SCARLETS DOMAIN

'This shows the depths and the lie of the opposite shore. Shallowing to ten feet at about a hundred yards out; that's where we move into action. Two caves in the sheer cliff-face, both thought to house war-galleys. The cliff face is as near vertical as makes no odds. At the top is the Skinhead HQ. Expect volleys of arrows but from that height no real accuracy. The main risks are underwater…we know that there are likely to be stakes triggered by trip-wires hidden in the waterweed. They're just a chance we have to take. The other definite scenario is a war-galley setting out to block the attack. Once we have destroyed its crew we get into the cliff by the caves; there are tunnels leading out to a path at the rear. It leads to the eagle's nest at the top. Those of us who survive will smoke out the last of our old and evil enemy. I want none to escape. Destroy them all.'
The commander of the Kelpie clan was a strong and determined young woman who had lost too many of her companions to the vile Skinhead Slutz. The time had come to take them out. Gathered round her, studying the chart of the sea-loch, were her followers, lissome water-warriors in robin's egg-blue one-piece swimsuits, cut high at the thigh, low at the neck and backless. Pale blue eye-liner and lip-gloss gave a sexy look to their anxious faces and their hair was short, gelled back in hydrodynamic sleekness. Each was equipped with a rubber-tube snorkel and a bicycle pump converted into an air-gun by the addition of a six-inch long attachment holding four poisoned darts. By pumping the handle at short range they could speedily spatter any enemy with gruesome death. Fixed to the underside of the pump was a sheath that held a nine inch, saw-edged blade for use in hand to hand combat once aboard an enemy vessel.
Draca took it all in with her usual alertness of mind. It seemed too risky; there were too many things to go wrong. What was the strength of the Slutz? How booby-trapped was the tunnel? What ambushes were prepared on the upward path? What were the defences of the HQ in the sky? Her anxiety was seen by Lacustra, the Kelpie war-leader.
'The second cave, to the east, presents no problems. A task-force was at work near the mouth in the night. We face only one galley; trust me.'
'Fine by me. One war-galley and some stakes and then three unknown quantities. Not bad odds,' grinned the hit-girl. She had been paid in advance to assist in the attack and felt as good as she ever had thanks to the magus' potions that had seen her recover from her mauling at the hands of Rastas and Cave-girls. Decimus had shown more concern than usual, however. He knew the evil reputation of the Skins, murderous thugs who only took prisoners to torture them to death. He had made feeble jokes about magicking up some supernumerary gills for her but his last action before she set out had been deadly serious.
'This phial contains enough highly virulent venom to end you in thirty seconds. If they take you, you take it. Promise me.'
Draca felt the small, green bottle that nestled coldly in her cleavage and hoped that her skills would see her through. She adjusted her snorkel, readied her crossbow and followed the Kelpie chicks as they waded into the warm, salty waters.
In a green, glaucous world the Kelpies moved smoothly, long legs propelling them swiftly forward, rippling their sleek torsos as they sped through their preferred element. Draca admired their sinuous, sinewy charm, the effortless motion of tanned loveliness in tight glossy lycra satin that clung seductively to breasts and flat, taut bellies and emphasized each sweet little pubic mound. In different circumstances she would have loved some subaqua sex such as she and Elaine had enjoyed in a far-off Mediterranean holiday, a time so remote she could hardly believe in its existence. The feel of wet swimsuit gave her a real frisson of lust and she 'accidentally' brushed against the teenage babe who swam next to her: the old sensation made her pussy warm and she yearned to be in the girl's embrace, like mermaids sporting among coral reefs. But now the water began to shallow, the sun's heat began to be felt through the waves, the emerald-green waving fronds began to thicken. She turned to smile at her companion. The girl's easy, flowing movement stumbled; a thin stretch of fishing gut snapped and floated towards Draca. From the dense waterweed something long and dark hurled up. The Kelpie somersaulted under water, her snorkel lost, a sharp stake driven through her belly, jutting out of the small of her back. She tumbled through the water, smoky- red with her belly-blood, bubbles gurgling from her wide-open mouth, screaming soundlessly as she sank with wildly kicking legs into the clutching weed. Draca kicked out at speed to make for the surface, to escape the fish-gut traps among the tendrils of watergrass. Near her she saw a second Kelpie take long, wooden death between her rounded tits, the sharpened head ripping her lycra swimsuit as she was pushed upward to break the surface in a terrible thrashing of arms and agonized screeching that ended as her head went under and she sank like a stone to join her companion.
