Divine Torment Read online

‘You want me to go to Mulhanabin, sir?’

  ‘I need you to take an army there and hold the city from all attack. It needn’t be a great force – I understand the city is quite defensible. In fact you cannot afford an excess of soldiers because food and water will be limited. The men will have to go on foot, with the minimum of baggage. They won’t like that, but the desert can’t sustain horses for long. That is our strength. The Horse-eaters won’t be able to put up a long siege. They’ll waste their efforts on Mulhanabin and break for ever on the banks of the Amal Bhad.’

  ‘Yes, I see, sir.’

  ‘You accept the commission, Commander Veraine?’

  ‘Of course, sir.’ He saluted. ‘It will be an honour.’

  Slaithe’s jowls tightened as he drew himself up. ‘Then it’s in my power to appoint you to the rank of general, and give you the command of the Eighth Host. Congratulations, General Veraine.’

  The newly promoted officer kneeled before his benefactor and clenched his hands over his heart. ‘I swear by the Seven and by my own star that I will serve the Eternal Empire faithfully to the last drop of my blood,’ he said, renewing the oath he had made when he first became a soldier. Silently he also vowed, And I swear that I will live through this mission, and I will walk in the sunlight with all the other nobles of the Irolian people!

  He let Slaithe raise him to his feet.

  ‘Well done, son,’ said the older man, gripping his shoulders tightly. ‘I hope we’ll be as proud of you as we are of your father, may his star look down upon us. Now come and eat. You’ll need it, I should think.’

  In fact Veraine had never felt less interest in eating. What he felt like doing was running the two miles through the baking streets of Antoth to the barracks and there smashing his old general against the wall, to laugh in his face. Or perhaps marching into the Hall of the Imperial Concubines and fucking every one of its three hundred inhabitants in full, horrified view of their radiant master. But he let himself be led over to one of the couches and sat upon it, facing Slaithe over the full table.

  ‘Eat,’ said the Glorious General, reclining to one side and sipping from his glass.

  Veraine stared down at the food. It looked wonderful; tiny roast fish, burnished grapes, the fattest olives he had ever seen. There were cream and fruit confections fit for a lady’s fancy and roast pigeons steaming in rich sauces. He had no appetite. The dark slave bent before him to fill his goblet and the sweet perfume of her flesh did tickle his senses, but he was very careful not to glance at her.

  ‘Do you speak Yamani?’ Slaithe asked.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, picking up a tiny golden fruit with a papery calyx. It seemed safest to eat something.

  ‘Well?’ Slaithe’s voice was sharp.

  ‘Very well, sir.’ Veraine felt no need to explain his language skills.

  ‘Good. You’ll need to in Mulhanabin – the locals won’t speak anything else.’

  The two slave girls, having poured the drinks, went and kneeled, knees just touching, slightly behind Slaithe’s couch. This put them out of their master’s casual view but directly in Veraine’s line of sight and he found it extremely distracting. The fair girl had large breasts that pushed up against her dress. The bleached cotton was strained between them and he could see her hard nipples forming little shadows where they defied the tautness of the cloth. He tried to concentrate on what his superior officer was saying.

  ‘We’ll be sending an adviser with you. His name is Rumayn. Not army, not even a good family really, but he knows more about Mulhanabin and the Yamani religion than anyone else I could lay my finger on.’

  The slave with the smooth, dark hair and the narrow eyes leaned in to her companion and kissed her throat softly. At the same time her hand stole up to pinch the nearer of those impudent nipples. The wheat-haired girl shuddered under that touch, arching her back. Her eyes half-closed in pleasure.

  ‘Sir?’ said Veraine suddenly, realising that he had missed a sentence completely.

  ‘I said, you’ll need him in dealing with the priests. They have a lot of power in places like that. Are you all right, General?’

  ‘Very much so,’ said Veraine. His mouth was dry and he grabbed hurriedly for another fruit. The two girls had started to kiss, their wet pink tongues intertwining very visibly.

  ‘The Eighth Host is currently under my own wing. I can vouch for them. The senior commander is a man called Loy. A sound man to have at your side. Twenty years a soldier.’

