The Spicy Tales of Peril Group presents…
The Perils of Lianni
By Dana Bowman, Jeb, and Jeanne Thorne
Chapter the Third
Five more minutes.
Jeb Stuart shook his head against the pain, and wiped blood from his eyes.
If he had just stayed unconscious for five more minutes, it might all have been different…
#
The ugly thunk of the first arrow into human flesh had sent Jeb's reflexes into action before his mind had even finished reacting. His pistol out, he hunkered low, waiting to see from where the arrow had come. They had come to a rise above a small culvert, but their attackers were on higher ground yet.
Around him, it was already all going to hell. Two men down, the line of march in disarray, and sailors flailing madly to fire at foes they couldn't even see yet. The thick foliage and spongy ground beneath made footing unsure, spoiling the aim of the few who managed to get guns to their shoulders before the wave of warriors was upon them.
Jeb squeezed the pistol's trigger, watched a huge black body sink to the ground, and hastily threw ball and powder in to reload. He'd have to go at the half-cock, as there was no time for proper tamping and priming -- not that it mattered much, with range to his foes being halved every second. He got off one more shot, appearing to remove an ear from one of the bastards, and they were upon him.
Three of them had launched themselves at the tiny knot of men who had rallied to him. A kick at his gun hand sent the pistol flying. His spare gun and ammunition were wrapped snugly in watertight oilskin and strapped under his shirt at the small of his back, but he might as well have left them at home for all the use they'd be now. Instead, he ducked under the man's next blow and used an elbow to the groin to send him tumbling back, retching.
Jeb reached to his belt for his knife, and gutted another of the attackers, kicking his bleeding body back into the remaining man, sending both sprawling. In the instant that gave him, he cast a bleak look up ahead.
The largest mass of the warriors was swarming over the head of the party. It was already hopeless -- half the crew seemed to be dead from the initial volley of arrows. Through the flailing of arms, legs, and weapons, he saw the attackers brutally dispatch his shipmates, except for one group in the front.
There, in their midst, Jeanne-Marie was laying about her with her cutlass, dealing out death with grim satisfaction, but no more arrows were loosed at her. Instead, the savages seemed to be trying to find a way to get past her guard without actually wounding her. And with their numbers it was inevitable that, sooner or later, they'd succeed.
In the brief moment he watched, Jeb saw two of the warriors make their way behind Jeanne-Marie, and as her cutlass sank deep into another of her foes, her arms were seized from behind. With no way to pull back on the sword, it remained lodged in the body of her foe as he collapsed, yanking the weapon from her grasp.
Before he could see what the savages did with his beautiful captain, he felt a crack at the side of his head, and his vision reddened as he reeled from the blow of the club. His knife responded, but a second blow caused it to drop from nerveless fingers. Disarmed, his eyes clouding with blood, he lashed out with a booted foot, hearing a knee crack and a screech of pain. He saw a flash and turned only just in time to let an assegai slice open his shirt, narrowly avoiding filleting him. He took a step, saw another club headed towards him… and his foot suddenly caught in the tangle of underbrush. The club made hard contact with the back of his head, and as he began tumbling head over heels down the embankment, he found himself wondering if the mucky water at the bottom of the culvert below him tasted as bad as it looked.
#
And now, he was awake. He lay on his back, in a tangle of dry brush and mud. As he blinked blood from his eyes, he realized two things: one, that from where he lay he could not be seen by the survivors of the battle; and two, that if he moved enough to get to his feet, they'd hear the brush crackle and come back to finish him. Painfully, careful not to make a sound, he craned his neck far enough to see back up the way he had fallen, and the aftermath of the battle.
Mostly, it was as he'd remembered it -- the huge dusky warriors, the dead and bleeding pirates. He could see Jeanne again, held fast by two of the massive brutes… but there was one new element to the picture, and Jeb had to blink blood and sweat from his eyes again before he allowed himself to believe it.
There was no question about it, though. Standing before the pinioned form of Jeanne-Marie was another woman -- and no ordinary woman at that. Even in his dizziness, Jeb couldn't fail to appreciate the lithe form that was clothed in no more than bits of animal skin, which left fine, creamy limbs exposed in a way that almost started him salivating on the spot. A mane of hair the color of beaten gold gleamed in the sun as she tossed her head proudly; even at this distance, her bearing was clearly that of a woman convinced of her own superiority to others of her sex. What he could see of her face was impressive, just as beautiful, and just as determined as that of the lovely pirate who was now her prisoner.
