I tried not to smile as Kima, the bully who had made my life horrible these last couple of weeks, wept floods of tears as she knelt in the training room to the left of Bahira. You’re not so tough now, are you, bitch, I thought to myself with a considerable degree of smugness. Oh, but this was wonderful. She looked like the most pitiful of slaves now, as if her life had practically ended.
As I watched, Bahira told Kima to open her mouth and then she pressed a sugared candy on to the girl's tongue as a reward for not struggling, resisting or screaming too much. The other girls around me looked worried and well they might be for any one of them could be next. I could sense that Kara was trembling beside me too. Would her name be on the list? Probably. Seremides had after all branded her. Now that I considered the matter it seemed likely that Seremides would not have requested an exemption on her behalf as he had so obviously done with me. For Kara would be a slave-girl for the rest of her life. Unlike me she would not be freed in a few short days or weeks once my mission here was complete. The collar, so inflexible in its cold steel, would never leave her pretty throat or, if it in fact did, it would only be a momentary respite while another collar belonging to another Master would be locked in its place.
So no, it was unlikely that Kara's name would have been removed from the list.
I still considered the prospect of buying Kara once I was free. I had previously made Seremides an offer which he considered adequate for her, and so there was a verbal agreement of sorts that I might have first refusal on her inevitable sale. I would of course then free Kara, for I was fond of her. Here in the pens we were chain sisters, and she had been kind to me. I would be kind too.
“Please, not me…” whispered Kara as she stared down at the reed mat on which she knelt.
Kima was motioned to crawl back to the line of girls and Bahira called the next name on her list. “Simba, you are next.”
Pretty little Simba sobbed where she knelt several places to my right. I was actually quite glad she was on the list because in the early days she had been rather snooty and aloof. Only recently she had been the daughter of a warrior from Kadesh and she seemed to think belonging to the Caste of Warriors made her something special. She was not special of course, she was just another girl in a collar. It’s not as if she herself was actually a warrior who knew how to fight – she was simply the daughter of a warrior, which to my mind was an irrelevance. I had grown tired of the endless tales of her mighty father who had battled the armies of Tor and had driven back incursions by the desert tribes in the Tahari. My father had been in the military too, but that didn't stop him walking out on the family that needed him when I was five years old. If her father had been such a superman then why was Simba now in chains with a brand on her thigh?
Furthermore, I had seen her so obviously flirting with the guard, Pallas, these last few days. Pallas was one of the kinder men stationed within the pens and he would often speak a few words to me as I walked back from the training rooms to the pens on the lower levels. As it happens I would occasionally have reason to dawdle close to where Pallas stood, perhaps to remove a small stone that had lodged between a couple of my toes. He might then see me, smile warmly, and enquire how the day’s training had gone and I would of course answer him, for he is a Master and it would not be appropriate for me to hurry on when I had been asked a direct question. If I had done well, and I smiled nicely, and I lowered my eyes in the way I knew he liked, he would sometimes offer me a candy. He would tell me to eat it now so that another girl might not take it from me when I returned to the pens, and so I would kneel at his feet and chew it for a minute or two while he told me a few tit bits of gossip from the other pens.
Sometimes he would ask me questions, like, “when will you be given pleasure silks in your training?” and I would tell him that we had been promised them in a week’s time and he would laugh and say he looked forward to seeing me in them.
We had of course been told that the pleasure silks were only to be worn in the training rooms themselves, and to be removed before we returned to our pens, which was a shame, as I desperately wanted Pallas to see me wearing them. Three days ago I had glimpsed another class, one further ahead of us in their lessons, dressing in the scandalously brief silks, to then practise various positions within the furs and I was mesmerised by how erotic the silks looked. Slave silks you see are not strictly speaking garments in the normal sense of the word, but rather lengths of incredibly soft silk, perhaps eighteen inches in width that can be artfully and creatively wound in various ways about a slave-girl’s body, partially concealing her modesty, but in a sense making her seem more naked than naked. They are usually tied in a releasing knot on the left shoulder and belted with binding fibre around the waist. The knots are usually variations on slip knots, meaning a man can strip the silks from a girl's body with ease, often one handed. Silks, when worn by slave girls can drive a man wild with lust, especially in conjunction with a collar and brand. Slave silks cling to a girl's body, part along the sides and cover very little. I am told they feel luscious against the skin.