  ‘Good.’ Veraine managed to nod. The girls were taking it in turns to bite the other’s lips, their hips rolling softly to the same internal rhythm. He was aware that under the linen tunic he was hard and getting harder. I’m a general now, he thought wryly; I shouldn’t be getting the horn in public.

  ‘I will send word back to the Imperial Barracks at once. You’ll have new quarters from tonight and I shall send round a chariot for your own use in the morning.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ Veraine had lost any struggle to keep his eyes off the sight of the foreplay between the two women. He was aware that Slaithe was still talking, trying to give advice and instruction, but the lion’s share of his attention was fixed on the sight of the erotic games being played in total silence within yards of where he sat. The fair girl had now kneeled up so that the shorter one could fasten a wet and pliant mouth around her nipples. The damp patches on the dress grew translucent under this attack, the dusky buds showing clearly through the cloth when she moved her mouth away. The victim of this assault retaliated by winding her assailant’s long hair into a silken rope in her fist and forcing her dark head from nipple to nipple as the whim took her.

  ‘Well, I can see you need some time to sit and think this out,’ said Slaithe, rising to his feet. With a physical effort Veraine wrenched his gaze around to meet the other’s eyes. It occurred to him in an appalling moment that there was no way he could stand up too without flaunting his erection, but Slaithe seemed not to need a formal departure. ‘Stay, stay,’ he insisted, waving him back into his seat as he tried to gather himself. ‘You finish your meal. I have work to do. Meilin and Hilde here will fetch you anything that you want. Just instruct them. What’s the point of being a senior officer unless you enjoy the privileges of your rank?’

  The two slaves in question stood demurely as their master left the room, no flicker of expression on their faces betraying their suddenly curtailed activities. As soon as the curtain had fallen on Slaithe’s exit they turned to face the young General.

  ‘Come here,’ he said hoarsely.

  They obeyed, squeezing in between the couch and table to kneel one at either side of him. Soft and wicked smiles were on their lips. Veraine ran his thumbs across both mouths simultaneously, finding the lips slightly swollen, and wondered which to start with. He tasted first Meilin – languorous and yielding – and then the wheat-haired Hilde, who mewed breathily under his exploring mouth. He was shocked to find when he gazed into her eyes that they were blue, but the novelty was exotic rather than unpleasant. He pulled their faces closer to his, so that all three were joined in a trinity of touch and vision.

  ‘Now what in hell is General Slaithe playing at?’ he whispered, his hands tightening ever so slightly on their necks.

  ‘I don’t know, lord,’ Hilde protested.

  ‘He wants us to please you, lord, in any way you wish,’ Meilin said. Her almond eyes were dark and knowing. Behind her the curtains on the walls swayed in the breezes from the hidden spaces beyond.

  ‘I think he wants to renew the memory of an old, very close friendship, don’t you?’ he suggested.

  Hilde moaned under his grip, the vibration in her throat stirring in his fingers. Meilin shaped a silent, suggestive circle with her lips and suddenly Veraine realised that he did not care what Slaithe’s motivation was. There were plenty of intense relationships formed in the barracks and if the old man wanted a show to remind him of times long gone then he was going to get a good one.

  With a s
hrug Veraine leaned back and released both women. ‘Fine. His hospitality can’t be faulted. You can carry on.’ Both women moved with no hint of reluctance to caress his legs but he interjected, ‘Undress first.’

  The simple robes were delightfully easy to remove, needing only the release of a single bow at each shoulder. The two women peeled each other free of clothing like delectable fruit, wriggling the dresses over their hips and tossing them under the couch. Veraine was enchanted. Meilin’s slender figure was as smooth and golden as a bolt of imperial silk, the cushion of her pubis shaved free of hair so that it felt like hot satin under his fingers. He stroked a spiral on that mound and felt her quiver. Hilde, on his right, ran her hand up his bare inner thigh, demanding his attention in turn. She was extraordinarily pale – so pale that he could see the blue veins in her upper arms – and her big, puckered nipples were the pink of rose-candy.

  ‘What shall we do first, lord?’ she asked winningly, her hand cupping the hard curve of his imprisoned cock. It thumped impatiently against her hand, but its owner had more protracted plans.