Jeb couldn't hear the conversation -- under other circumstances, he'd have given half his purse to hear two such women hurling insults at each other -- but he could see that Jeanne-Marie's customary defiance was not impressing her captors. Instead, he watched in horror as one of the men behind Jeanne raised a club and brought it crashing down on the back of her head. She slumped, her captors holding her up by her arms, as the golden-haired jungle woman took a fistful of Jeanne's hair, and forced her head back. Jeb realized that the only time he'd ever seen his captain's face look this vulnerable had been that night five years ago when she had moaned and wept beneath his body in their dim hideout. At least, thank God, she was still breathing.
In the next moment, he saw Jeanne's form thrown across the shoulder of one of the attackers as the blonde signaled them to move on. He saw the trim buttocks thrust upwards over the man's shoulder, the glossy dark hair a curtain trailing between the limp arms, and as the natives bore his captain away to her captivity, leaving him alone, he closed his eyes and cursed silently.
Five more minutes.
If he'd just lain here, unconscious, for five more minutes, he'd have awakened alone, the sole survivor of the attack. Less than a day's walk and two days’ rowing behind him, offshore, lay the finest fighting ship outside the British Navy, fully rigged, with a crew that he knew would follow anywhere he might choose to take them.
Plunder… power… women… all his for the taking. He could return to the Rover on his own, tell the tragic tale of their doomed expedition, and make himself the next Pirate King… He could have done those things if he had slept for five more minutes.
Instead, though, he had woken in time to see his captain made a prisoner, reduced from a beautiful, spirited young woman to a piece of baggage over the shoulder of an African brute. And he had seen the beautiful, haughty Golden Goddess who had taken her captive.
And with a weary sigh, Jeb Stuart set about crawling from the shelter of the brush and muck. There really was no choice, was there? For the second time in his life, he was going to rescue Jeanne-Marie Magdalena de la Croix.
And after that? His mind reeled with the possibilities.
#
By the tenth stroke of the lash, Jeanne's teeth had drawn blood from her lip. By the twentieth slashing blow, she had begun to scream...
Jeanne knew pain. She knew it like she knew the warmth of the sun and the rolling of the ocean. Pain was the forge and crucible that had tempered the steel of her will. Pain was the chief coin of her realm, and she doled it out as freely and liberally as a wealthy drunkard. Pain was her most hated enemy and her closest friend, because pain had brought her hatred, and hatred had brought her freedom.
By the thirtieth stroke, Jeanne's breasts and belly were a mass of bruises and crisscrossing welts, some of which bled...
Jeanne did not know the day of her birth and did not care to know. The day she celebrated was the day of her rebirth -- the day she discovered her true name, the day she turned her back on God. Her mother had been dead for ten years, and Jeanne had spent those years in the convent of Our Lady of Sorrows, in the hills outside Avignon. The sisters were of a particularly stringent order who believed that only through pain and toil could salvation be achieved, and none more so than the nun who oversaw Jeanne's journey of the soul. In those ten years, not a single day had passed without the appearance of Sister Bernardine, birch rod or bundle of twigs clenched in her clawlike hand, to administer the most savage beatings to the young girl's body.
By the fortieth stroke, Jeanne's throat was raw from her agonized keening. Blood had begun to run down her legs...
From the age of five to the age of fifteen, Jeanne experienced agony on a daily basis from the Sister's hands, the nun's eyes gleaming with a strange, mad light as she brought wood to flesh until her arm tired. And every day, Jeanne's sobbing pleas to know the nature of her crime went unheeded.
At the fiftieth stroke, a pair of warriors closed in and turned Jeanne to face the pole, looping more of the harsh cord about her waist to hold her in place against the pole and ripping the remains of her blouse from her back. Then the strap came down again to slash between her shoulder blades...
Finally, as the young Jeanne curled up in a ball at Sister Bernardine's feet, hugging herself to protect her budding breasts and sex from the unrelenting rod, the nun revealed her reason. The girl Jeanne-Marie was the bastard daughter of the famed pirate captain Jean-Baptiste de la Croix, renowned for his plunder and cruelty. His ship, the Red Rover, had run down a frigate off the coast of Sardinia, boarded it, and put all aboard to the sword, among them Sister Bernardine's beloved older brother. For years Sister Bernardine had prayed to Heaven for retribution, and finally her prayers had been answered by the arrival of the hated buccaneer's flesh and blood on her very doorstep. From that day, the nun had systematically taken her revenge, relishing it as a personal gift from God.
