The Baron's Code - Charisma's Challenge

[bcw8]

There once was a land ruled by a Baron, whose castle stronghold in the mountains loomed over the valleys below.  It was a time and place of beauty but also brutality.  By tradition centuries old, the Baron does not take a Wife; instead, he takes a Consort.  She holds a place of honor and wealth and comfort, but not permanence. If, after a year, no challenger for her place presents herself on the summer solstice, she remains with him another year.

However, if the Consort is challenged on that longest day of the summer season, the two women meet to fight, until one of them is still and lifeless.

In this way, the Baron assures himself that he possesses the best woman in the land. 

Three years ago, a penniless woman from a family of no importance named Katrina had won the mantle of Consort to the current Baron.  Despite - or perhaps because of - her humble life, she was beautiful and fierce and determined.  She had defended her place as Consort one year later, and then at the end of her second year no challenger appeared at their mountain aerie. In the winter months of her third year she bore the Baron a strong and healthy son.  She was beloved by many people of the land, but no person in power is ever favored by all.

Now, on the day of the summer solstice, Katrina stood at her bedroom window as she brushed her golden hair.  She watched a woman with hair as red as the autumn aspen leaves slowly riding up the winding mountain path to the castle.  Her heart sank.  The rider approaching meant she would be challenged that night. 

Katrina turned from the window and lifted her son from his crib and settled him to her breast as her mind raced. The tension held in her body made the child fussy. There was nothing she could do. The Baron's code was unbreakable. 

The solitary rider was a young beauty named Charisma, the daughter of a wealthy merchant.  Although her life was one without hardship, she craved the position and power of the Baron's Consort.  She had watched Katrina at the Baron's side and chafed at the thought that such a low-born woman ruled over her.  She felt deeply in her cold heart that she, not Katrina, was destined for power.

As required by the tradition, Charisma dined with the Baron and Katrina late that afternoon.  The sinking sun bathed the castle terrace with warmth despite the lofty altitude and mountain breeze. Both women dressed formally for their meeting; their gowns clung tightly to the curves of their bodies and bared much of their cleavage. Katrina wore the diamond earrings and necklace that the Baron had given her; Charisma wore black pearls around her throat and wrists. As they conversed, the Baron appraised Charisma with grudging admiration: she was intelligent and charming, and her face and body rivaled Katrina's.  She was a worthy challenger in every respect.

Still, the Baron silently hoped Katrina would prevail that night, as he had truly grown to love her. 

For Charisma's part, she was civil toward Katrina, but cold.  Her eyes roamed over her hostess and Katrina marked how they lingered on her milk-ladened breasts. Towards the Baron, Charisma was relentlessly seductive, touching him frequently, and speaking to him as if she were already his Consort.  But at last Charisma unsmilingly turned to Katrina and made the pronouncement of her purpose.

"I challenge you for your place here, Katrina, as Lady of this magnificent castle and as Consort in the Baron's bed. It is my desire that you and I fight tonight for this privilege."

Katrina nodded.  Tradition demanded it of her. She dared not look at the Baron, or to think of her son.  "I accept your challenge, Charisma.  I will fight you, to keep my place."

The Baron carefully put down his wine.  "The sun will set in two hours," he said.  "The contest will take place here on this terrace."

Charisma did smile now but in her face there was no longer any pretense of civility or anything other than feral desire.  "I will win, Baron, and once she is dead I will make you forget she ever existed."

Katrina stood and walked away, into the castle, without a word. 

**************************
As the sun balanced on the sawteeth of the distant peaks, the two women met again on the terrace, bathed in golden light, clad in silken robes.  The Baron was there as well, to witness their clash. 

Katrina shed her robe.  She wore her diamonds, but nothing else.  She was still a young woman of 29 years. The slanting sunlight flattered her body, adding a soft glow to her long legs and lithely muscled arms, her firm ass and heavy breasts.  Her belly was flat but still slightly soft from childbirth. Her mound was adorned with a small trimmed patch of soft golden hair. She was not as flawless as the first night he had seen her naked, three years before, but to the Baron's eyes she was the most beautiful woman on earth.

For the first time, he wished the tradition did not exist.

Charisma opened her robe and let it fall from her shoulders and down the triangle of her back.  She was naked but for her pearls.  She was 24 years old, and her form was the epitome of young womanhood.  Her breasts were large and perfectly formed, her nipples erotically jutting.  Her hips were shapely.  Her mound was shaven smooth.  Her belly and ass were hard-muscled.

The Baron could not help but recognize she was as beautiful as Katrina.  And he could not help but see that she was harder. 

They both turned to him.  He took a deep breath, and nodded.

The sight and sound of how they savagely attacked each other made him shiver.  He thought of Katrina, fighting to win him three years ago, and of his mother, and of the series of Consorts that followed his mother.  This was his cruel birthright, and it both appalled him and aroused him. 

