Rapunzel was too distressed to attempt a reply and the Baron chuckled sadistically. “Don’t worry, Rapunzel. If you are still a virgin, you won’t be for much longer. Isn’t that right, boys?”
There was a peal of laughter and cheers from the men, and then five pairs of rough hands were on her, pawing at her breasts, her waist, her bottom and her thighs. Weasel reached between her legs and rolled down her undergarments, exposing the girl’s delicate, hairless private parts.
“You won’t be needing these anymore, darling,” he sneered.
Rapunzel was still too stunned to protest. She tried to wriggle away from the men’s touch, squirming in horror and disgust, until yet another fist from Stalyan cut off her resistance. She choked desperately as the thugs continued to grope her, tears streaming down her pale, freckled face.
“All right, boys, there’ll be plenty of time for that later,” said the Baron, ending the gang’s fun. “Tie this little whore to the horses and let’s be on our way. Weasel, you lead her. Vexis, you make sure she keeps up the pace.”
Rapunzel could do nothing as the men dragged her over to the horses and tied her hands in front of her, attaching them by a rope to the saddle on Weasel’s horse. They bound her impossibly long hair to the saddle too, keeping it away from her back which they wanted clear for the ordeal to come. The thugs mounted their horses, save for Vexis who remained on foot next to their young captive. He was a giant brute of a man, more than seven feet tall with arms as thick as Rapunzel’s waist. As he looked down on the tiny princess, he drew a three-foot horsewhip from his belt and cracked it hard across her shoulders. He laughed at the whelp of pain it drew from the young girl.
“This is to keep you moving,” he growled. Then he drew back the whip and cracked it against her with such force it made her stumble forwards. The pain was so great it literally took Rapunzel’s breath away. “And that is if you move too slowly.”
If there had been any doubt about the ordeal that lay ahead of her, the two brutal lashes settled it. The princess tried to stifle her terror as the full horror of her situation hit her. She had been betrayed by her best friend; her boyfriend and protectors had been killed; and there was no one from Corona who had any clue to her whereabouts. She was alone in the hands of the most vicious bandit in the entire continent of Palgravia, one who held a deep and personal grudge against her. As Vexis cracked another line of fire against her shoulders for a third time, the young girl knew her pain was just at a beginning.
As the sting from the third lash seared into her flesh, the party moved off, the Baron, his daughter and his men all spurring their horses into a trot. Weasel did the same and Rapunzel suddenly found herself running as the rope wound tightly around her wrists jerked her forwards. The Karrion Gang had no fear of enemies on the road, being the strongest bandits in the area by far, but Baron Grievel had no intention of advertising his capture of the Corona princess to the world and so they immediately moved off the road and headed into the trees of the Vardaros Woods. There were paths through the woods that the Baron and his men knew well, seldom used by ordinary people but clear enough for the horses to move through at pace. They were just wide enough for Vexis, running alongside his captive, to swing the three-foot horse whip across the young girl’s back.
“Look alive now, girl,” he warned. “The route is going to get harder later so we need to keep the pace up.”
With that, Weasel gave his horse a quick tap with his heels. Rapunzel felt a violent tug on her wrists as the horse doubled its speed, forcing her to lift her legs up into a run. Vexis, twice the girl’s size and as strong as an ox, kept pace easily, swinging his huge right arm back as he ran and snapping it against her with a resounding crack. Rapunzel let out a cry of agony as she felt it bite through her thin cotton slip and into the delicate soft skin of her back.
“I hope you have plenty of stamina, princess, because we have a whole day of this. Now pick up your knees and run!”
Rapunzel did have stamina and she was used to being in the woods barefoot. But running with her arms bound to a horse was far more difficult than normal and the winding forest path pulled her this way and that, wrenching her shoulders and twisting her hips and thighs until they burned with pain. For the huge Vexis, running freely, there were no such problems, and again and again he found time to swing the whip against his victim, the force of the strikes pitching her forward toward Weasel’s horse and cutting lines of red-hot pain into her back. After twenty or thirty lashes, the blood was already soaking through into her white cotton slip and they were barely a mile into their journey.
Rapunzel knew Baron Grievel was intending to torture her once they reached his stronghold. He was a notorious sadist, infamous for his punishment of anyone who got in his way. His usual policy upon taking his prey – be it a small group of travelers or, in the case of Vardaros, an entire city – was to kill the men and capture the women, giving them over to his vicious cohorts for their cruel enjoyment. His stronghold, somewhere deep in the mountains around Vardaros, was rumored to be a place of terrible suffering where captives were held in cages in the open air, taken out only to satisfy the vile lusts of the Baron and his gang. Rapunzel could only assume that whatever terrible things were done to the Karrion Gang’s ordinary prisoners, the fate awaiting her would be a hundred times worse.
“Pick up your legs, slut! If you fall, you’ll pay the price!”
Vexis could see the young princess beginning to tire. Her chest was heaving hard as one mile of running had turned to two and two had turned to three. Sweat poured from her in the heat of the midday sun, mixing with the blood now running in streams from her back, buttocks and thighs. He gave her five savage lashes with the whip, putting all his strength into the blows and sending her stumbling forward toward Weasel’s horse. She kept herself upright with only the greatest effort but could do nothing about the hidden bed of thorns on the ground beneath her that now impaled her bare feet. She let out a cry of pain and fell flat on her face, her arms almost wrenched from their sockets as Weasel continued to keep his horse at a steady trot.
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