By the sixtieth stroke, Jeanne's screams had sent many of the Macumba women back to their huts to comfort their crying, frightened children...
The night of Sister Bernardine's revelation, young Jeanne had huddled in her cell and tended the embers of her hatred until they were into a roaring flame inside her chest. They had told her that God was loving and merciful, that He protected the innocent and rewarded the pure of heart and body. And then to find out that God had sent her as a child, motherless and unaware of her own name, into the hands of such a woman as Sister Bernardine -- the worship of such a God was a foul lie, a lie to which Jeanne would be party no longer...
By the seventieth stroke, Jeanne found it hard to breathe, the air rattling in her lungs as she panted and heaved against the pole...
If Jeanne was to pay for Captain de la Croix's sins, then by Hell she would claim the rest of her birthright. His name. His thirst for blood and gold. His freedom. And her first act as a de la Croix would seal her vow forever.
By the eightieth stroke, Jeanne's back was a canvas of purple and crimson, and she could feel her own blood pooling inside her boots...
Young Jeanne crept down the corridor of the convent that led to the sisters' cells, looking into the tiny window of each door until she found the one belonging to Sister Bernardine, who lay on her cot beneath the effigy of Christ nailed to the very thing that bore Jeanne’s new name.
By the ninetieth stroke, Jeanne's back was little more than raw meat, but inside her mind she gathered every ounce of agony from her straining muscles and scored flesh and forced it to coalesce into a white-hot pinpoint of purpose behind her eyes...
Jeanne remembered the gasp and bulging eyes of Sister Bernardine as the nun woke to find the girl's hands locked about her throat with unholy strength and the girl's face a feral rictus of hatred and rage. Jeanne stared down with blazing eyes as the Sister's struggles grew weaker and weaker. Just before the nun departed to join her beloved God, Jeanne had leaned in close and hissed her parting words through gritted teeth.
As the hundredth crack of leather on flesh dissipated in the humid air of the village, Jeanne's waist was unbound and she was turned back round to face Lianni. The pirate queen hung from her wrist-bonds, her body wracked and savaged, a melange of bruises and blood, and looked up at the jungle goddess through the ebony curtain of her sweat-matted hair. Her breathing was labored and rasping in her chest, but she found her voice and slowly repeated the words she had whispered to the murdered nun:
"My... my name... is Jeanne-Marie... Magdelena... de la Croix..." Jeanne paused to spit a gobbet of blood into the dirt at Lianni's feet. "And I... will not... be broken."
#
The tall blonde savage had stood by watching the vicious beating taking place before her. At first, the sight of the bare-chested beauty writhing beneath the steady stream of merciless blows both pleased and aroused her, but as the day wore on, and Jeanne-Marie incredibly showed no sign of surrendering, she began to grow angry and not a little impressed by the girl's ability to withstand such intense pain. Once, after the fiftieth lash had been delivered, she looked across at Zaba, and was surprised to see a momentary expression of pity cross his face.
Something kept this young beauty hanging on, and the longer she did, the more the natives seemed to be in awe of her. Lianni recognized the potential danger and now hoped with every new stroke that the pirate would give into the agony and be done with it. But it was not to be, and when Jeanne-Marie, bloodied and beaten, spat her defiance at Lianni's feet, the Jungle Girl was incensed. Her eyes blazed as she drew her hand back and lashed her knuckles hard across the barely conscious woman's face. The blow snapped the pirate’s head sideways, but she remained aware, and Lianni saw her own hatred reflected in the girl's pain-shrouded eyes.
“You dare to spit on the Golden Goddess of the Macumbas?” Lianni said softly, menacingly. “I will take pleasure in taming you and reducing you to a common slave.” She nodded to the natives holding the beautiful young female. “Take her to Barac and have him tend her wounds and heal her.” As they began to drag her away, Lianni gripped the girl's hair and jerked her head up to stare deeply into her eyes. “I have only started with you, you dark-haired bitch. When I'm finished, you will realize who the queen of the Congo is.” With a snarl, she released Jeanne-Marie's hair and watched grimly as the girl was bodily dragged to a large hut and taken inside.