Surprise had been totally lost and the Kelpie war-band now sped along closer to the surface, tintacked by a shower of arrows, all of which missed their quick-moving zig-zagging targets. Surfacing, Draca saw a war-galley's prow at the mouth of each cave. Only one, eh? This was worse than she had feared. Then, at the eastern cave, as the galley rowed out half-way, a tree trunk dropped from the cave-mouth, crashing through deck and keel. Amid the splintering of wood the ship settled speedily, its crew, those not below deck at the oars, leaping into the water. From the rocks by the cave the task-force of Kelpies who had booby-trapped the exit now kept up a rapid fire of darts upon the struggling Skinheads. One evil-looking bitch on the foundering deck had a bow raised. Draca saw her shaven head, her black fish-net singlet clinging wetly to her boobs, the short, cut-off denims and the ankle-length army boots. Then she saw the dark dart sticking out from her left breast and the girl fall squealing into the waves. One slut had only her head above water but could not escape a swift dart that shot through her face, piercing both cheeks. She gurgled blood as she sank, leaving a cloud of her gore floating by the surface. Even minor flesh-wounds were lethal: arms, shoulders, thighs were pin-cushioned with sudden and burning death as the toxic darts bit their victims.
But now the second galley was among the Kelpies and arrows began to make their mark. Near Draca one young girl was struck in her bare back by a barbed head as she surged towards the vessel. Her body heaved up from the surface as she yelped, only to get a second shaft between her tits. Blood clouded the water around her as she clutched the jutting arrow and sank to her doom. Alongside the redhead there was a ghastly grunt as a Kelpie maiden's pale throat was mangled by a barbed shaft that ripped through to stick out six inches from her neck. She clawed in desperation at Draca, trying to stay afloat, blood hosing from her wound and gargling up from her ruined throat to spill from her screaming lips. Draca struggled to free herself from the dying girl's grasp and let her slip silently under in a froth of blood-stained bubbles. All around her the Kelpie war-chicks were returning fire, darts zipping dazzlingly from repeating pump-guns, picking off the Skinhead archers who fell from the deck into the now reddened waters of the loch, clasping at the deadly, stinging, slender sticks that spelled the freezing of their life-blood in minutes. Draca lifted her bow as she trod water and got a Slut in the belly. The shaven-headed bitch spun round, vainly trying to pull feathered death from her entrails and fell back on the deck, her black boots kicking in her spasms. The wooden sides were nearer, the boat rocked gently and Draca and a wave of Kelpies hauled themselves on board under covering fire from those still in the water. From a prone position flat on the deck Draca emptied her magazine of bolts, taking out three more Skins, in breasts and belly. She drew her short sword and strode into the melee, dealing out death at each blow, excited and elated at her skill as a swordswoman, delighting in the dreadful wounds her fiercely handled blade was inflicting on the ugly crew of shaven-headed cows. The horizontal slash that slit through black fish-net and bare belly, splattering blood across the deck; the upward thrust that tore through tripes and into lungs; the straight lunge that butchered full, rounded breasts, piercing the victim's heart; the downward hack that severed jugulars and sent crimson life-blood spurting wildly in the air; the backward stab that ripped into the kidneys of a staggering, wounded enemy who had lurched past her; the two-handed swing that gashed open guts and spilled entrails on the deck.
The Kelpie clan were struggling to win the hand to hand fight, however, their saw-edged hunting knives at a disadvantage against the short -sword cutlasses of the Skinhead Slutz. Too often Draca saw her allies go down in bloody defeat: one chick had her blue swimsuit ripped open from her boobs to her pubic bush, a ghastly slash of red marking the cutlass's path across her torso; another was on all fours, her guts slithering from her grasping hands; yet another was on her back clawing at her mangled sex as she writhed on the blood-slicked deck. Draca fought on, horribly conscious of the lack of blue-swimsuited water-warbabes beside her. She saw Lacustra take a big Skin with an upward knife-blow that lifted the thug from her feet then a cutlass point burst viciously from the Kelpie leader's belly, thrust straight through her from behind. She stared down in disbelief, eyes wide in panic as her red belly-blood coursed down her long slim legs.
