The ponies pressed proudly through the thick crowd, making many a head turn, as villagers milled everywhere with market baskets or slaves at tether. And over and over, the observer glanced from the finely turned-out ponies to the slave behind them. But if I expected scornful looks, I was disappointed. What I saw was simply muted amusement. Everywhere these people looked they saw some delectable bit of naked flesh, punished or positioned or harnessed for their pleasure.

And as we turned corner after corner, rushing through this narrow lane and that, I felt more surely lost than I had been on the turntable.

Each day would have its dreadful course, its obliterating surprises. And though I wept more desperately when I thought of it, and my c**k swelled in the lacings, and I marched harder, trying to squirm away from the snapping thrash, it gave a strange luster to my surroundings. I felt the undeniable urge to fall at my Master's feet, to tell him silently that I understood my lot, that I understood it more clearly with every excruciating trial and that I gave thanks from the depths of my being that he had seen fit to break me so thoroughly. Hadn't he used that word yesterday, "breaking" a new slave, said the thick phallus was good for it, and the phallus was splitting me wide again, and another stretched my mouth making my cries hoarse and wildly unmanageable.

Maybe he understood from my cries. If only he would condescend to comfort me with just a little touch of his lips. . . . And I realized almost with a start that never had I felt this softened and subservient in all the rigors of the castle.

We had come to a large square. All around I saw the signs of the Inns, and the carriageways and the high windows. Rich and fancy Inns they were, windows as ornate as those of a manor house. And as I was whipped and pulled in a broad circle around the well, the crowd agreeably letting the ponies through, I saw with a shock the Captain of the Queen's Guard lounging at a doorway.

It was unmistakably the Captain.

I remembered his blond hair and coarsley shaven beard and those brooding green eyes. Quite unforgettable. It was he who had taken me from my native land, captured me when I tried to break and run from the camp, and brought me back, my hands and ankles bound to a pole carried between two of his horsemen. I could still remember that thick c**k spiking me and that silent smile as he ordered me whipped through the camp evening after evening until we reached the castle. And that strange inexplicable moment when we parted and both of us looked at each other.

"Good-bye, Tristan," he had said in the most cordial voice, and I had kissed his boot of my own will, my eyes still fixed on his silently.

My c**k recognized him, too. And as I was drawn near to him, I was in sudden terror that he would see me.

My disgrace seemed too much to bear. All the strange rules of the Kingdom seemed for the moment immutable and just, and I was bound, penitent, condemned to the village. He would know I had been sent down from the castle to harsher treatment than even he had given me.

But he was watching something through the open door of the Sign of the Lion, and in one glance I saw the little spectacle. A lovely village woman with a pretty red skirt and white ruffled blouse was spanking her slave quite diligently upon a wooden counter, and the lovely face peering out through its tears was that of Beauty. She writhed and struggled under the paddle. But I could see she was unfettered, just as I had been last night on the Public Turntable.

We passed the door. The Captain looked up, and as if in a nightmare I heard my Master halt the ponies. I stood still, my c**k straining against the leather. But this was inescapable. My Master and the Captain were greeting each other and exchanging pleasantries. And the Captain was admiring the ponies. Roughly he jerked the horsetail up in the one on the right, lifting and stroking the shining black hair, and then he pinched the red thigh of the slave as the slave tossed his head and sent a shiver through the harnesses. The Captain laughed.

"O, we have a little high spirits here!" he said, and he turned to the pony with both hands, apparently provoked by the gesture. He lifted the slave's chin and then the phallus and gave it several strong rocking upward jerks until the pony kicked and worked his legs friskily. Then came a soft pat on the rump, and the pony settled quietly.

"You know, Nicolas," he said in that familiar deep voice, able to strike fear with one syllable, "I've told her Majesty several times that she should give up her horses for short journeys and rely on slave ponies. We could outfit a great stable for her quickly enough, and I think she would find it delightful. But she sees it as a village occupation and won't really consider it."

"She has very particular taste, Captain," said my Master. "But tell me, have you ever seen this slave before?"

And to my horror he pulled my head back by the straps of the harness.

I could feel the Captain's eyes on me, though I didn't look. I could picture my cruelly stretched mouth, the straps of the harness scoring me.

He drew closer. He stood not three inches from me. And then I heard his low voice deeper still.

"Tristan!" and his large warm hand closed on my penis. He squeezed it hard, pinching the tip shut, and then let it go as sensation knotted at the end of it. He fondled my balls, pinching between his fingernails the covering of skin that was already pulled so tight around them by the lacings.

My face was scarlet. I couldn't meet his gaze, my teeth clamping down on the huge phallus as if I could devour it. I felt my jaws working, my tongue lapping the leather as if I were somehow forced to do it. He stroked my chest, my shoulders.

A flashing image of the camp returned, of being tethered to that great wooden X in a circle of X's and the soldiers standing idle about me, teasing my cock, educating it as I waited hour by hour for the evening whipping. And the Captain's secretive smile as he strode past, his gold cape over one shoulder.

"So that is his name," said my Master, his voice sounding young and more refined than the deep murmur of the Captain. "Tristan." And hearing him speak it further tormented me.

"Of course I know him," said the Captain. His large shadowy figure moved just a little to let a collection of young women pass, who were laughing and talking loudly.

"I brought him to the castle only six months ago. He was one of the wildest, broke and ran through the forest when he was ordered to strip, but I had him beautifully tamed when I put him at her Majesty's feet. He'd become the darling of the two soldiers whose duty it was to whip him daily through the camp. They missed him more than any slave they ever had to discipline."

I shivered silently, swallowing the sound, as the gag, strangely enough, made it all the harder.