took him from behind was hindered by his shoulder and instead of dying at once; the old watchman fell in a pool of blood.

There was so much of it he thought. Must be the horse’s not mine, he decided. Looking up he saw the gutter on the house above them was broken. Someone should fix that, the stray thought was an idle one and as incongruous as he was in a battle.

The fallen enemy rider had gained his feet and now stood over Brian with a mask of hate and entitlement carved on his face.

“You didn’t have to come here son,” Brian coughed. Blood was wet on his chin.

Oh, that’s not good, he thought, but for some reason he laughed. The young man standing over him was so angry.

There were a few of them now; all hovering in the street, loitering with intent he would have called it. The nearest held his sword as if it was a foreign object.

Never killed a man before, Brain thought. But the kid with the sword seemed scarcely worth his time. The clouds of white doves that took flight and glowed in the sun above the city were so much more beautiful. There were millions of them all flying away; all flying north. Birds fit for a king.

The western warriors in the street looked up and saw them too. Even the doves flee, they sneered oblivious to the significance of the flight. Then turning back to the fallen watchman they saw he was already dead.

“Come on boys, let’s see what we can take,” one of them laughed. And the men remounted and with a clatter of hooves pressed on deeper into the city.

To be continued.

Steampunk is very much back in vogue these days, although many of you might be forgiven for never having heard of it. The label ‘Steampunk’ was not coined until 1987 and even then it was merely mooted as a possible collective term for a sub-genre of science fiction writing. And some say it was wholly intended as a spoof on cyberpunk.

This last point maybe true as far as coining a phrase was concerned and the confusion with the use of the term punk has put many off. But the traditions themselves are not only older, but a long way removed from the anarchic aspirations of punk and cyberpunk. For one thing Steampunk is smart and savvy and hankers for a return to order of a sort, albeit a sort of stylish Victorian New Order.

For those who do not know, this sub-genre usually deals in alternative history and what-if scenarios. Most especially these stories are set either during the Victorian era or in a 20^th century where 19^th century values and key technologies did not perish and technology and society took another path.

The common characteristics of these stories are often clockwork, airships and of course steam power.

The movies The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with Sean Connery, and Wild West with Will Smith and Kenneth Branagh based on the 1960s TV show of the same name, gives one a feel for the sort of retro science that embodies Steampunk. Indeed could be said to be wholly within this sub-culture.

It is this particular genre that first attracted me as far back as the late 1970s, almost a decade before the name was even invented and the inspiration for this literary tradition can be traced back even further to novels as from the mid-19^th and early 20^th century such as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne and a whole swathe of books by HG Wells such as the War in the Air, the Time Machine and even War of the Worlds.

The mechanical legged Martians and clockwork time machine are staples of what is now regarded as Steampunk, where frock-coated and top-hatted heroes abound.

Apart from Wells, it was the novels of Michael Moorcock that was to be my first taste of retro-sci-fi and which is now known as Steampunk. His books presumed a world where the British Empire had not fallen and great mechanical steam or clockwork driven leviathans crossed continents bring destruction to mankind.

His alternative histories included works such as the Ice Schooner, the Land Leviathan, Warlord of the Air and the Steel Tsar. All of which had most of the classic features we now associate with Steampunk.

To complete the picture a whole raft of new authors such as Scott Westerfield, William Gibson and Cherie Priest have emerged sometimes confidently writing under the Steampunk banner.

Today influences can be seen far beyond traditional Steampunk and hints can even be seen in Dr Who (whose frockcoat predates even Moorcock) and many other contemporary imaginative fiction.

So it has been very much with this literary tradition in mind that I have viewed the growing emergence of the Steampunk sub-culture, where Victoriana meets sci-fi in brass and clockwork, and top hats with goggles that has even spawned a music culture.

So what has this got do with spanking and TTTWD?

My first encounter with real life Steampunks was at the LAM some years ago and then again during a London Fetish Fair where real embodiments of characters straight out of a Steampunk novel down to the hat, goggles and the whip in their hands walked the aisles. While on stalls parallels with corsetry and other fetish gear could clearly be seen.

Incidentally, returning to Michael Moorcock for a moment, before the old hippy engaged in a campaign to restrict spanking books to the top shelf on the grounds that no woman really wants to be spanked (well his heart is in the right place and to be fair some of the books he cites are rather misogynist) he did write a few books of his own that touched upon the matter in hand. The time travelling adventures The Life and Times of Jerry Cornelius and The Adventures of Una Persson and Catherine Cornelius in the 20th Century were not adverse to a bit of S&M, as it was quaintly called in those days. None of these books are strictly Steampunk, but the author certainly has such credentials.

So given an opportunity it has been an emerging ambition of mine to explore two merging interests. No, I am not buying a top hat and goggles, but I have written a short Steampunk spanking story which you can read here tomorrow.

Nobody knew exactly what Dr Ebenezer Marley was a doctor of. He certainly wasn’t a medic and although he had something of an educated slant to his words, nothing about his demeanour suggested he had had very much to do with the great institutions of learning either side of Atlantic.

Marley was neither tall, nor particularly short. He was a well-built man who hid himself under a full-length leather wing-button coat which was his custom to wear in summer or winter. On account of this the coat might have been adjudged by some to have seen better days. It certainly contrasted with is dark brown coachman hat, which was so constantly renewed that one might suppose that the good doctor had taken the old adage ‘to get a head, get a hat’ thoroughly to heart. However, if this had been true, one might expect that he would pay better attention to his hair, both facial and otherwise. For on such occasions that he doffed his hat, he revealed so brief a rash of grey-red covering atop of his head that it appeared as if he had been dusted with rust.

But the most striking thing about Marley was the contraption he wore upon his face. At first it was possible to suspect that they were spectacles or industrial goggles of some kind, but even a cursory inspection offered the suggestion of two clock faces over his eyes. Capping both these circles were two opaque black eyepieces that could be raised or lowered by means of a hinge to reveal a pair of adjustable bifocals. Goggles and sun visors of some sort were not entirely unknown in this industrial age, but few were more constant or elaborate in their appearance than Ebenezer Marley’s. But the truth was Dr Marley was not only a man of his age, but a veritable pioneer.

For as an engineer and an inventor Marley’s ingenuity knew few bounds and so outlandish and un-British was he in his manner, that many supposed him to be a foreigner; possibly even an American. America being one of the palaces to which he was known to have been a regular visitor.

Not that there was anything unusual about travel to America in these days. It seemed that some of the very best people would hop onto one of the new-fangled airships without a thought. Indeed before the War Between the States had broken out, many had proposed a regular service between the Great Cities of London and New York. It had even been suggested that persons as low down the social order as bank clerks and actors might cross the Atlantic in this way, although most sensible people had dismissed the idea.

Dr Ebenezer Marley was not one of these. In fact his business was very much dependent upon these very innovations. Inventions such as the patent steam-car, which for some reason had yet to quite catch-on, were very much a case in point. In fact to-date there was only one in the world and that was his.

Marley eyed it suspiciously as if it was in a plot against him and then kicked it. The steam turbine design was revolutionary, but it was prone to running out of either water or heating agent – just one of the pitfalls of incorporating it into such a small vehicle. The steam-car or to give it its full name, the auto-propelling steam locomotive street-car resembled a small carriage liveried in black and gold. The black was largely lacquered wood and the gold appearance was actually provided by the exposed brass workings. The wheels were a hybrid affair of steel and wood with vulcanised rims as standard carriage wheels had proved too flimsy and all steel train-like wheels too heavy and loud on street cobbles. All-in-all he was quite proud of it and if he could find a way to increase its range beyond 50 or 60 miles then he might even compete with the railways, let alone the horse.

He was still considering the problem of its failure to start when he remembered where he was going and why. One of his workshops in Rotherhithe had recently taken on a new apprentice who had proved so adept at the business that he was coming up with ides of his own. Not that most of them were all that practicable, not from what Marley had heard, but it was said that the boy could understand and repair existing machines on the briefest of introductions and far faster than any in the shop.

Marley looked around and up and down the street. The steam car had chosen to come to a halt in the Strand, necessitating him to push the vehicle up a side street to the corner of King Frederick Street.

“Should be safe enough there,” he mused aloud.

But all the same he glanced up and down the anonymous shopping parade for the least hint of an unsavoury character before being satisfied.

The car was now parked outside the Harp public house and there was a constable station just across the way. He didn’t think the opera going clientele of the pub would trouble it overmuch and in any case he would send word to Albert and have it taken back to Highgate in due course.

The only problem left was how he was get to Rotherhithe.

*

The fog had got up since his departure from King Frederick Street and on the river it was worse. The prevalence of steam ships had not helped the matter and all the way there in the back of the hired jolly boat Marley had pondered myriad ideas for an improved vessel using turbines.

“Mayflower Wharf all right for you governor?” the boatman asked.

Marley looked up and saw the old Mayflower Inn looming out of the fog. He knew it well and it knew him; being the closest establishment to his Rotherhithe workshop. Not that he now had much choice anyway as the boatman was already fiddling with the small steam engine that drove the boat, having already committed to the moorings.

“It will serve,” Marley said officiously, although he knew no better place to land.

By the time the boatman had hauled the boat to the side Marley had already stepped onto the dark rickety planking of the lower wharf and was striding out for the steps up to the pub’s back door. Even before the man could protest, Marley sent a half crown coin spinning into the air over his shoulder to be expertly snatched up.

“Thanks governor,” the boatman called, but his passenger was already inside.

The pub was a close medieval affair of the kind that still abounded in London. The oak panelling was black-brown and put Marley in mid of his steam car so ignobly abandoned near the Strand. Even the brass of the new-fangled beer pumps was similar.

“Dr Marley, glad to see you Sir,” the proprietor called over as the inventor-engineer picked his way through the late-afternoon mob of boatmen and workers from the underground railway that connected Rotherhithe with the City.

At a pinch he could find his way home that way, but he hated being so closed in and much preferred the river or better still the open sky.

“What can I get you?” the proprietor asked.

“Another time,” Marley said with a wink.

The proprietor, a portly man in shirtsleeves and a large yellow check waistcoat, winked back at the unspoken promise of future custom as the inventor pressed on through. The tight mob of customers made for slow going and he had to side-step discarded stools as he cut through spaces behind tables on his way out.

The front door of the Mayflower opened on an alley that led to the narrow cobbled street that ran parallel to the river. From the front of the pub Marley could see the workshop which was once owned by the Brunel and the subway ventilation chimney. Marley took a small pride in that heritage and paused to peer at the unimposing building over the top of his goggle-glasses. But only for a moment, as the fog, a real pea-souper began to close in on him obscuring even the workshop just yards from where he stood.

*

Marley stepped into the shop unnoticed and took stock of the work underway. At one end of the establishment an apprentice worked some bellows while another hammered at an anvil. It was the kind of work he had secured the premises to contend with; not wanting it in Highgate where his neighbours were wont to complain. But even here most of the work was of a more delicate sort and he noted a row of silent apprentices focused on small brass instruments and working with files as they refined tiny brass cogs.

One of his recent contracts was for a difference engine for the HM Computing Department at the Treasury. It was little more than a simple adding machine in Marley’s eyes, albeit one based up on Babbage’s better analytical machine. His more advanced and intricate machines were designed in Highgate and assembled at a workshop in Sheffield.

As he watched, Miles Dexter saw him and grinned. His old friend had begun life in publishing, having fled his native America for freedom in London. It was a profession that had been open to him on account of his rare education, a story in itself, and his exotic heritage. These had appealed to several publishers in Clerkenwell, who had soon found him to be more than literate and capable at the trade..

However, Dexter’s real passion had been for engineering and wondrous new labour saving machines, but even in more progressive London few would employ what they saw as a blackamoor in such a role. It had not been until he had met Ebenezer Marley some 12 years before that Dexter had at last had his chance. Ever since then the two men had been business partners.

Miles was a huge man who like Marley was rarely seen without either his hat or his goggle-like spectacles. The hat, a brown Derby, was usually worn with sand-brown cattleman’s coat of rather a better condition than his partner. But given the heat of the workshop, today it had been set aside.

“Ebenezer,” Miles called over, “Come and see this.”

Marley crossed the room half-acknowledging a chorus of greetings from apprentices sitting a benches who otherwise stayed attentive to their work.

“That old steam press we have may have some life left in it after all,” Miles smiled. “I hated having to buy a new one.”

The man’s baritone voice had only a touch of the Americas now, but it carried with it a serious enthusiasm that was both at once friendly and ripe with gravitas. He folded his arms and directed Marley’s attention to the small machine in the corner where an apprentice fussed over it on his hands and knees.

Marley had already been told it was little better than scrap and its continued operation was of no small value. So he wondered what had effected this change.

“Young John Smith has certainly been a godsend I can tell you,” Dexter chuckled. “I expect you’re going to want him up at Highgate afore long.”

Smith was the apprentice he had heard so much about and he studied the boy with a renewed interest.

The young man was small. Not just short, but diminutive like a child. He even wore a boy’s brown suit of the type that might have adorned a youth from a better household. Strangely though the apprentice was wearing a man’s bowler hat and heavy work’s goggle’s that made his head appear far too large for such a wisp of a body.

“How old are you?” Marley said with a frown.

“Me Sir? Why Sir? I’m… eh… near 19 Sir,” the youth spluttered.

Marley noticed that the boy pulled the scarf at his neck up to his mouth as he spoke. Also for a moment his voice had seemed a little high before deepening. The lad was obviously lying and was entirely much younger than he had said.

“Show Dr Marley this machine working,” Dexter said sharply.

He had sensed that Marley was suspicious of the boy and was suddenly concerned that he had missed something. Come to think of it, Smith had used some pretty highfaluting words in the past couple of weeks and his accent was all over the place; so much so that even Dexter could tell he wasn’t the normal run-of-the-mill National School type.

The youth seemed all too keen to break off from direct conversation and ducked back under the machine to finish his repair.

It was then that Marley noticed something else. He had enough Progressives, Aesthetics and exponents of the Dress Reform Movement among his lady-friends to know a woman in trousers when he saw one. And looking down at the broad base of ‘John Smith’s’ behind as ‘he’ bent over to fix the machine, Marley knew that he saw one.

Something about the change in his partner’s demeanour caused Miles to take a fresh look at his apprentice and then really look. Oh shoot, how could he have been so blind? The American engineer thought and clapped his hand to his head.

He shot a glance at Marley who smiled back with a shrug.

“So Mr Dexter you are telling me that Mr Smith has a real talent with machines?” the good doctor said casually.

“That is so Dr Marley, so much so that I might have been a might over attentive to his work and not his provenance,” Dexter said pointedly.

Just then the machine roared into life and the piston slid up and down with a steady clank working the press.

The apprentice got back to her feet and smiled through several layers of grime obscuring her face under the goggles.

“What did you say your name was again?” Marley asked her.

“Smith Sir, John Smith,” the girl said in a gruff voice, for it was definitely a girl and even Marley was amazed he hadn’t spotted it at once.

“Funny name for a girl, John,” Marley said accusingly.

The girl shot a look sideways and then drew herself up.

“I suppose it is… I mean… who would call a girl John?” the girl decided to bluff it out.

“That is what I want to know?” Marley growled at her.

She swallowed and looked at Dexter for a rescue. The big man folded his arms and looked even angrier with her if anything.

“What is your name girl?” Marley asked her gently.

“I am not a girl,” she pouted, becoming a little too shrill.

Ebenezer Marley looked at his friend and then back at the girl.

“I can well understand why you would hide your sex, but now I need to know who you are,” Marley urged her.

“I told you Sir, I am John Smith from here in Rotherhithe,” she said, again affecting a deeper voice.

Marley dropped his gaze so that he was peering at her over the rims of his large goggle-specs and glared at her.

“I’ll give you one more chance girl,” he said with emphasis on the last word, “What is your name?” His words were hard with sharp corners and each syllable was crafted with care like one of his machines.

If he could have seen her eyes he would have seen stubborn consternation written there. As it was her industrial goggles gave her a blank hostile stare and only the small motion of her Adam’s Apple-free throat gave away the least nervousness. The girl weighed his words carefully before offering a much less considered reply.

“I am John Smith,” she said scornfully.

The not so tall, but stocky Marley shrugged and swallowed down a smile at being challenged by a smaller than average woman who barely reached the lower part of his chest. Then he looked at Dexter who was shaking his head in disbelief at the girl’s defiance.

A moment later Marley seized the girl easily and comfortably tossed her over his shoulder. It was a small matter from there to stroll with her helplessly secured while he made his way to the back office while she berated them with girlish protests and a spate of impotent kicking. Dexter followed on in high amusement at a leisurely pace as he contemplated Marley’s next move.

Once in the office Marley sat down on a chair and dropped the girl to his lap before hauling her across his knee. Her ample womanish behind thus tendered to his mercy, he spanked her hard.

“You bastard,” she yelped, adding a stream of even more unladylike epithets.

“That, young lady, is no way to speak to one’s employer,” Marley chided her before spanking her again.

“You’re not my employer, he is,” the girl spat angrily.

Marley spanked her again hard, extracting a pained angry yelp from the girl.

“You want me to tan your behind for you instead?” Dexter suggested pointedly.

The struggling girl paused for a moment and then said in a distinctly girlish and hesitant voice “No.”

“Glad to oblige madam,” Marley said with a chuckle.

He brought his arm down with a determined blast setting the girl kicking and yelling her lungs out as he continued his efforts for some minutes.

“How did you miss that she was a…” Marley began, but a look on Dexter’s face warned him not to go there.

Besides, with her loose coat on and her face hidden under grime, hat and goggles it wasn’t that obvious. If she hadn’t wagged her tail at him he might not have spotted her himself. To pass over his partner’s mistake he addressed his attention on the girl. He could see even through thick woollen trousers that she had a full round behind. It was the kind that might have belonged in a music hall on the stage and certainly didn’t need a bustle for further emphasis. He was also certain that she was no girl, not in the youthful sense. What he had here were two very interesting things; a woman and a mystery.

“What is your name?” he asked again as he spanked on.

The girl was feeling it even through her trousers, her fiercely clamped jaw and the angry red around the goggles told him that.

“Your name?” he demanded as he spanked her again and yet again.

“You bastard, you can’t do this to me,” she raged indignantly.

Somewhere during the spanking her hat had slipped and now it rolled off altogether and onto the floor. The girl’s hair tumbled from under it, falling in a single plaited tress down the right side of her face. Marley reached down and grabbed the goggle strap and pulled it away to completely reveal the young woman’s angry glower.

“If you don’t stop that sewer mouth of yours and tell me your name I am going to take your breeches down and really set to work,” he warned her.

For emphasis he brought his arm down several more times as he watched her face. She was blushing patriotically, her jaw still hard set. But he fancied there was some yielding in her eyes.

“You wouldn’t dare,” she spat, but there was some doubt.

“Your name girl,” he bellowed as he spanked down hard again.

Finally she opened her mouth and set her eyes darting back and forth as she considered another lie. Marley gave her an almighty spank that made her return a wide-eyed gasp.

“I will take you onto the workshop floor, take your pants and trousers down in front of everyone and give you a sound spanking on your bare bottom if you don’t start talking,” Marley warned her.

“Amelia,” she squeaked, “Amelia Craven.”

The spanking ended at once and Marley set the blushing girl on her feet in front of him where she continued to wriggle unable to help herself from rubbing her behind.

“Amelia, Miss Craven,” Marley sighed wearily, “At last. Now how old are you and where…?”

He pushed a finger under the bridge of his own spectacles, not knowing where to begin.

Amelia glowered at him with a rueful pout, still rubbing her bottom.

“I’m 21,” she said defiantly.

Marley reached out tenderly and wiped some grime from her cheek. Her pout deepened, emphasising her rather full broad lips. She could see he didn’t believe her.

“Well almost,” she added quickly. “That is rather the problem.”

“I think you had better tell me from the beginning,” he sighed.

“I think I’ll leave you to it,” Dexter rumbled as he unfolded his arms.

He shot Marley a look that said ‘rather you than me.’

*

“I have always wanted to work with machines Sir,” Amelia told Marley, “Any machines. As a girl I liked watches, but lately I have moved on to steam engines, airships and… I hear you have a turbine driven steam car.”

