in firm-lipped silence now, as there was a speaking slot in the top through which they could be seen. The Flugleman drove over the dirt roads of the plain as if for dear life, down the narrow streets of the neighboring town, and finished up finally to a sentry's shouted challenge. They were at the barracks gates.
“Pass and proceed!”
Again they clattered briskly forward, fetching up in a cobbled courtyard to one side the main square. And again as though there were no time to spare at all, their escort held open the door, handed them down, and marched them at haste along dimly lit corridors and passageways on which his boots resounded echoingly. Maria, indeed, bringing up the rear, found herself forced more than once to break into a run; she soon realized, however, that this frantic pace was simply due to the inordinate length of leg of the soldier leading them. At last under flares illumining great ranks of helmets and cuirasses, swords and breastplates, they had turned into a stone passage lined with guardsmen. There must have been a dozen of them, motionless, backs to the wall, staring straight ahead as if of stone themselves. About a pace or more apart, none paid the smallest attention to the cortege of three women passing under their noses. But the Flugleman had stopped at a door at the end of this corridor, rapped on it, received a thundering “Herein!”, saluted and shown the three mistresses in, again saluting before withdrawing and slamming the heavy door upon them.
The three found themselves in a gloomily lit guardroom of black stone which, at sight of the man standing to one end of it, their six knees quickly struck. It was Count Karl von Schmettau, in full uniform of Commanding Officer of the 15th. Dragoon Guards, and he was not smiling at them.
“Get up,” he said without preamble, “and stand over there.”
The three women ranged themselves across the room from the Count, facing him. “Strip,” he said.
Maria Daunitz found herself almost feverishly tearing off her garments beside her friend Ingeborg, who was doing the same. Beyond her Wedell moved more lethargically. All three, however, worked with a certain lack of cheer. The contents of the room, to which their eyes were becoming accustomed, were not designed to inspire such; already Maria, for one, had noted the presence of three other figures, all stiffly standing to attention, than the tall Count himself. Moreover, it was curiously warm within this guardroom.
Confronting them also, as they lined up buck naked save their boots, was a brawny individual with huge, horsehair mustaches wearing only a stained singlet above his breeches. Spikes of wiry black hair from his chest thrust over this single upper garment, while behind, and to one side of, him stood a ruddy-cheeked boy of about fifteen, stripped to the waist. Some drummer-lad, thought Maria, noting how closely the thin white cottonette of his trousers clung to his young hips and thighs. He, too, appeared excessively solemn. Finally, to their left, at the far end of the chamber, a figure loomed stiff as a cypress tree, some waiting Grenadier; it was glancing at him that Maria noted a brazier burning in the dim recesses. Such no doubt accounted for the heat. Iron instruments lay on the coals. It was altogether an impressive place, calculated to dampen the liveliest of spirits.
When Ingeborg ventured to speak, indeed, it was in a tone of such respectful sobriety that it increased her friend's incipient apprehensions-“The boots, too, Hoheit?”
“No. Leave them. Line up there.”
Silently, slowly, the Count paraded before the three naked figures, nodding in satisfaction at the triplet of well-haired cunts on display at the tops of their legs-Wedell's vulva a bulging lump, Ingeborg's shagged in a strenuous golden furze through which the commanding officer's fingers strayed reflectively, and finally Maria's sliced twat, trim on her flat belly above the arcs of her nicely muscled thighs.
“You know why you're here?” he said, resuming his stance across the chamber from them.
“Ja, Hoheit,” came the hoarsely chorused murmur.
“I have had a platoon of His Majesty's favorite Guards attached to my strength for a month and, whilst they receive no especial favors or privileges-rather to the contrary, in fact-they needs must be serviced from time to time. Such big men require constant glandular relief. I suspect you will be surprised at the extent and power of their emissions. As there is a whole platoon and a Corporal to account for, we have some twenty-one men to get through tonight, and I told Frau Grumkow it might be a trifle, er, exacting for a single one woman, however stoic. She agreed.” Here the Count gave a sardonic smile, and his henchman in attendance stroked out the horsehair mustaches. “Sergeant-Major here will see to proceedings. A stable-boy will help mount each man… because with these… rather long… as you will appreciate. Now then,” concluded the Count, openly fingering his flies, “you'll all have your womb-sponges set?”