I so wanted to wear them.
I didn't of course truly care whether a man found them beautiful and alluring, rather I simply wanted to be as ravishingly beautiful as the slave-girls in the class ahead of us. I suppose it would be good if the men did find me ravishingly beautiful in the silks, but truly it did not matter one way or the other, for I was not personally interested in the attentions of men.
I did however hope that Pallas might have the opportunity to see me in the pleasure silks. Perhaps I could contrive some reason to step out onto the gantries and walkways in the silks before we were ordered to remove them.
So obviously I did not have a very high opinion of Simba when she so obviously began drawing attention to herself as we left the training rooms in the upper levels of the cavern. Now it seemed Pallas had two girls happening to pause briefly close to where he was usually stationed, despite my best efforts to scowl at Simba and warn her away with a stern glare.
Simba too would glare at me as if to say, 'go away slave-girl' but I would simply ignore her. I knew I was Pallas's favourite in the pens, and Simba was just an inconvenience whenever I deigned to talk to him.
So yes, I was happy to see slutty Simba shaking as she rose to her feet and walked slowly to the position that Kima had just vacated.
“I never liked her,” I whispered to Kara. “Stuck up bitch with her 'Caste of Warriors' superiority. And have you noticed the way she is with the men?” I rolled my eyes in dismay, sniffed and watched as the girl knelt obediently, tears in her eyes. I relished the sight of the leather worker, Karim Bey, doing to her what he had done to Kima and Sanja and Tuala before hand. In truth I felt a little bored and restless now. I wished Karim Bey would hurry up with these girls so that we could all return to our pen. We had been promised some of the fat juicy Medjoul style dates with our evening meal which I had been looking forward to all day. In the time I had been living in the Tahari I had developed a real taste for fat juicy dates.
“My name is going to be called, isn’t it?” said Kara in fear.
I thought she was probably right. I couldn’t think of any practical reason why Seremides might have instructed the slavers to spare her this indignity. I hoped she wouldn’t be jealous that I would be one of the few girls exempt from Kerim Bey’s work. I hoped it wouldn’t affect our friendship going forward.
“Be brave,” I said, squeezing Kara’s right hand.
“I’m afraid I will struggle… cry out…” whispered Kara.
“You mustn’t, Kara. Bahira will have you placed in a punishment cage. You know that. Karim Bey will be quick at least. Look – Simba is already done.”
Karim Bey had indeed finished with her and was cleaning his tools once again. Like Kima before her, Simba was crying, though she feared breaking position without permission. So much for the Caste of Warriors, I thought to myself. Yes, cry your eyes out, slutty little Simba. She wouldn’t be hovering near Pallas today as we were herded back to the pens. I wondered whether Pallas would give me another candy today. They were always good, for he bought them fresh each day in the market place. I would smile at Pallas and perhaps pose rather brazenly to attract his attention, for I was very good at that sort of thing now. It would be easy enough now that Simba would be snuffling and snivelling on her way back to the pens.
“Kara, your turn now,” said Bahira, reading from the list.
Poor Kara. Her name was on the list. How cruel Seremides was to her. I squeezed her hand again, thinking how horrible this would be for Kara. I was glad I was exempt from the list. Kara would be miserable tonight in the pen, as would most of the other girls. It was possible that the name of every girl in my pen was on the list with the exception of mine. I hoped they wouldn’t be crying throughout the night as I had enough trouble sleeping in the cold pen as it was.
Kara stepped up to the rug where Karim Bey had his equipment. I watched with pity for my poor chain sister as she bravely knelt at his feet. Then, with a brutal looking needle he pierced first her left earlobe and then her right. He dabbed the wounds with an antiseptic and fitted tiny bars through each hole, screwing equally small caps to either end to hold the bars in place. In a few days time Kara and the other girls would wear delicate chain earrings in their earlobes. They would be pierced ear girls – the lowest form of slave-girl on Gor. It was generally said that no one would ever free a girl with pierced ears.
I sighed, thinking how difficult it would be for Kara when I did buy her and inevitably free her. She would I suppose have to arrange her hair in such a way that her earlobes would always be hidden, perhaps with the aid of her veils. She would never be able to confidently show her bare face to other women the way Jacinta and I had done in the garden café in Corcyrus, for fear of her pierced ears being seen by another woman. It would destroy her confidence when she was free again, for she would always be aware of the truth, concealed by her veils and hair, always fearful that someone might find out. Poor lovely Kara.
