Lost Property (12 page)

Slowly the pace of the two squads picked up as they began to recover and by the time they met at the weapons pile, some of them had even broken into a trot. Carlo noted with pride that Blondie was among the first to arrive.

Then the scrapping became serious and the excitement in the crowd grew. As punches were thrown and girls’ bodies pinwheeled in front of cameras, breasts were mauled and kicks landed with eye watering accuracy, so the images from the terraces became more excited. Most of the women were screaming their team on, faces grimacing in ferocity, seemingly unaware of the fact they were being taken or buggered from behind. Others were being pressed into service by urgent masters and were down on their knees sucking cock but with eyes fixed on the screens.

There was no science to the combat out in the arena. Groups and couples of slaves tottered round, supporting each other as much as anything until one or the other could land the telling blow.

Carlo noticed that even Blondie was off balance when she swung the whip she had managed to grab from the pile. The camera followed her as she confronted a girl from the opposing team and the two exchanged lashes until Blondie managed to combine a punch to the ribs with a lash to the girl’s back that threw her off her own feet, she put so much effort into it. Her opponent went down and a referee signalled a fall to the N’Benga team, but Blondie was on all fours, panting for breath and never saw the kick coming from behind.

An opposition squaddie caught the blonde full on and sent her rearing up off the ground, hands clutched between her legs. She rolled frantically away from another blow, and got under the feet of another pair of grappling slaves and brought them down on her.

The crowd had let out one huge “Ooooh!” of sympathy and now went quiet as they waited to see whether she was flagged as down and out. The camera stayed on the thrashing pile of bodies, another fell over backwards as she was retreating and the heap became bigger and more ferocious. Carlo was biting his nails. Somewhere under it was Blondie who had never gone down this early in a melée before.

On another screen a referee flagged a fall for the visitors as Purdy was thrown down and made no attempt to defend herself as she was whipped, spreadeagled and submissive on the ground. Her conqueror settled astride her face and accepted her surrender. It made a brief tableau before another group of struggling slaves tripped over them and again it was a free for all.

“The home team need
five more falls! The visitors
are catching up and need only seven more! Blondie seems to be down and out
! Can they hold on
?
!”

Carlo knew that in the old days, his blonde superstar would have struggled clear and returned to the fray as an avenging fury. But not today.

He looked elsewhere and saw Ox bodyslam a girl down, then drop to her knees on her midriff. It was an immediate fall and the impassive Russian went to find more work but got caught by a blow from a stave from behind and went down like a sack of potatoes.

Suddenly a whistle blast sounded deafeningly loudly.

“Five! The Home Team’s done it!” the compere roared.

Carlo looked around to see where the victory had come from and saw the girl who had run as Turkish Delight, stagger upright, grinning broadly and holding her whip aloft in victory. At her feet two of the opposition lay writhing on the sand. The crowd stood to applaud and to a fanfare the naked men of both stables were allowed in, plus a few lucky spectators whose ticket numbers had come up in the draw. Usually the girls put up an entertaining struggle before they went down to inevitable defeat at the hands of the men but on this occasion they were too exhausted to do much more than trade a few whip strikes before opening whichever entrance the man wanted.

In little more than half an hour it was all over. The very last of the slaves had been ravished one more time and made no attempt to rise again. The crowd was sated, its carnal appetites fed and now there was the after-storm calm as Carlo, Johnson and Mr Su were applauded down onto the arena floor. It was tradition that the owners were thanked for the display, and this time as some of the losing team were put to whipping posts for penalties earned earlier in the day, Carlo could not take his usual pleasure in it. He used his foot to move supine bodies and where some were stirring he helped them out of his way.

At last he found her. Blondie was lying at the bottom of the heap she had originally gone down under and her eyes only fluttered open when he spoke her name. It took several men spraying the ground with a cold water hose to get the girls back on their feet. The lashes were still falling over by the whipping posts, those who had lost earlier on were condemned by the crowd to take a penalty, the thumbs only going up when the tally the compere called matched the majority of the crowd’s opinion.

The gropies had good pickings after that finale. As the battered participants limped and crawled away, Ox and Trouble carried Tigre between them and the gropies wiped the sperm from their thighs and backsides as it mingled with the slave’s own juices.