“So why the deception? I have employed women before,” Marley asked her.

The girl pouted again and began to rock backwards and forwards as if concocting another story.

“Not with the big machines, not with airships,” she countered.

He suspected she was still hiding something and folded his arms in warning.

“I… I…” she chewed on her lip and looked at the floor. “My family… they…”

Her voice had lost its put-on worker’s edge and now began with well-rounded with plums and was crisply clipped.

“I was to marry… oh it was awful…” she continued.

“You ran away?” Marley suggested.

Amelia nodded.

Marley pursed his lips and he walked to the window. It was growing dark now and there hadn’t been much of view to begin with. The fog outside was thicker than ever and even the grim bleak shapes of riverside workshops and warehouses had slipped from view.

“You spoke of my steam car and the turbine,” Marley said to the glass without turning.

He could see her behind him in the glass of the window, lost and more scared than she would ever admit.

“I read about it in the Times and… well after that I sought out magazines and read all I could,” she gushed.

“The Times was rather dismissive of my ideas I seem to recall.” Still he didn’t turn around.

“They don’t understand,” she said scornfully, “They are living in the past all of them. My father talks about Ancient Greek and Latin as if they will unlock the world. Steam is the future; steam and airships.”

Marley turned and studied Amelia’s earnest face and came to a decision.

“Just when are you 21?” he asked thoughtfully.

“You know, I am not sure of the date,” she whispered, “I was born in October, the eighth of October 1851.”

An auspicious year, he thought.

“You have a birthday in 10 days.” She could sign her own lawful indentures at that time and there was nothing her family could do about it, he pondered, that if she was sure. Then he watched her carefully.

“So you want to be our apprentice do you?” he said, “You sought us out?”

“You, yes,” she said in a voice touched with awe. “I dared not go to you direct lest you saw through my lies at once.”

In case you didn’t, she thought with some self-insight. A man such as Ebenezer Marley could never have been fooled by a mere girl. Not in her eyes.

He nodded.

“Very well, from tomorrow you will work at the Highgate workshop, it is mostly brain work there. But I warn you, I demand, dedication, loyalty, discretion, obedience and honesty,” he said insistently, “What do you demand?”

She opened her mouth and closed it again. They were to make a bargain then. This was her chance, she had to seize it.

“I am not a boy,” she said to state the obvious, “But I want a chance to… to be… be an engineer. I will accept and do everything you say if… if you at least make some allowances for my… my tender disposition and I will find other more delicate skills to offer you by way of compensation.”

She wanted to demand to be an equal to any other man, but several times she had had to duck out of some heavy work and if she didn’t gain some acknowledgement now for the disadvantage of her sex, she knew that later it might go against her.

“A good friend of mine says that ladies are equal but different,” he said kindly.

“I don’t want to be a lady,” she shot back at him bitterly; “I want to learn to be an engineer and… a woman I suppose.”

“Truly?” he asked.

She nodded vigorously.

“What are you to be then, a delicate flower? An engineer in skirts?” his question was an honest one.

“Oh I am tough enough and with my previous proviso, use me as you will,” she countered.

“Then we have an arrangement,” he said.

Amelia extended her hand and he took it with a shake.

“Now I am no more a gentleman than you profess to be lady,” he said.

She gave a curt nod. She had had enough of such sensibilities.

“You set out to deceive me and furthermore you still put on some heirs that you profess to eschew,” he said sharply.

She blushed, but didn’t argue.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, “Teach me.”

“In time I will introduce you to some progressive women who will teach you much,” he said, “Now drop your trousers and whatever you have beneath and bend over the desk.”

As he spoke he hooked his thumb at the buckle of his belt and drew the leather strap through the hoops on his breeches.

Amelia’s eyes flew wide and she gaped at him.

“Given our arrangement, am I unreasonable?”

She gulped and blushed with shame. Had she submitted to marriage, a man would have seen and commanded this and more she had no doubt. At least this was on her terms.

Steeling herself, Amelia turned and undid her trousers and the tie beneath so that she was able to drop her clothing both together in one brave act. Bending was more shameful, but boy apprentices suffered so she knew and this might go some way to erasing the unease she felt at her deception.

Marley started in astonishment at the curve of the girl’s behind. It did indeed belong on a stage. An almost perfect sphere, it was the colour of cream and as smooth as alabaster with a tight split between the firm rounds. It seemed a pity to mark it. But this was both needful and he admitted a pleasure; one that would do miss starry-eyes good if she was to thrive as a woman engineer in a man’s world.

The belt landed with a searing thwack that Amelia prayed could not be heard beyond the room. It was a more complete honest sting than her governess birch and not as biting as her father’s cane. But like both those trials, the real burn was to come and continued to build even as Marley lay on another breath-stealing swipe of leather.

From Marley’s point of view her bottom coloured well and held it sharply. It did not take long to place an even blush over every part of her curves, but still she did not quite cry out. Only her breathing betrayed her discomfort as it became a little laboured, that and a tremor at her lips, but she had set herself as if this were a test.

In all, the belt landed perhaps two dozen times before she gave a little shout and showed tears at her eyes. By then of course her bottom was quite red and enlarged with rubbery welts tainting the curves at her rounds and cleft. With no definite count Marley added six more and then stood back.

“Thank you Sir,” she said in a tremble of a voice, “May I stand?”

“You may,” he acknowledged.

Amelia got unsteadily to her feet and after ensuring that her shirt covered her front to her thighs at least, she turned nervously to face him without further repair to her dress and again offered him her hand.

“Thank you Sir,” she said again as he took it.

He nodded and finished with his buckle at his waist.

“Do I… must I…?” she began, the first real tear rolling down her cheek. “Am I to stand in the corner?” She looked at her feet demurely as she spoke.

“With your trews and so forth firmly at your ankles and for as long as I say regardless of who may enter the room…” he told her sharply.

She nodded without looking up, her face colouring as much as her bottom ever had.

“…the next time I have occasion to thrash you,” he added.

“Sir?” she risked a glance up at him.

“Pull your… whatnots up girl,” he muttered.

“Oh… oh yes Sir.” She was gushing again, but obeyed hastily.

“Welcome to Marley Dexter & Co,” Marley said with a grin.

“Oh yes, thank you Sir,” she grinned, but this time her hands were clamped to her bottom as she did a little shimmy.

Our story began here.

The Siege
Shula hadn’t been quite ready to believe the reports regarding the size of the army set against them until she saw it with her own eyes.

“You say we think this the main force has gone to Timbre?” she said to Euan Stand as she reviewed the hordes of warriors rapidly surrounding the castle.

“It is hard to say but… this is what we face your highness,” the captain offered tentatively, his great mass towering over her as he scratched the graze of steel grey hair that topped his head.

“This force is roughly a third of the size of the army that has taken Motra Mundy highness,” Crane put in with a shrug.

The tall thin wizard resembled a ragged crow and although usually people thought of him as tall, he was near a head shorter than the Euan Stand.

Shula glanced at both men and nodded.

“I suppose what the captain is trying to say is that it doesn’t matter how much more trouble Timbre is in, this is the battle we must fight,” Shula sighed.

Euan Stand heaved the smallest sigh of relief. The woman was catching on fast, he thought.

The princess pulled a cloak tight about her throat and went a little ashen so that her freckles stood out on her face. Her emerald green eyes peered out between two bangs of red hair as she looked again on the army outside. But she did not quail and moved closer to the window to review the situation again.

The enemy were too far away to discern much about them, but Crane had reported few magical elements among their ranks, which was something at least. So too was the construction of the castle. Standing at a bend in the River Renton, it was surrounded on three sides by deep wide water. The central tower on which they now stood looked short to an outside view, but it was stolid and squat and appearances were deceptive. And whilst the ancient inner tower was more vulnerable to modern siege equipment, the outer circular walls were far more robust. One of these was hard to the old keep and great hall, while another greater wall surrounded that holding supporting buildings and a haven for the refugees.

“There is a blind side from this tower above the great hall,” Euan said gently as he hoped that the princess was receptive to his strategic thinking. “The roof of the hall rises half as high as the main tower to block the battlements on the river side.”

Shula nodded as she tried to take it in.

“It can be countered by placing archers on the roof, but that will weaken our defence forces a little and require some disruption in the royal apartments as we struggle to keep these men supplied,” the captain said softly.

“You expect to fight within the inner keep then?” Shula shuddered at the thought of the foe so deep into her home.

“Not for several days or, the gods be praised, weeks I hope,” the captain offered carefully, “But if the need should come… it will take too long to place men on the roof as it has no ready access.”

Shula nodded again. She remembered her father saying that castles were always impregnable until 10 minutes into a siege and then all the foolish weaknesses were revealed.

“The water we have will outlast any siege,” Shula said decisively to show she understood, “There are wells that draw from the river. But we must strictly ration food, have someone calculate what we have… for? How many people are there?”

Euan shrugged.

“Find out. You and your men will get subsistence rations from now on; you and the younger children under 10. All non-combatants like me are to be given starvation rations. No exceptions do you understand?” Shula sounded angry. “If there is not enough food for a month then we will…”

“I think we have at least that much Ma’am,” Euan assured her, “Actually I am more worried about our supply of arrows and medicine.”

The captain was also worried about the woman’s soft heart. He had to say something.

“Your orders regarding the children…” he knew it was essential that they could discuss this.

“Parents will feed their children no matter what. Even your soldiers,” Shula said firmly. “And even if they don’t, a castle full of screaming children will drag moral down faster than…”

Only a woman would think of that, Euan realised, she might turn out to be good at this.

“In that case Ma’am, we should perhaps feed children up to 12 or even 14 if our stores will support it?” the captain suggested now convinced the woman was right.

“Let us see what we have first, but I agree,” Shula replied.

Both she and the officer looked at Crane for his opinion, but he only shrugged. What did he know of sieges?

*

Days had passed into weeks and the enemy at the gates were in no hurry to make their assault. Euan was convinced that it was because the more dynamic generals and most of the priest-witches were focussed on Timbre and that the siege here was intended as a holding action.

“Well it is working,” Shula said bitterly.

“Yes Ma’am,” Euan agreed.

But not everything was going against them. The stores versus refugees had held up well and even with a relaxed distribution regime, supplies could last eight or nine months. However, the shortage of medicine remained a problem and the best they had been able to do was distil vinegar to clean wounds. But Crane had consulted with several healers in the castle and reported that matters might be mitigated with magical intervention.

“I thank you Mr Crane,” Shula said with a smile.

Crane bowed awkwardly and muttered for the hundredth time, “It is just Crane Ma’am.”

The arrow shortage had been rather more critical. Euan had set fletchers working around the clock and given the lack of serious attacks they had been able to make more than they were using.

“We will use them fast enough when they attack,” the captain said bitterly, “A thousand archers can get through over 200,000 arrows an hour in a battle.”

Shula gaped. That was one for every man at her gates.

“Most fall harmlessly even in an experts hands,” Euan might have been reading her thoughts.

“How many arrows do we have?” Shula felt sick, knowing that when the attack came it would really bite.

“We began with a million or so,” Euan shrugged, “I have 200 fletchers and hastily assembled apprentices working around the clock producing near 5,000 new arrows every day… I expect the count to reach 12 hundred thousand by about tomorrow. Or to make it clearer, half a day’s solid fighting’s worth if all our archers shoot.”

Shula sat down ashen faced as she took this in.

“Your highness, if it came to that we would probably win. That many arrows…” he imagined the carnage, if only they were that foolish, he thought. “Sorties generally last 20 minutes and less than 500 men would be in a position to return fire,” Euan said encouragingly.

“Good to know,” Shula said unconvincingly. “What you are saying is that they will wear us down with small attacks and each time we will…” she did a calculation in her head, “…use some 30 or 40,000 arrows.”

He nodded.

“Which will then take a week to replace?” Shula added pointedly.

“So long as the materials last out, yes,” Euan agreed.

Shula pitched the bridge of her nose in despair. Thank the gods I am not a man. I despise this mathematics of death.

“Your highness, there are other matters we must…” Euan decided to broach the thing now.

Shula looked up and wondered what more horrors he had for her.

“Restrictions on supplies of food and medicine have been strict, but we have had a few breaches,” he sighed, “Hoarding and attempts to side step the rules.”

Shula frowned. She thought about her maid Cali still standing in the corner back in her chambers. The girl had swiped a crust of bread from the kitchen; an act for which she would heartily pay when Shula had the time. The girl wouldn’t sit down for a week by the time Shula was done with her.

“One was just a young mother chancing her arm,” Euan said, “I took the liberty of having stripped across a block in the yard and even now she is having her bare arse blistered with a quirt by a sergeant-at-arms. She won’t sit easily for the rest of this siege I promise.”

“That is for the good but see that her children have been fed. Some food may have been… misplaced.” Shula relaxed. She was on easy ground now. “Oh and put the woman to work… making arrows.”

Euan snorted in approval. Then he said, “Actually it is the other issue that concerns our remaining thief.”

“Misplaced food you mean?” Shula asked.

“That’s right Ma’am,” the captain looked uncomfortable, “We caught some black-marketeers, a man and a woman. The man was killed trying to escape, but we have the woman in custody.”

“You want to hang her?” Shula said bluntly.

Oh the gods no, Euan thought, but it was needful he knew.

“Bring her in,” Shula said wearily.

It didn’t take long and after a minute two guards entered either side of a woman like bookends. She was tallish and thin with short tousled hair and men’s clothes. Shula adjudged her to be in her late 20s, but by her manner she was not the usual highwayman’s moll or footpad. In fact she looked arrogant and defiant.

“What is your name?” Shula asked.

The princess took a moment to sit down without looking at the woman as if her captive were singular of no importance.

“Leah Gingham-Woolf,” the woman said in a dead voice.

By its vowels she was of a professional class, but not so highborn that she didn’t carry a hint of an Aspen accent.

“You are what a… a footpad, smuggler?” Shula asked.

“I am the proprietor of an export business,” she said proudly, and then a bit less certainly, “Or I was.”

“You don’t look like an exporter,” Shula accused her.

“I had to take to the road when Aspen fell and I thought I might be safer as a man.” The woman sounded bored.

“Hard times,” Shula replied.

“It has been dreadful your highness.” For a moment the woman sounded as if she might cry.

“So you thought you would make it harder for others by stealing?” Shula said bitterly.

The woman blanched and then looked at the floor.

“I didn’t mean…” she sighed. At school this was the time to say ‘no excuse ma’am’ and take her licks. But her licks this time would be delivered by a rope. “I fell in with the wrong man, alright,” she spat bitterly as if it were Shula’s fault. “It is kill or be killed out there, you should try it sometime ma’am. I have been a proud woman all my life and I have never needed a man… but Gus saved me… I didn’t want to raid the stores… I swear by the gods that I didn’t know that was what he intended until… oh what difference does it make? I probably wouldn’t have stood up to him anyway. Life is just small steps isn’t Ma’am? And I took small steps in the wrong direction.”

“And if someone had stolen from you? Back in Aspen I mean?” Shula asked.

Leah opened her mouth to answer and then closed it again.

“I once vouched for a woman who had. Got her whipped instead of a penal indenture. She came to work for me afterwards actually.” Leah smiled at the memory. “But it was only a blanket she stole and it wasn’t during a siege. Anyway she is dead now too; never made it out of Aspen.”

The sadness in the woman’s voice was crushing.

“I have no one,” Leah whispered, “So hang me. It is just.”

“No it is not is it? Nothing about this is just,” Shula sighed. “This damn war wasn’t asked for and the demon-spawn bastards at our gates can go to bloody hell.”

Shula sucked in air through her nose and let it go slowly as it would blow away all the world’s ills.

“Drop those ridiculous breeches right down to your ankles and get over that bench. I want your bare bottom pointing at the ceiling and your elbows on the floor.” Shula ordered the woman.

“Your highness…” Euan protested.

“Hanging a woman this early in the siege is not good for morale is it? We have the culprit; this man. Hang him from the castle gibbet with a sign that reads ‘looter,’” Shula spat angrily.

“But he is already…” Euan let the puzzlement fall from his face and he shrugged. “Yes Ma’am.”

Leah was still hovering and eyeing the guards and the bench in some consternation.

“You, breeches down, bottom over that bench, I won’t tell you again,” Shula snapped.

The woman fumbled for a coarse rope that held up her tattered clothing and pulled it free. Her trousers fell to her ankles in one motion, baring her legs and revealing a lack of underclothes.

There was no dignity in her struggle to get down and over the bench, but she managed it after a fashion so that she was jack-knifed with her small hard white bottom mooning the ceiling.

“You,” Shula said sharply to the older of the two guards gaping at the woman’s shame. “You have grown daughters?”

“Yes Ma’am,” the guard said awkwardly. “And granddaughters come to that.”

He was a big fellow with grey hair that put his age above 50.

“Good. Take a belt to this woman’s bottom like it was a daughter you just caught selling her tail to a Westerner and don’t stop until I tell you,” Shula said.

The guard nodded and offered Leah’s vulnerable bottom a disappointed smile. Then he unhitched his sword belt and laid it with his shield by the door.

“You can go,” Shula said to the other guard.

The man snapped to attention and fixed his eyes ahead and the wheeled on his heels and marched out.

“I’ll go too if I may be excused,” Crane said pointedly and without waiting he strolled away.

The older guard had removed his other belt and folded it double before advancing on Leah’s long pale legs and exposed bottom. Then he took one final glance at Shula who gave one curt nod.

The first thwack of leather on skin was as loud as trebuchet assailing a castle and a red band of pain landed across Leah’s behind.

“Yah,” she yelped. School had been nothing like this.

The second stroke landed followed by a third before the woman could draw breath. Thereafter she continued to wail with only the crack of leather for punctuation as each swat pursed swat as regularly as sword drill.

Shula guessed the proud Leah Gingham-Woolf, former merchant of Aspen, had never been so treated. Well it would do her good and at least it was better than a rope.

Leah’s bottom leathering lasted an age and hard welts of red had formed long before Shula called a halt. By then of course the woman was a mess of sorrow sobbing and howling like an Aspen orphan who had gone without supper.

“I doubt you’d make a good fletcher’s apprentice my fine lady,” Shula said soothingly, “So you can work as a scullion for the duration.”

But Leah was passed caring as she bucked over the bench in great heaving sobs.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she wailed.

“I know and I so am I,” Shula sighed.

It took a while for Leah to half rein-in her tears and get to her feet and when she did she bounced up down with her hands clamped to her bare bottom without the least regard for her modesty or dignity.

“Say thank you to the man,” Shula said quietly.

“Thank you Sir,” Leah wept.

The man nodded.

Then Leah turned to Shula and kneeled, “Thank you Ma’am… thank you so much.”

Then the woman stooped to kiss the hem of Shula’s dress.

“You may go,” Shula said, faintly embarrassed, and to the guard she muttered, “Take her to the kitchens.”

To be continued.

Our story started here.

Quail was awoken by someone kicking her in the side.

“Get up, where do you think this is, a hotel?” said a gruff voice.

She was about to say of course it is a hotel when she realised that she was naked and lying on the floor. Quail’s eyes flew open and her old reflexes had her on her feet at once.

Chains bound her hands and restricted the movements of her legs. Also it was dark and the only light was from an opening ahead of her. She could see the outline of a man but little else.

“Alright, we haven’t got all day,” the voice came at her again.

So she had moved on again, she pondered, now unconcerned. The voice cajoling her was familiar and so were the smells of the place; cold and metallic, yet musty like a space dock or… a sick feeling assailed her stomach even as she was pushed into the familiar hall outside.

She was in the slave pens of Xajule Six. She was certain of that because she had been there just a few months before. She had gathered some excellent slaves from a raid on a passenger hauler and had even bought a cute girl from there.

Strangely although she had been quite taken by the girl, she had thought of her since she had sold her…

“Move,” the man bellowed.

Quail staggered forward towards what she knew was the bidding arena. It was hard to look up on account of the strong light, but she had a sense of space.

“Fifty credits,” someone called.

“I’ll bid 80, let’s cut to the chase.” Quail took a moment before she recognised her own voice.

“Too rich for my blood,” the first voice chuckled.

I’ll go 90, Quail remembered.

“I’ll go 90,” said a new voice.