“Ja, Hoheit,” came the even bleaker chorus of assent, to this.
“Not that there is truly any need of them, since each guardsman has his orders and Kurt, our stable-boy, will watch closely. However, one never knows with such prodigies of manhood as these. So each of you will take seven men. You should be able to stand it, under controlled conditions such as these. All of you are strong young Prussian girls. There will be no chance of insemination since each man will fuck you in the cunt first and finish up the anus and I assure you, with tools like theirs you're going to know you've got something up you. The best thing you can do is to relax and try to help it on. You'll feel you want to go, but you can't. Understand? Any recalcitrant behavior, any lack of complete co-operation on your part and my Sergeant-Major will have the pleasure of putting his cane across your backsides in no uncertain fashion. Got it?”
“J-j-ja, Hoheit.”
Seven pricks! Merciful Heaven!
But the boy Kurt was coming forward, with an anxious frown, close followed by the bristling Sergeant-Major. Almost directly to the right of the three women was a whipping post, dripping straps. To this-the celebrated “martyr's pole”-the boy was rapidly secured. It was a simple solid upright no taller than himself, and squared off so that his legs embraced its sides. They were strapped at ankle and knee; his waist was belted and his arms locked either side at elbow and wrist. Slightly bent of knee his posture pushed back the surprisingly plump pumpkins of his arse which threatened to burst out of his thin trousers. Already the lad's normally jovial face was crisped in fear as the Sergeant-Major slid a leathern pad up a groove in the post in back, fixing it under the pelvis in a manner that stuck it even further out.
“Strictly speaking,” explained the Count as these preparatives were riveting the attention of the three Schloss mistresses, “Kurt has done nothing wrong. But on occasions such as these we administer what is called a warming punishment. It will not be too bad,” he amended wryly, with a glance at the naked cunts ranked before him, “since it will be over the trousers. It would hardly be consistent with modesty to take them down, would it. Give him a good dozen, Sergeant-Major, you have firm meat to work on here.”
The big man's eye seemed to glow as he trembled the cane through the air a moment. Moistening his right hand with spittle, he took his eager and impatient stance at a calculated distance from the boy's expectant bottom. Maria saw his hairy muscled arm, his bull-like neck, noted the shake and tremor of the frightful stick as it rested on the stone a moment, and all marrow seemed to melt from her limbs. He was more like a savage animal than anything. Finally, at a nod from his superior, he started work, with obvious relish. The cane swung with the full might of his arm, its powerful whirr-and completed clap-sufficient evidence of its hurt. The stable-boy gave a convulsive movement of his body, driven to his toes by the sheer force of the blow, but said nothing, biting on a kerchief.
He received no less than eight slowly measured stripes of such severity before he allowed a dull moan to escape him. His neck muscles stood out like cords, his back ran sweat, and his whole chest heaved like a runner at the end of his race. Maria Daunitz thought she had never seen such a brutal flogging. They were all three close enough to see the ooze of blood that stained the trousers on the right side, where hard, dark-colored swellings could be seen. By the last two his thighs and knees were knocking on the post in some despair and when he was let down he fell to his knees for a minute, desperately contorted and moaning in cramps.
“Pull yourself together, boy,” said the Count, “and get to work. Which of you three is to be the first? Here, you're Wedell, aren't you. I was up you once as I recall and it was a commodious cunt. Let's see you show a lesson to the others, as you're senior, so I think.”
“Klotz!” yelled out the Sergeant-Major at the same moment, replacing his immense cane on a wall-rack. And an answering shout came from outside-“Sir!” A second vast guardsman stamped in, his heels clashing, saluted, and took up his position behind the man already waiting there. This latter, Maria saw with sudden horror, was now distinguished by a rock-like erection visible up one side of his trousers. Aroused by the sight of the flogging as well as the women, no doubt. She was beginning to feel faint. Already she was running with a cold sweat. The place reeked of male perspiration, boot polish, and bad brandy.
“Trice her up tight, Kurt,” came the Count's command. “Above all let them see her cunt. No, tighter still than