It had taken many months on Gor for me to fully comprehend how dreadful the prospect of a woman having pierced ears might be in this savage culture, for of course in Western society on Earth it was perfectly acceptable and indeed encouraged. Here though it is deemed to be one of the most degrading things that can happen to a woman, Free or slave. Accordingly all the girls in my class were in shock that this was now being done to them.
Poor Kara. Perhaps I would give her my share of the Medjoul dates tonight to console her.
But then again she probably wouldn’t be in a good enough frame of mind to enjoy them the way I would, would she? It would be a shame to waste them like that, for after all we weren't given dates very often in the pens. No, perhaps I would keep the Medjoul dates for myself and treat her another night when she was feeling better.
The leather worker now produced a pair of pliers with thin needles on either end, and as I watched he inserted the tool between Kara’s nostrils and with a click and a sharp cry from Kara, he pierced the middle of her nose. Now she, like the other girls, might be fitted with a nose ring if her Master so wished. Aside from the decorative quality that some men enjoyed, it would be possible to leash a girl by her nose ring and control her remarkably well with just light movements of the leash. A girl leashed by a nose ring would not wish to feel the leash being pulled in anger. This to my mind was a more distressing thing, but for a Gorean woman it wasn't considered quite as degrading as the piercing of her ears. Perhaps this is something to do with the fact that a pierced nose through the septum is not as immediately obvious to someone else if a nose ring isn't worn.
There were only three girls left now, aside from myself. Amelia was called up next but I didn’t bother watching. I didn’t mind Amelia – she was reasonably quiet and knew her place inside the pens. She had on occasion tried to befriend me and I had appreciated that. Kara knelt on the mat beside me again, tears rolling down her cheeks. Truly I didn’t know what to say. I touched her thigh and whispered the words, “chain sister” to her but she didn’t seem to notice. The piercings hurt, but not nearly as much as the distress and humiliation she felt.
I was still unsure how I was supposed to locate Erin within the pens. With the seasonal influx of girls in the complex I estimated there were now over three hundred girls in total, of whom I had probably only spoken to a few dozen. It was surprisingly difficult to meet girls from pens some distance from mine. I was always either in training or I was locked in my pen, and the only other time I was able to mingle was during the tightly controlled periods in the morning when we would be taken to the water troughs to wash, and the times when we would walk from one area to another for training purposes. Erin was here somewhere but with the routine as it was I might never get to meet her, or if I did it might take many more weeks.
The nightmare scenario of course was that while I tried to make contact she might be sold and taken away from the pens. In fact, how did I know for sure that had not actually happened in the three weeks I had been housed here? What would I do if Erin had moved on? At what point would I communicate to Seremides that it was time for him to collect me because the mission had proven to be impossible? He had only given me one communication code – the one to be used when my mission was a success. He had told me not to use it for any other reason. But at some point if finding Erin proved impossible, I would have to use it, or else how would he know to collect me?
I hadn’t expected the mission to take so long. I had been here so long that I was now being trained in how to give pleasure to a man in the furs. It was degrading, and at some point I knew the classes would progress to the point where I would be expected to practise my skills on a chained male slave. A girl could only learn so much from theoretical lessons and practising before straw filled dummies. The time was drawing perilously close to the day when I might be expected to actually arouse a chained male slave and to use my hands and mouth to bring him to a long drawn out orgasm.
I obviously had to complete my mission before that might happen.
If only I knew for sure which pen housed Erin. There were 25 pens in all, all of which were now overcrowded due to the success of various caravan raids. New girls were entering the pens every day, distraught, terrified, and crying. The queues at the water troughs in the morning were getting longer and longer.
Lost in my thoughts I suddenly became aware of Kara nudging me.
“What?” I whispered, unsure why she had just done that.
“Emma…” she whispered back, nodding imperceptibly towards Bahira who stood on the wooden podium, the slave switch in her right hand, staring at me.
“Mistress?” I looked up, confused, for I seemed to be the subject of her attention now. Had I been obviously day dreaming? Was I supposed to have been watching each and every girl having her ears pierced by the leather worker? She hadn't told us to watch.
