GEETWO STORIES - PAGE 085

- LAST QUEEN OF THE INCA -

By

Geetwo

writergeetwo@googlemail.com

ART BY COCO

The Inca Queen had trained long and hard to earn the right to lead her people into battle, spending years building muscles and honing her skills until she was more than a match for any male warrior. She had no equal with the spear or fighting-knife, few could match her physical strength and in her pride and arrogance, she believed that no enemy could ever defeat her.

Until the bearded, pale-skinned men arrived from far across the ocean.

With their hard metal armour that the blades of her soldiers’ weapons could not penetrate, their long fire-sticks that dealt unseen death in a cloud of smoke and flame, mounted on large animals unlike any she had ever seen, they swept through her armies like a fire through the forest, killing hundreds of her men and putting the rest to panicked flight. She would not flee, for she was the Queen and so, alone in her palace in her deserted city, dressed in her royal robes and with her useless weapons in hand, she waited for the men who had invaded her lands and prepared herself to die a warrior’s death.

The Spanish conquistadors who entered her palace were searching for gold and precious jewels, intent on plunder to enrich themselves and fill the coffers of their King, rather than a time-wasting skirmish with a woman they neither knew nor cared was the Queen of their beaten foes. When they burst into her throne-room, she screamed her war-cry and threw herself at them, stabbing with the spear in her right hand and slashing with the fighting-knife in her left. Her solo attack proved no less brave and no more effective then those of her armies; the stone point of her spear shattered against the armour they wore and her knife was outmatched by their long swords.

Surrounded by a steadily-closing ring of enemies that she could not defeat, she reversed her knife, prepared to die rather than surrender, but before she could strike the fatal blow, a conquistador, unseen behind her, struck hard at the nape of her neck with the butt of his musket. Dazed and barely-conscious, she fell to the floor and rolled onto her back, her brain registering what had happened and her eyes open, but her body stunned and unresponsive. Above her, several swords rose to end her fight and her life, then lowered as a sharp order countermanded their intentions.

Understanding nothing of his language, she could not know that the command that had saved her life had been given by a quick-thinking Spanish officer who had deduced her identity from the robes and gold jewellery she wore. Eager for recognition and promotion, he instantly realised that a dead warrior Queen would soon be forgotten and reflect little credit on the man responsible, but a living one, taken back to Spain and presented to the King as a helpless prisoner and a symbol of his dominion and power over her lands and people ... that would earn her captor royal patronage, undying fame and the fortune he craved.

At his order, several of his men used their daggers to slash and rip her robes from her bod, stripping her naked and exposing her heavily-muscled, large-breasted figure to their pitiless gaze. She tried to will her limbs to resist and fight, but she had not had time to recover from the blow to her head and although she mumbled protests and her arms twitched feebly, the men swiftly lashed her wrists and elbows with many loops of strong rope, cinching the turns cruelly tight. More loops encircled her waist, combining with those on her elbows to immobilise her upper arms, then still more from the rear of those, passed between her legs to her bound wrists and pulled taut, forced her hands tight to her belly.

A final series of lashings around each of her ankles, linked by a short rope hobble, completed her bondage and when she was lifted to her feet to be inspected by the young officer and his grinning men, she could do nothing to conceal her nude breasts and buttocks, or hide the fury and despair in her eyes. As the Queen of her people, only her female servants and eunuchs had ever seen her unclothed and she would have had executed any man who dared look upon her with the insolence, total lack of respect and naked lust, exhibited by her captors.

Defeated and captured, though, she was a Queen no longer and as hot eyes devoured her helpless exposure, she shuddered in understanding that these men saw her only as a bound and helpless woman to use and enjoy as they desired; theirs by right of battle, the prize for their victory. Her own warriors had treated the women of her defeated enemies in the same way, taking them to be their slaves and bed-servants. Better she had died than be condemned to such a fate, but she had been too slow and allowed herself to fall into the hands of these foreign soldiers. They might ravage her body by force, but she would never willingly submit to them and must endure whatever lay ahead, until an opportunity came to end the shame and humiliation of her captive servitude.

