My duty begins at midnight and my rank as a lowly foot soldier of the Palace guard means that I must act as a sentinel in that remote location until dawn. Six am. From nine until eleven I am also required to play my part as a Palace whore. It is what we women of the guard do.

Thus I lay on one of the beds in the seraglio, naked and openly available amongst the other girls, while the men of the palace and the fighting divisions came and visited us and used our bodies as the receptacle of their seed. There were six girls there that night and we each got used at least five times. We have no conversation during these liaisons and need only lie there and listen to the grunting and the endearments of the men as they rut to their satisfaction. There is no affection here. No love, no sexual arousal, for us, it is a duty and we try to do our duty by allowing the men full rein in the use of our bodies.

After each man had used my slit for his gratification I douched with my twenty percent lemon juice spermicide. It is not good for a girl from the palace guard to become pregnant from the nights of whoring. When the last man had used me I soaked a small cloth tampon in a fresh bowl of lemon juiced mixture and inserted it inside my vagina to kill off any lingering sperm or unwanted disease. I could feel the heaviness that foretold the onset of my menses and considered leaving the tampon inside me but as I dressed for guard duty I decided to remove it. Tonight would not be the night.

I laid out my costume. Sandals that strapped above my ankles, a brief triangle of undercloth and the brocade belt and loin cloth that dropped front and back between my legs reaching to my knees. Being from the womens' guard unit my loincloth was yellow with a red Greek key patterned border and my brocade belt was striped in both red and yellow.

I pulled on my extremely brief under garment and then settled the loincloth over it. I sat to strap on my sandals and then collected my stringed weapon belt and tied this around my waist as well and slid my dagger into the leather sheath. I painted my lips and applied thick kohl to my eyes and then brushed my long hair and made my way down to the west gate. By the time I collected my spear from the guard post and walked the extra way to the gate it was midnight.

I settled in for my watch.

The time spent in the seraglio often makes me tired and despite my having distanced myself from the whole experience I still suffered weariness from the demands of the men.

I thought of Dahv.

My boyfriend and my lover from the men's guard. Soon I hoped to wed him and leave the womens' guard to become a wife and mother. With him loving was something else. He was handsome and strong and ambitious and would soon become a praetorian and then we would live within the palace compound and I would be able to mingle with the other women and cook and tend house and one day produce little Dahvs for my beloved. My pleasant daydream was interrupted by a noise and I patrolled my section of the wall but saw nothing. Back at my post my dreamy thoughts of Dahv caused me to feel a slash of heat in the tummy, a heat that travelled quickly into my groin. I touched my bare breasts, caressing my nipples and feeling them respond.

I heard another noise and patrolled again.

I could still see nothing.

I let my thoughts wander to Dahv again and placing my spear aside I slipped my hand beneath my loincloth and under my pantie and found my slit with my fingers and then one questing finger found my clitoris and I started to rub it slowly and then faster and faster.

Nothing ever comes from behind.

"Ooooooooooooooh........................."

My love oils filled my cunt and slicked my fingers.

The ligature snaked around my neck like the lightning of a summer storm. It was the leather thong of the gladiatrix.

This couldn't be!

An attack from behind!

I twisted and saw the two gladiatrix. Both big strong women. Fighters. Winners in the arena. Our own people. I saw their faces.

Treachery!

I opened my mouth to cry out but the ligature was around my throat and she snapped it tight.

I couldn't cry out, couldn't make a sound, couldn't breathe.

Both women were a head taller than me and strongly built and from the moment of their attack I stood no chance.

I twisted and writhed but one had pinned my arms and the other was strangling me with the vicious leather thonged ligature. It bit into my neck just above the thyroid cartilage and closed my windpipe off completely.

I struggled but to no avail. My best efforts were as nothing to these two strong women.

My breasts thrust forward and my eyeballs bugged wildly and my tongue thickened, swollen with pressure and filling my mouth. Spotty haemorrhages popped in my eyeballs and on my face above the ligature which had isolated my head from my body. My eyelids fluttered like dying butterflies but I saw nothing through them. Saliva ran from my mouth and oozed around my bloated tongue and dripped hotly onto my breasts.

I kicked violently, lashing out with my sandalled feet but they kept the relentless pressure going.

