Kiera of Gor (18)

18: Of capture knots and ankle chains

I have never seen a sword arm move as fast as Brinn's. The first of the rencers found himself impaled through the chest on Brinn's sword point as he charged into the small clearing. Brinn had thrown his full body weight into the strike, moving inside the effective arc of the rencer's wood axe and smacking the man backwards with a rugby like shoulder blow in the process. As the rencer screamed, Brinn flung the man backwards with a strong push of his left hand, wrenching his blade free from the muscle tissue.

I saw movement everywhere as rencers ran in from the left and right. Marissa screamed as hands seized her wrists and hair and threw her belly first onto the ground. I saw Brinn seize the fallen axe of the slain rencer before I too felt a man seize me by my hair and force me face down onto the water logged soil.

“Brinn! Brinn!” screamed my mistress before her mouth was ground into the mud to silence her. I struggled hard but to no effect as one rencer held me and a second rencer pulled my wrists behind the small of my back. I could only assume the same was happening to my mistress. I briefly saw Brinn swing the wood axe in a low to high arc, catching the axe blade of a rencer, pulling his weapon away from the man's body and rendering him defenceless as Brinn's gladius then struck out and slashed a horrible deep cut from upper right cheek to lower left cheek. The man screamed, tried to draw his axe back but before he could Brinn's right leg tripped him and as the man fell he received a thrust of the blade into his stomach and out again.

I cried as my wrists were crossed and tight binding fibre ensnared them. Gorean men are trained from puberty to bind the wrists of a woman quickly and efficiently. To them it is second nature and instinct, like knotting a tie on Earth. Most men of Gor routinely carry binding fibre which says more about the relationship between the sexes on Gor than anything else.

I think four rencers were now circling Brinn, realising that it was suicide to fight him one at a time. But together he would not be able to defend from every direction. I felt my wrist bound body hoisted with ease onto a man's shoulder, and I saw out of the corner of my eye the struggling hysterical but lovely shape of the Lady Marissa similarly hoisted by another man. Her legs kicked futilely as she hissed and screamed. This was a hit and run raid to steal women and presumably kill Brinn out of convenience, but Brinn was an elite warrior of the Sardar, a captain of a shield wall, a man to whom other warriors swore oaths, and he would not surrender or back down.

Brinn had his back to the thickest clumps of bamboo as he swept his axe in an arc and stabbed forward with his gladius. The rencers were wise enough to bide their time and not commit themselves to a risky strategy, so instead they watched his movements, gauged the pattern of his moves and offered probing attacks with their own wood axes.

I saw no more as I felt myself carried by a powerful rencer into the long rence grass. I heard his feet stamp through the boggy marsh land as he ran at a surprising speed away from the clearing. I had been captured! I had been stolen. I felt so helpless. It had been so easy for the men.

How easy it is for men to seize, bind and steal women on Gor. They are so strong and we are so soft, weak and helpless compared to them. My captor was in the lead, and so I could see many paces behind him his compatriot who ran with the Lady Marissa over his own shoulder. She too was being stolen. Her eyes looked frantic as she continued to scream Brinn's name for all the good it might do. Brinn was one man now surrounded and pinned in place by four others. I had little realistic hope that he might survive.

We were being taken towards the single wharf jetty with its four tree trunk foundation poles that sank deep into the shallow marsh water and its small area of decking. It is where our gondola had been tethered and where the Lady Ameena had tethered hers. The expanse of ground was mostly low marsh land around it for up to a hundred yards, affording an excellent view for bowmen. While the thickets of rence grass grew up to four feet in height, they were sparse enough to make it obvious if anyone was moving towards the jetty. A single rencer stood guard over the two gondolas and their own three skiffs He held a peasant long bow in a semi draw ready to raise, pull the string back, and fire at any distant target that presented itself. I saw a sheaf of arrows slung across his body on a diagonal leather strap and a number of loose arrows embedded points first into the wet soil ready to be plucked and drawn. A trained archer can loose up to fifteen shots a minute, making the Gorean long bow effectively a weapon of mass destruction in this pre-technological age.

Like most jetties this one had a number of iron rings bolted to the decking. I saw the unmistakable figure of a naked woman chained by her left ankle to one such ring and I assumed this must be the Lady Ameena. She lay on the left side of her body seemingly cowed and compliant as we neared the wooden jetty.

“Where are the others?” shouted the bowman when we were maybe twenty yards away.

“Crassus and Tyssus are down. The others are killing the warrior as we speak,” said the man who carried me over his shoulder. “He heard us attack so we lost the element of surprise.”