Carlo had no taste for the celebrations that normally followed a victory. He and Anne Marie were kept busy, applying cold compresses and bandaging to the CSL contingent. Meanwhile the stable vet was working on all her charges. The two of them agreed that the Council should be told that the pillars were a step too far for a final day and should be found a place elsewhere in the games.

“Mind you,” Carlo said as he stared at the groaning, welted bodies around him in the home stables. “It was quite a spectacle!”

Chapter Eight

Before the full heat of the following day had taken hold, Carlo was clipping water bottles to the travelling crates the CSL slaves were shipped in. Each slave was hog tied and slid into her crate, all neatly parcelled for the journey with water where she could reach it, just beside her face.

Johnson had promised him a truck to take them to the airfield and dead on time it drew to a halt beside him as he stood at the great gate to the fortress. Dust swirled and rose before drifting away on the breeze. A man jumped down with a clipboard and counted the crates.

“Could you sign here please?” he said with a brilliant smile as his colleague began to slide Purdy’s crate round to the back of the truck. Carlo took the clipboard.

“Mister Suarez!” A voice distracted him and he turned away. “Could I have your autograph please?”

“Please Mister Suarez!”

“Me too!”

A crowd of excited women was approaching from one of the hotels. He signed without looking at the clipboard, handed it back and turned to the fans. He spent a few minutes signing programmes and answering questions about the slaves and their treatment – it was frequently female fans who wanted to know about that. Then when they were satisfied he and Anne Marie climbed into the taxi that Johnson had booked for them and followed the truck to the airfield.

As was usual there were no problems in shipping the slaves out. The N’Benga stable was a major foreign currency earner and Anne Marie was only required to offer herself to three of the customs staff before everything was stamped and they could return to the plane.

It was not their usual pilot and air crew. The co-pilot who greeted them at the top of the steps apologised for Captain Seymour but he had become entangled in some customs wrangle in France and they had been summoned instead.

“But everything’s on board safely, Mr Suarez and I signed for the cargo.”

“Thanks.” Carlo took the copy he proffered and entered the plane, stowed his hand luggage and glanced down at the paper only as he was about to sit down.

He felt suddenly sick, his heart skipped a beat and his hand shook as he picked it up to take a closer look.

“Four! It says four crates were loaded!”

“Yes, Mr Suarez. I counted them in and you had signed for four when they were loaded.”

Carlo looked again. The man was right. He replayed the scene at the fort again, the gaggle of women. He turned and ran for the bulkhead and threw open the door to the cargo area. There were four crates and without looking any further, although he forced himself to, he knew who was missing. There was Ox, Trouble, Tigre and Purdy. Blondie had gone.

“But what are we going to do?!” Anne Marie wailed as she too took stock. Carlo whirled back and ran down the steps, he turned full circle, looking for a trail of dust that would mark out where the truck was. But it had gone.

The co-pilot stood at the top of the steps, distraught. “But the truck was empty Mister Suarez! There were four crates in the truck - and only four, I’m sure!”

“I bet there were,” Carlo said grimly. He reached for his mobile phone and rang a number.

“Johnson!” he said when it was answered. “Where did you hire that truck from? A local firm you’ve used before? Can you get some men down there now! Blondie’s been stolen. The truck might still be in the country and you’ve got clout with the police here! We’ve got to stop them!”

Blondie had been so tired that she had hardly registered the pinprick at her left elbow, as the truck had jolted away towards the airport. At least the discomfort of the hog tie meant that she was on the way home. With luck her master would do what he sometimes did when they came home from a show. A day or so after, when she was beginning to recover, he would lean on her stall door and smile at her and cluck his tongue, holding out her favourite shortbreads. She would feed from his hand and adore him with all her heart and soul, then when the others had gone out training, he would come into her stall as she lay dozing on her sheet-covered straw. He would open her legs gently and slip his fingers inside her with exquisite, slow movements and bring her gradually to a pitch of pleasure that made her groan and whimper. He would make her keep her legs wide apart as he went on working his fingers deeper and more vigorously inside her, her tongue ring would render her pleas and her cries inarticulate, as was only right and proper for a creature like her, the creation of her master. He would make her come, once, twice and then as she was descending from the clouds. She would at last feel his weight on her and in a spasm of delight that was almost orgasmic in itself, she would feel his cock suction her lips open and slip easily into her, filling her, inch by exquisite inch as his full weight descended onto her. Then he would begin to move in her and she would hear his pleasure as he breathed by her face and then his lips were on hers, his tongue was penetrating her mouth just as his cock was reaming her vagina and he was claiming her back as his own.