“I am bored now, 200 mega credits or you can keep her,” Quail’s voice sounded cocky like she didn’t want the girl and was just making a point.

A few weeks back the ploy had worked. But how could she be in the arena and bidding?

There was plenty of laughter, but it was pretty obvious that no one would go as high. Quail tried to make out the faces above her. Although her eyes had adjusted they were in silhouette still. Then she saw her own reflection on the far wall; a cruel piece of theatre to humble slaves up for sale.

It was not her own face she saw, but… Cutie was all she had called her; a tall woman with wide hips and sad eyes. Her bottom had taken the whip and paddle well, but there had been no true submission.

Finally Quail had sold the woman on an agrarian world. It had looked like a shit hole, a fate worse than a city bordello, Quail had thought. She had felt bad about it afterwards and had got drunk.

Why can’t I be me this time? Like before. Then I could… I could set her free on a good planet with some money this time. But it hadn’t happened like that and nothing about this virtual replay could change that.

*

The next few weeks played out scene by scene as it had happened. As Cutie, Quail experienced every indignity at her own hands, which was weird enough. But worse still was the hatred she felt for the pirate woman who whipped her just for fun.

How can I hate myself? It was a question that tortured her night after night as the chapter played out. It would serve me right if… Quail felt physically sick as a thought occurred to her. She was going to spend the rest of her life as an agrarian slave, she was certain. None of the other chapters had been this long.

Let me be me, she screamed inwardly at the universe. I can put it right. But such prayers are never answered. The adventure didn’t end until she was ankle deep in excrement and watching herself fly away.

“Work hard and maybe one of these grunts will buy you for a wife,” a scornful voice rasped in her ear.

Quail had heard some such comment on the dock before the transaction. At the time she had laughed.

*

Quail awoke with a start and swung her legs down off the bed. There was a pristine mirror facing her and this time it was her own face that stared back at her. Quail almost wept with relief. Almost and then for the first time since home-world she did.

Hunched over with her head in her lap, she cried for a long time, until finally she was totally spent. The hollow-eyed woman in the mirror was only very slightly older than Quail remembered. Only a tiny fresh scar and a single wisp of grey at her temple had changed. Then she noticed the lack of implants and the bright orange jump-suit. Prison coveralls, she thought.

“Okay, I get it,” Quail said bitterly, “This is Christmas future and I have been a bad girl.”

There was no response. No one cared; she was just one more captive on a backwater somewhere. Well she had been in worse places. She would soon see her chance, Quail promised herself.

Strangely her prevailing thought was that she could go back to the agrarian planet where she sold Cutie and rescue her. If only she could escape, that was.

*

Quail spent a night and another day in her cell before anything other than grey goo and water came to her. But finally the door slid back and a rather dour woman in a grey business suit was standing there.

“Ms Quail,” she said imperiously, adding tentatively, “I have some… good news, yes, I would say so.”

Quail stood up and wondered where the woman would sit. She recognised her of course. They had never met, not in fact, but even Quail had forgotten that. Somehow she had forgotten everything, or could not bring it to mind just then, which was much the same thing. But the woman she knew. She was her lawyer.

“I am not going to stay, my work is done,” the woman said, “I have entered the guilty plea and…”

“What…” Quail gasped.

“We agreed,” the lawyer looked puzzled. “The death penalty, it has been set aside. We got everything we asked for, don’t you understand?”

Quail frowned, she couldn’t… she sighed.

“It has been… could you just run it by me again.”

“The death sentence, personality wipe, indefinite incarceration… we had them all set aside. In return for a guilty plea the judge has recommended the alternative,” the woman was nervously excited now. Maybe Quail had gone mad.

The woman opened a file that she had been holding under her arm and began to read aloud.

“Letitia Quail, 39,” the lawyer glanced up at her once glamorous and youthful client. Not bad for 39, but that won’t last, she thought, “Eh…” she continued, “Unproven charges of murder and grand larceny. But piracy and kidnapping all substantiated. It is recommended…”

“An agrarian world right?” the knowledge came to Quail suddenly and she remembered the deal. “It is appropriate I suppose.”

She was thinking of Cutie again.

“There is just one thing…” the lawyer licked her lips.

Quail shrugged. It didn’t matter, nothing mattered anymore.

“You have to serve 30 years as I told you but…”

Quail shrugged. She knew that part, but with remission she could get out in 15 or even 12 years.

“…the sentence doesn’t start until you have been… well there is an assessment and a period of… strange planet this… it will all work out but… you have to atone first and they have to believe that you have atoned,” woman gabbled.

*

Quail was naked again.

She had been stretched over a frame so that her head was down and her bottom uppermost. It was a classic punishment position, but instead of the floor in front of her nose, there was a platform for an audience and beyond that a large screen that displayed her bottom on a big screen in tri-vid HD.

The whole structure reminded her of a museum rather than a correctional facility. There were certainly enough gawping people passing by to watch.

She knew that she had been wired to some sensors that monitored her brainwaves and every other bio-response she had to her punishment. Three weeks in and she had never felt so meek. The day had only just got started and she would remain in strapped in place for another four hours.

Every other day was an exercise day, but each night she had to fill-out a journal and undergo automatic psych tests.

“How long… I mean…?” Quail had gaped on her first day.

“Oh it is indefinite, I assure you, if you and your smart off-world lawyer have pulled a fast one then you are in for a… well let’s just say, I really do hope you are sorry,” the warden had told her.

The round-faced sweating man looked as if her regrets were the last thing he was hoping.

Nor did it help that she didn’t appear to be alone. From her vantage point she could see other women in various states of undress either undergoing a strapping or facing the wall to await their turn.

Quail wasn’t even the centre of attention. She was just one more woman to be punished. Then even this realisation was robbed from her thoughts.

The prison strap landed with a painful thwack that dragged a grunt from Quail’s lips. On the screen her bottom bucked and then shimmered from side to side. Then before she could shake out the sting another blow landed and she began her dance again as he bottom slowly reddened.

“I’m sorry, okay, I’m sorry,” she yelled.

But the only acknowledgement was another blast of prison strap across her bare bottom. This time the fire in her tail started off bad and then got worse. On the platform opposite the glass outside two young couples stood in a grinning group. As the strap seared Quail’s behind for eighth or ninth time they began to applaud.

“I’m sorry,” Quail shouted at them in a pleading tone, but they were no longer paying her any attention and had gone to gawp at another woman being punished.

To be continued.

“How come only the kids get candy on Halloween,” Stacey moaned.

Caroline rolled her eyes and prepared to repel borders. She knew when Stacey was about to sound off with another of her kooky ideas.

“Why don’t we doll up all sexy like and hit the homesteads around town. I bet if we played it right we might even make some dough off of those folks who didn’t get any candy in,” Stacey said eagerly.

“Come on Stace, you’re talking like a hooker.” Caroline made her ‘it is so gross face.’

At 19 and a month older than Stacey she liked to play the sensible one.

“Besides,” she added, “When we were kids you couldn’t even go up the steps of the old Henson House over on Carol Street.”

“I could too,” Stacey lied.

“Yeah, well I meet you outside at sunset and if you can get anything out of the strange family that are ‘supposed’ to live there then I’ll think about your plan,” Caroline sneered.

Stacey pulled a face. The house still gave her the willies and she could have hoped to start the evening anywhere but there.

“Okay, you’re on,” Stacey said at last, with rather more bravado than she felt.

*

Stacey walked apprehensively towards the house on Carol Street, her long bare legs making dance like side-steps as if she were on roller skates. Her honey-blonde hair was hidden beneath a long gothic black wig with a white stripe running through it. The dress was charcoal and cut short so as to end in a ragged fringe. It was short enough to stand clear of her stocking tops that hung on suspender straps that ran to mid-thigh.

For a moment it looked as if Caroline had stood her up, but then she saw a vampire girl standing at the gate to the Henson House. It wasn’t a sexy costume exactly, as far as Stacey could tell from the distance, but it looked realistic and stylish enough.

“Hey Caroline,” Stacey called over as she picked up her pace.

Vampire Caroline showed no sign of having heard and after a quick look around she strode up the path to the door as if she owned the place.

“Wait for me,” Stacey called and began to run.

The wind picked up in a spooky howl and Stacey had to pause to hold her hem down and by the time she reached the front porch of the house Caroline was nowhere to be seen.

“Darn it,” Stacey said angrily.

The door was as old and battered as she remembered it and in the dark the bronze work demon that formed the knocker took on an even more sinister shade. Stacey shuddered. The house had certainly seen better days, but it was in a good neighbourhood and was just about the largest house around.

Reluctantly Stacey seized the knocker and let it rap. It sounded way too loud to her ears and she felt like running as she had as a kid when the boys had crept up here to play ginger.

“Hey open up, I’m with Caroline,” she called and after a brief hesitation, knocked the knocker again.

For a moment in the dark it looked as if the door had opened by itself. One minute it was hard in her face and the next it swung silently inward leaving a large black oblong in its place.

“Oh shit,” she muttered under breath, and then out of sheer desperation and bravado she offered nervously, “Trick or treat?”

“Who is Caroline?” a dark voice asked.

Stacey nearly fled at the disembodied voice and then she saw the man standing just inside the door; dark grey on grey and black as her eyes adjusted to the gloom inside the hall.

He was tall and of indeterminate age. His suit was of heavy weave and like the house had seen better days. But despite his creepy demeanour he had a warm smile like her grandfather’s; charming even.

“Caroline…” Stacey said tentatively, “She just came in here.”

The man frowned and then smiled again.

“Oh her, yes do come in,” he said.

Stacey suddenly wished he hadn’t said that and felt like fleeing again, but that was just foolish so after taking a breath she followed the man into the hall.

*

“Now what was it you wanted again?” the man said in a creaking voice.

Stacey was at once put in mind of Bella Lugosi and stifled down a giggle.

“Trick or treat?” she said brightly with her sunniest smile.

“Aren’t you a little old for that?” the man said with a slight raise of his left eyebrow.

“Can’t I just have what Caroline is having?” Stacey said weakly.

“Caroline? Oh yes, the one you say you saw come in here.” The man’s face took on a distracted look and he looked away at the cellar door.

“Amelia, oh Amelia,” the man called out towards the door.

Stacey frowned and wondered why he would address the cellar. But after a moment there were sounds of footsteps on creaking wood and the door to the basement slowly opened.

The woman who emerged looked a little like Caroline and was dressed as Stacey had seen before. But it was obvious now that she had been mistaken and that this woman was nearer 30 than 19.

“Oh I thought…” Stacey felt totally embarrassed.

But the man was ignoring her.

“Amelia is it true that you have only just returned from your… stroll?” the man asked the woman.

There was some menace in his voice and Stacey backed away from him.

Amelia was pale, almost too pale, and what Stacey had taken for a costume now looked like an expensive Pre Raphaelite gown. Her eyes were dark so that her pupils were lost within the irises so that it appeared as if she had too impossibly deep holes in her face. Her demeanour too was strange; almost as if she was a teenager and she hung back looking somewhat sheepish under the man’s hard gaze.

“Answer me Amelia,” he said sharply.

Amelia and Stacey cringed together at his tone.

“Yes Sir, I was caught by the…” she shot a glance at Stacey and seemed to pause before adding “Rain.”

Stacey frowned. It hadn’t rained for weeks.

“Last night I stayed at that place you showed me,” Amelia said softly as if lost or standing far, far away.

“That is inexcusable,” the man growled at her, “Go into the front parlour and wait for me.”

Amelia’s eyes darted from the man to Stacey and then she bowed her head in nervous assent before walking as if condemned down the hall.

Stacey felt as if she was intruding now and eyed the front door hopefully. The man followed her gaze and appeared to consider something.

“You wanted something didn’t you,” he said slowly, “A trick, a treat or… what Caroline was having you said? Was that Caroline?”

“I thought it was, sorry my mistake,” Stacey gushed nervously.

“It is no matter, you shall have all three,” the man said silkily, the charming smile had now returned to his face and Stacey relaxed a little. “Come with me.”

The man turned away then and with a strange gait, he went down the hall. It was almost as if he were gliding and only moving his legs to simulate the appearance of walking. But Stacey felt an odd compulsion to follow him, although with the prospect of some goodies, she probably would have anyway. Nevertheless, she did feel somewhat apprehensive about his promise of a trick. That was not how it usually worked, didn’t he know that?

As Stacey followed the man down the hall she noticed how dilapidated the house was. But the decay and the mustiness in their air was totally at odds with the quality of the artwork on the walls. Some of the paintings were originals by familiar artists, although she could not quite recall any names.

The parlour, as they called it, was better appointed and more brightly lit. There was a fire in the grate and the decorations were green marble and mother of pearl, suggesting a late Victorian Art Nouveau style.

Stacey might have looked further but then she saw Amelia. The girl had removed her Pre Raphaelite gown and was standing in the corner and was now barely draped in old-fashioned underwear. The silk slip she had worn was wound-up around her exposed hips and formed a frame for her nude polished alabaster bottom, which was completely bare.

Stacey gasped.

“We are somewhat old fashioned around here and my… ward has behaved recklessly and dangerously staying out all day in the… rain,” the man said pleasantly. “Now since you are here you may assist.”

“Perhaps I…” Stacey was blushing and pointed lamely at the door behind her.

“Nonsense,” the man said charmingly, “You simply must stay for Amelia’s spanking; it will be so exquisitely humiliating for her. Now on the table by the door, pass me the hairbrush you see there.”

Amelia turned her head then and looked back over her shoulder at Stacey with an accusatory look of pure hatred. The woman looked far from meek now and Stacey shuddered.

“The hairbrush, if you please.” It was an order and it was the man now who fixed her with his eyes.

Stacey found the brush and hastily passed it to him before she stood back from the unfolding scene. When she looked again the man was already sitting in an armless chair which had appeared in the middle of the room.

“Now Amelia, come here,” the man intoned.

Amelia turned and offered him a pout, but she obeyed him readily enough. In fact there were no further orders from him as if she knew what to do. The strange woman crossed the room from the corner and lowering herself to her knees folded herself neatly over his seated lap.

“Such a broad round target, don’t you think?” he chuckled to Stacey.

Stacey just gaped. Amelia’s bottom was astonishing, preternatural even, and for a moment the two of them looked like some strange statue carved in stone paused in the punitive act.

Then the man’s arm rose slowly like a conductor about to begin a concert and the brush hung in the air. Then it fell sharply with a crack before rising again.

There was a smooth dark pink oval across both curves of Amelia’s perfect bottom, which as Stacey watched, slowly flooded with an ever deepening blood-red blush. Then, after a moment hung on end, the brush fell again with a louder crack that made Amelia gasp.

“Amelia you have been warned many times to get home before sunrise, now you will be soundly spanked as you so richly deserved. Afterwards you will go back to the corner and remain there until midnight. Is that understood?” The man’s voice was dark and commanding now.

Stacey was too dazed to wonder why a grown woman should be forbidden to go out, especially during the day, but she was in no doubt that Amelia would obey him for a while.

The brush rose and fell six or seven times in quick succession until Amelia’s bottom was a hard polished red all over and dark tears streamed down the gasping woman’s face. The streaming mascara must have been the old-fashioned kind, for in the light of the fire it looked almost like blood on Amelia’s cheeks.

“Please Master I’m sorry,” Amelia wailed.

But it was to no avail. The spanking continued for some considerable time until Amelia’s bottom was thoroughly chaffed and extensively welted. Finally the man set down the brush and allowed the now sobbing Amelia to stand.

“Hush now, be a good girl,” the man soothed and then to Stacey he added, “She will be as right as the moon in a night or two, have no fear.”

Stacey nodded in awe. Then as she watched, Amelia shuffled unsteadily back to the corner with her slip held to her hip so as to keep her bare bottom revealed to anyone in the room.

“Now you have had your treat, you shall have what Amelia had as you deserve and indeed as you requested,” the man said invitingly as he beckoned Stacey to him.

“Oh come on you can’t…” Stacey offered uncertainly. If she ran now she could get through the door before the man gained his feet.

But before she could act the man was somehow already between her and her escape. He pointed at the chair and made a gesture with his hand that suggested she should undress.

Stacey’s protests died on her lips and woodenly she began to obey his silent command.

“I will be gentle with you,” he whispered from his place back on the chair.

Stacey self-consciously let her panties fall to her ankles and then nodded. She had no choice.

It wasn’t until she was across his lap with her bottom upturned to the ceiling that it really sunk in what was happening.

“Hey you can’t do this to…” her words were cut short by a blasting sting to her exposed behind that robbed her breath.

The spanking was slow and steady and sounded like thunderclaps on her bottom. But the only rain was that which sprung from her eyes as the burn in her tail built to impossible levels and she could no longer contain her distress.

“Ow, ooh, yah,” she howled, or something like it.

In any case she bore the spanking with much less dignity than Amelia had managed.

“You know I could make you return here every evening for the rest of your life,” the man said absently as he spanked on. “Imagine that, you would look quite fine as an ornament in my corner for the next decade or two; when the corner was vacant of course. But then Amelia would want her share of your misery and she can be quite imaginative. She has an ivory cane somewhere from when I first trained her, don’t you Amelia?”

Amelia may have acknowledged the question but Stacey was too lost in bawling her head off to notice.

“I am sure you are sorry already, but I am going to spank you to your utmost and as you are a strong girl that will take some time I feel,” the man told her in a lilting voice.

As predicted the spanking lasted well into the evening, by which time Stacey was begging incoherently and promising anything for just some respite.

“Very well, go and stand in the corner opposite Amelia,” he said, “I want you calm before I show you that trick I mentioned.”

*

Stacey felt utterly cowed as she got dressed. Her bottom felt like it had road burn and it was throbbing awfully. Amelia had not taken her nose from the corner, although Stacey just knew that somehow the woman was watching every move she made.

“Now let me show you that trick I mentioned,” the man whispered.

As Stacey turned he enveloped her in his arms and she felt herself go limp. The last thing she remembered were the words, “Come again every Halloween my little treat.”

The next thing Stacey knew she was standing outside in Carol Street under a waning moon. There was a hush in the air and she knew the town beyond was asleep. Her bottom throbbed dreadfully as if she had been dragged behind a truck sitting on hard gravel for an hour or two.

Caroline was a no-show eh, she thought wanly and then broke into a run for home. No more trick or treats for me, she promised as she left the turn to Carol Street behind. But later as she offered her bare behind to the bathroom mirror and puzzled over the throbbing purple rash that stained her entire bottom she fancied she heard the words in her head, “See you next year my little treat.”

Happy Halloween.

Our story started here.

Quail stood meekly in the line while the commune’s leader gave his speech. She had been living this life so long now that she had decided that this was the end game.

The punishment centre had held her for almost a year before her lawyer argued that the psych tests proved she was penitent. He had been a new one this time, a local boy who felt sorry for her and had enough contacts to get her a hearing.

By then she had almost got used to kneeling on the floor to eat off her bunk and sleeping on her belly. But she had never got used to the almost relentless strappings, which after a few weeks had finally broken her.

It had come upon her suddenly. One minute she was grunting angrily and trying to ride out the waves of pain where the sting met the burn and locked themselves in a dance on the curves of her raw-sore bottom. Then all of a sudden she began to sob. Great gasping wails of tears to punctuate her all too earnest begging and please of “I’m sorry, so sorry.”

Even the duty punisher noticed her change in attitude.

“Sorry are you, really?” he said sharply during a pause in the relentless strapping.

“Yes Sir, oh yes Sir,” she had gushed earnestly.

“So you admit you do deserve this?” he asked.

She could only nod miserably.

On bad days after that she would sometimes remember where she was and beg for the access codes or the exit codes or plead with her unseen tormentor for another scenario. Then she would yell incoherently as she begged to know, “What do you want from me?” or “I won’t steal it, I won’t, I swear it.”

But usually she just called out in a miserable sobbing voice, “I’m sorry, so sorry.”

The commune was better than the detention centre. Well anything was better than that. At least now her sentence had formally started.

It had been explained to her that for every day she behaved herself she would get a day taken from her sentence. If she had a spotless record for five years and learned enough skills then she could become a trustee and have two days taken off her sentence for every day of good behaviour.

