Chapter 21: War

About five years after Robinson had taken up his post as butler to His Magnificence, the Emir Mahmoud Abdullah, a small war started against the neighbouring Khanate of Tirfil. The new Khan, formerly Prince Habib, had allowed more and more incursions across the border, raiding villages, mostly for livestock but with a few women also being stolen. Things came to a head when a complete village was razed to the ground and its male inhabitants slaughtered. A few escaped and they confirmed what the Emir had feared; the Tirfil army was involved in these raids. Also the purpose of this raid, some thirty miles inside Kobekistan, was primarily loot and women; few sheep were stolen, and many were killed.

The Kobekistani army, and the Emir's military advisor, General Mustapha, agreed that Tirfil could be taken and the Khan overthrown in a short, sharp campaign. The Emir decreed that they would do this, and then withdraw, preferably with the Khan alive and a prisoner. He, himself would lead his men, though the Generals would control the actual troops. All the advice to the Emir was that he should not take part in the actual fighting, but he insisted that he could not ask his men to fight unless he was willing to take part himself.

The planning took some two months and the invasion was mounted. That night Princess Ayda came again to Robinson's bedroom and offered herself to him. The butler had enjoyed the Princess's company several times since his arrival in Kobekistan and was by no means averse to enjoying that enthusiastic, if now somewhat mature, body as a pleasure object. They had always enjoyed their nights together. They were an especial pleasure for Ayda as the Emir no longer took his pleasures with her, preferring younger women.

This night was different, however, as Ayda seemed uninterested in bedroom games. Robinson used a riding crop on her, as was their custom, and then started to fuck her from behind, but he quickly realised that her visit was not for that purpose.

Withdrawing, he turned her on her back and asked, "What is it, Ma'am? You are not here for bedroom fun and games, are you?"

Ayda burst into tears and held him close to her for a long time before pushing him away and saying, "Master, please do not be a Kobekistani tonight. I need an Englishman to talk to."

"Very good, ma'am," said Robinson, once more the butler, "How can I help?"

"What do you know of my history?" she asked.

"Very little, ma'am," replied Robinson, not at all pleased at this turn of events, "I know you were a widow, and that you and your daughter married the Emir on the same day, and that you have both borne him children. As to the whys and wherefores of this, I know nothing."

"I am the daughter of the Earl of Bargoed, and was married to Andrew Featherstone, who was killed in the third Gulf War..."

She broke off in tears again.

Recovering slightly she continued, "We met the Emir and he courted both of us and married both of us. Even though I bore him a child, I still love my poor dead Andrew, and he knows that. That is one reason why he lets me come to you for company. Now I am afraid that I shall lose another husband in another stupid war, and it has shown me how much he has come to mean to me."

"Believe me, ma'am," the butler reassured her, "There are ten thousand men whose first aim is to protect their Emir, and only then to conquer Tirfil. He will return in triumph at the head of his troops."

"Oh, I wish I could believe you," said the weeping woman, "Is it very wrong of me to want company and solace while he is risking his life?"

"No, ma'am; it is entirely natural for you to cling to someone you know."

"Then please make me forget him, at least for a few minutes. Do whatever you need to; hurt me, fuck me, anything. Just make me forget for a few moments."

Robinson wondered whether anyone could possibly achieve that. Then he decided that if he was to try he might as well try to enjoy himself at the same time, and he had, for some time, wanted to make her obey him properly, not as a Princess ordering her servant to pleasure her, but as a woman submitting to a man. He lifted her to her feet and led her to the whipping bench, his excitement increased by his awareness that if this went wrong he would probably be executed by the Emir for failing to satisfy the Princess.

After he had positioned her on the bench and, unusually for them, shackled her wrists and ankle to the uprights, he stroked her upraised haunches and ran his hands through her anal cleft and across her cunt.

"Have you ever been whipped?" he asked quietly.

"Only in play, and mostly by you," she whispered.

"It will hurt," he said.

"Oh, please," she replied, so quietly that he could hardly hear her.

Sississis ... CRACKACKACK!

The Princess screamed aloud at the intense pain of the nine tails of his whip landing across her buttocks simultaneously. He did not wait for her screams to stop before he laid another nine stripes across her buttocks.