“Crassus was always careless,” said the rencer bowman as he covered our approach, keeping an eye out for any sign of an enemy across the clear marsh ground. The bamboo thickets were impenetrable to the naked eye and it was impossible from here to tell what was happening. “Two more beauties, I see,” said the man with a grin as I was dropped onto the wooden decking of the jetty. He turned my body over with his foot to admire me in my greatly diminished tunic. “Kajira?” he said.

“Kajira, Master,” I said in fear.

“Let me go!” screamed my mistress as she was unceremoniously dropped onto the wet decking beside me. The Lady Ameena gazed up us with despairing eyes from where she was chained. I could see that there were red switch marks crisscrossing her back, buttocks and the sides of her thighs. Perhaps she had decided to be troublesome when the men had caught her. Perhaps she had been foolish enough to anger the men. I would not make that mistake. I knew what I was.

“Kajira?” enquired the bowman of Lady Marissa as she tried to struggle and sit up.

“No! I am not kajira!” she hissed. “I am a free woman!”

The three men laughed at that.

“Would you like to be kajira?” enquired the bowman.

“No! Of course not!” Marissa whimpered softly as one of the rencers took hold of her left ankle. She saw the man lock a length of chain to the same iron ring that tethered the Lady Ameena and then he fastened a steel anklet at the end of its chain around her ankle. It snapped shut with a click.

“Beast!” she said.

The man laughed again and untied the binding fibre about her wrists. My mistress moved her stiff arms in front of her body and tried to massage some feeling back into her wrists and hands for the binding fibre had been tight.

Marissa drew her legs back along the decking and tried to cover her breasts again the way she had done before by placing her hands on opposite alternate shoulders, x-like, covering herself with her forearms. The chain links slithered across the wooden planks as she moved.

Now I was similarly chained about the left ankle and secured to the same iron ring. Then my wrists too were untied.

“Are you red silk?” asked the man of Marissa.

“No!” She shank back, horrified. “I am not! I am a free woman! I am white silk! White silk!”

“We shall see.” She screamed as he parted her legs and, when she tried to resist he cuffed her hard, twice about the face, drawing blood from her mouth and then he placed his fingers inside her sex. My mistress looked like she was about to faint from shock as the man made his own determination of her virginity. Seemingly satisfied he withdrew his fingers. “White silk,” he nodded.

“Yes!” Marissa drew herself back along the decking as soon as he released her. She was about to reach the water's edge when the man simply took hold of her steel ankle chain and dragged her back across the planks to where she had previously been.

“We will play dice for you later,” said the man. He then turned to me. “Red silk?” he asked.

“No Master. I have yet to know the touch of a man. I am a woman's slave.” I moved to the position of nadu, kneeling back on the coarse wooden planking, sitting on my upturned heels, the tops of my toes resting on the floor, my back straight, shoulders thrown back, my chest out, belly in, and head up. My knees were now open, widely spread for his pleasure. And my hands rested upon my thighs, palms down. My obedience and obvious training seemed to please the man.

“Slut,” hissed Marissa as she saw me display myself like that to a Gorean man.

“Yes, Mistress,” I said softly. I lowered my gaze in submission.

“A waste of good slave flesh to keep this one white silk for her mistress,” said a rencer. “She should writhe in the arms of men.”

“Yes, Master,” I said softly.

“Slut!” cried Marissa again, furious that I was responding submissively to these men. How foolish she was. I had been enslaved. I couldn't help myself.

“Where are the others?” asked the bowman again. “Why are they taking so long? It will be dark soon and we should return to our village.”

“Perhaps they are looting his body,” suggested the rencer who had stolen the Lady Marissa. “Perhaps he has told them there are other luscious females close by in hiding. Perhaps they seek those little sluts too.”

“Perhaps,” said the bowman as he gazed across the windswept flat land. There was no sign of anyone approaching, friend or foe. “Should we call out?”

“They wouldn't hear. The distance is too great and the wind blows towards us now.”

“Why are you two not kneeling in nadu?” asked the bowman of Marissa and Ameena. Swiftly then Ameena imitated my position as best she could, parting her thighs and adopting a clumsy form of nadu. She was untrained but she tried her best. She had of course been switched many times and was unlikely now to wish to anger the men further.

Marissa however did not seem to understand this. “I am a free woman! I do not kneel in nadu!' She still lay on her left hip, legs and knees drawn towards her body, her arms crossed in an x-shape to cover her breasts.

“Very well.” One of the rencers produced a slave whip.

“You cannot be serious!” cried Marissa. In reply the man slithered the whip until its strands touched her naked thigh. Suddenly my mistress became somewhat more compliant, adopting the disgraceful position of a pleasure slave as instructed. She wept as she parted her thighs and, studying the elegant way I now knelt, tried to copy me. As I gazed at my mistress she blushed furiously.