The commune wasn’t such a bad place either. It was not a bit like the dread planet that she had marooned Cutie on. Here there were trees and soft beds. Although the women all had to wear dark grey dresses with white aprons and white caps, at least they were clean. And every five days there was a day off so that the girls could study and better themselves. Passing exams was even rewarded with more remission off their sentences.

Most days Quail forgot that none of this was real. But then she no longer even knew that for certain. In her more optimistic moments she thought about a holiday at Cloudhaven and prayed that she could wake up there again. But somehow she knew that that moment had passed for her; slipped from her grasp just as it had in her former life.

On other days she wondered if such places as the commune and the detention centre even existed in the ‘real’ world. Or was it some invention of her own guilty conscience she had dreamt up to punish herself?

It didn’t matter, not any more. If there was some greater purpose they she would have to play it out and wait. Until then all she had was the commune.

The worst thing was the speeches.

Every morning the commune leader or one of his deputies gave a speech about good behaviour and working hard. Quail could swear that each of the men only had three original speeches and kept recycling over and over in oh-so pious monotonous drone.

To say that the speeches were the worst thing was just Quail’s idea, she imagined. The other girls dreaded the punishments more, she knew.

The punishments were severe and varied. They ranged from a sound over-the-knee spanking on the bare bottom with a short paddle, through harder spankings with a large drilled paddle while bent over a chair or rail, to a trip to the woodshed for a sound birching.

Sometimes a girl was bent over a frame like the one at the detention centre and soundly strapped on the bare bottom in front of everyone as a prelude to a caning.

Only these latter punishments counted against a girl’s remission, which was one of the reasons Quail could cope.

For the Quail the lesser punishments added a sense of danger and spice to the monotony of commune life. And even when it was not her being punished, she could enjoy the punishments of others.

Not that she actively courted these punishments. It was just that they added some risk to other activities like apple scrumping, swiping booze and the occasional roll in the hay with another girl.

True Quail would have preferred one of the men, but they were all staffers and too discreet to involve themselves with a new girl.

“Now girls, gather into your assigned teams and listen for your allotted jobs,” the speech finally came to an end.

Quail looked up down the rows of smartly aproned girls, all meekly looking at the ground. She still felt like a tigress in a field of sheep. In eight or nine years she would be a senior trustee with a line to the outside. And in 12 years tops she would be out of there with a stake and… her thinking went no further. It never did except to think about Cutie.

*

Sara was a new girl. She was a young pretty blonde working under a five-year sentence. She had run with some gangs on the outside and hadn’t worked out that not only was she here for the duration, but she wasn’t as tough as she thought she was.

A petty argument over a bread roll had got her hauled out onto the back porch of the refectory

Sara had obviously thought to talk her way out of trouble but no sooner had she reached the porch when the deputy-leader had hauled her across her his lap and turned up her skirts.

“Hey you can’t…” she spluttered, but the man quickly bared her bottom and began spanking her with a small paddle.

The spanking was fast and furious and Sara’s small tight bottom went shiny red in moments as her voice made croaking protests.

Quail busied herself with a broom in the yard nearby so that she could watch the action. On days like these the commune wasn’t so bad.

“Nooo, you can’t noo… ah,” Sara wailed, as dark red doughnuts formed on the crowns of her bottom and tears spilled from her eyes.

Quail imagined the cocky arrogance with which the girl once might have mouthed-off or given attitude to a peacekeeper. Her fellow gang members would fall about laughing if they could see her now. Especially, Quail noted, as the girl had a totally glass-arse and was already bawling like the kid she was.

The spanking lasted for several minutes before Sara was set on her feet and made to stand and face the wall by the refectory door in full view of her fellow inmates as they filed out.

Later Quail found Sara morosely stacking seed pots in one of the out houses.

“Go away,” Sara said sullenly.

“Is your bottom still sore?” Quail asked.

Sara blushed. Close up Quail could see that she was barely 20 and the only thing holding her down was the native cunning that knew a bigger fish when she saw one.

“If you keep stacking those pots like that, then you will have an even sorer one,” Quail observed.

It wasn’t entirely a bluff; she had certainly seen better pot stacking.

“Oh,” Sara’s eyes were suddenly a little wider with panic.

“I have something here that will take some of the sting out of your bottom and then I can show you how to do it properly,” Quail offered.

Sara pursed her lips and blushed a little more. But she put up little resistance as Quail turned her about and bent her over the lower shelf. Lifting up Sara’s dress she found the girl’s bottom still mottled red with welting down the cleft. It was a rare treat to smooth cooling salve from a tube she had pilfered from the infirmary.

Sara gasped and closed her eyes as she allowed Quail full access to the underside of her bottom.

“Good?” Quail asked as she let her fingers wander deeper.

“Uh,” came Sara’s answer as she parted her legs somewhat.

Quail continued to tease the girl, letting her fingers stay on the upper slopes of Sara’s red-stained bottom and only occasionally dipping down low for tighter darker folds.

“See, I know how to…”

“Don’t stop,” Sara gasped

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” a voice snapped at them from behind.

There were no closed doors on the commune and Quail had known the risks.

“I was just…” Quail began, she allowed a pout of frustration to show on her face.

“I don’t want to hear it,” the man growled.

He was one of the younger deputies. He was tall with red hair and fierce dancing eyes.

Quail pouted some more as she got to her feet. Sara, she noted looked like a lamb about to be slaughtered.

“Get those dresses off, I want you stripped down to your stockings and bodices,” he snapped.

He didn’t wait to see if he was obeyed, but strode out of the shed, making a determined turn to the left once he was framed by the door.

“What is he going to do?” Sara gasped, her eyes domed and wide on her face.

“I don’t think he likes me undoing all that hard work they put in on your bottom,” Quail said sardonically.

Sara looked as if she might cry.

“Come on, do as he says, I’ll take a punishment but I don’t want to lose any remission,” Quail said hastily.

By the time the deputy had returned both women were huddled together in just a brief breast-supporting bodice top and grey thigh length stockings. The birch in his hand came as no surprise to Quail, but Sara began to whimper a little.

“Come with me,” the man snapped and then strode away again.

Both Quail and Sara followed on reluctantly, the air tickling at their legs and exposed bottom. Sara clamped her hands to her crotch and walked in an utterly cowed posture, while Quail led the way somewhat more stoically. As they went they drew a few glances from the other girls, but most were too busy to dawdle, lest they wanted a share of the birch themselves.

The deputy led them to the woodshed where there in the centre of the room was a low wooden crossbeam wide enough to take three or four bare bottoms in a row. At a nod from the man, Quail stepped forward and flopped right over it and then wriggled until the pressure from the beam on her lower belly was bearable and her bottom was properly elevated.

“Please Sir I didn’t…” Sara squealed in panic.

“No you didn’t, did you? And you were supposed to have done,” he snapped at her, “Besides, you know the rules, comfort from a punishment is not to be sought in working hours outside of the infirmary.”

“But…” Sara persisted.

“Bend over,” the deputy barked at her.

Sara gulped and then cast a glance at Quail’s blossoming behind. With a blush she scurried across the room and dropped face down next to her new friend so that her bottom too was neatly presented for the birch.

The birch fell in a healthy swoosh and landed crisply across Quail’s bare bottom. The pirate-queen displayed no reaction at first, but all too quickly the nibbling bite began to sing in her flesh and then burn. It was a fuzzy tang and she hissed through clench teeth as she rode it out.

The second swipe garnered much the same reaction as did the third, but each stroke that landed after that made Quail give out with a panicked wail as the fire in her behind grew and grew.

After eight searing swipes the deputy switched bottoms and lashed the birch across Sara’s waiting bottom.

“Yeow,” she screamed melodramatically, kicking her legs back as she rocked her bottom in bucking motions.

The second, third and fourth strokes all got the same reaction, but after the fifth Sara set-up a continuous howl and sobbed bitterly into the floor just inches from her nose.

Quail grunted at each stroke during her second set and made clawing motions with her hands as if swimming away from the fire in her bottom. Sometimes a good sound birching transported her back to the detention centre.

If Sara’s first set had been bad, the second was unsupportable and she began to howl like a banshee as she was birched for her second eight.

“No more, please, no more, I didn’t mean it,” she shrieked.

It was the kind of reaction Quail usually enjoyed but she was still holding on to herself and panting hard through waves of flame in her own bottom.

Quail’s third eight had spluttering to sobs every bit as earnestly as Sara after just two more strokes and this time the deputy took her up to 12 before he switched back to Sara. It ought to be enough for them both he decided as he readied Sara’s last set.

But after just one more biting swipe Sara leapt to her feet and began to dance around the woodshed.

“No more, no more please Sir,” she sobbed.

The deputy sighed.

“It looks like we have to start over doesn’t it?”

“Oh no, n-n-no, please Sir,” Sara wailed.

“Bend over,” he said sharply.

It took a minute for Sara to steel herself, but finally she stopping hopping around and woodenly walked forward to bend over.

The repeated first eight felt like someone had taken a blow-torch to her bottom and Sara shrieked so much that several people came running. By the time it was over Sara was a broken heap of tears.

“That would have been enough for you if you hadn’t rebelled,” the deputy said in a tone of disappointment.

“No more, please, please, please no more,” Sara sobbed.

“Too bad,” the deputy sighed.

“Please Sir,” Quail piped up. “It was my fault and she can’t help it. It is her first time.”

Quail found it a strain to speak and as she winced words through an aching jaw her bottom had to contend with a million billion bees drilling and biting into her.

“Your fault eh, so I guess you’re offering to take 20 more in her place,” the deputy scoffed.

But he was impressed with Quail’s courage all the same.

“Yes Sir, if it will spare her,” Quail found herself saying.

There was a mutter from the few people outside and the deputy gave a low whistle. Then he shrugged.

“I gotta see this,” he said, “But if you cry off before I am half-done she gets it just the same. And if you beg me sooner you’re both get it anyway and I tell you now, that is what I am working for.”

It sounded harsh, but Quail realised he could have birch them both twice over for trying to make bargains. He was fair at least.

The next stroke that seared its way across Quail’s red raw bottom made her grunt down a shriek and really dance over the wooden bar. She had now taken 29 and now had about as many to go.

“Oh comets on fire,” she gasped.

They were her last coherent words for 10 minutes as true to his word the deputy birched her to total surrender.

*

Both Quail and Sara were told they would lose their day off, which the heavily sobbing older woman almost protested as unfair. Then they were told to go and stand outside their dorm house and face the wall for the rest of the day.

It was as good a place to stand for a good cry as any, although the public exposure never lost its embarrassing shame-filled piquancy and was positively mortifying for the novice Sara.

After crying non-stop for a derision-filled hour Sara stole a glance over her shoulder and then whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

“Are you kidding,” Quail said miserably, “I got us into this mess.”

“But you… but you… but you… took my punishment,” Sara sobbed and then she was crying in earnest again.

Quail flicked an eye down over shoulder at the two heavy swollen domes protruding behind her. Quite an eyeful for the spank fan inmates like her, she thought ruefully and my bottom is about as raw as it could be short of being flayed. Her rounds were so fiercely throbbing she could actually feel a pulse in each cheek. Not the worst I have ever had, she thought, but her mind would not alight on a punishment that was. Then like Sara she started to cry again.

*

“Thank you Letitia, my bottom feels much better now,” Sara gushed shyly.

The two of them had stolen away to a quiet loft that Quail had scoped out. If they were discovered it would mean the paddle and then Quail would probably never sit down again, but that was her life now.

Quail had produced another tube of ointment and laying Sara naked on her front, she had smeared the soothing unguent gently over the girl’s tortured cheeks.

“What about you?” Sara had finally said in a thick voice.

It took all her will to break off from her own little ecstasy.

“I was coming to that,” Quail said huskily.

There was mischief in her eyes and she looked at the girl like she was breakfast.

“Put out your tongue,” Quail ordered the girl.

Sara gaped for a moment and then obeyed. Quail carefully squeezed a long worm of ooze down Sara’s pink digit and smiled.

“Whanth dyath wanth me too doo nowth,” Sara mumbled with a straight tongue as she tried not to laugh.

“You know,” Quail said offering the girl the curve of her bottom. “Your tongue is softer than you fingers.”

Sara giggled and then stooping down gently began to apply the unguent to Quail’s raw flesh.

“Careful now or I will spank you,” she cooed, “And don’t you think I wouldn’t love that.”

Given the intimate location of her tongue, Sara couldn’t reply.

To be concluded.

Our story started here.

Quail took Sara firmly under her wing after that. She supposed that she saw in the girl someone like her who was on the wrong path in life. Maybe if she could save Sara then in a small way she could save herself.

“Is it true you were a pirate?” Sara asked her one day.

They were in the small shed on the far side of the commune sorting out tools. There was a big pile of broken hoes and spades, some of which could be repaired and others that would have to be recycled for scrap.

Sara was stooped over letting her eye scan the pile for any that could still be used and pulling them out. She had spoken idly and without looking up as if the question was either trivial or the most important question of her life and she couldn’t bear to be disappointed.

“Who told you that?” Quail shot back at her angrily.

Sara looked up.

“I heard two of the deputies talking. They say you were real hard case and commanded a ship and everything.” Sara’s eyes were brimming with excitement. “One day I am going to get out of this dumb system and be just like you.”

Quail felt strangely sick, like she was falling and would never stop. Was she really ever as stupid as this kid?

“You get out of here clear and free in two years. You are doing great in your studies and not only will you have some qualifications, but you will have a recognised agricultural apprenticeship. It is more than you could ever have hoped for.” Quail was conscious of the desperation in her voice. “What about being a journalist? You sounded keen before. You could be an agricultural correspondent. It must be all they read about on this planet and then in a few years you could back to the city on your own terms.”

“But I could hook up with some of my own gang and steal a ship maybe…” Sara said excitedly.

Quail wanted to shake her. To tell her that she would be dead in a year if she were lucky and if not she would spend her life as a fugitive. But what was the point? Then she saw the short broken end of plank on the floor. It was tapered down one side as if to form a crude paddle.

Quail snatched it up and then grabbed Sara.

“You little brat, have you really learned nothing,” Quail raged, “If someone had caught me sooner and put me in one of these places…”

Quail was speechless now and tumbled Sara face down over her lap. The skirt was easy to hike up and in a moment Sara’s bottom was bare.

“What did I do?” Sara wailed.

Quail answered with a serious blast of the paddle which landed with a sharp crack across Sara’s exposed bottom. Sara’s legs shot out straight and she bucked her head back with a yowl.

“You are going to go to college,” Quail yelled as she spanked the girl again, “You are going to be a journalist,” and again, “You are going to make something of yourself.”

Quail blasted down her arm three more times drawing mewling squeals from Sara as she bucked up down on the older woman’s lap. There was a mess of hard red rectangles on Sara’s white flesh where the paddle had landed and they looked sore too. But Quail was too angry to care, too angry even to get any satisfaction form spanking her young protégé.

“If you ever, I mean ever, think about a life a crime,” Quail slammed the broken plank-paddle down as hard as she could, “If you… ever…”

Quail was speechless and brought the paddle down again and again.

“I am telling you girl, you won’t ever sit down again,” Quail spat. “If I have to spank you every day for the rest of your sentence, if I have to get us a public caning and loss of remission to keep you here until you see sense…”

“Alright, alright,” Sara wailed.

But Quail was far from done. She was set to spank the girl until someone came and dragged her off the girl, right then Quail would welcome a full paddle-strapping and caning just to clear her head.

Sara began to cry as she kicked her legs in futile protest as she felt her blistered bottom melt. But her only thoughts were of a home she never had and the only friend who ever cared.

Deputy Leader Andros stood at the door of the shed watching. He had come to break up what he had assumed was a fight, but had got there just in time to hear everything. He was the new kid on the block and was still finding his way around.

Andros was a tall and in his mid-50s with steel grey hair that was now thinning on top. He had switched careers after 30 years as a businessman in an effort to put something back. He was motivated in part after his own daughter went through a rough patch and did a short spell in correction.

Well that was what he believed for as an entity he was as fully formed as any and been born, grown-up, lived and loved in his world just like any other. Perhaps he was a copy of someone who had been on a similar journey to Quail’s at some time. Or maybe he was a construct from many such experiences or drawn from something deep in the lost pirate-woman’s consciousness. To the Sphere it was all the same. It dealt in myriad realities all complete within its matrix as it shaped and learned about the universe.

Andros himself would have been fascinated. He loved reading about alternative universes and the philosophical nature of reality. He often spoke on the subject over dinner.

“I think, therefore I am,” he might say with a grin.

“I eat therefore I am,” was the teasing reply his friends usually answered him with.

Andros didn’t care.

He had been watching these two and had assumed that there relationship was an unhealthy one. He had seen enough bull-dykes and their gimps to know. But then he had seen Quail’s eyes checking out the men in the yard and something else. He saw hope. Andros considered for a moment and then he quietly slipped away. He got 80 meters away before he could no longer hear the spanking.

But Sara heard it and the message it imparted. The shed rang with thunderclap spanks that went on and on for a good portion of the hour before Quail was spent. By that time the girl was a sobbing wreck and hugged into Quail with all her strength.

The next day Quail was made a trustee and assigned some admin work and a hip- switch.

*

The years passed in real time for Quail until she forgot that there ever was another world. From time to time she would get into some trouble and Andros would haul her off to the woodshed for a workout that left her standing for supper for days to come. But Quail needed and welcomed these moments of clarity and responded to Andros’s guidance much as Sara had.

Sara herself left the commune after only 18 months on account of diploma she had got in journalism. Initially she had gone to work for the justice system writing a newsletter on judicial communes for the profession, but after a year Sara had written to Quail and told she had been offered a job as a crime reporter in the city.

By then there were other Sara’s to help. Hard cases, some of them, but Quail spanked a measure of respect out of most of them and if that failed she went to Andros and arranged for a healthy portion of birch.

“What will you do when you get out of here?” Andros asked her one day.

“Out of here?” Quail mouthed back at him.

“Your sentence must be up soon, less than I year I make it,” Andros said happily. “You have been with us 10 years now, your remission has really piled up, and in a way we will be sorry to lose you.”

“Ten years,” Quail said absently.

A single tear rolled down her cheek.

*

Quail did not so much as wake but more came back to herself.

She was standing on a whirlpool of molten steel that spun beneath her feet as if it would swallow her, but never quite did. The room around and beyond her was made of opaque glass or so it appeared and it was this that lit the room, a hall really, with cool blue light.

Somewhere inside she knew she had full access. But she was calm. She no longer needed it.

“You have your prize now,” said a gentle female voice, “Don’t you?”

The woman was standing about 10 meters from her and directly ahead. Quail couldn’t think how she had not noticed her at once and she smiled. The woman was almost Jane from home-world and the house with the garden so, so many years ago.

“I am not sure what I have,” Quail whispered then she thought of something. “How… how long have I been…?”

She looked around and then back at the woman.

“Here?”

“Time is of no relevance to us,” Jane said, for Quail was sure it was a ‘Jane’ now. “Subjectively from your point of view you have been here 56 days.”

Quail opened her mouth to reply but found she had nothing to say to that.

“The Wayward Girl has docked and from here you can get a liner home,” Jane told her.

“Home?” Quail was puzzled, she didn’t even bother to ask who or what The Wayward Girl was.

“The ship you tried to rob,” Jane said in answer to her thoughts.

Quail nodded. She remembered now.

“There is a residential commune-college on home-world where you born,” Jane said casually, “You are enrolled there. They are expecting you in 43 days by your reckoning.”

“Redemption,” Quail whispered, she wondered how she could not think on home-world’s name for so many years, not even in her deepest thoughts.

“Yes Redemption,” Jane said brightly, “It is waiting for you.”

“The planet,” Quail looked at the woman sharply.

“All of it,” Jane replied.

“But…” Quail thought about Cutie and all the others she had harmed.

“Sometimes a line must be drawn,” Jane said in answer again. “The one you call cutie, Katherine Harrison, was redeemed by e-cheque 40 days ago and is now on route to her home. The funds were drawn from selling your ship and similar sources.”

“You can do that?” Quail gasped.

“We can access your… forgive me, primitive systems easily,” Jane smiled. “Similar arrangements have made where possible with other victims of yours.”

“But…” there must be some who could not be so easily helped. “I have to pay.”

“You have,” Jane said, “You judged yourself and served an 11 year prison sentence after helping dozens of others.”

