SCARLETS DOMAIN

As soon as Miki reached the ford she knew something was wrong. The air stank, a column of dirty smoke lifted itself sluggishly into the pink evening sky.There was a hideous silence. Quickly, her heart beating and her mouth dry, she ran over to the opposite bank. The watch-tower was a pile of blazing logs covering something she didn't like to look at. Blood spattered the grass everywhere. In front of her, hidden by straggling bindweed, was Kika's sword: she squatted down and took it by the handle. She had sold her life dearly, all right, if the dark red splashes on the blade meant anything. Miki wiped the steel with a tuft of grass and gazed on this weapon which she had seen so many times. The three foot blade, three inches broad, the glinting blue steel damascened with inlays of golden arabesques that spelt out the curse of Al-ghul, the Saracen afreet; the handle of polished, old yellow ivory, a solid walrus tusk carved in the shape of a naked Amazon; the pommel a many-faceted ball of deep lapis lazuli. The silver cross-hilts curved down wickedly, chased with deep-cut runes. It was so ancient, its parts put together many decades ago from different weapons, all centuries old.Miki rubbed her eyes: she was its custodian now....and her first task was to avenge her slaughtered sisters.

It was night by the time she reached the Pict encampment with its stockade and stables and two thatched huts. Miki groaned in shock as she saw the naked bodies of the Tagalog war-babes dangling from the gateposts, two on either side. Softly she approached and, her eyes blurred with tears, did all she could for the defiled corpses, shorn of their long pony-tails. She took off the silver toe-ring from the left foot of each dead girl, kissing their cold toes tenderly,putting the badges of Tagalog kinship in her leather top. She could see to it that they were placed in honour back at the camp. Now she had scores to settle.Her job was made easier by the absence of sentries: the Picts were all in their huts and, if she knew their ways, they'd be well drunk on heather ale by now.That and sex....they were randy as stoats, those Pict sluts. Keeping carefully down wind of the stables, Miki cautiously padded towards the nearer hut and crept in the open door. She paused to accustom her eyes to the murk compounded of peat smoke and darkness. The fire flared up suddenly and she caught her breath. All was well: on a heap of furs by the fire lay Olc, stark naked, dead drunk, snoring softly; her partner, Dragh, was propped against the roof pillar, muttering as she spilled the amber ale down her bare body as she swigged from a pottery jar. Better deal with her first. Miki knelt beside the Pict chick, her hand going for her sword; but before she could draw her blade Dragh had put an arm round her neck. Hot breath, sweet with heather ale, fumes of lust. Fingers, wet with ale and pussy juice, stroked her brown satiny thighs. Miki trembled in desire. The four plaits of silky red hair brushed her cheek and those sleeked wet lips found the Tagalog's open mouth. Miki closed her eyes in her own desire: Dragh's pink tongue was deep inside her mouth and she tasted good....sticky saliva that mingled the flavours of syrup-sweet heather ale and the love-juice in Olc's cunny.Now the Pict was drunkenly fumbling at Miki's quim, feeling her up in a delirium of desire that was so far out of it that it could not detect the leather straps of her Tagalog kilt.Some ancient, primeval Pictish magic must be at work.....Miki couldn't think straight.....this emerald-eyed little bitch had her senses bewitched....the ale must be a love-potion....what was that sensation in her snatch? So warm, so sweet, she.... Dragh broke her own spell, foolishly as it turned out. She stroked Miki's long pony-tail and then awareness dawned in her fuddled brain: 'Long...hair...not Pict girl....you're....' Miki's hands encircled Dragh's throat, her thumbs together on the narrow windpipe and she squeezed good and hard, her mouth still glued to the red-head's panting, gasping mouth in a French kiss of death.She felt the Pict's tongue jut further into her own hot mouth, felt hot little nipples hard against her leather top, felt a horrible shiver surge through Dragh's bare beauty and she knew it was all over. Leaving the limp body behind her, Miki moved over to the sleeping Olc. It was too easy, but deeply satisfying all the same, to take a grey wolf- skin rug and press it down hard on the snoring girl's pretty face. Kneeling astride her, Miki rotated her crotch against the heaving painted belly as she smothered the life out of Olc.Even after the cow was dead she continued to enjoy the sensation of her quim kissing the lifeless Pict's smooth-skinned belly. A scream, high-pitched and agonized, woke Miki from her masturbatory fantasy of being Dragh's lover. She drew her sword and stepped silently from the hut.