'Draca…oh, fuck it's my…slaughter-slash! I'm fuckin' gutted….Draca, save yourself.!'
The tall redhead swung her blade in ferocious arcs to clear her way to the ship's side. Barring her way was one scar-faced bitch, bleeding from a wound in her arm. As Draca closed with her there was a crashing splinter from above as rigging and yard arm gave way, the stays cut by a dying Kelpie seeking to disable the galley. The wooden pole pulped the Slut's shaven head, spattering Draca with blood and brain but it struck her a glancing blow that left her sprawling unconscious on the deck, a prisoner of the malign Skins.
Skimming just above the tree-tops of the dense birch-wood was a glossy sable shape, sleek and speedy and sinister. It swooped into a clearing and was swallowed up by the dark rectangle of an opening into the ancient burial mound. Matthias Corvinus folded his sooty pinions as he settled first on the back of the mage's chair, a throne-like structure composed of lengths of linenfold paneling, parts of choir-stall and a medieval misericorde, the salvaged flotsam of a lost civilization. The warlock was reading a small Elzevir 'Horace', rapt in his enjoyment of the Pyrrha ode. His familiar hopped down onto the shoulder of his cassock and for a short time clattered his beak urgently in his ear. Blood drained from the sorcerer's grim face then a terrible frown incised deep lines between his tufted eyebrows.
'Then the fuckers shall rue it!' he grated and stood up to reach his bookcases. His long fingers found a squat tome whose dusky, wrinkled cover was made of very old human skin. Inside the front cover a card read, in sepia ink and renaissance secretary hand, 'The Necronomicon of Abdul al Hasred.' As he moved into the center of his pentacle, the crow slipped across the room to perch on a yellowed human skull and, at the words 'Dread Cthulhu' hid his beaked head beneath a trembling wing.

It was impossible to tell what bits hurt most. The raw cowhide thongs twisted tightly round wrists and ankles bit deep into her skin, holding her to a rough metal frame, her slender arms stretched up painfully, pulling at her shoulders. A wound at the back of her right leg throbbed constantly; a late-fired arrow had hit her as she fell and then been rudely wrenched out, barb and all. Her left eye was closed and her nose tender; blood clotted her split upper lip. Someone had given her a very thorough beating up as she lay unconscious. Now she awaited further treatment at the hands of the Skinhead Slutz with the stoicism bred by years of being on the receiving end of a viciously hard upbringing and further time fighting to keep her body alive, if not intact, since the days of the Apocalypse. Draca admitted to herself, however, that this time things looked pretty ugly. Talking of ugly, there, through her one functioning eye, she could see two of her captors leering at her as she stood pinioned in their high eagle's nest on the cliff-top. They were hard bitches, their sweat-stained bodies tough in those black fish-net singlets and cut-off denims, their heads showing only the minimum of dark bristle.
'At last, cow, we can get to work. Your mates the Kelpies are all dead meat and Skut an' me are gunna help you join them in the big swimmin' pool in the sky.'
'Yeah,' grinned the other with a flash of gold tooth, 'but it won't be for a while, will it, Skag?'
'Oh no, mate, it's gunna be long an' it's gunna fuckin' hurt. Let's get her kit off an' see what she's got to show.'
A knife slit the buckskin of her halter and bared her full, large-nippled breasts. As the bra slipped off the little phial was caught by Skut.
'Could be her power-potion…bitch is the hardest I've seen in a fight…gotta be some fuckin' magic there, I reckon.'
Skag said nothing but forcefully ripped the leopard-skin satin thong from Draca's crotch, tearing it apart in her violent hate. The tall redhead said nothing; she wasn't in the business of empty curses or threats she could not deliver….yet.
'Well, ' said Skag as she walked round her prisoner, eyeing her bare beauty closely, 'been in a few fights, ain't you, bitch? Plug scars from arrows, line scars from blades, couple of fresh ones through the right shoulder here..' She wrenched at the recent arrow wound and sweat poured from Draca's scalp ,blinding her good eye.