“What s your name, kajira?” asked the man of me.

“Kiera, Master, if it pleases you.”

“What is the free bitch doing wrong, Kiera?”

I swallowed hard. “The mistress is not keeping her back straight and she needs to thrust her breasts out towards you, Master for your pleasure.”

“Correct.” He turned now to gaze at the horrified Lady Marissa. “Nadu” he said to her. With a whimper of misery she straightened her spine and thrust her breasts more prominently. She looked very beautiful like that. I think she would look good on a slave block. The master Brinn had been right with his assessment earlier.

“She has excellent lips,” said the rencer who had carried her.

“And look at those curves. That is a slave's body,” said the other rencer.

It was true. No matter how much my mistress might try to deny it to herself on those long lonely nights when she gazed at her naked reflection in the mirror, she had a slave's body. The ratio of hips to breasts to waist was near perfect as far as slavers are concerned. Slavers of Gor do not highly value the body shapes of slim small breasted women such as the cat walk models of Earth. They value hips and breasts and a more hourglass shape. A woman with a body shape like Kate Moss or Victoria Beckham for example would be considered of low value in the markets of Gor. Men wish their women to have the unmistakable body shape of women.

“Do you know any other slave positions?” asked the first rencer of Marissa.

“No...” she couldn't look at the men, which was probably just as well. Whenever I looked at these men it only served to make me feel more helpless, more submissive, more slave like.

“You will learn them,” he said with a grin. “And you will learn many other things too.” He stroked her breasts and watched Marissa's reaction as his fingers played with her nipples. After a minute or so of stimulation we could all see that her flushed areola had increased markedly in size and her nipples were now erect. That seemed to me to be a reasonable response time for a sexually healthy woman. The stimulation of course had a more pronounced effect as she was kneeling in nadu before men. If you are a woman, try kneeling with your thighs spread far apart and you will perhaps understand how this makes you feel. Now imagine you are doing so not through choice but because a man has commanded you to do so. You might be beaten if you did not. He can and will whip you. You must kneel perfectly now. See how he is observing you? You must keep your back straight, your belly in, your breasts thrust out. And now he chooses to touch you while you kneel like that. You must hold position! You must not move, but how difficult it must be to not move when you kneel there feeling so open, so vulnerable, so helpless and all the while his hand is stimulating your breasts.

Perhaps my mistress might even now be wet to the touch. Maybe she would already be 'oiled for use' as the Gorean men often say. Of course all this would be new to her. Even in her wildest dreams she could never have imagined how this might actually feel.

The man who had been touching my mistress now withdrew his hand after seeing the desired effect. It seemed to confirm something to him.

What made this a thousand times worse for my mistress was the fact that her intimate body slave could see her signs of arousal quite clearly. Her body had betrayed her, making clear to the casual observer that she had healthy sexual responses to bondage and slavery. How shameful for her. I would of course pretend that I had not seen anything.

“They should be back by now,” said the bowman. He seemed to be growing ever more concerned. I gazed back over the near flat expanse of wet marsh land broken up by random clumps of rence grass three to four feet in height. It wasn't sufficiently dense to allow a man to approach us unseen. The bamboo thickets formed a thick screen making it impossible to tell what was occurring within them.

“Do you want to investigate?” suggested one of the other rencers.

“No, I do not,” said the bowman. He kept his long bow at half stretch, ready to draw and pull if an enemy appeared. “It will be dark soon. We cannot stay here indefinitely. We should bring the women down river to the security of the village.”

“And leave our friends behind?”

“They should be here by now,” said the archer.

And then we saw the man as he emerged from the wall of bamboo. He appeared to be a rencer for he wore the garments of the rencers, but he was too far away to make out his features. He limped badly, clutching a wounded leg that slowed him down to a hobble. We watched as he began the slow laborious approach to the jetty.

“Is that Sansk?” suggested the rencer who had carried me.

“I do not know. The sun is setting. There are many shadows. It could be. Ho! Sansk! Is that you?” shouted the archer. His voice carried back to us in the strong wind that blew across the vosk delta.

“He may not be able to hear us,' said the rencer.

“Or he chooses to pretend he cannot hear us,” said the archer as he now partially raised his bow.

“We will know when he comes near,” said the other rencer. “If it is not Sansk or one of the others you need only kill him with a shaft.”

“I will,” said the archer.

Minutes ticked by as the man slowly hobbled across the wet sucking ground. From time to time he had to pause from his injuries but then he continued again. When he was halfway across he called out to the jetty, but although we could hear his voice, we couldn't make out the words.