“But it wasn’t real, none of it,” Quail insisted.

“Sara has just been made an editor and Andros has just got word, he has a third grandchild,” Jane tilted her head.

Quail opened her mouth again and then closed it.

“I don’t understand. Who are you?”

Jane shrugged.

“Yes you do,” she said.

Quail drew in a long slow breath. Well now she had no ship and… how could she go to college on Redemption, there she thought it. She was assailed with images of Cloudhaven and the cool green forests of Tannamere.

“Okay I am reformed, but…”

“You are now physically 19 again, your DNA altered by just enough to be consistent with being your own daughter. There is just enough from your ill-gotten gains, the lawful interest actually, to provide for your fees and an apartment when you are ready. The money is held in trust for you.”

Quail frowned. On Redemption she could not be a full adult until she was 25; one of the reasons she had left. Now she welcomed the situation.

“Who…?”

“A guardian has been appointed, he will suit you I think,” Jane explained.

“You know me so well,” Quail said sarcastically.

“Yes we do,” Jane stated it as fact.

“You even chose a new name for yourself,” Jane said brightly.

Quail nodded as new information was realised in her head.

“Tell me about this commune-college place I am going to.” Quail allowed herself some hope.

“It is very like the commune you now know in various uncomfortable ways, but you need that, don’t you?” Jane was actually smirking, “But they also have flyers for the crops and to get around the extensive lands they manage.”

Quail blushed.

“Goodbye Quail,” Jane said and then she was gone.

*

Quail stood at the end of a long blue-grey slate road that wound its way up the broad valley to the distant mountains. The nearer peaks were chiselled from blue stone and still held snow in the crannies sheltered from the sun. Overhead the sky was cobalt and crystal clear, although far across the hills were some great towers of white, like milk in water billowing into the sky. She knew that beyond the hills was another mountain range that led up to Cloudhaven and her heart swelled. Perhaps she would have a holiday there.

On either side of the road were dark-green Goya trees, their twisted grey-brown trunks curving out of the ground like umbrella handles. Here and there were signs of cultivation and there were even some vineyards on the far south-facing slopes.

She was still admiring the view when a tractor-hauler came up behind her and came to a halt. On top in a red bucket seat, which like the rest of the vehicle, was open to the elements, sat a young man of around 30.

He had sandy blonde hair and his white shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows to reveal heavily tanned arms. These thick limbs were dotted with dark blonde hair, but not too much, just enough to set off his manly rustic aspect, Quail thought.

“You heading up to the commune?” he called down.

Quail shifted her small pack on her back and grinned at him.

“Yes I am,” she called up.

“The main house is still six kilometres up the road, as for the rest you are looking at it,” he grinned, “The name’s Tony Nichols, come on I’ll give you a ride.”

“Thanks,” Quail beamed, “Quail, Sara Quail.”

She had always wanted a daughter called Sara and maybe now, one day she would have one.

Quail jumped onto a low platform in back of the tractor and shuffled her tail to get comfy.

“Ready when you are,” she called and the tractor pulled away.

Up in the sky a flyer turned circles and seemed to wave at her so she waved back.

The end.

LSF have published another short story collection of mine. This one based on the adventure the Master and the Governess.

The headstrong Amelia urges Lucy to follow her lead and run naked into the woods … two wood nymphs scampering through damp grass in the sunset. But when their little adventure is over and they flee back to Weighbridge Hall, it is to find the back door locked. They find another way in but are caught by Amelia’s father, Sir Richard Weighbridge, and, given his daughter’s wilful nature, he employs a governess for her. Despite Amelia’s protests, Miss Caroline Cambridge is tasked with turning her into a lady and is also charged with disciplining the young woman. However, it takes one particular incident, where Caroline feels her master’s anger herself, before she understands that she needs to be stricter on her young charge…

This volume also includes the following short stories: An Edwardian Establishment; The Governess; An Interlude in the Drawing Room; Letter to a Friend and Miss Andersen.

It is available from Amazon and LSF Publications.  There are more details in the book shop.

Hilary Cline had always been fascinated by her aunt’s alma mater. Set among the rolling woodland of New England, it had a proud tradition of educating women that went back to 1879.  It took its motto seriously;  respiciunt futura praeteritis ad honorem, which meant something like respect the past to honour the future, or maybe the other way about, Hilary was never too sure. But Clyburn had always pursued progressive thinking while maintaining traditional methods of discipline. It had been one of the first ladies colleges to advocate the vote, one of the first to admit black women and boasted one of the first lady state governors among its graduates.

Hilary’s young aunt had graduated back in 1965 and it had always been her and the family’s wish that her niece follow in her footsteps. Hilary had been in her teens back then and more than a little impressionable. Not that she had been immediately convinced that she even wanted to go to college. Then one Thanksgiving she had come to find her aunt had come to visit on her way back from Clyburn.

Hilary had flown up the stairs to the guest room and had swept in without knocking.

Aunt Clarice was lying half naked face down on the bed with an ice pack on her tail end. Even obscured by the ice bag, it wasn’t hard to see her aunt’s purple rear and for Hilary to work out that her heroine had been very soundly spanked.

“Busted,” Clarice blushed. “You won’t tell your mom will you? She will just have to tell mine if you do.”

Clarice rolled her eyes as she spoke and then winced.

“But you’re… you’re way too old to be spanked,” Hilary had said with something like awe.

“Not at Clyburn kiddo, there it is practically mandatory,” Clarice said ruefully.

“But what did you do?” Hilary had asked with wide innocent eyes.

“Best you don’t know kiddo, let’s just say I had it coming,” Clarice grimaced.

“Was it a paddle?” Hilary asked as she came nearer. She had seen the girls’ at high school’s backsides after a trip to see the principal. She couldn’t take her eyes from her aunt’s tail end.

“This time it was, but they can use just about anything at Clyburn,” Clarice told her. “They have some very quaint traditions.”

That had been a turning point for Hilary. After that and for reasons she could not then or since fathom, studying at Clyburn was all that she ever wanted.

*

A dozen troublesome thoughts ran through Hilary’s head all competing for her consideration. But only one of these notions came with free tummy-butterflies and that was the one she tried to supress. Well she couldn’t say she hadn’t been warned beforehand and she certainly should have known better now, Hilary thought as she picked her way between the trees back to block house.

The block houses at Clyburn were like small mansions set higgledy-piggledy among the trees. They generally stood at the end of winding paths that led to and from the red-brick study halls. Hilary shared hers with eleven other girls at different stages of their student careers.

It was a fairly neat arrangement, with older girls able to support the newbies and show them the ropes. Also there was none of that bitchiness that came from a house full of sorority rich girl clones all competing over air and nothing in particular.

Hilary herself was fairly tall which gave her a slender look, and her shoulder length dark hair curled in from her narrow shoulders in two points at the front to frame her face. Her features were a little sharp for true beauty, but she had high cheekbones and her aunt’s dark smiley eyes.

It was 1971 and Hilary was in her final year of a four year course in English and History. She had already been offered a place at Stanford to do her master’s and if it hadn’t been for her recent troubles with her tutor she wouldn’t even have considered it. She was a Clyburnian girl through and through.

The trouble with John Harmon had begun routinely enough. She hadn’t got back into the swing of things after the summer vacation and had skipped a few lectures was all. The summons to his study the week before last had come as no great surprise nor had his instruction to drop her pants and panties and bend over for swats.

Professor Harmon’s paddle was old school; a short stout affair carved from teak and with thumb-sized drilled holes. It was said that it had been at Clyburn since its founding, a possibility supported by the smooth shiny face on the striking surface.

Hilary had felt it many, many times since her first semester and she had never lost respect for it. Not least because when Professor Harmon was particularly pissed at her he could have at her behind for some seriously prolonged workouts that not only left her unable to sit down for days, but gave her strange mincing step that was hard to shake and announced to all who saw her that she had been a bad girl. But the laughter and smirking was usually short-lived as all too soon her fellow students knew there time would come around.

Usually a serious spanking from John Harmon went in sets. First came the warm-up with his culprit bared and bent for several hard steady swats. Then the girl was sent to the corner to think about her sins. The second set of bottom-blisters was delivered while Hilary or whoever was bent over the back of an old padded chesterfield. Holding on to ones ankles for a second instalment was all but impossible, so one had to admit that it was a fair enough pose. Hilary for one, was always grateful for the added support.

Usually, it being an hour or more since being summoned, that was the end of it. Bye-bye paddle, goodbye sitting privileges for another week. But sometimes a girl had to go back to the corner for another goodly while to contemplate a serious dose of the cane. This was never ever fun. Her aunt had told about such extended corrections and Hilary had been enthralled, but the reality was not to be borne. Still it was what she had signed on for and such corrections were not handed out unless they were thoroughly deserved.

Then there were the other punishments.

Hilary had never fallen afoul of the campus nurse, but she had heard dark stories. Added to this were tales of dark initiations among the various faculties. Hilary prayed nightly in thanks that she was an English-History major; they were such a staid lot and did not go in for some of the more colourful rituals found amid the sports faculty, medicine or even law. But more than this, there were worse things.

Besides the legendary campus judicial bottom blistering; this carried out in public with a range of medieval devices all designed to unseat a girl for a whole semester. There was debagging.

Now strictly speaking, debagging was not as bad as a full judicial. But then a full judicial was less than rare and could only be carried out after a disciplinary hearing. You had to be caught with a reefer or have stolen a car or suchlike for it to come into play.

But debagging was rare enough to get you noticed in the very worse way and entirely within the gift of anyone with authority over one.

Debagging was a quaint term for what amounted to a very public correction. Firstly, as the name suggested one was devoid of ones bags. Bags being a quaint old term for trews, pants, panties, breeches and anything pertaining there to. This of course included skirts and the lower portion of ones dress should one be so attired. There was a time honoured tradition that predated Teddy Roosevelt that a girl’s skirts should be pinned up above her tail end and everything beneath to be left sans culottes; that is to say removed.

But a public display of one’s behind on a mainly all-girl campus was not the worse part, although the heavens knew it was bad enough for a delicate flower’s nerves. No, indeed not. The worse thing was that such a presentation both proceeded and followed a rather sharp punishment or punishments of an elaborate nature. And furthermore the one debagged usually had to remain so for at least a week.

Mockery was the friend of such a girl well beyond the punitive semester, and indeed whole academic careers could become associated with such colourful corrections. It is this last point that brings us back to Hilary picking her way home through the trees.

It had begun with the aforementioned summons two weeks ago. John had greeted her tersely and enquired about her health. He was a tall sturdy man in his late 40s. His dark parted hair was touched with white at his temples and streaks of white emanated from the sharp comb-track that divided it. This cumulated in a broad patch of white that hung in a quiff to his forehead. Only his eyebrows were completely dark and these sat as expressive hats above his slate-grey eyes that seemed to miss nothing. Today they seemed to regard Hilary sternly and find her lacking.

The usual polite exchanges had taken place while Professor Harmon had patiently stirred his tea as he listened. Hilary noted at the time that he had not offered her a cup, a sure sign that she was for the high-jump, but then she had known that already.

Then he had come sharply to the point.

“Your grades are slipping,” he said looking up.

“I know I…” Hilary blustered.

“You have been missing lectures,” he continued without pause, motioning her to silence. He looked down at his desk at this point and then back to meet her eyes. “Seven lectures I believe, one of which you especially asked me to arrange.” He let the last words sink in.

Hilary shifted uncomfortably as she stood in the middle of the carpet.

“We will come back to that last point later,” he said pointedly, “Much later. Now I will just get old faithful while you get ready.”

Hilary flushed to ears and felt her nerves jangle. It was always like this. Usually though she got to apologise before taking her licks. Apologies first and then swats, all followed by an expression of gratitude. That was the ritual. Something was amiss.

John coughed at her inaction so she had flipped her hip button and drew down the zip on her dogtooth ski-pants then neatly stepped out of them. With her back turned the panties had followed and then she had stood meekly with her hands cupping her sex in front to preserve some measure of modesty. By then John had returned with the paddle and an expression that would have wilted the roses outside the campus main entrance.

“Now bend over Miss Cline,” John said in a business-like manner. He only ever called her Miss Cline when she was in trouble.

“Yes Sir,” she whispered and then turning around she doubled over and grabbed her ankles so that her bare bottom was adequately presented.

The motion left her legs parted a little and small pools of hot blood gathered on the crowns of her cheeks in embarrassment at what he might see. Professor’s perk, went the quip among the other girls. If one wasn’t due a parcel of pain then one laughed.

The first swat was a killer. It always was. Hilary grunted and shook her tail in acknowledgement.

The second was always worse than the first, but this biting impact nearly sent her forward into the wall. Man, he is really pissed at me, she had thought. The place where the paddle had landed sizzled like sausages in a frying pan and she could feel the oblong pad on her rear throb. Every searing hole drilled in the board was seared there even though the paddle was now safely in his hand and not touching her behind.

Tears pricked behind her eyes in response to the third swat and by now she was breathing loudly and was totally unable to keep her bottom still under its assault.

“I do hope you are feeling this Miss Cline,” John intoned.

“Yes Sir,” Hilary hissed through clenched teeth.

“Good, very good,” he said as he swatted in hard once more and then in a twist he spanked her quickly again.

The unexpected follow-up swat made Hilary yelp and a struggle began as she was determined not to cry. Tears this early usually embarrassed him and it wasn’t fair on her part. After all she was the one being punished not him.

In the event she had taken all 10 with wet silent tears and a bottom that felt like two baked potatoes.

“Please address yourself to the corner Miss Cline,” he said at last.

Hilary was relieved. Ten was an average starter dose and from his manner she had expected more. But then there was still time enough for that. As it was, the corner was a million miles away when one could scare put one foot before the other and she took small pigeon steps as she oh so carefully crossed the room to place her nose at the point where the two walls met.

John took a moment to study the raised pad of spanked flesh and the circular welts. Then he put the paddle down and went back to his marking.

The corner held Hilary for more than an hour before John directed her to the chair. By then Hilary knew he was very, very pissed at her.

Hilary’s second go round consisted of a full two dozen as she dangled bottom up over the back of the chair. This time she had bawled for America from the 11^th or 12^th swat. Scratch one bottom for the duration, she thought miserably.

She had cried like a proverbial baby for a good 20 minutes as she stood again in the corner, but then she didn’t care too much where she stood. That was until Professor Harmon had said, “I could quite easily have you stand in the hall.”

Hilary swallowed. Yep he was pissed at her; she had screwed up this time. She felt a caning coming on, but it had been a while and she guessed she was due.

“You know what this is about, don’t you?” John asked her as he faced her with the cane in his hand.

Hilary shrugged. Her attitude had stunk and missing seven lectures was a kick in the face for her parents. For her it was an all-time record, but she guessed the grade hit was worse.

“The lecture series on the impact of religion in 16^th century Spain was oversubscribed. I cashed in some favours to get you a place,” John said wearily. “You missed the first and again I had to go to bat for you. Miss another and you and I are going to have a very serious falling out.”

Hilary winced. That lecture had not been on her miss-list. Tammy Radcliff’s car had broken down and they had crashed at a pad off-campus. She had gotten the notes from a friend and had definitely meant to catch-up.

“Sorry Professor, I really didn’t mean to goof off,” Hilary said apologetically.

He nodded and then pointed significantly at the back of the chair.

The cane was bad. It always felt to Hilary that she was being cut with a great blade that went so deep a little piece of her soul was stung. The cane on a twice-paddle behind felt like a small piece of hell. The small piece that she earnestly hoped Dr Arnold had been consigned to.

There was no way she could not have yelled. Not at that first stroke or the last. It was so undignified and this time John did not mind her heartfelt tears. Not then or after the caning. Not even when they lasted well into the afternoon as she stood yet again in the corner and Professor Harmon had to cancel his next tutorial.

“I damn well ought to have my student in anyway and leave you there as an example,” he threatened under his breath. “The only reason I don’t is because she has problems of her own and you would be far too distracting standing there.”

“Yes Sir,” Hilary said miserably.

That had been two weeks ago. She hadn’t sat down for almost a week and every drop of cold cream in her block-house had been begged, stolen or borrowed. This had been at the price of displaying a good eyeful of tail for the amusement of her housemates. It had then taken her three days to walk straight and even now she could make out some faint stripes and perfect circles on her behind.

That might have been the end of it. After all it had happened before and it would happen again and not one of the girls had or would escape at some time. Luckily the next lecture had not been for another two days after her punishment and it was well-attended enough so that she didn’t look a total dork standing up at the back.

Not that she was alone standing there and by shoving people along there was adequate seating for everyone. Hilary guessed that John and the other professor had been busy that week. No one commented. This was Clyburn after all.

No, the first week had gone well and she had recovered a grade on her next paper and had got to the Spanish religion lecture without a hitch. In fact she had only missed one lecture that first week and that had been an optional.

It was entirely possible that John would take her to task for it and if he paddled her again then it was no biggie. Well apart from some residual tenderness in the sitting equipment, but hey-ho that was Clyburn. In fact he hadn’t. Largely, she suspected because it had only been the day before her tutorial and he might not yet have heard she had missed it.

Then Wednesday had rolled around.

Wednesday was an orphan day on the calendar. The week was getting old but the weekend was still two days away. Wednesday night was when the weak and the party-minded got a little high and sneaked a little booze just to mark the mid-week.

Vodka shots had seemed such a good idea. After all, her paper was in and there was only one bottle. What harm could it do?

The next morning her head felt like an old rusty biscuit tin and twice as empty. It also seemed to her that a bird had made a nest in her mouth and it was entirely incomprehensible that the room wouldn’t keep still. The nausea was the worst thing and Hilary did not want to know a thing until she had some coffee.

“Did they kick you off that course?” Tammy said as she breezed back from that morning’s lecture.

Her blonder bunches bounced perkily which at that moment Hilary found very irritating. The girl was always like a high-school senior on speed and even dressed the part. A typical ex-cheer leader, Hilary thought bitterly. Does she never have a hangover?

“Eh,” Hilary said thickly, “What did you say?” A vacant expression hanging from her eyes and reaching her slack jaw.

“I thought you had that Spanish thing?” Tammy gushed and gaily bounded over to the fridge.

When she turned back Hilary was banging her head repeatedly on the table with exaggerated irony.

“Forgot it huh,” Tammy said with a shrug.

“Oh yeah,” Hilary groaned.

*

John had not been mad with her. He had said very little. She had gone there as a bag of nerves expecting to be paddled within an inch of her life and then caned again. She even wondered if he she would have to stand in the corner outside his office while a parade of students went for their tutorials. It had happened, although not to her.

“Miss Cline, I will consider your punishment and put my decision in your pigeon-hole before the end of the day,” was all he had said.

Being addressed a ‘Miss Cline’ was warning enough that she was in the hottest of hot water, but that was as far as her imagination would run.

The yellow envelope had been in her mail box at 4.30 before she went home. She placed it in her purse unopened as she picked her way through the trees. She hadn’t had the courage to look at it there and then, and anyway the bright yellow discipline note had drawn some stares.

The house was in view now. Up to then it had been obscured by the trees, but now the wind got up and a low shush began a way off and then got louder until it passed overhead and showered her with leaves.

It is like a ticker-tape parade, she thought bitterly, only I am no heroine. Up ahead the house looked a million miles away, a refuge denied to her. Whatever the note said she would get no sleep tonight, especially if she didn’t open it.

Some of the girls would be home now and she hated the idea of opening it with everyone there. She pictured the envelope being snatched from her hands while boisterous Karen or one of the others gleefully read out her fate.

Hilary reached into her purse and pulled out the yellow square of paper. What the hell, she thought, it was probably just a formal caning, after a firm paddling of course. It wouldn’t be Clyburn if her bare bottom wasn’t soundly paddled. This one would go on her record somewhere. Maybe there would be an embarrassing entry on the college notice board. She had seen them.

Hilary Cline, soundly paddled, 24 strokes of the cane.

She quailed inwardly. It would be more than 24, she just knew it. She had gotten 18 last time, and that had been to get her attention. The note would put her on campus restriction with a severe tail-warming threat to her behind in the shape of a disciplinary visit to Professor Harmon’s study. An afternoon in the corner followed by, well she if she had to guess, 30 strokes on a paddled rear end.