'An' a deep one on the left calf, too' noted Skut as she slammed her boot into it. Draca buckled and twisted as the pain shot from the recent Cave-girl spear-wound up her twitching naked thigh.
'So far, though, no scars from burns. You missed out there, pigshit, but we can introduce you to a couple of flamers that'll complete your collection real nice,' promised Skag.
Skut did not need to be told to go over to the fire with its two irons thrust deep in the heart of the hot coals. She selected one, an ordinary poker, and came back to her mate.
'There's only six of us mates left alive, now, you cocksucker, so we're gunna make you pay for that first. Gimme the iron, babe.'
Skut passed the red-hot poker to her friend and flipped the top of the small glass bottle.
'You give the cow a taste of flame-grilled tit, angel, an' I'll beef up for the big, bad brandin' iron.'
Draca watched coolly as the Slut swallowed the contents of the phial in a greedy swig. She began to count..one…two
…three…four…five: eyes bulging, Skut reeled back, her wet lips flecking with foaming saliva. Ten…eleven…twelve….her hands ripped open her fish-net singlet trying to tear at her bared belly as it seemed to heave and pulse spasmodically. Twenty…twenty-one….twenty-two…now she was on all fours her lips spread in a gasp of agony, her bowels burning like lava within her, green bile spewing in spectacular projectile vomit across the floor in front of her. Twenty-seven…twenty-eight…she was racked by huge convulsions that emptied her bowels into her denim shorts. Thirty: stark dead, eyes wide with dreadful agonizing terror. Well, you had to hand it to that magus. When he said thirty seconds, he meant thirty seconds.
Skag glared in pure, evil hate at Draca.
'You little bitch! You'll wish you'd never come fuckin' near me!'
The poker thrust forward and jabbed the hit-girl just beside her navel-stud. Wincing, she threw back her head, clenching her teeth. Now Skag circled her, jeering.
'Where next? Up the ass? Too quick. Singe your ginger tush? Too smelly. Across your ripe boobs?'
Draca nearly bit her tongue as the poker kissed her left breast below her brown aureole, leaving a two inch burn that blistered in searing pain. Skag threw aside the poker.
'Getting' too fuckin' cool! Time to brand your butt, babe!'
She strode over to the fire and brought back the white-hot branding iron.
'Your corpse'll look real classy with 'Slutz' branded on your buns, bitch!'
As she rammed the iron against the white, smooth right buttock, Draca's nails bit into her palms and she spat saliva through tightly, achingly clenched teeth. Then her head lolled forward and she let herself drop into a pit of savage pain that terminated in oblivion.
Coming round to sensations of biting pain was no new experience but this time Draca did not know whether she could face any more. Her poor breast throbbed with its livid scar; he felt a tearful pity for it, remembering the way Elaine would nuzzle it, leaving it circled in smudged lolly-pink lipstick.
'Good! You're back in the land of the livin'….for a few hours yet, cow, 'cos this ain't gunna be quick!'
Draca braced herself as Skag approached her, toying with a scalpel.
'Skag! Skag! The seagulls've gone! They ain't feedin' on the bodies!'
A desperate Skin had burst in from the look-out post outside the cave.
'For fuck's sake! What am I? Some fuckin' bird-watcher? Get back an' keep look-out, you little shit!'
'Oh, Skag! There's…there's….there's…..' stammered a second Slut.
'Shit! Do I have to do every fuckin' thing here?'
Before she stormed out to deal with whatever had disturbed her remaining warriors, Skag smashed her fist into Draca's face, knocking the redhead back into unconsciousness.

Outside there was an aura of primal and deep-seated fear, the gut-chilling and stark panic that lurks in every sub-conscious mind. The Slutz were shaking and wild-eyed, one nearest the iron-studded gate biting her knuckles as it swung slowly inwards. A compelling and insane emanation of absolute terror seeped in and swept up all in its path. The chick by the gate choked and twitched, clutching her chest as she succumbed to cardiac shock and fell back into the cave, her boots kicking pitifully in her final pain. Two more scrambled madly up the palisade and hurled themselves down the sheer precipice to the waiting rocks, flailing their limbs as they tumbled and turned in their sickening fall through space to splatter in blood and shards of white bone at the bottom.
