The Emperor's New Pony (6 page)

Comnar had decided to visit a terrible humiliation upon Ranin, lord chancellor and chief marshal of Amidia, in this dreadfully mundane way. Ranin knew precisely what the emperor wanted from him: the acknowledgment not only that Ranin was no longer a lord, but that Amidia was no longer a nation. The theory of nobility that Ranin’s tutor had drummed into his head, back in far-off Auria, said that the monarch of a nation stood as the fount of that nation’s honor. Princess Edera, until Comnar had captured her, had been the fount of honor of Amidia. Edera, naked, shaved, and being called ‘sweetheart’ by a stable lad, had lost her honor, and with it she had lost the entirety of the honor of her country. Ranin could not be a lord of Amidia, when the princess of Amidia had a horsetail emerging lasciviously from her bottom’s sweet young ring and must show her tender little cunt to the eyes of the stable boys of Maq.

But part of Ranin’s noble heart, raging, still refused to accept that everything he saw did not represent a cruel, silly jest on the part of an insane Maqian emperor. Surely Maq could not be utterly controlled by a ruler who would treat foreign nations thus? He turned to Lord Qartin.

“My lord,” he said, trying to keep his tone even. “I beg of you. I beg you to tell me that this is a jest, and that although Amidia must accept imperial rule from this time, we may keep our honor at least.”

“Goodman Versal,” said the emperor, standing upright now and clasping his hands in front of his chest like a man who will fight another with his fists and loosens his fingers before he squeezes them closed to give the first blow, “shall I tell you what will happen if you do not bow to me as a goodman of Maq should?”

Ranin felt himself looking blankly at Comnar. He felt himself opening his mouth as if to say something, but no word came out.

“I shall take that as a response in the affirmative,” the emperor said. “If you do not bow to me this instant, it is not you who will be whipped for disobedience, it is the girl who was once your princess. Boy Gad, you may rise—so also may you, Master Morqan and Boy Hednar—and show Goodman Versal what I mean.”

Ranin spun his head to see what the lad did, and to his horror he saw that the stable lads had small quirts at their belts, and that Gad had taken his in his hand.

“No!” Ranin shouted. “No, please…” Without even willing the motion, he felt his legs rushing him toward the stable boy, but he stood too far away, and as he tried to dart forward, he could only watch the horsewhip come crashing down upon Edera’s lovely backside to the right of the tail, where he could see evidence that she had already been severely beaten.

Edera gave a muffled yelp around the leather bit she wore in her mouth. She sobbed as if her heart would break when Ranin, not caring what the consequence might be, knelt down beside her and held her around her sweet bare shoulders, from which Gad had unbuckled the harness. Ranin saw the harness there, where the stable boy had put it, and the feeling of madness returned, because touching Edera that way, having the image of the whip coming down in his mind’s eye, being unable to help turning to look at the terrible, beautiful mark it had made on his princess’ adorable backside—all of it roused his cock so thoroughly that he could not even hope to deny, to himself, only ever to himself, that he envied these Maqians their degrading pleasures.

“Shh, princess… shh… we will… we will be… I will help,” he said softly, unable to think of anything that might really reassure her. She greeted his words with renewed sobs that rent his heart and, to his satisfaction, calmed his raging cock at least a little.

“Goodman Versal,” came the voice of the emperor behind him, “you may not call her a princess anymore. Every time you do, from henceforth, she will be beaten. She is filly Edera now. Say it, please. Tell the girl who was once your princess that she is filly Edera.”

Edera gave a wrenching sob. What could Ranin do? Nothing. Nothing.

“You are filly Edera,” he said in a voice that sounded hollow to his ears. To his dismay, Edera nodded vigorously, and Ranin knew that she told him to yield. She could not know what yielding truly meant, he thought: she simply had not lived enough, or paid enough attention to her lessons, to know that for him to bow as Comnar demanded that he bow, would destroy her country forever. Surely she could not know: if she did, Ranin hoped she would rather die than tell him to submit.