Maybe she had just been thrown off the course. The idea saddened her, especially as she hadn’t been paddled yet. Was John that disgusted with her? Well he should be, she guessed.

Hilary sighed and then hastily tore open the envelope. Her name was in red on an otherwise mundane college note. Professor Harmon’s name was signed at the bottom and she was relieved. It hadn’t occurred to her until that moment that part of her had secretly feared a referral to the Dean. This disciplinary slip had been issued on John’s authority. Then she slowed down and took a deep breath to read the rest of the note in the gloom of the forest.

“From six tonight until further notice consider yourself debagged,” the note read, “You will post this note, a copy of the one now on every notice board in college, on your house board and observe all restrictions while out of your room. You will report to me suitably debagged at 9.30 sharp for the first part of your punishment.”

Hilary licked her lips feverishly and reread the words twice over. She felt sick. In her heart of hearts she had also considered this possibility. Dark thoughts of extended cane time had run through her head all afternoon in an attempt to blot out this option from her mind.

She could go to him now and take her punishment. Maybe afterwards he would… she glanced at her watch. John would be at supper and it was already well after five. A trip to campus this evening would be carried out sans culottes as per Clyburn tradition. Her heart not only sank, it caved and ran like gloop into her belly and made her feel sick.

Hilary gulped down nausea and slowly reread the letter again. In her first semester here a sophomore, Candy Chandler, had been made to wear only a fire warden’s tabard and serve two weeks as parking attendant. It had been hilarious. She had been naked back and front and you could have fried an egg on her welted behind. She had never seen anyone look so miserable. Unless, that is, you counted Rachel Ryan.

For a week Rachel had been made to walk around campus picking up litter with her pants and panties around her ankles. The paddle spore was something to see and it had taken an age for her to walk anywhere so everyone had time to take it in.

Then there was the technique adopted by Professor Lindsay. She liked to the traditional approach and had girls where pinafore dresses pinned up in back and was given to handing out public over-the-knee spankings in embarrassing and inopportune places.

Daisy Schindler had been spanked in front of an entire class before a lecture Hilary had attended. She had spent the rest of the 90 minutes in the corner at the front.

All of these girls crimes had been long forgotten but their punishments lived in the mind and took up a home there. Hilary let out a long heavy groan and ducked her head as if to hide. She was about to enter the Clyburn history books and been added to a long line of punished students.

At least Professor Harmon had not insisted on any embellishments. She turned the note over. No. It was a simple debagging. She would have to get the handbook out but she was pretty sure bare bottom drill was the only stipulation.

“Okay girls,” she addressed the block house up ahead, “Prepare to be entertained.”

Hey-ho world, here I come.

continued

Part 1 here.

Tammy, Charlotte Coleman and Anne Shelley were all around the kitchen table when Hilary walked in. The red-haired senior, Charlotte, shifted awkwardly in her seat, visibly wincing. Hilary remembered that Charlotte had had a tutorial that day and she knew damn well the girl had not finished her paper.

The well-groomed Anne was rather more sensible, although the pink fluffy slippers belied that and clashed with her raven hair. She didn’t look up until Tammy rather too enthusiastically said, “Hi Hilary.”

The girl’s mood did not fit Hilary’s just then.

“Hello,” Hilary replied dejectedly.

Anne was already regarding Hilary with a quizzical look, having picked up on Hilary’s vibe, but now Charlotte too cast a glance in her direction.

“What’s up?” she said.

Hilary drew in a large slow breath and then let it out as a heavy sigh. Then she crossed the room defiantly and slapped Harmon’s note on the cork board and pinned it there with an angry flourish as if to say ‘there, have a good laugh.’ Then she crossed her arms and stood there rocking back and forth with her lips pursed to await a reaction.

“What’s this?” Anne frowned.

Charlotte seemed to forget her own woes and strained to read the note without getting up from the table. But it wasn’t until Tammy bounded over and read it aloud that they got the full picture.

“Oh-my-God,” Tammy said with slow shocked deliberation. All expression drained from her face and she went limp with her hands dangling at her sides.

Charlotte got painfully to her feet with another wince and came and read the notice for herself as if not quite trusting the news from the ever-ebullient and rather flakey Tammy. Her lips moved silently as she read, realisation growing on her face.

Anne was more direct and after a moment stood up brusquely and grabbed the note by one corner and read it quickly without pulling it off.

“Is this to do with that Spanish history thing?” Tammy asked in a tone that suggested she was still more shocked than amused.

Hilary nodded and thought she might cry.

“Oh Hilary, this is dreadful,” Anne said, her voice strained with concern.

“It’s the first debagging of the semester isn’t it?” Charlotte said as if it were a random piece of news. But the word was out of her mouth and it seemed to Hilary like an undeniable pronouncement of doom. It made it seem real somehow.

“I guess you won’t be going onto campus tonight,” Tammy said mildly as she recovered from the shock.

Hilary looked up at the clock. It had gone quarter to six and she swallowed down some despair. Anne followed her gaze and offered Hilary a sympathetic face.

“Oh I don’t know,” Charlotte said in a dismissive voice, “You could always brazen it out like Susie Morgenstern.”

During Halloween of the previous year Susie had been debagged but had chosen to don nothing below the waist but a tutu and walk theatrically around campus thrusting her stripes at anyone who showed an interest. The woman had been in campus theatre, but even so Hilary wondered if it had all been a defensive stratagem. Hilary had seen Susie on the stairs when she thought no one was looking; she had paused before the doors to the lower concourse and fanned her face with her hand as if steeling herself before a performance. She had looked cute in a tutu though and Hilary would love to carry something like that off.

“What are you going to wear?” Anne asked softly, “I mean, what is your…? I don’t know. I’m sorry Hilary. This is a tough break.”

“You kind of deserve it though, don’t you?” Tammy said brightly as if she thought the suggestion might help.

In funny kind of way it sort of did, but all the same, Hilary chose that moment to burst into tears.

*

That evening Hilary mostly stayed in her room. There was no way that she would go back onto campus for the evening meal. Instead after six she had laid out a range of clothes and tried them on one by one to gauge which was the least revealing while meeting the requirements of a debagging.

She could probably have gotten away with not complying while still in the house, but John might ask her directly and he would see through a lie immediately. Also someone else might let it slip and she didn’t really know all the girls in the house well enough. Besides it was good practice for facing the world the next day.

Her best option was a short dark blue woollen number that could be tweaked up at the back, but then Anne, who had come to support Hilary, pointed out that debagging required that everything in back be no more than three inches below the waist. So while the blue dress would work, it would have to be clearly hiked up in back and draw more attention than was perhaps strictly necessary.

That was going to be true of almost all of her skirts and dresses and Hilary dropped into the chair by the bed in despair. There is no way out of this is there? The thought was a crushing hard reality.

Anne frowned and crinkled up her nose in deep pondering. Then she said, “I have a long bum-freezer wrap around sweater. With a few small adjustments it might just serve. From the front and pretty much the sides too it looks like a frock-style affair, very chic, but the hem rises naturally in back almost as far as the waist. You’re supposed to wear it with a midi or pants, but…”

Hilary seized her hand in gratitude and forced a smile.

“That will do for a day or two but what if… what if…?” she was close to a fresh outburst of tears now.

“Hey, let’s cross that bridge later…” Anne shushed her soothingly, “I also have a big leather full-length coat. You could wear most anything under that above the waist and then we could just button or pin it back like a curtain behind. You know as debagging goes we have a lot of scope. At least you haven’t been told to wear a fire-warden tabard.”

Hilary remembered Candy Chandler and after a moment she cracked a smile until Anne laughed too.

“See it could be so much worse,” Anne said encouragingly. “Come on let’s go to my room and look what else I have. If worse comes to worse you could borrow a pair of Tammy’s shorts. She wears them so brief in the summer that no one would know if she even got debagged.”

Hilary giggled at that image too and wished she really could get off that easily, but nevertheless paused at her bedroom door before she faced the world. Then with a shrug she pulled off her robe and followed Anne in just a skimpy hipster shirt and her socks. One of the girls gave her a wolf-whistle and Hilary did a little shimmy out of bravado.

*

Hilary had opted for the bum-freezer for her meeting with John Harmon. The coat was a good call also, as were a couple of the other options, but the thick-collared woollen wrap-around sweater best met the letter of a debagging and she didn’t want take the slightest chance of having her punishment upgraded for evasion.

Nine-thirty was a late start, but then John wasn’t an early riser if he didn’t need to be. The trouble was the rest of the campus started to come alive after eight, so as Hilary made her way through the trees along the path she felt acutely exposed.

The bum-freezer was aptly named as the cool October morning was more than evident on her behind and the flesh on her curves tightened with goosebumps.

There had been some derisive humour over coffee that morning and two of the girls hadn’t even heard. But it had been largely good-natured, as Hilary expected would be the rest of the college’s reaction, but she had blushed all the same and had done her best to keep her behind backed to the wall wherever possible. But now it was time to face the world in earnest. Hey-ho, campus here I come, she thought.

Hilary had opted for leaving early. She figured that if she could get to the history faculty building where John’s study was before the campus became too busy, then she could hide in a bathroom or sit down somewhere with her tail end neatly tucked from sight.

Part of her hoped that John would bawl her out and then after a suitable paddy-whacking would relent about the debagging having given her a fright and put her in her place. It wasn’t an entirely unrealistic ambition, she had heard about and seen girls ducking down corridors with their hind-ends exposed having only come on to campus for a sound spanking. Skipping a lecture or two during a two or three day debag was manageable. However, given that Hilary’s crime was skipping lectures, she dared not even contemplate that strategy. Her only hope was that John would punish her and let her go home before letting it drop.

Hilary reached a branch in the path just as three women came from one of the other houses. They were giggling among themselves but didn’t give Hilary a second glance. Hilary felt her heart pounding in her chest and hung back to let them get ahead. Then quickly looking behind she saw no one, so after a moment picked up the pace towards the history building.

Her normal route took right across the main thoroughfare passed the refectory and common areas, but today Hilary opted for another route through the trees that skirted the service road to the faculty buildings.

Her only concern was that someone would drive by or come up behind her, the greatest danger being from someone on a bike who would come along fast and relatively quietly. But it was just possible that in a hurry someone would just think she was wearing pink pants.

Then she remembered meal times. Up to now she had had no appetite and a small snack prepared by Anne had sustained her. But cooking facilities in the block houses were limited and almost all students had to eat in the refectory. The option to go off campus either to buy food or to eat was closed to her so if she got debagged for a week, as was likely, then all her evasive tactics was just delaying the inevitable.

“Oh shoot,” she cursed. You idiot, you absolute idiot; this was going to be bad.

Just then a car went by and she swung around to present her back to the trees. As she did this a bike did come up the path at a lick. It was ridden by a girl with wild blonde hair who looked as if she might be late for something. Neither, as far as Hilary could tell, noticed a thing.

Up ahead the red-brick faculty building suddenly looked exposed being at least 50 yards from the nearest stand of trees and already she could see people coming and going through the side entrance she had hoped would be quiet.

It was 8.55, her circuitous walk had taken longer than she had supposed. Still she was early.

A man making a delivery pulled up in a van as she reached the side entrance. As it was she had walked briskly across the open area and then had kept her back half turned to the side wall as she headed for the door. He smiled broadly at her and winked as he got out with a stack of boxes in his arms. Hilary froze.

“Hey ma’am, can you get the door?” he puffed in her direction.

Hilary gave him a fixed smile and grappled for the door sideways on. It was a narrow escape. At least on the central campus she wouldn’t encounter outside males and very few men at all, she pondered as she watched the man go about his business oblivious to her exposed state. Then he too was gone.

Inside there were people about but they were all off to the side or had just passed. Only someone directly behind her would see her bare bottom and know she had been debagged. So as it was she reached the back stairs without a hitch.

Halfway up Hilary passed one of the teaching staff she vaguely recognised. She was a woman in her 30s with dark horn-rimmed specs and a tweed skirt suit. She smiled in acknowledgement but went on past. Again Hilary did the half turn thing and went on up confident that the woman had seen nothing.

“Oh my, someone has been a bad girl,” said a female voice from behind that made Hilary start.

A middle-aged woman with a blue rinse who Hilary knew worked in admin had seen her naked tail side-on from the top step as she came through the fire doors. Hilary blushed and tugged self-consciously at her sweater.

“I studied at community college myself,” the woman said with a twinkle and a hint of southern drawl, “I missed out on all this fun.” Then she winked and went about her business without further comment.

That wasn’t too bad, Hilary reassured herself and hurried on. But her ears and face were furiously burning. She went so fast that she almost broke into a run all the way to her hoped for haven and reached it without further incident. Thankful there was no one in the student’s bathroom and Hilary found a stall to sit in to wait for her appointment.

*

Hilary knocked on the door and then bounced up and down impatiently praying that John wasn’t late. She shot a glance up and down the corridor willing that no one would come. Then finally the door opened.

Professor Harmon looked her up and down suspiciously, his eyes glancing at her middle. He looked as if he was about to say something and leaned sideways a bit. He must have glimpsed her bare bottom in profile because he relaxed and ushered her in. For a dreadful moment he had feared that Hilary had taken advantage of their friendship and had defied him. But for her part, from his reaction, Hilary gathered that her outfit was well chosen from most angles. Thank you Anne, she prayed silently.

“Miss Cline, so nice of you to be on time for once, I see you got my note,” John said pointedly.

“Yes Sir,” Hilary blushed.

“Tell me Miss Cline, have I made my point?” he sighed.

Hilary couldn’t answer and just got redder in the face.

“I mean if you can look me in the eye and tell me that I have overreacted then I will go easy on you,” John continued.

Hilary opened her mouth to speak and then closed it again. What could she say?

“No really, I mean it,” he said in a tired voice. “You are only the second student in 25 years here that I have ever debagged. The other was 18 years ago and the alternative was a full-disciplinary or exclusion. I really do prefer a private afternoon putting a girl straight and it usually works. If you can make a case I’ll just paddle your tail, no doubt with a little caning thrown in, and you can go home and get more appropriately dressed.”

Hilary clamped her chin to her chest and frantically tried to think of an argument that would end this nightmare.

“You see when I said I went to bat for you twice over the Spanish history course I don’t think you understood. I vouched for you as being reliable and keen; twice. I promised, promised a senior colleague that you wouldn’t let us down. I am not just embarrassed, I am not just compromised…” he let out a heavy sigh and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You have made it more difficult for me to push another student forward in future. You know Professor Martin wanted to give you some demerits and hold you back for a year. All because Professor Lindsay got a bee in her bonnet about making an example of you; you know how she gets.”

Hilary felt sick. He hadn’t until now understood the shit storm she had caused.

“Guess who went to bat for you again to get you clear of Madam Professor Righteous. Although frankly I can’t blame Jim Martin, he has good cause to be pissed at you,” John added.

“Thank you Sir, I’m sorry,” Hilary mumbled. She guessed that John had bought her out of a hole with the debagging option.

“Do you want a week’s suspension?” he asked in a tired voice, “Maybe it will have blown over somewhat by then and I could deal with you properly.”

Hilary thought of Aunt Clarice’s disappointment. Running away would be a kind of betrayal of Clyburn. Besides what if it didn’t blow over? A double debagging would look bad and might even… well it would be a mess whatever happened. So what if a mailman or a guy from maintenance caught an eyeful of her rear end? What was a bit of joshing from the girls? It was part of the Clyburn experience. Better to be a bystander, sure, but given a choice between Clyburn without its traditions or the one she knew and loved… well someone had to take a fall from time to time and what was so special about her. Besides, thinking about it, by Clyburn’s lights, she deserved it. Aunt Clarice would be proud. She felt a cosy tickle down her spine like warm milk and a homely fire at this thought.

“No Sir, I guess I have it coming,” she said in a spirited voice.

“You know you are still on Professor Martin’s course, he practically insisted on it. Not one for giving up on a student is Jim Martin,” John told her, “But you’ll have a devil of a job making the grade and I expect he will make you squirm this week given the situation.”

“If I get less than an A minus from him you can spank me,” Hilary said in bravado.

“Oh Miss Cline, I will,” John growled. “And don’t think he won’t spank you himself for the least thing. When you come to write your autobiography you can call this chapter ‘The Semester of Standing for Supper.’

“Yes Sir,” Hilary grinned sheepishly. It was kind of funny.

“Now let me tell you about this week and how we are going to handle things,” John said darkly. He was using his serious voice again. “In the meantime I suggest you do not miss any lectures, even the optional ones. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes Sir,” Hilary gulped the implications for her infamy and dignity not lost on her.

“No seriously Hilary, do I? I really resent being forced into this OTT situation and I am determined to make it stick.” John sighed. “The alternatives are too gruesome for either of us to contemplate.”

Hilary sighed. “I know. I’m real sorry Professor Harmon. I guess I’ve got it coming,” she said miserably.

After a bawling out that left her close to tears, Hilary was surprised to be taken over John’s lap for a sound hand-spanking. It not only stung, but it was embarrassing. Under the circumstances, that was still surprising.

After finally setting her on her feet where she stood blushing and gasping for breath John said, “In future, so long as you are debagged I mean, you will report to the faculty office to tell them you have arrived for your tutorial and then you will go to the corner opposite the entrance and face the wall until you are summoned.”

While Hilary gaped at this news, John reached across his desk and picked up a piece of paper.

“I have your schedule here. You will report to me every day, even when you don’t have lectures on campus… well we don’t want you skulking in your room do we? Also unless you are dismissed from here for a lecture or another agreed purpose you will go back to the corner in the faculty office until I ring down to dismiss you.” John told her. “I know other professors use debagging largely for the public shaming aspect, but that is by and by. I believe there is nothing as salutatory as a sore bottom so for the next week or so anyone who does see your bottom will see that it is pretty damn red. I do hope you understand that.”

Hilary nodded and then with a deep breath she acknowledged his words with a curt, “Yes Sir.”

“Today I have one other task for you to get us off to the right start and to put you in the right frame of mind,” he intoned.

Hilary swallowed nervously. She had already realised that an over the knee spanking was way too lenient.

*

Instead of the corner, Hilary was told to go into the ‘beautiful countryside’ and find a suitable tree for switches. She was to cut at least a dozen 18-inch lengths and if she didn’t know which were suitable, she was to go to library and look up how to identify birch, hazel and suchlike for use of correction.

“If you get it wrong, I will send you back out again,” John had told.

Hilary walked dejectedly to the main entrance ignoring the occasionally glance and “Oh-my-goshes.” It was going to be a long week, so she might as well start to get used to it.

She pondered if she should bite the bullet and go to the library or rely on what her Aunt Clarice had taught her. It was worth taking a chance, she decided. If she could help it she wanted to stay as far away from the library as possible this week.

Thankfully the woods began less than 100 yards from the faculty building and apart from one gaping girl on the steps, no one noticed her slip into the trees.

It was peaceful in the woods and one would never have known that the campus was a few steps away. She didn’t have to go far before she saw a thick hazel tree; she recognised it by the small heart-shaped leaves. They were yellowing now and one or two had become brown.

This tree was no use to her, but at least she was confident now she could pick the right one for switches; for she was in doubt that that was what John intended to use them for. A bare bottom switching was its own little piece of hell she had heard. But thankfully it was an experience she had had little familiarity with up until then.

It took her another 10 minutes to find a smaller tree which stood like an over-large bouquet in a clearing. As she stooped to trim some of the straighter withes from the hazel she remembered that she could also have found an apple tree. She would have no difficulty in identifying one by the apples of course and she knew that there were some about. She shrugged. It was too late now and the hazel would probably sting less, she decided on very little data. But Clarice had told her that apple switches were the very worst for switching.

“That is to say the best,” she had said one day with a twinkle in her eye.

Before coming to Clyburn Hilary had always wondered how Clarice knew so much about it. Surely she could not have been spanked that much, Hilary had thought. But after her first semester they had been able to trade stories and up until now Clarice’s always had the edge for drama. So now Hilary felt a kind of pride that she was now the star of one of Clyburn’s oldest traditions. She was finally one up on her aunt. During the walk back she felt a strange sense of achievement.