“Emma, do I need to repeat a command? You’re normally more attentive than this. It is your turn now. Come up here.”
“My… turn?” For one brief moment I simply didn't understand. And then I did. I stared at her, then at Karim Bey who was cleaning his needles and pliers and apparently waiting for me too. “No. No!” There had to be some mistake!
“Emma, up here, now. It won’t take long,” said Bahira. She clicked her fingers and pointed to the rug where Amelia had just knelt. “You will have a candy afterwards, just like the other girls.”
“No, no, no… my name can't be on the list!” An absolute sense of horror swept over me. Was this some stupid administration error? Or had Seremides made a mistake when he filled out the slave forms? Had he stupidly forgotten to tick my exemption?
“Emma… don’t cause us any trouble. You’re normally very well behaved.” Bahira clicked her fingers a second time and once again pointed to the reed mat on the floor.
“No! You don’t understand! You can’t pierce my ears, my nose! There has been a mistake! That’s not supposed to happen to me! No! No!”
As I screamed hysterically, the other girls, Kara amongst them, moved away from me in fear. Guards entered the training room, Pallas among them, as Bahira motioned them towards me.
“My Master doesn’t want this! Please – just speak to him! Contact him! He will say no! This is a mistake! You mustn’t do this! You mustn't!”
I felt my wrists being seized by Pallas and another guard. I struggled wildly as they held me. They mustn’t do this! Didn’t they understand this was a mistake? I wasn't really a slave! I was going to be freed after my mission was complete! Why weren’t they listening to me! I would be freed after this! How could I live as a Free Woman on Gor with pierced ears! “No! Get off me! Fucking get off me! You fucking bastards! Let me go!” I was swearing now in English, spitting and struggling. Pallas struck me hard across the face and I would have been thrown back by the force of the blow if I hadn’t been held firmly between the two men.
“Emma! Calm down!” Bahira shouted at me. The other girls were shocked by the way I was now struggling and screaming. I had been so good these last couple of weeks.
Pallas dragged me towards the mat and forced me to my knees.
“Find Seremides! “ I screamed, “he won’t allow this! No! Let me go, you fucking Gorean scum!” I was swearing exclusively in English, much to the surprise of girls who had thought I was Gorean. A guard pulled my wrists painfully behind my back and locked them quickly in slave bracelets. Another guard held my head in a vice like grip. Bahira looked furious.
“No…no, no, no… please, no…”
Kerim Bey placed the needle against my left earlobe. There was a sharp stabbing pain as he pushed the needle through, removed it and daubed the wound with antiseptic. I screamed again and probably blew snot from my nose, I was in so much shock. This would ruin me as a Free Woman! I felt the needle stab through my other earlobe and I howled in misery.
“What is wrong with her?” said one of the guards.
I had pierced ears on Gor! This was even worse then being branded! At least a brand could be hidden beneath clothes in public! Now Kerim Bey picked up the pair of pliers and I lost control totally, screaming a flurry of four letter words at him that would have been meaningless, except for the context in which I raged. He snipped a hole in my septum quickly, obviously disgusted with my tantrum and motioned for the guards to take me away, once he had inserted a ring and bars through the piercings.
“Place her in one of the holes,” said Kerim Bey in disgust.
I felt sure I was going to go insane. Pallas had dragged me out of the training rooms by my hair. I had been hysterical, out of control, and so he had secured my wrists to a wall mounted slave ring and then he had whipped me.
The pain was unbelievable. I had always thought I was his favourite. He had often given me sweet candies as treats. He had enjoyed looking at me as I returned each day from the training classes. I had looked forward to him seeing me dressed in white pleasure silks in a few days time.
But he had whipped me. The pain is indescribable and I believe I actually passed out from being whipped by the full strength of a man. When I awoke it was because a bucket of cold water had been poured over my head. I was lying on my stomach in the hexagonal chamber where the five punishment pits were housed. To my horror, my whipped and bloodied body was lowered into one of the narrow vertical holes and despite my frantic pleas I felt myself drop until my feet touched the cold iron grille, ten feet below the surface of the chamber. I felt a tight constriction in my chest and breathing as the narrow walls of the cylindrical hole seemed to press around me, bringing with it a sense of extreme claustrophobia as if I had been buried upright in a stone tomb. My arms were flat against my body and it was impossible to raise them for the hole was far too narrow.