But he could not disobey her. He had sworn to defend her person, and Comnar knew—if he did not perhaps know about the oath itself—that Ranin would do anything if he could prevent one stroke of the quirt from falling upon Edera’s bottom. Never mind that the sight roused his cock. Never mind that the sight of girls in harness worked strangely on his imagination. If he did not acknowledge to the emperor that Amidian honor had ceased to exist, his princess, who would always be his princess whatever the emperor forced him to call her, would receive another lash.

He stood and turned to the emperor. He knew how to do this, for he had watched the Maqians curiously and closely ten years before. One must not look at the emperor’s face. For a final instant, though, Ranin let defiance rise inside him, and he looked at Comnar for long enough that the emperor, Ranin saw, realized that the Amidian marshal meant offense. Comnar’s eyes narrowed, and Ranin knew that he had delivered the message he wanted to give, from one general to another:
I will fight you while I draw breath
.

Then, studiously and exactly, he bowed low, with his eyes upon the ground, until his fingertips came to the middle of his shins, covered by the red damask of the lordly robe he knew they would soon make him change for leather breeches and a homespun tunic.

“Thank you, Goodman Versal,” the emperor said. “You may rise, so that I can show you the stables, your new home.”

What had the emperor said? That Lord Ranin would live here at the stables? How could Edera bear to see him again at all, let alone every day?

And yet the news that Lord Ranin would remain with her seemed like one of the rays of light that shot into this stable and illuminated the teeming dust motes that arose from the straw with which the stone floor was covered. Had he not said he would help? Had he not knelt down beside her, and held her close for that one instant?

Edera bowed her head, there on her hands and knees on the straw. She closed her eyes so that she need not see her harness, where the stable boy Gad had laid it on the floor in front of her after he had unbuckled it and taken it off. He had not removed her bit, and she almost felt gratitude for that, because she had no ability to protest the emperor’s terrible humiliations.

Bitterly, though, she remembered that Comnar had already told Edera and her ladies that he trained his fillies to speak as good mares should, though he had not told them what that meant. That had happened when they arrived here at the palace, after two days in the wagon, wearing their tails and their belts, having to make their water there in front of one another.

They had promised to turn away from one another when the need came upon them, but Edera found that something in her body’s response to the belt, the wristlets, and the tail, made her long to sneak her eyes around to watch Melisan and Adilan and Alira when they squatted in the corner of the wagon where a hole had been cut out, clearly for this purpose. The strange feeling, the dreadful pleasure, seized her when she saw the golden stream gush from her friends’ private parts, and then even more when they heard the shouts of laughter from the soldiers who escorted the wagon, with cries of “There goes a filly!”

And something about the way the emperor had treated her as nothing but a filly seemed to make a whisper in her mind that she could, and should, give in to the strange excitement. Why should she not watch another filly make her water? Did real fillies bother to turn away when other horses let their golden streams go upon the ground? Did not real fillies even look at the stallions’ enormous male parts? When the breeders allowed it, did not the stallions simply mount the fillies and cover them?

Thinking about it now, Edera found herself to her shame remembering how when they had watered the Amidians at the trough an hour before Master Morqan had said that they would be ready to show that Amidian man who was on his way ‘how fillies go pee.’ They had watered them well at that terrible little trough in the yard where a girl had to get down filly-fashion and put her face in the water. Now that Edera thought of it, the pressure in her privates, which had been building all through the time when they had to meet Lord Ranin and show him their tails, became almost unbearable.

Then, so overcome with the pleasure of release that she did not even realize that she had begun, Edera, princess of Amidia, went pee right there in the stable, in front of all of them. She gave a little sob as she felt the stream start. Then she felt the pee flow, and she heard it shamefully loud as it hit the floor. Then, worse, she felt for a moment that having been a filly now for three days, to do such shameful things had a rightness and a propriety about it, as if she were forgetting she had been a human girl, who stood upright and wore a gown—or as if that had been a sham, and Edera had in her soul always been a filly who made water in the stable, in front of her masters, the stable boys, and the other fillies.

“Oh, look,” said the emperor behind her. “Goodman Versal, look at what filly Edera is doing! Isn’t it charming?”

“Oh gods!” burst from Lord Ranin. “You monster!”