#
Lying in the brambles and swamp water, Jeb had waited until he estimated that Jeanne's captors had taken her about a quarter of a mile, then gingerly freed himself from the tangle and muck and slipped quietly back up to the top of the small hillock. From what he could see, the natives were returning by what appeared to be a much-used track in the jungle -- probably their regular route when heading to the river on trading expeditions. That was lucky -- Jeb was no woodsman, and this would make it easier for him to keep a safe distance from the retreating party without losing them.
He paused long enough for a quick reconnoiter of the "battlefield," snatching some food and ammunition left with the corpses of his slain shipmates -- sentiment and burial would have to wait. He recovered his knife, along with a whetstone someone had been carrying. He didn't bother with a musket, not wishing the bulk to slow him down, but did take a bloodstained cutlass. He bent down, washing blood from his face in the murky water, and set off down the path as quietly as he could manage.
The journey was not a long one. The Macumbas clearly intended to return home before nightfall, so their village must be close.
As the day went on, Jeb's proximity to the group waxed and waned, depending on the terrain. Every now and again he was able to spy on the party ahead of him. There they were: the hulking dark warriors… his own shipmates, bound and bedraggled… the limp figure of Jeanne-Marie, hauled along like a piece of booty, her dark hair a glossy curtain between her dangling arms… and at the head of the group, the proud golden head of the woman Jeb knew only as the Golden Goddess.
Now there was a piece of booty and no error: the blue eyes that had reflected cruel arrogance in the brief moment he had seem them, the lush pelt of golden hair, the sculpted figure that rivaled Jeanne-Marie's… and when he suddenly realized he was picturing both figures stripped for comparison, he shook his head angrily and fingered the hilt of his knife as a distraction.
Close to dusk, they came upon the village. Impressive enough, though
Jeb had seen larger. More to the point, it was surrounded by copses of trees, offering him an easy choice of vantages. He quietly slipped up into one particularly thickly wooded one.
Less than an hour later, he almost regretted having done so. Jeb closed his eyes, and leaned his head wearily back on the branch of the tree that had been his perch. The things he had seen from up there…
Jeb Stuart had seen and done many bad things in his days on the high seas. He'd robbed, killed, and raped, seen men flogged and hanged without batting an eye. But he'd be damned if he'd ever physically tortured a woman. And to watch the proud Jeanne-Marie de la Croix helpless, strung up like a side of beef, and whipped by those misbegotten savages… He was not a sentimental man, and he knew Jeanne-Marie's black heart had put her in the same position that dozens of pirates had been before her. But that didn't matter. No matter that their one night of animal passion had never been repeated -- to see the fine body that had writhed under him that night broken would be more than he could bear. He was proud, almost shamefully so, to see that she refused to let that happen.
Finally, after some interminable length of time, he heard the voice of the blond she-cat and opened his eyes to see the jungle woman standing over Jeanne's beaten, but defiant form. She was holding the pirate by the hair, and while Jeb couldn't hear the words, the blonde was clearly gloating over the helplessness of her once-powerful captive. Jeanne was then dragged off, out of Jeb's line of sight.
Jeb ran through a few choice curses to himself as he scanned the layout of the village. To slip into a hut, kill the occupants, and be off with Jeanne-Marie would present few problems for him.
But that wouldn't do, would it? His shipmates-- leaving them behind wouldn't sit well with the rest of the crew.
And treasure? Hard to return to the ship with none of that.
And then, there was the matter of the blonde jungle girl. This so-called "Golden Goddess" had earned herself a very special place in Jeb Stuart's soul, and whatever plan Jeb came up with had to include comeuppance for that delicious piece…
He had been about to close his eyes, to try and nap for a few minutes to gather his strength, when he saw something in the crowd below, and sat bolt upright.
A face. A face he'd not expected to see here... and yet, when he thought about it, what could be more obvious?
And suddenly there it was -- the idea he'd needed. He settled back again, and waited for the coming of night, and with it opportunity. Before this ended, he'd see that golden-haired witch kneeling at his feet, atoning for this in ways she could not have dreamed.
For those interested in such things, here's an example of our writing method: the scene at the end of Chapter Two, where Jeanne is captured, was written by Dana. I did the bit at the beginning of Chapter Three, where we see the capture from Jeb's perspective; Jeanne then wrote the scene where she is whipped; Dana did the brief passage where Lianni gloats as Jeanne is beaten; then I wrapped things up with Jeb setting off to the rescue. It's not a formula-- we just wrote what we felt should come next.