Shona clenched her teeth against the searing pain. A narrow line of fiery torment burned across the middle of her bare back, adding its agony to the others that simmered on her skin. She sagged in her bonds, her wrists tugging at the ropes that stretched her arms taut between two vertical posts.
Her spine arched and her body stiffened as her limbs tensed against the lash. She cried out, but the yell was cut short by a gasp of pain as the whip whistled and cracked behind her. Looking down, she saw her naked breasts glistening with sweat, her nipples curiously hard and shiny as though displaying some kind of strange arousal. Looking up and straight ahead she saw three villagers, two men and a woman, standing barely six feet from the whipping posts. Like her, they were in their early twenties and of peasant stock.
The flogging was being delivered to Shona's back by a burly soldier from the village militia, but the three spectators were more interested in the front of her body. The two men were tall, bronzed and muscular: shirtless farm laborers in shabby brown trousers. Their faces were clean-shaven but their black hair was tousled and dirty. Their female companion was petite and extremely pretty: a delicate suntanned beauty whose raven mane tumbled around the low-cut neckline of her long white dress.
The trio stood grinning and chuckling, staring excitedly at the sight of Shona being whipped. The woman tried to count the strokes, losing the tally in a fit of giggles after the forty-fifth lash.
"Stop it, Farnel!" she squealed, feigning coyness when one of the men grabbed her around the waist from behind. She pretended to struggle as the other man unbuttoned the front of her dress.
The antics of the three spectators failed to distract the stern-faced soldier whose task it was to deliver Shona's punishment. So engrossed was he in his duty that he barely blinked when the village woman's dress fell open to her slim hips, revealing pert breasts that seemed over-large for her tiny form. Through a haze of pain Shona saw the uncovered bosom but paid no attention to it: her mind was absorbed by a frantic determination to survive the merciless flogging. She knew, however, that the odds were stacked against her, and that the promised two hundred lashes might take her to the brink of death. Her back was already a mass of crimson welts, and still the whip snaked across her skin as the soldier swung each stroke with deadly precision.
"Why don't you whip her ass and legs?" the female spectator inquired.
Her question remained unanswered, but she persisted nonetheless, standing on her tiptoes as the tall man who stood behind her reached around to cup and squeeze her breasts.
"What about the front of her body?" she asked. "Aren't you going to lay the whip on her belly?"
Again the soldier ignored her, so she swore under her breath and whispered in the ear of the man standing behind her. He laughed, squeezing her breasts even tighter and stooping to kiss her face. The other man stood to one side, watching Shona's naked body as it writhed and squirmed under the lash. A large bulge poked against the crotch of his trousers.
"The law of the village forbids it, Karla," he said, answering the woman but keeping his gaze fixed on the flogging. "It is regarded as an insult to public decency if the front of a female body is subjected to the lash. The same law demands that Shona is whipped here, near the forest, far from the sight of any villager who might be distressed by the brutal spectacle."
"It's a stupid law!" Karla retorted. "In the neighboring villages a bandit girl would be flogged in the marketplace, in full public view, and the front of her body would not be spared. I tell you, Morling, the elders of our village are too soft."
"I agree with Karla," said the man standing behind her. "Shona's cattle-thieving has surely earned her the special humiliation of a public whipping. The elders are fools!"
He ran his fingers over Karla's nipples, hearing her sigh as the teats stiffened under his thumbs. "The whole village has gone soft," he added. "We three are the only citizens prepared to give up our valuable time to witness the punishment of a bandit. The others are either too faint-hearted to watch a flogging, or too lazy to walk the long mile to this place."
"You speak truly, Farnel," said Morling. "And you are right about the need for humiliation, for Shona is a wicked wench who deserves every type of torment."