Then she reached the path and paused. Until then she had been able to brazen it out and hang back or turn her back when she passed someone. But now she was standing in the open with a bundle of hazel twigs in her hands.

Hilary had seen girls gathering them before and everyone knew what they meant. It was a specialty with some of the professors, especially the ladies, but the embarrassed miscreants didn’t usually have their tail’s hanging in the breeze.

She waited for the path ahead to clear and then she all but ran as fast as she deemed appropriate for the faculty building. Nobody saw her and she once inside she sighed with relief.

The she remembered her instructions and her heart sank.

“Oh shoot,” she said in frustration and stamped her foot.

*

It had been embarrassing enough to meekly inform the receptionist at the faculty desk that she was waiting to see Professor Harmon and could she let him know. The woman had frowned in open puzzlement, as students were not usually announced. Then her colleague had whispered something in her ear.

“Oh, you are that girl,” the woman said tartly.

Hilary blushed.

“I’ll be…” she pointed to the corner, realising that the woman and everyone else passing through the office would now know everything.

“Oh I know where you’ll be,” the woman replied with a smirk.

Hilary glowered and then averted her eyes.

Standing in the corner in a public office finally robbed her all of all hope that she wouldn’t be seen. She could only pray that John summoned her quickly. Then she remembered the bundle of switches. Maybe she hoped that, oh God, Clyburn certainly knows how to put a girl in her place she miserably thought.

A door opened and there was palpable atmosphere in the open space behind her and then whoever had come in went about their business leaving Hilary with her nose in the corner and a heroic blush on her face.

It seemed to take forever for the receptionist to tell Hilary ‘to go on up.’ Before then more than a dozen people must have come and gone. Most, if they noticed her at all, did not react. But Hilary counted two gasps, one ‘oh my God,’ and four giggles before the woman called out in a voice that was far too loud for comfort, “Miss Cline, Professor Harmon will see you now.”

It must have been a day for discipline for as Hilary reached the door to John’s office a pretty blonde emerged looking sorry for herself. She was damp-eyed and rubbing her bottom as she came out and when she saw Hilary she hurried away.

Another freshman learning the mysteries of Clyburn, Hilary thought ruefully. She wondered if the girl would ever be initiated into a debagging. Then she shrugged and then knocked on the door.

“Come in,” John said at once.

The paddle was still on the desk and Hilary fancied she could still see smoke issuing from it.

“Miss Carmichael managed a D minus on her second attempt at the same paper. Her spelling is atrocious. You would think being English she would know better,” John said humourlessly.

Hilary acknowledged him with a nervous half smile and proffered the bundle of hazel.

“You know what they are?” his eyes narrowed.

“Hazel I think,” Hilary said meekly. Then she added, in case he meant something else, “Switches, for my… for me.”

“Hazel, yes, did you look it up?”

Hilary shook her head. Then seeing that he was still questioning her with his eyes she added, “My aunt, she… she had some experience.”

“Indeed?”

“She was here a few years back, she is only a little younger than me,” Hilary explained. “My mom’s little sister.”

“Oh yes,” John said brightly, “Clarice Greenburg. I remember her… yes I knew she was your aunt. She has called in to see me once or twice since then.”

He had a faraway look in his eyes and a smile played about his lips.

“I never debagged her, but she did have to cut switches for me more than once. Quite a wilful girl I remember,” John chuckled.

“She never told me it was you…” Hilary gaped. Of course, so much made sense to her now.

Then he stiffened. “Anyway, to business Miss Cline,” he brusquely, “No need to disrobe today eh? Bend over and grab your ankles. We’ll warm you up first.”

Hilary regarded the paddle that had suddenly made an appearance in his hands with some dread.

“Miss Cline,” he said significantly, “If you please.”

The first dozen swats were familiar territory for Hilary. Each splat across her behind extracted a sharp grunt and a shimmy but she held up well. In fact the light burn in her tail brought back some feeling against the slightly numbed chill that had crept up on her due to her exposure. If only that was all she faced, she thought ruefully.

“We have wasted enough time on this today as it is,” John said after a cursory application of the paddle.

“Yes Sir,” Hilary winced.

As she stood up she saw him picking through the pile of switches on his desk.

“This might sting a bit,” the professor said thoughtfully, “I want you to kneel facing backwards in the seat of the chair. This time and bend right over the back with your head towards the floor.”

It was a more awkward and not to say more undignified position than she was used to. The posture had the effect of thrusting her bottom right up. But she was soon to learn the madness of his method.

The first swipe of the hazel switch felt was sharper than the cane, too sharp to bear all at once and she flailed her head and hands and tried to launch herself upwards. But for the assistance of gravity she may well have succeeded, however the extreme posture kept her bottom correctly presented for the second wisp-snick of the thin hazel rod. The third and fourth bits of twig landed in short order, each redoubling the pain of the last until Hilary bucked and bounced as she was being goaded by a cattle prod.

“Hee-ow, professor, it kills, it kills,” she squealed.

“Does it?” he muttered and continued liming her tail.

He didn’t intend to use all the switches she had gathered, not unless she was rebellious. He merely wanted to have a choice and besides the act of collecting so many was a good symbolic gesture of submission for her.

By the time John had used up the first switch to place 30 or 40 light stinging swipes across her bare bottom, Hilary’s bottom was dark red all over with a tight nest of rippled welts. She was also quietly crying, which was a surprise to her if not him. So much so that he decided to let her rest in the corner for a few minutes before he continued to the second and third switch.

“I hope you are learning your lesson Miss Cline,” he said sternly to her as he helped her get to her feet.

“Yes Sir,” she agreed meekly.

His use of the present and on-going tense did not escape her. But nor was she surprised. He hadn’t told he had no use for all of the switches so it was with extreme apprehensive misery that she hobbled to the corner and placed her nose in a well-trained posture.

“It is fortunate that you have no lectures today,” John observed once she was nose-pinned in the corner. “Is there anything else you need to do on campus today?”

“No Sir,” Hilary replied in a sore-filled voice. It had a damp misery addled tone and she sounded a little wan.

No lectures today she thought miserably, but she had two on the next day and one of those was with Professor Martin. Please, please, please let me… she didn’t know what. She just wanted the week to be over, and right then the day or the minute even.

“Well then. Once we have concluded our business here, you can go back to the corner in the faculty office,” he announced.

“Yes Sir,” she said miserably after taking a moment to let his orders sink in.

As ever, corner time seemed to take an age, but this time for once it was too short and she was ordered back into place.

The second set of striping made Hilary yell out this time and she shrieked and babbled apologies by turns until John was ready to take up the third and final switch.

“This is very beneficial don’t you think?” he asked in a neutral voice.

“Yes Sir,” Hilary panted back. Her eyes and nose were in overload producing tears and snot that now drenched her face. She wiped the later with the back of her hand and blinked hard against the searing throb in her bottom.

“Do you think you will skip lectures again?” John asked almost conversationally.

“No Sir, oh no Sir, never,” she promised earnestly.

“Good,” he replied as he struck her across the raw bottom with the last of the switches, “Very good.”

Hilary yelled purposefully now in a vain bid to distract herself from the sting. By then her bottom carried welts like angry worms wrapped around the curves of both her hinds. Each stung and throbbed in a separate punishment for her; dozens and dozens of burning ridges all competing to make her cry.

I’ll be good, really I will, so, so good, she promised the universe in earnest prayers, you can stop now. Then it did.

It took a while for Hilary to notice of course, such was the burning insistence that had become her bottom. For a moment or two she fixed on her ragged breaths in anticipation of another unbearable stroke that would finally send her over the edge. But as ever with such things under the command of a competent but stern master, they stopped just short of what she could cope with.

Her punishment for the moment over, the already tear-drenched Hilary burst into loud cleansing sobs. She lay flopped over the back of the chair strangely enjoying the contrast between the cool rough surface of the chair back on her lower belly and thighs, and the rasping burn in her bottom as it cooled in the seeming chill of the room.

“Miss Cline,” John asked gently, “Are you alright?”

Hilary managed to get her tears under control to reply, “Yes Sir, thank you Sir.”

He mouthed something and extended a hand. She needed his help in getting to her feet.

“Quite a lesson,” he sighed.

“Yes Sir, thank you,” Hilary sniffed.

He nodded.

“No Sir, I mean it. Thank you.” She actually managed a smile even as she winced and did a little shimmy. She was proud of herself that she could resist dancing around the room like a freshman after her first paddling.

He returned a sad smile and nodded again.

“You can use the staff facilities in the hall to clean up,” he said, “But then you know where I want you?”

She nodded ruefully and moved painfully towards the door.

“I will see you again tomorrow morning,” he reminded her.

She looked back and nodded and then she was gone.

To be continued.

Part 1 here.

Spanked college girls was a common enough sight on campus for it not to draw too much attention, but the woman in the faculty office looked up as Hilary took her first slow painful steps through the fire doors that led into the open area. Hilary could feel every loving stripe of each switch with every step and she guessed the flare in her bottom was reflected in her sorry face.

There were two women behind the reception desk. The older woman was standing up filing and taking no notice of Hilary as she entered. The younger seated woman winced sympathetically as she watched the recently switched college girl’s painful progress.

“It beats me why these girls never learn,” the elder woman said without looking around.

The seated woman rolled her eyes. As a graduate of Clyburn she knew all too well and sometimes wished her older colleague had had some of the past benefits the school had to offer. It certainly might hush her mouth. Even so, she shot a firm glance at the usual corner.

Hilary nodded and made an awkward 90 degree turn like a robot and with renewed pigeon steps made for the penitent haven on the other side of the room. It was only then that the young woman could see her switched ravaged bottom and gasped.

Even the older woman stopped talking and paused to study Hilary’s stripes over the rim of her spectacles.

“I guess she learned,” she said quietly.

“Ouch,” the younger woman mouthed, “Honey what did you do?”

“I voted Democrat at my first election,” Hilary quipped out of bravado as she reached the corner.

The younger woman laughed and wished they could do that for real for the Republican brats on campus. But the older woman only remarked, “See, they never learn. Just got a whooping and she is already smarting off.”

The younger woman rolled her eyes again.

“Hey cherry-tail,” the older woman called over sharply, “Hands on your head or I’ll send you back up for another go round.”

Hilary instantly clamped her hands to her head and felt the shaming blood rush to her cheeks.

“Oh come one,” the younger woman muttered as she rolled her eyes yet again.

Her elder leaned down and whispered, “I have a hairbrush in my purse if you want some of the same.”

Her junior felt the heat rise in her face and she dipped her head demurely.

“I was only saying,” she whispered.

“You were only saying was it? But I hear too what you were thinking,” the older woman said loudly. “I had plenty of bottom blisterings growing-up and in college; did me the world of good. I figure you’re not too old to go over my knee. Like I said, you girls never learn.”

“Yes Ma’am,” the junior said hastily.

Hilary might have enjoyed the exchange but her bottom was too bare and switch-marked to hades for her to have any other concerns just now. Then the other door opened and someone breezed in and she shrunk into the wall.

“Shit,” a girl’s voice gasped, “I was going to ask… I mean…”

The young student seemed flustered and distracted. Oh I wonder why, Hilary thought ruefully.

“Something up?” the older of the two women asked her, then she added suspiciously, “is that an extension request form?”

“I was gonna… I mean my paper was going to be late and I… you know I think I might get it in on time if I work overnight…. Yeah… excuse me, gotta go,” the young woman squeaked and Hilary heard the door swing open.

“They never learn,” someone said.

Hilary rather thought it was the younger woman being sarcastic, but all the same she miserably thought, I guess we don’t.

She wasn’t dismissed for a good long while and by the time she was, about 50 people must have come and gone to and from the faculty office. Her dismissal came as welcome news not just because of her embarrassment, but also on account of the ache in her arms that had been plated on her head.

Although she managed to get out of the building and onto a quiet stretch of path without being seen, a girl she didn’t know came from nowhere and accosted her.

“Have you heard?” she said excitedly, “Some poor shmuck has been debagged.”

Then the girl was gone. A freshman, Hilary guessed. Oh well goodbye discretion and hello fame and misfortune, she rolled her eyes and sighed. At least the cool air on her behind felt soothing on her hot topic.

She thought of that evening’s visit to the refectory and how the conversation would die on everyone’s lips as all eyes turned to her. Maybe Anne could rustle me up something, she found herself hoping, or otherwise I am going to live off Twinkies for a few days.

Hilary reached the blockhouse without further incident and went to her room. Studying belly down on her bed reminded her of home and Clarice, wait until I tell her, she thought ruefully and opened a book on Charles II of Spain.

*

The next morning the welts on Hilary’s bottom had reduced to a rash of purple streaks across plum-coloured hind curves. But the previous evening when Anne had dropped by with a sandwich they had still stood up like a relief map of the Himalayas.

“Jesus and Mary that’s some bottom,” Anne gasped, “Even if you had have gone to dinner you would have eaten standing up.”

“Is everyone talking about me?” Hilary had said as she took the sandwich, “Oh… thanks.”

“Eh… not everyone,” Anne had said evasively.

“As bad as that?” Hilary winced.

“Not as bad as that certainly,” Anne replied with pursed lips and a significant glance at Hilary’s bottom.

“Oh, I’ll live,” Hilary replied.

“Sure you will kiddo,” Anne replied cheerfully.

Now the morning after, both her bottom and her dignity still ached. In the case of the former it was an all-over deep muscle ache coated in finger-repellent sore. Luckily it went without comment when she had to stand for coffee and toast at the kitchen table.

“Your lecture is not until after lunch,” Tammy stated the obvious, “Why would you want to go onto campus before then?”

“I have to see Professor Harmon again,” Hilary said ruefully.

Tammy shot a glance at Hilary’s bottom.

“You are not… he’s not going to spank you again is he?” she asked incredulously.

Hilary shrugged. She hadn’t got past the corner in the faculty office in her thinking.

*

Corner time lasted half an hour before John had phoned down to send for her. Being again displayed in the faculty office was a holiday compared to what she now felt. Every step towards Professor Harmon’s door echoed a thud off the hard wood floor and resonated in her mind.

Not the paddle again and please not the cane, she prayed for her bottom. But the fear that really seized her belly was being sent out into the woods for a bundle of switches again.

As she reached the door the Carmichael girl was standing there again. She had been crying and Hilary felt a small buzz of comfort to know she wasn’t the only one for the high jump two days running.

“That paddle stings, doesn’t it,” Miss Carmichael said in crisp English tones, although her voice was a little wan. “At school we only had the cane.”

Hilary noticed the girl was still holding her panties.

“I didn’t want to… I mean I couldn’t put then on,” the English girl whispered shyly, “You don’t think anyone will notice do you?”

A self-debagging, Hilary thought enviously. But she said, “Not unless there is a breeze. It could be worse. Believe me.”

Then the door opened and John was there.

“Don’t stand there all day, come in,” he snapped.

“Yes Sir.”

John went to his desk and made a note as Hilary closed the door behind her.

“How do you want me?” she said with a gulp, “Or do I… I have do something else?”

“What? Oh no, not today. We will get to that soon enough this week. At least once more anyway to finish you off; that is… if you behave yourself.”

“Yes Sir,” Hilary said with relief.

“There, I have made a note of your attendance,” he said in a bored voice, “Was there anything else? Either here or on campus?”

“No I…” Hilary began.

“Good. Then you can go back to the corner in faculty,” he smiled.

Hilary’s heart sank.

*

Hilary hadn’t felt much like lunch after she was released from the corner and in any case she only had 45 minutes before her lecture with Professor Martin. That was one event she wouldn’t have missed if war had broken out.

For once she had done her homework and had extensive notes on religion and the decline of Spain after 1661. She had gotten a few smirking glances as she he had made her way from the faculty building but by now it was something she seemed to be able to take in her stride. Well perhaps a stride was still a bit beyond her, she thought grudgingly as the sharpness of the air touched her sore bare bottom on the faculty steps. But a confident walk enabled her to pass several students without drawing a glance and she decided that she might even get through the day without the entire college forever linking her face with her switch-sore behind.

Vending machines under the stairs where the lecture was to take place provided her with a packet of nuts and a coke for sustenance and she was able to make some hasty purchases without joining a line of people all checking out her tail end and laughing.

So far so good, she thought, as she considered her next move. Sitting down for the lesson was out of the question, but Hilary decided that all she had to was slip into the lecture hall and stand at the back. There was only one challenge to this plan. Students attending most lectures, and certainly Professor Martin’s, had to go to a table by the door to collect and sign for the notes. This was how he had found out about her earlier two absences. But since he wouldn’t check the register until afterwards she could wait until everyone was in and then risk a few knowing glances as she grabbed hers and signed for them.

Hilary finished up her luncheon of nuts and cola and then ducked down the back corridor to the entrance furthest from the main doors. Then she was able to take the stairs and slip in the far entrance of the hall.

The room was already mostly full and what she took to be the last of the attendees were gathered in a small knot around the hand-outs table to sign the book. Hilary felt the butterflies poised for take-off in the pit of her stomach as she unconsciously tugged at the back of the bum-freezer. Then with a deep breath she strolled quickly along the back wall to a place near the table ready to grab the goodies and sign before anyone took any notice. This will work, she breathed and allowed herself some hope.

At the front of the class Jim Martin was almost ready to begin and his body language called for silence. He was a stout man in his middle-50s with short grey hair and a little rotund around the tummy, which was emphasised because he was not all that tall. But nevertheless he had an authoritative demeanour that brooked no argument.

“Now if everyone has the notes,” Professor Martin began, “Oh I see we have one late-comer.”

Something other than butterflies lurched inside and Hilary snapped around to face the voice from the front of the hall with her exposed bottom firmly towards the wall.

“Miss Cline,” Jim Martin said mockingly, “How very nice of you to join us, even if you are a little late.”

“Late? No I…” Hilary gulped; conscious now that all eyes in the room were upon her.

Damn, can’t everyone mind their own business? I am here aren’t I, she cursed inwardly.

“Late, Miss Cline,” Martin said sharply, “Which is almost as bad as being absent in my book.”

“No I…” Hilary wanted a great big pit to appear beneath her feet so that she could blamelessly escape.

“Yes Miss Cline, late I say,” Professor Martin bellowed, “Come down to the front here.”

“Oh no I…” Hilary protested. She considered running or making-up a faint. Maybe the professor would respond to begging.

“If you please,” he said firmly, making an inviting gesture with his hand as he bowed a little out of mock respect.

Hilary took a deep breath and hastily sighed next to her name in the book. Then gathering up the notes she held them behind her back as she walked like a character in a Film Noir down the gentle steps to the front.

“I understand that you are undergoing discipline Miss Cline,” Martin said drily before she reached the bottom.

All ears in the room pricked up and all eyes swivelled to watch Hilary’s discomfort. Someone whispered in a loud voice, “She’s been debagged.”

Suddenly there was babble in the room until Professor Martin silenced it with a glare.

“Miss Cline?” he asked, letting her know that he expected an answer.

“Eh… yes Sir,” Hilary said meekly, as she well know, she cursed him.

“Under the circumstances I will tolerate no tardiness from you.” His voice was like a gathering storm.

Hilary was about to reply when he reached under the lectern and picked up a short hand-paddle. There was a gasp and a short burst of girlish babble and then the room fell silent again. The air was thick enough to get itself parted with a paper cut and Hilary felt sick. He wouldn’t, not here, she quailed inwardly.

“I am going to set you a test on this lecture, just you,” Martin growled, “So I strongly suggest you listen carefully and read all the notes.”

“Yes Sir,” Hilary squeaked.

Then Professor Martin kicked his chair from behind his desk and sat down on it. He beckoned her with a crook of his finger.

“Professor Martin, please…” Hilary blustered and made to back away.

“Young ladies too immature to come to lectures on time after not one, but two warnings deserve to be spanked over my knee like the brats that they are,” he told her.

There was some tittering in the room but Martin let it pass.

“From now on unless you are already here and sitting nice and attentively in the front row when I arrive I am going to start every one of this course of lectures with you bare-bottomed over my knee getting a spanking in front of everyone,” he said.

Hilary gaped, her eyes springing open wide.

“Then starting today, you will go and stand in that corner where you can listen intently until after the lecture.”