Charisma's small hard fist plunged into Katrina's stomach and as the blonde woman buckled, Charisma locked an arm around her neck.  Bent forward and trapped, Katrina absorbed blows to her back and ribs, to her dangling breasts.  Those were the most painful, as Charisma's knuckles ripped through tender milk glands.  Katrina dug her fingers under the redhead's forearm and slowly pried it off her neck, until she could twist free.  But in fact, Charisma let her go.  As Katrina straightened, Charisma sank strong fingers into her breasts.   

"You are nursing a child," Charisma hissed.  "A brat who will go hungry tonight."

Katrina's body went rigid as her challenger cruelly crushed her breasts, kneading her flesh like thick dough.  She clawed at Charisma's forearms to no avail.  The younger woman's grip was deep into her chest.  Katrina moaned in agony.  She saw, unmistakenly, the challenger's strategy - to hurt her horribly as a woman, first of all. To humiliate her. 

Charisma twisted Katrina's breasts, pulling them down and out.  The blonde woman screamed as she felt soft tissue tear in her chest wall, as her milk bubbled hotly from her engorged nipples.

By this grip in her breasts, Charisma threw Katrina down to the stone terrace like a petulant girl might a doll that displeased her.  "Your Consort is soft and weak, my Lord.  Surely you see that?  You deserve a son born of better than her!"  She spat on Katrina contemptuously.  "Get up!"

With Charisma's spittle running down her cheek, Katrina tried to rise, but the redhead challenger seized her hair with both hands and flung her sideways into the heavy table at which they had dined earlier. The table's edge caught Katrina in her ribs and her cry of pain caused the Baron to wince.  She lay half-across the table on her side, bent awkwardly at waist, her left arm extended across its top, her hair spread like a halo around her head. 

Charisma walked toward Katrina slowly, her posture erect and regal.  She stopped next to the blonde woman, regarding her closely for a moment. Then she drove her knee into her belly.  The impact ripped through Katrina, throwing her off the table to the stone again.  She lay there on her back, panting in pain, Charisma standing over her.  Methodically, the challenger lifted one foot and stomped down into Katrina's chest, her heel driving into her breast.

"You're nothing, Katrina," Charisma marveled. "I expected a fighter!  But you? You are no match for me!"  She planted her foot on Katrina's throat and bore down.  The Baron watched Charisma as Katrina thrashed, her long legs and lithe body.   The younger challenger could have killed Katrina then, could have crushed her windpipe with the diamonds of her necklace or, short of that, blocked her breath until she was still. 

Charisma did not seek quick victory. She sought sadistic dominance. She wanted the word to spread throughout the land of her power. And so after a tortured minute, she lifted her foot and Katrina drew ragged breath again.  Breath that Charisma immediately drove from her lungs with another savage stomp to her breasts. 

With a mocking smile on her lips, Charisma stepped back.  She was acutely aware of the Baron's gaze on her naked body.  It aroused her, but in truth it was Katrina's pain that excited her more. She wanted the Baron's bed - but she wanted first and foremost to break his bitch Consort, to do it slowly, to drink deeply of her suffering and humiliation.  She waited, until Katrina stood again, though unable was the blonde to fully straighten due to the ache deep in her belly. 

Katrina raised her fists.  Charisma circled her, stalking her as a cat does a mouse.  When they closed again, Katrina erased her challenger's smirk with a blow across her mouth. Blood spattered the stone from Charisma's burst lip as her auburn hair whipped. Katrina drove her knuckles into Charisma's bobbing breast, then her belly.  But bloodthirsty animals are not tamed easily.  Snarling, Charisma sent Katrina staggering away with a vicious backhand to her cheek. Like one of the lions of the mountains, she set her claws in the back of her blonde prey and ripped down, tearing her flesh.

Katrina shrieked in pain, her spine arched.  From behind, Charisma locked her arms around Katrina, a vise of muscle and bone directly across her breasts.  Again the Baron saw the strength of the challenger as Charisma crushed Katrina in her bearhug, his eyes roaming over the muscled triangle of her back, the tautness of her ass. The tops of Katrina's breasts bulged grotesquely; her nipples rode just above Charisma's forearms and as the cruel pressure bore deep into her breasts, her milk spurted hotly from her.

Charisma whispered her venom into Katrina's ear then bit the lobe and tore the diamond earring free with her teeth, blood mixing with the blood from her lip.  Had Katrina been able to draw full breath, she would have screamed.  She fell as if her chest was collapsed, her ribs no longer capable of protecting her heart.  Her head lolled back against Charisma's shoulder and the redhead turned her to display her to the Baron and bit her again, her throat this time.  Blood ran down Katrina's shoulder and forward over her breasts.

Then Charisma found the strength to squeeze even harder, and the cartilage between Katrina's ribs did crack. It was audible and the Baron closed his eyes against the shudder that left his Consort limp in her challenger's embrace. 

