As the first light of the dawn streamed over the dunes, they found the Viscountess de Bure stretching out in languid delight over her bed of newly turned straw. The ponygirl treasured these moments in the early morning before the stablehands were awake and about. She hardly felt the pinpricks of pain from the scratchy hay; like the feel of the golden collar around her throat, the sensation had become unremarkable through long habit. The Viscountess scarcely remembered a time when she had not lived in a stall, had not walked about in magnificently bridled nakedness in the glare of the Moroccan sun.

She felt a deep stirring in her abdomen as her unborn foal kicked. The Viscountess wished that her hands could be freed from the band of leather which kept them restrained, free so that she might touch the swelling flesh of her belly. The child was very close now. In less than a month, she would deliver yet another slave into the care of her master, the Sheik. She knew that he was proud of his lovely breeding mare, for many was the time she had heard him praising the skies for his good luck in acquiring her. His Captain of Corsairs had been richly rewarded on the day he brought the Viscountess in irons to the Shiek's desert estate.

Hers was not the only foal waiting to be born. Across from the Viscountess was the stall in which slept the stately mare the Shiek had renamed Laliba, Fire. The red mane which was her namesake lay like a blanket over the sleeping woman and almost hid the swell of pregnant belly. Laliba had taken to the mare's life with grace. Now almost two years since her capture and enslavement, she had not even balked when the Shiek had ordered her bred by her own captive son. This breeding back promised that her foal would have the glorious red curls of its parents.

Laliba's son and mate slept at the other end of the barn; like the other stallions, the little male was kept separate and apart in his own enclosure. The stablehands had long ago learned that males were too violent and unpredictable to be allowed near the brood mares and their offspring. Laliba's son had been particularly unruly, the Viscountess remembered. Some residual scruples from his days as a human no doubt found the prospect of being crossed with his mother unattractive. He soon accepted fate, however, and by now Laliba was just another member of his harem. He even seemed to prefer her when it came time to stud service, covering the older mare at every opportunity.

The Viscountess' own mate was tethered in a stall nearby. The boy Saloo had been her eager attendant on the voyage from Marseilles. As a servant, he had been docile and had walked in awe of his proud mistress. Since their capture and training by the Sheik, however, Saloo had gained a stallion's insufferable pride. When brought together in the breeding stall, Saloo would always take his time with the coverature, often squeezing and licking the indignant Viscountess until her skin bruised and bled. As a cabin boy, Saloo had always seemed slightly comical in his eagerness to please. Now, the Viscountess lived in fear of his possessive moods.

The Sheik always considered every pairing carefully. Long limed slaves were bred together generation after generation in order to produce the prized racing ponies of Morocco. Other slaves were bred for milk production, or for physical strength. The Viscountess had devoted much thought to this practice over the years of her captivity, and had come to the conclusion that real animal livestock would be much more efficient. Humans weren't as strong as oxen, nor as fast to mature. Further, no woman born could compete with a cow-beast for quantity of sweet milk produced. Surely, most estate owners would have more sense than to keep humans to perform tasks for which a dumb beast would be more suited. The Viscountess had long ago concluded that those that kept ponyboys and ponygirls did so more out of perverse delight than anything else.

As evidence of this, the Sheik took great pleasure in tormenting his human chattels. He delighted in calling the Viscountess de Bure by her full title, a reminder of her days as a proud noblewomen of the French court. Last year, had even gone so far as to forcibly mate her with a little Shetland pony, a pet of his daughter Shesa. Such a union could never bear fruit, of course, but the sight of his proud slave straining under the heaving animal had delighted the master to no end. He still had the little creature service the Viscountess from time to time, often while his guests looked on and marveled.

The early morning silence was broken by the creaking of a wooden door. The Shiek's young daughter, Shesa, entered the barn outlined by dawn light. To the Viscountess' surprise, she had a guest with her this morning. The lithe and limber boy Abdul was following behind Shesa as she made her morning rounds. The Viscountess knew that Abdul was the son of a potentate from far Syria, where human livestock was a rarity. The Syrian's eyes darted to the naked mares in the barn with greedy amazement. He pointed to the Viscountess and giggled something into Shesa's ear.

The pair approached the recumbent mare, stopping for a moment so Shesa could grab an empty milking pail from a hook on the wall. The Viscountess took this as a signal to get to her hands and knees and present her swelling breasts to her mistress. Abdul stood close, eyes sweeping over flanks and hindquarters, milky bosom and the shaved patch of her V. He breathed in the dung and musk smells of the stall as if they were perfumed wine.