“Whip her, Gad,” the emperor said. Gad brought the quirt down on her bottom while Edera was still peeing, and suddenly that too felt right, because should not a girl be punished for peeing like a filly? And why did it feel good? How could being whipped with a quirt feel good? Edera cried out around her bit, over and over, as Gad gave her two more lashes upon the other bottom cheek.

“I beg of you… I beg of you, your imperial majesty,” Lord Ranin pleaded. “Beat me in her place. Please.”

“I do not think you have begun to grasp the ordeal I have in store for you, Versal. I will not beat you. But you will beat her.”

“What?” said Ranin, and Edera cried out again at these words, though Gad had stopped with the quirt. She cried out at the thought of being beaten more, for they had whipped her so often since this all began. But at the same time, though she could not think why, the image of Lord Ranin beating her made her feel better. Perhaps because she felt so keenly that she had let him down, and let the kingdom down, she hoped he would have the opportunity to punish her for her foolishness. But somehow that was not all of it—another part of her seemed to crave the whip Lord Ranin would wield.

“I shall not make you do it now, Versal. I like to save my pleasures. But I shall tell you the fate I have decreed for you: you shall train filly Edera for me. You are a famous marshal of horse, in the country most renowned for its chivalry in all the world. Show me your skill, and perhaps you may rise to the rank of master, and even rule the stables when Morqan here himself moves up. Learn the ways of my stables and train this filly of mine in them, and you shall live, and so shall all the goodmen and goodwomen of Amidia who once were nobles.”

There was a silence then. Edera pictured Lord Ranin’s face, and she felt sure he wore the same expression of concern he had shown her when she had decided to go to the parley with this strange, cruel emperor of Maq. She bowed her head and closed her eyes, feeling the tears leaking out from beneath her eyelids.

“Your imperial majesty,” Lord Ranin finally said. “As you might guess, I feel I have no choice but to accept.”

Comnar responded in a tone that had horrible glee in it, “Oh, of course, but I have not made the proposition as awful for you yet as I will now proceed to do. For now, I will show you what the ways of my stables entail. Lads, let’s proceed with the wash-down. Lord Qartin, please ensure that Goodman Versal here watches every bit of these procedures, since he will be required to enact them with his special filly very soon. Do you hear me, Versal? You will do every one of these shameful things with filly Edera.”

“Yes, your imperial majesty.” Lord Ranin’s voice sounded wretched. What did the emperor mean, Edera wondered. What were the terrible things? She and her friends had been in the stables only a very short time, and they had seen nothing, though they had heard sounds that Edera couldn’t understand, hearing them from where she lay looking for sleep on the straw of the stall they had led her to, next to the stalls into which they had put Melisan, Adilan, and Alira.

Master Morqan said, “Alright, Gad, let’s get that bit out of Edera’s mouth, and then her tail. Then you can see to Melisan. Hednar, you see to Adilan and Alira. Once they’re all untacked, wash those backsides out nicely. Then the wash-down proper: Melisan, then Adilan, then Alira. Goodman Versal, Gad and Hednar are good boys—they don’t need all the direction: I’m just saying it so that you can get used to our wash-down routine.”

“I thank you, Master Morqan,” Lord Ranin said.

Gad unbuckled her bit and laid it on a bench next to Edera’s harness. “Time for the tail, sweetheart,” he said. “Get that rump nice and high for Gad, and those knees well spread, and we’ll have it out in no time.” Shivering with embarrassment, and hardly believing that she could really do this in front of Lord Ranin, she bent her face to the stone floor that stank of fillies’ pee, and assumed the position she had learned the day before, when their bungs had been taken out for the first time. For the moment, it was the most humiliating thing that had ever happened to Edera, but the need to have the tail out of her bottom made her eager to comply with Gad, and the kindly tone he had adopted actually made it easier.

“Arch that back now, filly,” Gad said, and he began to pull. Edera tried not to picture what she looked like to the man who had been her lord chancellor when she had been his princess, but nonetheless the vision appeared of the wicked bung and its fine white horsehair that must have come from an Amidian mare, between the chastised ovals of her bottom cheeks, of her tender private part revealed when Gad moved the tail aside—of it all upturned and offered to the observer as if for… for Edera didn’t know what, but knew that the wicked part of her wanted that, whatever it was.