  ‘I was thinking we shouldn’t waste all this food,’ he murmured, appreciating her firm touch nonetheless. He reached forward between them, took a cup of syllabub from the table and emptied the creamy confection over Hilde’s large, firm breasts. It oozed slowly over the curve of those warm globes, and they quivered as she flinched from the coldness of the cream. Her nipples hardened even further. ‘You can carry on from where you stopped before.’

  ‘Lord?’ said Hilde, jiggling her cream-splattered breasts.

  ‘Suck her,’ he told Meilin.

  Meilin leaned forward eagerly and began to lap the thick sweet cream from Hilde’s white body, sucking it from the swollen nipples with undisguised appetite and causing the pale woman to moan and whimper over the little slurping noises of the suckling. Hilde arched backwards to push her breasts up into Meilin’s face and finally abandoned Veraine’s crotch altogether, taking both her breasts in her cupped hands and lifting them up, pressing them together so that both nipples could be snatched in the other woman’s greedy mouth. Veraine could feel the pulse hammering in his groin but he restrained himself for as long as he could, until Meilin had devoured most of the fruit-pulp and cream. When he was at the apex of frustration he snatched Hilde up in his arms and pulled her up and over him so that his face was buried in her wet and slippery cleavage, with the smell of berries in his nostrils and her slick and yielding flesh under his lips and between his teeth. She wriggled against him and squealed as he sucked clean the last traces of confection, rasping her with his unshaven skin. Then he became aware that Meilin had sent deft hands questing up under his tunic, had found the knot that held up the loincloth beneath, was tugging at it and – as he stopped moving, almost stopped breathing – had at last released the painfully hard shaft of his cock from its confinement. It felt as if it were red hot, but when she took it in the wet grip of her mouth it did nothing to soothe the heat; instead his whole groin seemed to incandesce in a rush of flames.

  Veraine gave a thick groan and released Hilde. She slid down to her knees and the two women between them managed to force his tunic up over his hips. He stared down helplessly at his braced and splayed thighs, the pathetic rag of his discarded loincloth pushed to one side, the dark fuzz of his crotch hair dimmed by the shining blackness of Meilin’s head, as it rose and fell over the length of his cock. The things she was doing with her tongue seemed to strip every thought from his mind. And Hilde was crouching even lower, right down between his thighs so that she could nuzzle and lick his balls.

  ‘Ah,’ was all Veraine was able to say as the flaxen-haired slave pressed his knees even further apart and ran her tongue all the way from his bulging scrotum to his arsehole and back, pausing at one end of her journey to gently engulf each bollock in turn in her mouth, and at the other to tease and probe mercilessly with the pointed tip of her tongue. Meilin was taking what seemed an impossible length of his cock down her wicked throat, her tongue tangling with Hilde’s when they met on the soft skin of his balls. Their breath, coming in hot gusts, caressed the sensitive pubic hairs. Veraine lay back, braced himself on his elbows and surrendered to their expertise, not even trying to resist as the pressure built in him to a white wave of pleasure. He bucked and gasped and filled Meilin’s mouth until she nearly choked on his ejaculation.

  When the room stopped spinning Veraine stared down the length of his body at the two slave girls with a certain degree of self-satisfaction. His cock, still bloated with lust, stood upright, dark and glossy, framed between their two faces. The women both kissed it softly, slightly wistfully he thought, their full lips pressing its bone-stiff column. He decided it would be a shame not to make use of its hard length while it lasted and, sitting up, he took the pouting Hilde around the waist and lifted her into his lap. She settled over his cock with the perfect tightness of a sheath on a sword, surprise flashing in her eyes. She smiled too and planted a hot and open kiss on his lips.

  ‘You’re very hard, lord,’ she said simply.

  ‘You can keep it that way,’ he murmured. ‘Oh gods. Probably till I die.’ He squeezed her breasts until they overflowed his hands. She tightened her thighs and moved upon him, rising and sinking a little, her inner muscles clenching about him. He let slip a little grunt of appreciation. Meilin, still kneeling on the floor and almost hidden from view, gently raked the skin of his inner thighs with sharp fingernails. His scrotum tightened in anticipation.

  ‘May I, lord?’ Hilde asked, teasing out the knot of his belt. He let her wriggle the close-fitting military tunic over his shoulders and throw it on the floor, leaving him naked to her gaze and touch. Pleasure bloomed in her face. His torso was tight and well-muscled from years of military service – a commander was not exempt from daily combat practice – and she ran her hands over it covetously, tracing paths from his dark flat nipples through the scattering of chest hair down to the hard ridges across his belly.