"Oh jewel of the desert," Abdul said to Shesa in a plaintive voice. "Might I have the privilege of unburdening this creature of its milk? I have oft drunk human mare's milk from these estates, but never once have I performed the task of acquiring it."

Shesa tittered at this boy's pretensions, and handed him the pail.

"Oh, you silly boy; here, if it will make you happy," she told him. "You must take care not to harm my treasure, as she is my favorite of all the stable. You must take the nipples between your fingers and pull with the most gentle of touches."

In his excitement, Abdul ignored this advice and gave the Viscountess breast a sharp downward tug that made the mare gasp. With Shesa's guidance, however, the boy soon had a steady rhythm going. Jet after jet of sweet milk streamed through his brown fingers and into the pail. The Viscountess felt a warm glow of relief settle over her, ans she soon was writhing with pleasure and licking the hands that milked her.

With the upcoming birth of her foal, the Viscountess had been producing much more milk than before. Always it was thus, the mare remembered. Her three prior pregnancies had been much the same. Each time, her bosom would be constantly sore from unexpressed milk. She seldom thought much of those children, the fruit of her prior matings. The Sheik was very strict about removing any newborn foal to the care of well-trained stablehands. There had been two colts and one filly, she recalled distantly. With any luck, the colts would escape the gelder's knife and join the Sultan's armies in the House of the Malamutes. The fate of her daughter would depend on whether she was a great beauty, or a had the beginnings of a racer like her mother. If she caught the eye of a rich townsman, she might even have the honor of living in a house and wearing clothing, maybe even going on to become a great man's wife. In any case, the Viscountess had long ago given up hope of seeing her children again.

When she had been drained dry, Shesa handed the nearly full pail of milk to a stablehand. Next, the Shiek's daughter began to groom her treasure's long black mane. She had the Viscountess stand at attention while her hair was un-braided, washed, and perfumed.

Abdul made a great show of helping. He ran a damp sponge over every inch of the proud mare, spending an inordinate amount of time soaping her hindquarters and the soft folds of her V. Once, when Shesa's attention was elsewhere, she felt his fingers invade the slick warmth of her inmost domain. She trembled with indignation at the look of greedy delight in the boy's eyes. Over the long years, the Viscountess had all but lost her human inhibitions; nevertheless, she silently cursed the Sheik for her mute captivity. She dared not speak her outrage. The Shiek was a just master, but he enforced the rules of the stables with an iron hand.

When she had been thoroughly washed, the little princess produced a straight razor and shaved the delicate stubble of her treasure's body hair. Satisfied at last, Shesa and Abdul led the Viscountess to a paddock where a leather halter was clipped to her collar. The pair chatted amiably as the Viscountess de Bure performed her morning ablutions. Years of conditioning had failed to instill the proper attitude towards the performance of her bodily functions, and the Viscountess still reddened with shame at the indignity of it all.

Her bladder and bowels emptied, the Viscountess was induced to a little light exercise, trotting about the corral with her leash attached to a peg in the ground. The Sheik had strict rules against any broody mare pulling a load or racing at a gallop until after she had foaled. The powerful stallions in their stalls craned their heads to watch as she jogged past, one or two of them grinding against the wooden bars of their enclosures with frustrated need. The leather chastity belts they wore prevented their release; the belts were only loosened immediately before they were ordered to cover a mare. One of the few consolations of pregnancy, reflected the Viscountess, was that she at least was spared the stallions ministrations. Once a mare was in foal, the Sheik saw little point to them being covered they had given birth. With so many of the women expecting, the males were doomed to disappointment.

Despite herself, the Viscountess found that the sight of the stallion's excitement and the warming action of her exercise was beginning to have an affect. Beads of moisture began to collect on the surface of her well shaven V and a flush spread across her perfect bosom. This did not go unnoticed by the boy Abdul, laughed at her plight before turning to whisper in Shesa's ear. The little princess' face at first darkened with embarrassment, then took on a devious light which was quite unlike her. With a wink to the boy, the Sheik's daughter deftly unhooked the mare's leather halter from its peg. She led her docile charge back inside the hay-scented darkness of the barn, and walked her over to the stall where slouched the stallion named Jandal, Stony One.

