Agate Boyd
Revenge of the Satyr
The panic stricken peasant fell to his knees, both hands clasped together imploringly. His whole body began to shake jelly-like as Prince Vulkan slowly dismounted from his horse. The haughty young nobleman's handsome, yet spiteful face creased up into a vindictive frown as he advanced upon the hapless figure.
"How dare you withhold tax from the king you filthy, whingeing swine," the short-tempered prince screamed at the top of his voice. Punctuating his harsh words with a hail of withering blows from his riding quirt; lacing into the miller's face with the supple, stinging leather until the sobbing man threw himself prostrate into the dirt at the nobleman's feet.
"Mercy! Highness! Mercy!" the man begged wretchedly, "the drought has made the river all but disappear and without water the mill wheel will not turn and so I cannot earn enough to feed my family and pay the king's taxes," the miller's voice became even more wretched, "please Highness, I beg you and your gracious father to give me more time to pay."
The slender prince's narrow chest seemed to swell with an even greater volume of outrage.
"More time? more time? have you no beasts of burden with which to turn the mill wheel you indolent pig?" he roared, at the same time planting his boot into the back of the miller's neck, cruelly grinding the terrified, blubbering face into the dank earth.
"P-p-please Highness," the miller begged again, his voice quavering so much he could barely speak, "we had to slaughter our only bullock for meat and now I have only my wife and daughter to help me in the mill."
Prince Vulkan took time-out to look slowly around the small collection of tumbledown buildings and ramshackle yard. His mobile, twisting expression a cruel parody of confusion and indecision that instantly had his men smirking and nudging one another as they enjoyed their master's sinister sense of humour.
"Well then," the noble youth breathed at last, "let us get both of the lazy peasant sows out here and we shall see how well they turn the wheel with my whip dancing across their idle backs!"
Vulkan nodded curtly to his sergeant-at-arms; a barrel-chested giant of a man, who immediately disappeared into the nearby cottage to emerge a few moments later dragging the two terrified woman behind him, his huge fists buried in their tangled hair.
"On your knees before Prince Vulkan you mangy sluts," growled the lackey, pitching both females face down into the dirt as he spoke.
The prince slapped his quirt under the wife's quivering chin and jerked her face up to the sky. The woman may have once been enough, but after twenty odd years of over-taxed poverty and unending toil, her face was lined and tired looking and the sagging bundle of her bosom seemed almost to reach down to her waist. Allowing the mother's head to fall, Vulkan next tapped the plaited haft of his quirt under the daughter's chin and was pleasantly surprised to find a fresh and decidedly pretty face suddenly looking up at him, fear and uncertainty writ clearly in the cast of the large, moist brown eyes.
"Stand up trollop," the prince commanded, his voice softening subconsciously as all thoughts of putting the young girl to the mill wheel faded. His erstwhile peevish mood suddenly began to mellow. The girl climbed hesitantly to her feet to stand fidgeting – gnawing fretfully at the fulsome redness of her lips. She averted her doe-like eyes as the prince lifted her homespun calico dress to expose her shapely teenage thighs; the smooth, pale flesh leading his lascivious gaze inevitably up to the downy pubic mound with its delicate, tightly sealed lips nestling below the gently curving dome of her belly.
"Very well, sirrah," the prince said at last, his rage finally subsiding, "I will grant you more time to pay. But that time and my father's inconvenience must be paid for by an afternoon's use of your charming daughter here."