The Spanish officer, his inspection complete, gave orders to his men, then waited as a rope leash was tied around her neck and handed to him. With a harsh jerk that tightened the rope at her throat, he forced her to follow him, her hobbled steps short and awkward as she was led from her palace to where the horses of he and his soldiers were picketed. Dwarfed by the horses and their mounted riders, she stumbled onward in helpless subjugation as her captors rode slowly through the city she had once ruled, pulling her behind them with her naked body drawing much ribald laughter and obscene suggestions from the soldiers who paused in their looting of the deserted shops and houses to ogle her nakedness.

Although she could not understand the words, the sniggers and gestures left her in no doubt what was being said about her and as her shame changed to rage and humiliation, she began to fight, twisting and tugging at her bonds, digging her toes into the earth and straining back against the leash to make things as hard as possible for the young officer. Irritated by her attempted resistance, he jerked sharply at the leash, but when she refused to heed the warning, his face darkened with anger and, snatching his coiled horsewhip from where it hung on his saddle, he sent the thin braided leather hissing through the air to land with a loud crack across her right hip and buttock.

Terrible pain exploded through her body and she screamed in anguish, her eyes wild with disbelief and fear, then screamed again when a second and then a third hard lash raised other livid weals on her previously smooth and unmarked flesh. No-one in her whole life had ever dared lift a finger to her, far less whip her without mercy, but when his arm rose for a fourth time and she realised that he could continue for as long as it pleased him and there was nothing she could do to stop him, she dropped to her knees and bowed her head in submission, humbling herself in a bid to avoid more of the cruel punishment.

He gazed down at her for long seconds, then lowered his whip and tugged firmly on her leash, first bringing her to her feet, then pulling her towards him until she stood at his stirrup, her head tilted up towards him by the pressure of the rope on her throat. Holding her eyes with his own cold gaze, he slowly reached down with his free hand to capture her breast and as his thumb and forefinger rolled and squeezed her nipple, she moaned and shuddered to the power of the unwanted arousal that jolted through her body. She desperately wanted to recoil from his touch, but the leash and the menacing threat of his whip held her in place as if paralysed while he fondled each of her breasts, his eyes never leaving hers until shame overwhelmed her and she was forced to look away, knowing that the unmistakable response of her body had betrayed her.

Only then did he take his hands from her body and as he rode on without a backward glance, the leash at her throat tightened, giving her no choice but to resume her slow, uncomfortable and undignified progress along the road down which the invaders had arrived to ransack her capital. She knew the road led to the ocean, but what she could not know and would not find out for some time, was that in a sheltered bay lay three Spanish warships which had carried the young officer and his men to her land. Taken aboard one of those ships, the ropes she wore would be replaced with thick, heavy iron manacles, rivetted permanently around her limbs and throat and linked by chain that even her strength could never break. Eventually, the ships would return to Spain and she would go with them, a helpless captive, never to be free and never to see her homeland again.

In her chains, naked and subjugated, she would be taken to the royal palace and offered as a gift to the King from the young officer. Her life would be that of a full slave, serving in the bed of the King and those of his courtiers, allies and advisors given her use as a reward, or in repayment of favours. Some would be considerate and treat her well, many would not, but she would have no choice but to serve them all.

She would not see the young officer again for many years, but when she did, he would have risen to the rank of General and become an extremely rich and powerful man; a trusted friend to the King, and he, too, would use her often as a slave to satisfy his desires. In his bed, late at night when he was sated and asleep, she would sometimes think back to their fateful first meeting and the land and people of which she had once been Queen, then her eyes would fill with tears at the memory, for that land and those people that lay far across the ocean and were now ruled by a foreign King, while she, their former Queen, served as a chained and lowly slave in the beds of those who had defeated, captured and enslaved her.