I now started begging, pleading that I would behave. I could feel the sharp stinging from my earlobes and nose, but that was as nothing compared to the sheer agony of the whip marks across my back, and the chill cold of the stone pit. I heard the iron grate being placed back over the top of my prison and locked in place with two padlocks and I screamed again, I screamed until I made myself hoarse. The hole stank, even though it had been hosed with water from its last occupant. And it was dark. The chamber received little light except for a few slow burning oil lamps in various wall sconces. None of that light penetrated into my dank prison. I moved my feet as far as the minimal space allowed, and I began to feel an overwhelming and rising tide of panic set in. Around me I heard continual sobbing and howling from two other women who obviously occupied nearby pits. How long had they been down there? How long would I be down here?
You lose all sense of time in the darkness of those pits. You cannot sleep properly. You certainly can’t rest, and the pain is unendurable. If there is a Hell, then one of the lower levels must surely be a series of sunken narrow pits in which sinners are entombed for all eternity. I would have said anything, done anything, promised anything, to be allowed out of there. I would have happily agreed to exchange places with any one of my loved ones for the opportunity to escape this nightmare.
Do not think badly of me unless you too have been tortured in this way.
At some point I too started to wail and howl as the agonising cramps set in, in my leg and arm muscles. I felt faint, unable to support my weight, and so I slumped against the narrow walls as best I could. They took my weight to some degree but still the inability to stretch, to properly move my leg muscles in particular was agonising. I screamed and I screamed and I screamed, and no one came. I had been left here and my misery knew no end.
The panic attacks would sweep over me until I typically screamed myself to exhaustion and then I would momentarily know some peace through fatigue, though always with the burning pain in my limbs and body. No matter how much I slumped against the sides of the stone walls, the pain never truly left my body. I would feel a tight constricting of my chest, I would have difficulty breathing, and then the terror panic would rise again, perhaps triggered by the wailing of another girl from one of the other pits, until it burst like a dam from my mouth too.
It was a thousand years of suffering in a space where time was impossible to measure. I began to worry that my offences had been so severe that I might be left down here indefinitely until I simply died of thirst. My throat and mouth swiftly became dry and I craved water. The sides of the stone pit were damp with condensation, and in my misery I would lick the stones with my tongue, desperately taking what moisture I might find.
As time wore on without the means to count it, I suffered the further indignity of shitting and pissing where I stood trapped, and I felt the filth around my feet. I cried out again and again, begging the Masters to show mercy. Once, I think the grille was lifted from the roof of my prison and my eyes were hurt, blinded by the sudden flare of a torch above me illuminating the previous pitch black darkness in my hole. Was there a man up there displaying me to a couple of new slave-girls, or was I simply hallucinating what I had seen that first day when Jubal had taken me and Kara into the hexagonal chamber as a cautionary warning?
If I slept, I slept in small snatches of twenty minutes here and maybe forty minutes there, always to wake again, screaming from nightmares and the pain in my legs. How could men do this to me and call themselves men? I hated them all. I hated every Gorean man and I wished them all dead.
At some point in my delirium I raged and swore that I hoped they would all die in nuclear fireballs delivered by the Kurii. Let Gor burn and everyone with it, if this is what they do to women.
But still I was shouting with no one to hear.
Soon, having exhausted my pointless threats, I began begging again, followed by more crying, more despair until eventually I just rocked inside my narrow prison, scratching with my nails at the brick work. I felt sure that weeks had gone by, months maybe, and yet surely I would have died of thirst by then.
I shat and pissed again, despite the lack of food and that too told me that time had not passed as quickly as I had thought. I felt it trickle down my legs, stinking, though it was for sure the least of my concerns.
And then sometime after I think I had given up all hope and simply succumbed to bleak despair, I felt burning light and my body being hoisted up out of the pit with hooked poles. My limbs flared up in pain worse than before as they were now able to move. I screamed, lying on my back, raving, begging that I would be good, that I would behave, that I would do anything I was told. I didn't know who I was addressing but i would have promised anything, and I meant it.
There was a man there – possibly Jubal, but I was in no state to know.
And there was a slave-girl, kneeling quietly to one side, watching me.
The man rolled my body over on to my stomach as he regarded the whip marks on my back. “She's filthy and weak. Wash her and feed her, Erin, and then return her to the pens.”
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