Jandal was an old stallion, long past his prime as a breeder. His manhood hung limp and flaccid, and his skin was cracked and brown from years of pulling heavy burdens in the hot Moroccan sun. Before being captured by Barbary pirates and sold into captivity, Jandal had been a young Portuguese fisherman with a wife and children of his own. The Sheik's father spotted the potential in those strong fisherman's arms and ample loins, and purchased him off the block in Rabat. Since then, the stallion whose family had known him as Jao de Faro had sired tens upon tens of foals for his masters. His glory days now long behind him, Jandal had spent near his entire life in the stables and could no longer remember even how to speak his old name.

"My pet, I see that you long for the embrace of this virile stallion," giggled Shesa to her treasured mare. "You must go to him; it is the proper thing for beasts, male coupling with female." The boy Abdul opened the low door to the Jandal's stall and gestured grandly for the mare to enter, smirking as he did so.

The Viscountess balked at the entrance to the stall. Neither the enclosure nor its occupant had been cleaned in some time, and emitted a hot, dry stink like the inside of a monkey's cage. The stallion's rheumy eyes cleared and brightened as he saw his designated mate, and his organ stood feebly at attention.

Shesa looked at the Viscountess with disapproval, saying "my beloved, there must be no more of this nonsense. Must I go to my father and bring back his iron goad?"

The boy Abdul joined in, voice husky with adolescent lust. "Yes, beast; you must obey. I would have you mate as a true horse does, shamelessly!"

The Viscountess looked to her mistress, whose face was flushed and whose eyes were gleaming in eerie reflection of her guests. She knew that she had no choice but to obey. She started forward into the enclosure. The little princess gestured the mare forward into the stall, shutting it firmly the moment the Viscountess was firmly inside. She saw Abdul hand snake out to clasp Shesa's own sweaty palm.

"Good, beast," the boy said to the mare. "Now, we shall see how well my host has trained you. First...," and here the boy paused for thought. "First...I would have you smell each other, as true beasts do." Shesha nodded her agreement.

The Viscountess shuddered in horror, but she obeyed. She maneuvered directly in front of the ancient stallion and painfully squatted down, once again cursing the rules that kept her arms bound at the small of her back. Jandal slavered slightly as the mare's head approached his groin, his eyes rolling. The Viscountess breathed in the dried fecal matter and semen smell of the man. She was pressed right up against the stallion's rapidly straightening rod, close enough to note the dried evidence of previous matings staining the skin and hair. She pressed against the organ, nostrils flaring as she struggled to catch he scent.

Her breath coming in heaving gasps, the mare then turned to place her back to Jandal and bent down almost to the point of overbalancing, placing her lovely hindquarters and V in full view of the slavering male. He moved suddenly to bury his nose in her cleft, snuffling so he breathed in her musk with every breath. He then bent still lower, smearing his face and hair with her juices.

"Release your bladder, oh jewel of the desert," breathed the young pervert Abdul. "This is as I have seen true mares act; so, then, must you act."

The Viscountess was so far lost in her own horror and animal lust that she barely had the presence of mind to obey. For the second time that morning, she squatted down to relieve herself. A stream of urine sprayed out, most catching the stallion on his face and scalp before trickling to the filthy straw below. The beast who had once been a man lapped up what droplets fell through his lips as if they were fine champagne.

"Now, my pet; present yourself to your mate, and let us be done with this," said Shesa lightly. Despite her tone, she found that she had dug her nails into Abdul's hand in her excitement.

The Viscountess, trembling with the emotions roiling within her, obeyed without a second thought. She bent forward until the swell of her pregnant belly pressed to the ground, and spread her thighs suggestively. Foam fell from the bit in her teeth as the slavered in anticipation. The stallion was on her in an instant, hips pistoning as he sought her opening. His weight bore her into the mud and flith of the stall floor, while his skin and hair were rough against her back. Strong teeth savaged the Viscountess' left shoulder as he bent to his task. At last, his straining organ found her V, and he pushed into that warm, wet embrace with a choked shout. In his passion, he ripped away the cuff restraining his hands and reached forward to fondle her full breasts. Milk dripped to the floor, joining the other fluids already soaking into the straw.

The Viscountess and her mate writhed against each other. There was not even a hint of humanity in their faces. Watching this spectacle, the little princess leaned over and gave her Syrian prince a chaste kiss on the cheek. The two watched for a long, long time.