The Tagalog bandit peered into the other hut: a peat fire and four candles gave a better light. The naked slave was supine on some fur skins, his dick lolling and huge, a dirk deep in his heart. By the look on his face he had died happy. Bradan was standing with Cruaidh in her arms, both girls deliciously naked. The Pict chieftain was soothing the whimpering girl. 'Come on, pet....it was real good to be served by that stallion. Feel me: I'm all wet with his cum...'n so are you, angel.' Her lover moaned, 'But it hurts, Bradan, it hurts...' 'Well, you can't be a virgin for ever, my darling......I thought I'd be giving you a treat, little one.' Cruaidh winced, 'It hurts an' I'm bleeding.....help me, Bradan, lover, please....' The chieftain dropped to her knees before her bed-mate: 'I'll kiss it all better, baby....you'll like that, won't you?' she whispered. Now she was fully engaged in licking out Cruaidh's pussy and her lover was moaning in a more pleasurable tone, Miki moved on silent sandals towards them. Cruaidh's head was back, rust-red plaits dangling, eyes shut, lips parted, her hands both caressing her lower belly as Miki crept up behind her. The sword swung back and then viciously and decisively forward. The ball of solid lapis lazuli struck Cruaidh's right temple with such force that you could hear her skull crack like an eggshell. She made no sound at all; her dead body collapsed sideways, stretching its length on the mud floor. Her lover was on her feet at once, grabbing a sword from a pile of bearskins.'You filthy little mare!' she screamed at Miki, 'You're dead meat, you Tagalog bitch!' Bradan swung into action, her four foot steel swishing through the smoky air, whistling its way past Miki's head. 'Spirit of Kika, help me....Daemon of this blade, assist me...' prayed the brown-skinned beauty. Now both girls were fighting for life, moving like lithe feline predators around each other, the brown Tagalog in her black leather and the naked, war-painted Pict.Cold steel clashed and rang, echoing through the hut as they fought. First blood went to Bradan who sliced a gash down the silky tan skin of Miki's left thigh. The Tagalog reeled and stumbled from the wound and the Pict flung herself into the attack, wild to avenge her murdered mate.A long trickle of blood coursed down Miki's lovely leg and she felt the strength seep from it. Down on one knee she went, Bradan towering in nude loveliness above her, proud breasts adorned in blue warpaint. The long sword sang through the air and Miki ducked sideways, her right arm thrust out straight to slice a nick out of Bradan's right nipple.The Pict recoiled with a scream that was half agony and half blind fury at the wound to her magnificent tit.Now she went at Miki like a berserker, the long blade whirling wildly. Faintness was woozily affecting the Filipina chick: she had to make her move now...or join her sisters on the wall of the stockade.The redhead rushed at the reeling Tagalog and swept her steel in a hissing arc that missed only because Miki's legs gave way under her. The accident was her opportunity. A thrust and a twist and her steel was slipped between Bradan's ribs, just below her blood-splashed right tit. There was no scream, just a hideous groan as the Pict stumbled forward driving the damascened blue steel deeper into her lung. Miki felt the sword-tip hit ribcage and then, with both hands, tugged it from the broad, deep wound. Bradan dropped her own war-sword and staggered backwards in the eerie, flickering candle-light. Her green eyes were fixed in despair on Miki; her bare body racked with pain as she drew short, rasping breaths; her hands clasped to the death-wound, the blood dribbling through her fingers; with each hoarse breath the bright red blood gargled in her throat, spilling copiously from her contorted lips. Miki lurched to her feet. Where should she finish her? Navel? Throat? Left nipple? Fuck her, she thought wearily, let the bitch drown in her own blood. Bradan was now up against the wall of the hut, legs apart to keep herself upright. Slowly she slid down to sit slumped on the floor, her head lolling forward as she rattled her last breath. Her bladder emptied in a gush that left the Pict princess in a pool of her own piss.

After the musky, peaty atmosphere of the hut the air of a grey pre-dawn world was like spring-water to Miki. She had the animal-tooth jewelry of her enemies dangling from her belt and wore their plaits of red hair, woven into a sash, about her slender waist. She walked to the stables and chose a pony for herself. She swung up onto its back and moved off back to the Tagalog camp, the ancestral sword by her side....now rightly hers. As she cantered along towards the ford she thought, 'I'm a real warrior...and a woman...not a girl.' She felt the taste on her lips and tongue of sugary heather ale, of the dreamy desire that had mesmerised her and Dragh. Her pussy was tingling and wet, now. She rose and fell on the pony's back, rubbing her quim eagerly against its movements. She clapped her long, slender legs against its flanks and urged it...and herself...into a gallop. The sun rose as she splashed through the ford, bathing her brown-skin in light and warmth. Miki rode into the dawn of a new day, her climax rippling hot and wild through her, her shrill orgasmic yell a paean of ecstasy and triumph.