Her last surviving war-babe was huddled in a corner, facing in to the wall and digging a cutlass hard into her own heaving guts as she puked in fear. The tip of the blade ripped out with ferocious force from her buttocks, spurting her dark and sticky life-blood, as she eviscerated herself rather than face her terrors. Skag had stumbled back in panic retreat till her back was against the rough wooden fencing: 'No…noooooo! Oh! Oh! Nooooooo! Nooooooo!' she screamed until she sank down, crouching in a foetal hunch, her thumb jammed in her mouth and the warm urine wetting her denim cut-offs as it hissed uncontrollably to puddle between her legs. A voice filled with grim authority uttered words in an unknown and guttural tongue. The birdsong started up; the ambient temperature became warm; still, serene normality returned in the atmosphere. The entity he had summoned had done its work and returned to the other world to lurk at the threshold, biding its time until its tentacled and hideous form would be called for again.

Decimus had been quick to find Draca and overwhelmingly relieved to find her alive. Snuffling back tears of sorrow for her and happiness, too, he had cut her down from the rack and laid her gently on the floor. Some time had been spent on dealing with the leg wound, deep and mangled as it was; facial contusions had been treated with calendula and witch-hazel; a specially contrived unguent had been pasted on her red and shiny burns using a soft and delicate goose feather. It was only once he had treated her injuries that he realized that she was nude. He was irritated to feel an erection stir in his robe; this was not the way he wanted it to be. Blushing and scowling at his perfectly natural but shaming response to her bare loveliness, he tore down a purple satin hanging from the wall and softly wrapped it around her, covering her from above her rounded breasts to below the knee. That done he took a phial of pain-killing herbs from his pouch and trickled it between her swollen lips. Then he sat back in a rough chair, took out his Horace and read quietly, oblivious to the corpse of Skut or the continued suckings and whinings from the constantly rocking figure of Skag.
After some hours he was roused from his reading by a whispered 'Hi, you.'
'Greetings, my dear! Just tell me where it hurts and I'll give you some more of my patent pain-killer.'
'Just some aches and twinges, thanks…but it would have been hellishly worse if you hadn't got here, lovie.'
'You have Matthias to thank for that; I had him keep you under the closest surveillance at all stages of your adventure.'
The crow hopped in, bustling over to his master.
'That was the nastiest eyeball I've ever eaten….yuk! Hi, dishy Draca! All those ugly thugs are dead meat….and tasting horrid, too!'
'You killed them, Dec?'
'I fetched up from some evil malebolge, some especially vile depth of the Pit, something that drove them insane and suicidal with fear. You will find that their leader is a lunatic creature gibbering a corner.'
'Shit! So you can do stuff more spectacular than herbal remedies and talking crows?'
'Only as a last resort. It was draining and it was dangerous….but necessary if you were to continue to light up my humble abode with your learning and wit.'
'What am I wearing, old chum? Looks like somebody's granny's curtains.'
'They stripped you and destroyed your clothing…so I restored you to some form of decency. I do not profess to know what you will do about new clothing, though.'
'Honestly! Even in this post-Apocalyptic era a girl keeps a spare pair of knickers! What on earth do you think my perineal hygiene would be like otherwise? Oops! Sorry! You do blush so easily, though, that it's hard to avoid provoking the beetroot flush….give me your hand; I owe you my life, so I'm going to kiss you, you dear old thing!'
'Middle-aged thing, thank you. I'll take the kiss later: your lips are too tender for even the chastest peck. Now I am going to get you home. I'll take your weapons, Matthias will speed off to tell Orca and Wyrd to expect us at noon tomorrow. To the river! I have a skiff tethered nearby.'
'What about Skag?'
'Leave her to the gulls.'
'Decimus! You thug!'
'After her treatment of you it is the best she deserves. Now, down to our boat.'

As the sun set with splendour behind the purple hills, thick with flowering heather, they moved gently upstream, Draca curled up in the stern and the sorcerer sculling rhythmically and slowly.
'Still alive,' she mused. 'Seems too good to be true……'
'But it is true, and that is all that matters.'
'What's that noise?' she asked, drowsy after her adventures.
'Nightingales.' He grinned. 'Unconjured, purely natural, entirely beautiful and melodious nightingales.'
'Dreamy. Bliss on a bicycle. Goo'night, sweetie.'