She rose and thrust back at his every lunge, snapping her hips at him, rotating her pelvis, seeking to employ every single way a woman can bring pleasure to the man inside her. No repeated ravishings in the arenas, no post-whipping fucks, no orgasms under the whip itself came close to the heaven she entered when her master took her and she heard him groan as he released himself into her.

She woke with a start as light flooded around her and she felt her crate being dragged backwards.

“She’s awake,” a male voice declared as she tried to come to terms with the loss of her dream. “The false bulkhead behind the van driver worked perfectly, M’sieur, and so did the distraction. It all went like clockwork.”

“Good. Onto the plane and let’s get her out of here!”

She was a little surprised by the urgency in the men’s voices but the crate lurched as it was lifted and she saw the grass of the airfield beneath her, then there was the dusk of the plane’s interior, the clanging of doors the thundering of the engines; all familiar sights and sounds on the journeys to and from the arenas. She yawned and settled herself to sleep again. She was going to be stiff and sore for several days, this time. Even her cunt hurt.

When she awoke again, she was in a stall but it wasn’t hers. This one faced directly outdoors and the daylight was stronger and brighter than in England. She sleepily began to examine her surroundings. Her hands were clipped together behind her back, so that was normal. Her left ankle was chained to the wall beside her, normal, but at home she was chained to the back wall. She was lying on a sheet over some straw and there was an appetising smell coming from the trough just beside the half door, and that was normal too.

If there was one thing her life as a slave had taught her, it was never to try and work out the masters’ plans and intentions. Carlo had his reasons for her being wherever it was she was now. It would all be made clear in his good time. She struggled to her knees, wincing at the various pains that exploded in her legs, her back and her groin. But she ate, drank from the water bottle and slept again.

Her master always had perfectly good reasons for what he did with her and it was none of her business that he seemed to have hired her out straight after a show for once.

John Carpenter put the phone down and rubbed his forehead wearily. Carlo sat opposite him and suddenly John saw how this had aged him. He looked gaunt and pale, his infectious good humour gone with the crate that held his beloved slave. He had arrived home the previous day with the other stock. Johnson’s men and the local police had found the real courier’s truck some miles from the town with its occupants bound and gagged. They had been unable to furnish any descriptions but at least it looked as though Johnson and his stable were in the clear, something the Owner’s Council had been very concerned about.

“The Council is making sure every trainer and owner knows and they’ll alert every dealer and auction house on the circuit. Whoever’s got her won’t be able to make a move without us knowing,” he said.

Carlo shook his head. “They won’t try and sell her. There’s no auction house will take her, I reckon she’s gone to a private collector.” He gave a wry smile. “The trouble is we can’t call on any law because we’re all illegal!”

“And the only law that matters is the one that says possession is nine tenths of it!” John sighed and got up. He wandered over to his office window and looked down at The Lodge’s stableyard. The extension to the CSL stable had been completed only the previous week and now the yard was busy with CSL stock being moved out and Lodge girls being moved back in. Patti Campbell, the red haired, head groom of the CSL stable was holding centre stage as Anne Marie and Raika led the slaves here and there on their tongue rings. Madame Stalevsky fussed around her girls, the naked and collared pony girls being led by the beautifully gowned Lodge girls. It was a colourful scene and order was emerging from the chaos. But beneath it all he knew everyone was conscious of the huge gap that Blondie had left behind her.

“Our only hope is that whoever’s taken her has got some sort of stunt set up, or will want her to do some exhibition bout. They’re bound to be cock-a-hoop at having her in their collection! And when they let on that she’s part of whatever it is, there’s no way it’ll stay secret. That’s when we’ll have to move to get her back. Whatever it takes,” John said.

Carlo nodded. “Whatever it takes.”