“That sounds like Sansk,” said the archer. “But I cannot tell what he is saying.” Now the man seemed to be gesticulating wildly, waving his arms in the air as if to signal something. The rencers gazed to their left and right but the flat lands around them were empty. They gazed back towards the darkening lagoon but could see no boats approaching.

“Something is wrong,” said the archer.

“We shall know more when Sansk reaches us.”

“His injuries make him slow,” said the rencer who had carried me.

“Where are the others?” mused the archer. He prepared himself to fire if the man who seemed to be Sansk turned out to not be Sansk. 

And then we were all startled by a loud scream from the man who had carried Marissa. He screamed because a dripping wet Brinn had quietly climbed out of the marsh water onto the jetty and had driven a sword through his back. The other two men turned round, but Brinn was on the archer in an instant, slashing fiercely across his throat before he might raise the powerful bow. The third rencer who had one of the few swords in the group drew his weapon but in the time it took to clear his awkward scabbard Brinn had stabbed him repeatedly through the stomach. He fell screaming like the others.

The man who was almost certainly Sansk now stopped in his tracks ten yards from us. In terror he turned and began limping back across the wet land towards the bamboo thicket. Brinn simply cleaned his blade on the tunics of the men and, taking his time, lifted the great peasant bow, nocked an arrow to the string, drew that string back to past his ear with an immense strain of his core muscles and let fly. The shaft punched straight through the man's back with the arrow tip protruding from his chest. He dropped like a stone and lay face down in the marsh grass.

“Master,” I said breathlessly. Pressing my forehead to his feet.

“Brinn!” Marissa crawled towards him, leaving her disgraceful position of nadu and with a slither of chain lay gratefully next to me, overcome by the animal like psychological need of a threatened female to seek sanctuary from a protective male.

“The crippled rencer made for a suitable distraction while I swam around the shore,” said Brinn with satisfaction. He gazed down at me as I licked and kissed his feet. He seemed pleased.

“Kajira,” he said with a smile.

“Kajira, Master! Kajira!” I wept, knowing my place at his feet.

“Brinn, you were amazing,” whispered Marissa as she lay on her left hip by his side. I could tell that powerful emotions were flooding through her body now. She was a vulnerable woman and he was her protector.

“Lady,” said Brinn as he gazed down at her. “I seem to be making a habit of saving you today.”

“I am grateful, Brinn. I am very grateful.” I noticed with interest that Marissa had forgotten to cover her body from Brinn's roving eyes. There is something psychological about this from a primitive level where an endangered female may exhibit herself to a man so as to prove to him she is worth protecting. It is almost as if she subconsciously says, you can have me if you save me from the others. Look what you can have. See how desirable I am. Surely you do not wish to give me up?

Brinn gazed now at the Lady Ameena and observed the switch marks on her body. He observed the ankle chain on her left ankle and how good it looked upon her. He saw the same ankle chain on my mistress and smiled, thinking perhaps it attractive on her too.

“A very pretty chain coffle,” he sad with a chuckle as he sheathed his sword.

“Brinn!” said Marissa in outrage.

“Thank you, Master,” I said softly as I gazed up at him.

Ameena still seemed to be suffering from shock from her extensive switching and said nothing. She simply looked at Brinn in fear, afraid perhaps to displease him in any way.

“It is the term for two or more women chained together,” explained Brinn to my mistress.

“I know that!” said Marissa sullenly as she drew her ankle back and touched the hard resilient steel.

“It is a weakness of mine,” explained Brinn politely as he began to search the first of the bodies. “I find the sight of women's ankles in steel fetters rather charming.”

“I suppose you do,” said Marissa as she now drew her legs back and adopted her familiar pose of crossing her arms in an x over her upper body.

“Women look good in ankle chains” added Brinn.

“I wouldn't know,” said Marissa as she gazed at the two gondolas bobbing gently in the incoming tidal waters of the Thassa.

“It is a commonly held opinion,” he said as he found a steel key on the body of the archer. Marissa watched him as he bent down and unlocked the anklet from my left ankle. He then did the same for a relieved Marissa and finally for the numb looking Lady Ameena. “Stand,” he said to us. We all stood as commanded.

“Can we return to Port Kar?” asked Marissa.

“I think that would be wise. The sun is about to go and there will be little to no light in half an hour. That will of course make it easier for you to return to your lodging without being seen like that. There you can bathe, dress yourself and drink some wine to clam your distressed nerves.”

“Thank you.” She fell silent for a moment before adding with real sincerity, “I will not forget what you have done for me today.”

“Nor will I,” said Brinn with perhaps a hint of hidden meaning.