Charisma let Katrina fall but caught her by her diamond necklace. She twisted it like a garrote as she tore free the other earring.  She dragged Katrina across the terrace by her jewelled choker until it broke a few yards from the terrace's edge.  She finished the journey with a grip in Katrina's hair, flinging her against the low wall that looked out over a chasm.   

Katrina lay across the wall on her back, her arms outstretched along the stone, her head thrown back and dangling beyond the brink, her hair flowing down into eternity.  Charisma knelt on the stone wall astride her.  The Baron moved close.

He watched. 

He saw Charisma's fists, left-right, beat down into Katrina's breasts until no more milk burst from her nipples, until their shapely beauty was malformed and torn. 

He saw the redhead lift his Consort's head by her scalp and bludgeon the beauty from her face, listening to the crunch of bone on bone.

He saw Katrina's eyes, unseeing, and finally closed. 

Charisma stood again, breathing hard, surveying the wreckage she had wrought.  Katrina hung there, unmoving, except that her battered chest still rose and fell, her heart still beat.  Charisma glanced at the Baron, expecting his eyes to be on her in proud admiration.

He watched Katrina, still. 

Charisma felt fury like she had never known.  She turned back to her prey and stabbed her fingers between Katrina's thighs, deep into her womanhood, and lifted her hips.  Katrina's arms and shoulders were beyond the wall as her body arched and shifted.

"Say farewell to her," Charisma hissed. The drop was a thousand feet onto jagged rock. 

"Stop," said the Baron.  "Stop. You have won.  She is defeated."

"She is not dead!" Charisma's eyes blazed at him.

"Enough," he said.  "You are my Consort now."

Charisma's bloodlust for Katrina's death hung in the air between them. The last ray of the setting sun fell across Katrina's unconscious body.  At last Charisma withdrew her hand and turned to the Baron.  He took her body into his arms and then his bed as the silent servants gathered the broken woman from the terrace wall. 

****************************

The wagon with the woman and her child jolted down the mountain path in the darkness.  Katrina stirred only at the bottom as the boy cried with hunger.  Her ruined breasts held nothing to nourish him. Her brothers came at last and bore them home in silence.

As days passed, in time Katrina rose from her bed.  Her body healed.  Her mind and heart?  Those remained above, in the mountain castle at which she gazed each night, at the candlelit bedchamber of her love. 

*****************************
Her sweat-slick skin gleaming in the candlelight, Charisma rode the Baron's hips, squeezing him deep inside her, her climax impossible for him to resist.  Night after night, she took his seed, but she never possessed his heart. It was ironic, she thought, as the months went by and her hate grew, that they both desired the same thing ... for Katrina to climb to the castle on the summer solstice. 

Mercy would not be commanded twice.

[Rocko23]

A great concept and scenario. Would have preferred a closer fight. Charisma a bit too dominant here.

[Brook1]

Great story - loved the teaser to a rematch

[Phoenix_Falcone]

Yet another wonderfully crafted tale by bcw8.  Well done!

[bcw8]

Thank you, Phoenix my friend, and you too, Brook.  Yes, it was one-sided, Rockies .... but I hope there will be redemption for Katrina.  Or not. 

[Drake8]

"The Baron's Code" is a classic on this site. It's hard to believe it's already been two years... Another tremendous story, but I prefer the graphic novel version, a true gem (I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it yet) featuring an extraordinary, feisty Katrina fighting fiercely for her position and for the baron's love. It's incredible to see the evil Charisma destroying and subduing Katrina's incredible body, which was saved thanks to the Baron. "The strongest spirit can be broken by enough pain."
For some reason, these two characters have something special. I always thought there might be a sequel, that "come back in a year" line hinted at it... . Or maybe it'll be the sadistic Charisma who goes after Katrina, jealous despite her resounding victory that the Baron still loves Katrina more... who knows?

[bcw8]

"The Baron's Code" is a classic on this site. It's hard to believe it's already been two years... Another tremendous story, but I prefer the graphic novel version, a true gem (I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it yet) featuring an extraordinary, feisty Katrina fighting fiercely for her position and for the baron's love. It's incredible to see the evil Charisma destroying and subduing Katrina's incredible body, which was saved thanks to the Baron. "The strongest spirit can be broken by enough pain."
For some reason, these two characters have something special. I always thought there might be a sequel, that "come back in a year" line hinted at it... . Or maybe it'll be the sadistic Charisma who goes after Katrina, jealous despite her resounding victory that the Baron still loves Katrina more... who knows?

Thank you, Drake.  I don't think there is anything more rewarding to a writer than for a reader to say that a sentence or a character stayed with them.  As you saw, in this story I didn't track the "graphic novel" (as you very generously called it), but started afresh with the same characters and premise.

[bcw8]