My body twisted and shuddered and writhed with the efort of struggle but all to no avail. My tongue pushed at my teeth and spilled out like an emerging slug. My fingers scrabbled for an instant at my knife haft but slid away. My shoulders slumped and my arms flopped in my lap and my breasts squashed together as my tummy bulged out.

An acrid stench of ammonia as my bladder released (like a good girl I had gone before coming on duty and had hardly anything in there) and piddle soaked my under pantie and ran warm and wet down my inner thigh.

My eyelids were still fluttering and my mouth was open and my tongue protruded and snot from my nose mingled with saliva from my mouth. I however saw nothing as I was falling backward into a deep dark spiralling blackness. I knew that if I let myself go it was the end but I had no choice in the matter. My feeble defence was over and the ligature bit ever deeper into my soft flesh and I gave in and fell into oblivion.

I was dead.

My body lay inert in the arms of the gladiatrix.

It was over.

I saw myself, my body now a corpse. I had never been pretty always just a plain girl who tried her hardest with the little she had. Now I was not a pretty sight at all. My tongue hung out, my eyelids were almost closed, my glazed eyes spotted with pettechiae as was my face and a blackened bruise ran around my throat and cyanotic bluish empurplement coloured my face.

The killers laid me out on my back.

My spirit hovered unable to leave the confines of its earthly bonds.

I saw one of the assassins grab my body under the arms and drag it backward into the palace. My arms dangled in my lap, my hair trailed and my heels scuffed along the floor.

The big strong gladiatrix lugged my pathetic corpse into a shadowed recess within an apse and dumped me unceremoniously onto the floor. My head cracked against the wall and I ended up lying there on my back with my head elevated and staring through lidded eyes at my splayed tits, my neck bent at an unnatural angle and my arms spread and my legs wide apart.

She looked down at me.

"Hah, the little one offered no resistance."

"Two on one, especially two as well trained as we, was hardly fair odds to the poor creature."

"See how she pokes her tongue at us."

"Can you believe one so slight has such a long tongue."

"She could almost suck her own nipples."

The gladiatrix who had strangled me retrieved her leather thong and turning to her companion said, "My friend the "strangler" does good work. See the hideous black mark that our dead friend here sports."

"A little more and you might well have had her head off altogether."

They laughed.

"Such nice titties our little sentry has."

She gripped my nipples between thumb and forefinger and pulled them upward stretching the flesh of my breast. She released them and they sprung back elastically and wobbled sideways, both big poached egg aureoles looking away from each other. She rubbed her hand over my sagging breasts.

"She doesn't look so pretty our little friend. Spotty and sort of blackish above the neck. What was her name?"

"Ba Ba Ra."

"Well Ba Ba Ra if you don't mind we'll borrow your guard's costume."

"I don't think she minds."

They laughed again. My killer unstrapped my sandals and took them off. Then she unfastened my brocaded belt and removed my loincloth.

"Hah poor Ba Ba Ra has pissed herself," she muttered as my sodden pantie garment was revealed.

"Hurry, put on the sentry's clothes and we must go. Here take her knife." She had untied my knife sheath and now she handed it to the other.

"Her sandals are far too small."

"Forget them just put on her loincloth and hurry."

"That too is a squeeze."

"It will do, come."

They hurried away, leaving my pitiful corpse lying stripped naked and sprawled against the wall.

With one of them dressed in my guard's costume they prepared an ambush for a Palace dignitary, the lady Vizier, but when the assassin wearing my loincloth made her move to slay that lady she was jumped by a contingent of guards who had been prepared for just such an event. Both gladiatrix were taken into custody.

My nude body was quickly found and carried by two guardswomen to the central meeting hall of the palace.

*

The next day.

The sun shines down on the arena.

The two murderous assassins are staked out on the sand. A cohort of warrior slaves uses them, brutal evil men. One after the other they move up to take the women in a mass gang rape. At the end the gladiatrix will be killed but that will probably not be necessary. At that time they will be very lucky to have survived. Already they scream out and blood flows freely from their ravaged and violated bodies.

Borne on a litter my oiled, perfumed and garlanded body circles the arena and all pay homage to the brave guardian who died in the performance of he duties.

If they only knew.

If they only knew that I had been pleasuring myself at the time of the attack, masturbating when I should have been alert and watchful, ah then perhaps my heroine status may not be so great.

Such is life.................

And death.