Hilary drew a breath to speak but Jim Martin took her by the wrist and pulled her across his knee. A squeal went up around the room and the babble of excited students was impossible to quieten. Hilary focused on the papers that dropped from her hand as they went clack on the cold hard floor. The exposure of her bare bottom to the class was too surreal for her so she ignored it, choosing instead to read the headings on one of the hand-outs just inches from her nose.

“That’s a very sore bottom you have there Miss Cline,” Martin observed, “This is going to be quite a challenge for you isn’t it?”

The first splat on her bottom pulled her from her detachment and she squealed.

“You can’t do this, not here,” Hilary wailed, but Martin spanked her again.

“I think you’ll find that I can Miss Cline.”

The spanking was a sound one that lasted five minutes or so. Long enough on a switch-sore bottom when 50 or 60 students are watching. It took all of her efforts not to cry like the brat Professor Martin said she was and for all of that time by turns she looked fondly on John’s paddle and hated early modern Spaniards.

“Now Miss Cline, go and stand in the corner over there,” he said dismissively, “We have wasted enough time on you.”

Hilary was set on her feet and promptly ignored. The entire room had a clear view of her red bottom, which certainly was a striking hue after Martin’s expert efforts but just then Hilary couldn’t have faced them on pain of another spanking. She found that she was a little grateful that he had angled her away from the class even if his intention was to strip her of the modesty and dignity she had strived so hard to preserve.

She clenched her buttocks in lieu of rubbing them, which would have been the final humiliation and sniffed back a tear as she pulled lemon faces of distress. Then daring no further telling or worse, she walked to the corner as she had been told.

Please, please, please let this day end she prayed to any deity who would listen; if the river gods of the Ancient Britain were the only ones listening at that moment she would take it. This had to be the worse day of her life, she decided miserably. But strangely she thought of Aunt Clarice and more than 80 years of Clyburn tradition and wondered if her name would go on a plaque somewhere after today.

*

The afternoon had been hellish. After the spanking she had had to stand in the corner for the entire duration of Professor Martin’s lecture while everyone in the room pretended to ignore her. She had no idea how much of Martin’s wisdom was absorbed by the others, but Hilary hadn’t heard a word of it. Nothing so far in her whole life had been this embarrassing.

The following English lecture had not been as bad, but lessons learned she had just quickly signed the book, taken the notes and had taken a position at the back. This time no one said a word and she doubted more than a half dozen had noticed a thing anyway. She could have kicked herself.

Only once did a girl cast a glance back at her and Hilary had blushed to her ears just knowing that the girl must be a fellow joint history English major who had been at the lecture. But that was enough for Hilary to keep a quiet as a mouse. Then the day finally over Hilary had run all the way home completely careless of who might have seen her, which at that time of day must have been many; she no longer cared.

Surprisingly she had not been crushed into tears on arriving at the blockhouse and far from bottling up her experience would have welcomed venting with a friend. But her flight from campus had got her home first for once. And so the study posture experimenting had begun.

Hilary’s over-the-knee spanking had reignited the deep throb from John Harmon’s switching and now the thought of sitting down even with the aid of a pillow was totally out of the question. She had tried several other different positions for working on her paper and so far standing at the kitchen table had been the best. But even though no one said anything as they got home and passed on through the room, it was way too embarrassing for her to concentrate. On the other hand the desk in her room was too low to stand at, so she had opted for kneeling on a pillow on the floor and using her bed as a writing surface.

Professor Martin’s notes were excellent and she only wished now that she had found the presence of mind to listen to his lecture. Shoot, she thought as she remembered the threat of a test and waded through a discourse on Spanish society. But nevertheless, she had found it interesting. By the outset of the 18^th century in Spain a quarter of the men were unemployed nobles and another quarter were priests, she gaped at the implication. With most women locked up out of sight; that left a good part of the population as totally unproductive. No wonder Spain was eclipsed by France, Britain and the Netherlands at this time. This was absolutely fascinating. She began to wonder if the whole Hapsburg Empire had suffered the same fate. She hastily made a note and wondered what books the library had on it.

Hilary knew now why she had so much wanted to be on Jim Martin’s course and regretted her lack of attendance. The only trouble was now, that she would have the devil of a job scraping a good grade on her next two papers and a spanking loomed for each of them. For she was in no doubt now that Professor Martin would gleeful dust off his paddle or cane to put her in her place. Then she remembered her conversation with John. Oh God, she groaned, she faced two spankings apiece for each sub-standard paper and she hadn’t even considered the English essay yet. This really could turn out to be the semester of standing for supper she sighed ruefully. Even when her debagging was over she was still going to be well and truly up to her neck in deep do-do.

Sometime later there was a knock at the door and Hilary looked up. It was only then that she noticed that the ache in her knees had eclipsed the soreness in her bottom and she pulled a face and got stiffly to her feet.

“Hills, you there?” said a tentative voice outside. It was Anne. “Are you okay?”

“Come in Anne,” Hilary called back absently.

Anne came in as if she were entering a porcelain shop after an earthquake; first peering around the door and the creeping in one foot carefully placed before the other as a precaution that the floor would not collapse under her.

“I heard about…” Anne began.

“Hey, did you know that Spain’s GDP fell by… what was it?” Hilary started to mumble as she again consulted Jim Martin’s notes.

“Jim Martin’s lecture,” Anne finished carefully.

“Yeah, he’s totally brilliant, these notes are a blast,” Hilary gushed.

Anne relaxed and now completely non-plused she drew upon her most incredulous face.

“But I thought…” Anne leaned forward and examined Hilary’s still red sore bottom, still exposed through the curtain of Anne’s own bum-freezer, although strictly speaking it didn’t have to be while she was in her won room.

Hilary looked up and seeing the direction of Anne’s gaze remembered.

“Oh that…” Hilary winced, “That was… omigod, you should have seen what… no really you shouldn’t… I thought I’d die.”

Hilary was blushing again. “I’ll never live it down, never, how dare he…?”

“It kind of sounds as if you already have.” Anne’s smile competed with the puzzlement for command of her face.

Hilary was still blushing but she shrugged.

“Is everyone talking about it?” she asked shyly.

“I think they must be,” Anne chuckled.

“I kind of hoped that it would just be a few geeks in the history department who would… well no one in English took much notice and…” Hilary averted her gaze and tried to recapture her interest in Spain.

“Oh sure, yeah, that will be it… a few geeks, a couple of lesbian jocks and oh the college rag,” Anne said in brittle-amusement.

“What?” Hilary baulked.

“There is a girl downstairs from the Clyburn Clarion,” Anne told her. “It seems she caught Professor Martin’s performance and is here with a photographer. I tried to send her away but she is a friend of Tammy’s and she says she is going to do a write up if you talk to her or not.”

“Oh God,” Hilary groaned and dropped her behind onto the bed. “Yeowch,” she squealed, immediately launching herself upright again.

“Tammy or no Tammy I would throw them out but they only have to wait outside tomorrow morning and follow you all day,” Anne sighed.

“I know, I get it and it is kind of funny. I guess I’ll come down and see them,” Hilary winced.

As Hilary followed Anne down the squared-off wrap-around stairs past the orange drapes, she wondered who had chosen such an awful colour. Institutional cream or almost anything else would have been better. Not that it was what really concerned her just then, for at the back of her mind was the headline: Hilary Cline, 21, debagged and publically spanked on the bare bottom like a kid. Not that snappy she knew but in reality it would be worse.

‘Hilary Cline, do come in. Aren’t you the girl who was spanked at Clyburn?’ they would ask at job interviews. All the way to the kitchen she pictured a poised woman doing a postgrad in journalism with cold hard appraising eyes and already rehearsing her Pulitzer acceptance speech in her head.

Carey Yates was a small bespectacled ash-blonde wrapped up in a large green coat. It was way too big for her so that she peered out from between the edges of a rucked up collar like small cute tortoise. Even the mug of coffee gripped in her hands seemed like a bucket and if that frailty hadn’t had disarmed Hilary then the fog of moisture on her big owl specs from the steaming drink totally would have.

The other girl, the photographer, looked like a wide-eyed freshman. She didn’t look up when Hilary and Anne walked into the kitchen, but stood on the far side of the room fiddling with her camera like a rookie on the battlefield who couldn’t remember if her gun was loaded. This second girl had a close-cropped neat afro that might have looked too boyish if the brown-eyed pale-skinned black girl hadn’t been cute.

“Miss Cline,” Carey said pompously after the introductions. She extended a tiny hand lost in the sleeve of her coat which she had to tug up to reveal the fingers.

Hilary looked at the photographer who had been introduced as Lola Warwick. She was still fiddling with her camera and at one point looked as if she might drop it.

“If you try and take a single photo without our say-so I am going to…” Anne threatened.

Lola suddenly looked scared and threw a worried glance at Carey.

“My dear friend, we won’t,” Carey assured them in tones that would have made the most officious faculty clerk proud.

“You want coffee, Hills?” Tammy gushed from the other side of the room.

Hilary nodded and finally took Carey’s hand.

“If she isn’t taking pictures yet, then why is she standing like she is about to reel off a shot?” Anne asked suspiciously still watching Lola.

Lola blushed and soundlessly began to stammer.

“Oh,” Carey said dismissively with a wave of her hand, “Lola’s a freshman, she’s new at this and besides she has had a run in with Professor Lindsay today, haven’t you?”

Lola looked like a floor collapse might have been welcome and blushed some more. Hilary knew the feeling.

“We have all been there,” Carey said magnanimously, “Even I got spanked by… oh John Harmon is your supervisory tutor too isn’t he? Of course he is. Debagging is not his usual… eh… well bag is it? What did you do to piss him off? Anyway, he paddled me two weeks ago, and me a senior…”

“Is all this on the record?” Anne asked suspiciously.

“God no. I mean I did ask John but he was reluctant to talk. In fact he made it quite clear that if I went overboard with my story…” Carey blushed and coughed, “Anyway since my editor too is acquainted with John Harmon we let his intervention in the freedom of the press slide for now.”

“I see,” Hilary said.

“First off, face or eh… other end?” Carey asked breezily.

“Pardon?” Hilary shook her head.

“Top or bottom? For the photograph,” Carey explained. “I think John wouldn’t approve of having both next to the story. Such a bummer, my editor won’t even run it as a front page. Not after John spoke up for you. I think she has a rather sensitive seat.”

Hilary exchanged glances with Anne.

“Of course people can look you up in the year book to match your face with your eh… bottom, but that is up to them,” Carey continued. “Personally I would love to do a behind shot with campus buildings in the background; first debagging of the season, you know the kind of thing?”

“Not really,” Hilary answered.

“Hey kiddo,” Carey winked, “This is a snow job, a picture story; just the facts from the public notice and a tasteful picture on page seven. I only need a quote and a picture pose and we are out of here.”

*

The rest of the week was as grim as Hilary expected, although the worst part was corner time in the faculty office where she was always going to be the centre of attention, albeit for a small audience.

But with Anne and Charlotte’s help she avoided the refectory line for food and most days she could slip across campus to her lectures without drawing undue attention. She realised then that it would have been so much worse in the summer with students out in force.

Then the Clyburn Clarion went to press. There were neat piles of the free campus newspaper outside every lecture hall and faculty office. Hilary felt her tummy tingling. She had to wait for the rush to die down, but she was able to sidle up to a stack in the history faculty and swipe a copy before ducking into a cubicle in the student bathroom.

As promised there was no story on the front page or the next. But Hilary’s picture dominated page nine with maybe 150 words outlining the details. The photograph was tastefully shot from behind with Hilary on the path in the trees. She was half obscured by shadows with the moon of her shaded bottom contrasting with the distant soft-focussed buildings of the campus.

The headline ran as ‘Student suffers debagging for a week.’ There was no mention of the lecture hall spanking and although it did mention Hilary’s name, you had to read to the end not to be given the impression that this was a past event.

In any case Hilary only had one more active visit to John’s study and although she suspected that this would be more active than usual, she could at least console herself that it was the last day before the weekend. At sunrise on Monday she would be off the hook.

As she left the cubical she was still celebrating that fact she had no more lectures to go to in a debagged state when she bumped into another girl by the sinks. She was a tall redhead Hilary had seen around and to Hilary’s horror she had her nose buried in page nine.

“Oh my God the poor girl,” the woman gasped, “Have you seen this?”

The girl looked right at Hilary and then back at the shot of her bottom.

“Yeah,” Hilary held her breath.

“Just like that other girl last semester, what was her name?” the woman continued.

“I forget,” Hilary said woodenly.

“Me too, I bet that she is the only one who hasn’t,” the redhead shrugged and made to leave. “I have to report for swats,” she sighed, “I guess I’ll be standing for dinner tonight.”

Then she was gone.

“Me too,” Hilary said to the space where the woman had been standing.

*

Hilary knocked on John Harmon’s door without looking around. Today because of the Clarion there had been a knot of whispering people in the faculty office standing behind her. She couldn’t make out all that they said; just random phrases.

“Is that her?”

“Her butt is hardly marked.”

“Cute.”

“I bet her face is redder than her behind right now.”

“Not for long.”

“Oh God is that how I look in the corner.”

“I’d just die.”

“You can go up now Miss Cline.”

It had taken a moment for Hilary to realise that the last comment add been to and not about her. With her chin on her chest she had mouthed ‘thank you’ and scurried for the stairs.

Now she stood in the hall waiting, careless who might pass by; after all the damage had been done. But even as she thought that she remembered John’s paddle, cane and… she gulped. Nearly over, she steeled herself.

“Come in.”

Hilary took a breath and went through the door.

John was standing at the window looking out, but Hilary could see the large paddle and the cane on his desk. At least that probably meant that she wouldn’t have to fetch any more switches.

“Hello John,” she said meekly.

“Hello Hilary,” he replied, turning to look at her with a tight smile.

It was virtually the first time he had used her name since the nightmare had begun.

“Am I forgiven?” she said quietly.

He shrugged. “We have a tutorial Monday and we can review your progress. Your paper for Jim Martin will be back by then, and the one for me.”

Hilary gulped. It was even money that she would be paddled and or caned for one or the other. But at least she would not arrive sans culottes. Then she remembered that as far as any failure with Professor Martin was concerned then it was ‘paddled at school then paddled at school’ for her as per the ‘bet’ with John. Ouch, she thought grimly and felt her buttocks clench.

“Now Miss Cline if you will kindly bend over and grab your ankles then we can begin,” he said pointedly.

“Yes Sir,” she whispered. This is where we came in, she thought as she obeyed.

Her still tender bottom thrust out towards him as she took a firm hold of her shins to offer him the ‘professor’s perk.’ As ever, she blushed. ‘Don’t you ever get used to it?’ she had once asked her aunt.

“Thankfully not,” was Clarice’s reply, “For that way lies danger.”

That was about the size of it, Hilary agreed, complacency led to more bottom blisters and it was most definitely red for danger around here. She might have laughed at her own pun but the paddle struck.

The force of it made her stagger and go cross-eyed and she took a moment to breath. By then the next swat had added to the fire and she had to clench her teeth. If she was very, very lucky, then she was in for the standard triple. That was twice paddled and then a good slice of caning.

The third and fourth made her grunt and her knuckles whitened at her ankles. Maybe it was the previous tenderness or just the end of a long weary week, but tears sprang to her eyes and she started in with the heavy breathing.

John paused at six swats and examined the two dark red ovals that described Hilary’s bottom cheeks. He remembered the puce-faced freshman he had paddled that first time. She had been bawling by now and he had let her off at eight. But her thanks afterwards had been in earnest and there had not been the least resentment in her eyes. Clarice had told him Hilary would take it like that.

He remembered the letter he had got some days before when he was considering how to handle Hilary.

Dear John,

I absolutely concur with your solution. I cannot believe you have any doubts. Hilary is a wilful complacent girl just as I was at her age. As you know I was debagged in my sophomore year, although not by you even though I deserved it many times over.

I have never told Hilary that, probably because before it might have put her off going to Clyburn and afterwards it might have seemed like bragging. If you go ahead with your plan, and I really hope that you do, perhaps she and I will compare notes on the matter.

One more thing, afterwards she may feel the worst is behind her, so to speak, and start to slack off again. Make sure you keep her up to the mark and paddle her hard. That trick you used to do making me collect switches, I gather you have never employed that one with Hilary or hadn’t last time I spoke to her. I can tell you a girl never forgets.

I can still feel your paddle… cane, switches, that rubber thing you used to have and that nasty, nasty prison strap. Hilary respects you and has never expressed anything but ruefully gratitude for your discipline. So do not stint.

I for one sometimes miss your firm hand and when I last called in for a visit I felt quite weak at the knees knocking on your door. Oh well happy days I suppose.

Keep up the good work.

Yours Clarice.

The paddle resumed its burning path and John could tell this time Hilary was struggling with its impact.

“Okay Miss Cline, you may go and stand in the corner for a while,” he said at last.

*

The corner smelt of old wood and polish and the prickly throb in her bare bottom felt hot where it met the cool of the room. She felt cosy and safe, like a bad girl forgiven. Then for the first time in over three years at Clyburn she burst into tears after just her warm-up paddling.

John cocked an eye and felt like saying something comforting but Hilary forestalled him by saying, “Sorry Sir, I’m alright, really I am. I have no idea where that came from.” Her voice was wet with tears.

“You’ll feel better afterwards,” he said.

“Yes Sir, I already do.”

He kept her there for half an hour before he had her bend over the back of the chair. Her bottom was still starkly red, which emphasised her tight domed curves. For once he hesitated and then he remembered Clarice’s letter and lined-up the paddle; the heavier one this time.

Hilary’s angry grunt sounded hoarse as the splat rocked the room. Not that she remained angry. After four more she was cowed again and surrendered to the tears. This was just as well for the second round with the paddle made the first warm seem like tickles.

“I’m sorry,” she hooted, “So sorry.” Her declarations were heartfelt, but in truth she had forgotten he was there. She was alone with purgatory and welcomed it.

Only the sharper assault of the cane brought her home again.

“Ooh,” she croaked huskily as she bucked and clawed in response to the stick.

“You can count these today,” he said.

“Yes Sir,” she rasped, “One.”

It was a tough discipline but kept her focussed.

“Two,” she grunted for the second, then sang out, “Three-ee.”

It was difficult for her to hold it together and in the end he had to break the punishment into two sets of 15. By then her bottom was like two pads of corrugated burgundy on a ruby sheen and she was bawling in great cleansing gulps.

“I think you can go back to the corner for a rest,” he said, “Your debagging may be over but unless it sticks your bottom is going to be getting a lot of this.”

“Yes Sir,” she groaned.

But this time the corner was twice as welcome and she would have happily stayed there until Monday. A fact reflected by a wash of tears that rolled down her cheeks and off her chin like summer ice cream. All this she reflected on as the cane stripes sawed in out in waves as they throbbed, and she welcomed them like old friends come to greet her.

*

The Saturday night campus barbecue was a riot of fun and although Hilary was still officially debagged she was glad that Anne had talked her into coming. Even though she had to stand in the shadows under the trees the cold night air felt good on her sore bottom and gave her some slight hope that she might be able to sit down before the end of the coming week.

It was a fiction of course, but a comforting one. The report slip in her purse held a C plus for Professor Martin’s course and he had asked to see her on Monday afternoon. Straight after seeing John, she ruefully thought. God I do hope I have a decent grade for that man because dear old Harmon will have my behind again for not getting above B plus.

And what did Martin want? C plus wasn’t that bad and he couldn’t know that John owned her tail for the grade. Maybe he saw some promise in her, she certainly hoped so for all-in-all his was the best course she had yet been on. Hilary certainly knew now what her dissertation would be on and if Clyburn would have her, she would be back next year for her master’s.

But she knew that if Jim Martin wanted to spank her for getting a C plus then he could and would. She shrugged. That was the Clyburn way.

“What are you thinking about?” Anne asked as she came over with a hamburger for the semi-reclusive Hilary.

Hilary smiled but her attention was on the flames of the fire as they scorched sausages, chicken and hamburgers. The barbecue couldn’t be as hot at her bottom right then and she was glad not to have to sit down.

“I am thinking that if I can sit down for Thanksgiving Dinner then I am one lucky girl,” Hilary chuckled.

Anne said nothing. In her own pocket was a discipline slip from her tutor. Move over Hills, we might both be standing for supper this semester.

The end for now.