  ‘I like this,’ she said, fingering a white scar that crossed his left ribs.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘What I like is when you rock your hips. Oh gods yes. Like that.’ For a moment purpose failed him, then he managed to lie back and swivel round until he was lengthways on the couch, Hilde still straddling his hips.

  Meilin, deprived of his balls to play with, leaned over and took his right nipple in her teeth, tightening her grip until shudders ran through him like waves. Veraine stared up past her dark hair at Hilde gyrating slowly on his crotch and thought, I hope Slaithe is appreciating the show.

  ‘Get up,’ he told Meilin. ‘Across my face.’

  She mounted the couch in a single fluid motion, facing Hilde, her thighs spread wide across the width of his shoulders. Veraine was presented with the finest view of a shaven pussy he had ever witnessed, inches from his face. He was vaguely aware that the two women were fondling each other over his prone torso, but Meilin’s cleft filled his vision and his consciousness to the exclusion of almost everything else in the world. Her arse was thrust out well and the globes of her buttocks filled his horizon like golden moons. He could see everything from the amber starburst of her arsehole to the tiny gold ring protruding from between her labia at the apex of their meeting. He parted those soft folds with his fingers, finding her golden on the outside and pink and juicy within, like some extraordinary ripe fruit. Very juicy indeed; his fingers were instantly slick with her moisture. He was gratified beyond words. He gently teased the pierced hood of her clitoris and was rewarded by a visible welling of further moisture from her cunt. His head swam with the scent of her musk. He loved that smell. She writhed on his tickling, stroking fingers.

  With his free hand he pulled her down on his face. She made a noise like a kitten. He ran his tongue up the entire length of her cleft, from ring to arse, probing for the points of greatest pleasure. His tongue sank deep into the wet depth of her hole. When he licked her bejewelled clitoris she danced and twisted, pressing herself down on him,
so he covered her with his mouth, both sucking and licking. Her moist flesh was all over his face, juices running over his nose and clotting in the lashes of his closed eyes. He could see nothing and could barely breathe, his nose buried in the wet grip. He could feel Hilde sliding up and down faster and harder on his pumping cock. He could feel the blood pounding in his temples. He was not getting enough air, blue lights were flashing behind his eyelids, but he pulled Meilin closer, smothering himself in her engulfing slit as she wriggled and jerked. He could hear Hilde crying out wildly, the sound muffled by the grip of the thighs around his head. But when Meilin’s climax took her he did not hear it so much as feel it, the shuddering of her tortured body going through him like an earthquake. The blackness behind his eyes yawned like a pit and he swung helplessly above it, the pulse pounding in his head, lungs screaming for air – but all he could breathe was the musky sex juice that was flooding his face and running down his throat and burning in his nostrils.

  A heartbeat from unconsciousness, Veraine hit orgasm and convulsed beneath the two women, tearing Meilin from his face as he did so. His gasp sounded like pure agony, but that could not have been further from the truth. The three collapsed together in a shaking, sweating heap, and even when they rolled apart they could do nothing but stare wordlessly at each other for many moments. Meilin at last pushed her hair back behind her and stooped to plant a soft kiss on the tip of his penis.

  Veraine looked down at himself with something like amazement. Numb with overstimulation, nevertheless, his cock still stood hugely erect. Feeling as insatiable as any hero, he seized the opportunity.

  ‘Lie down,’ he told Hilde. ‘Get your legs open.’

  She obeyed. He bent over her and ran his finger through the sodden ringlets of her thatch. She smelled strongly of his come, the stink of a sweet chestnut tree in flower, and as he watched little rivulets of jism began to leak from her open slit.

  ‘Get your face in there,’ he ordered Meilin. ‘I want you to ream her with that wicked tongue of yours.’ Wide-eyed, she hastened to do his bidding, sinking her glossy head between Hilde’s thighs. Veraine hefted her arse from behind, lifting it high so he could ease his cock into the wet hole she presented. Standing at the end of the couch he was at just the right height to enter between her spread arse-cheeks, and slowly, with great deliberation, he filled her to the brim with his shaft.