Companions of Gor: Chapter Thirteen

 

 

Asha seemed to be the strongest girl in this pen. Certainly all the other girls were intimidated by her, and she swaggered around at meal times with a confrontational gaze that made the other kajirae look away for fear of challenging her. So when Asha and Caelie pulled my hair together, laughing, it was Asha I hit moments later. I hit her three times, hard, one blow after another, and I broke her nose in the process and, I think, a few teeth. As she lay on the floor, stunned, I took hold of her right hand and quickly snapped two of the fingers on it. All this happened before a guard could intervene. When he did, he slapped me to the ground, angry that I had disfigured Asha in the short fight. As a lesson to me, he uncoiled his whip and lashed me five times.

 

I held firm from the first two strokes but then to my shame cried out during the final three. Satisfied, he left me there. I picked myself up slowly, my body burning from the pain, but I forced myself to look at the other kajirae who were beginning to circle, unsure whether they should rush me all at once or leave well alone.

 

“I will kill the next girl who pulls my hair,” I said through the clouds of sharp pain. “Understand, I am not locked in here with YOU. You are all locked in here with ME.” 

 

I knew two things as I stood there, naked, that morning, in the enclosed exercise compound.

 

I knew that long before we might be returned to the pens at nightfall, I would be taken to a room and branded by a metal worker. A white hot kef would be permanently marked on my left thigh.

 

The second thing I knew with equal certainty was that sometime after that, after my branding, at the first opportunity, I would kill myself. I knew that now. A sense of fatalism had fallen over me, and with it a lack of fear of what these girls might do to me over the next few days, because the next few days no longer mattered. All that mattered was my upcoming appointment with the metal worker. There is always a way to end your own life. I might have to wait a while, suffering degradations in the process, but an opportunity would arise. Maybe I would be near a mirror and I might smash it with my fist and then, before anyone could stop me, I would cut myself open, multiple times, to bleed to death. There is always a way.

 

I would not live with the brand. That was the end. How could I face my brother, my father, my mother, as a slave girl? I couldn’t. They would never accept me back. 

 

I saw the girls back slowly away. I meant it. I would kill the next one who touched me. I would break her windpipe with a hammer blow of the heel of my right hand. So what if I might then be killed by the guards for destroying their property. They would simply save me the job of doing it myself.

 

I was naked except for my collar, a collar I now knew had an inscription in tiny etchings, at its base, that read ‘Return me for punishment to the House of Andronicus’. The café was obviously the property of the House of Andronicus, and the collars there the same as the collars worn in the slave pens. 

 

My protests had fallen on deaf ears as soon as the men had inspected my collar. I had been found wandering the basement cells of the house wearing a house collar. The fact that my thigh was not yet branded was obviously an oversight.

 

“I am a free woman! I came through the sewer tunnels from the café,” I had cried.

 

“That was a foolish thing to do, kajira,” a man had said. He thought I was therefore a café slave. The collar did not lie. It was a collar of House Andronicus and I was a girl inside House Andronicus wearing it. 

 

“I am a woman of Vonda! Mikos of Vonda, the black wine merchant will vouch for me!”

 

This made them pause for a moment. A slaver house can be closed down and its owners prosecuted by law if it is found to be stealing women of Vonda for its pens. Free women of the city are protected by law. 

 

“Where does this Mikos live?” the man had asked. But I didn’t know. I had never asked him. I knew very little about him, in truth. I could do nothing but describe his overall appearance. 

 

“Then he cannot vouch for you,” said the man, “if he even exists. Which I doubt.” 

 

Nevertheless, I had no brand. Checks would have to be made in the house records. The lack of a brand suggested I was fresh stock, but the records would have to be scrutinised. It wouldn’t do for the men to discover after I had been branded that a mistake had been made. Imagine the size of the fine that would be levied against the House for not conducting its regulatory checks when women are brought in for the first time. To brand a woman that has not been legally enslaved, where there is no paperwork of ownership, stamped and officiated, why, the consequences would be damaging to the integrity of the House, to say the least.

 

I would of course still be a slave, regardless. Once the brand kisses a girl’s thigh, she is a slave, end of question. No one would free me, least of all my family, but compensation would be levied by the courts. A significant fine would be charged to the House, and regulations would have to be improved at once or risk further fines when inspectors called to inspect the books some months later. 

 

But I would still be a slave. The brand is irreversible. My fate would be sealed the moment the iron kef touched my thigh. 

 

I was caged in one of the kennels while the inventory was checked. Many girls pass through the pens of this house. I was examined thoroughly so that records could be checked and cross referenced. Men measured my body, my hips, my waist, and my breasts. They took my weight and height, noted my hair and eye colour, took thumb, finger and toe prints, inspected and counted my teeth, measured the size of my earlobes, the length of my nose, and the flare of my nostrils. Everything was recorded on a form and then stamped and certified by a slaver’s clerk. Every detail could be matched against the records in their offices. 

 

There was also the matter of my collar. As well as the word I mentioned, it had a serial number. That number could be checked against the house records to confirm it was a genuine collar. It was, of course. It was recorded as having been issued to the neck of a slave called Niamh. No doubt this Niamh had been sold at some point, having only passed through the House for a very short time, and then the collar had not been returned to the central store as it should have been. Perhaps someone had borrowed it for the café, without making the appropriate file notes. It had not been noted as ‘returned.’ It was, essentially, still a ‘live’ collar as far as the House was concerned. The records clearly stated it was currently locked around the throat of Niamh. Niamh still wore it. Records do not lie. 

 

“Are you Niamh” I was asked.

 

“No! I am a free woman of Vonda!” I was reluctant to give them my name, though I referred to myself as Cassie. I would only give my full name as a last resort, for word would get out and the resulting scandal would be the end for me. 

 

“Do you wish to be beaten for lying, Niamh?”

 

“I am not Niamh!”

 

The records for Niamh could not be found, which was frustrating for the men concerned. This was a lapse in strict record keeping, but may have something to do with why the collar had not been returned promptly to the central store. My personal details could therefore not be cross referenced or corroborated with Niamh’s, and furthermore, it could not be confirmed whether Niamh had been branded or not. The men had to assume she hadn’t been branded by the time she was lost to the system, as I wasn’t branded, and I had to be Niamh.

 

There was one other test the men could make.

 

“No! I’m a free woman! No! You can’t!”

 

A slaver put me to ‘the touch’. He wished to determine whether I was a free woman or a natural slave. I was caressed as my hands were tightly bound to iron rings and my legs thrust apart, ankles locked in restraints. A slaver knows how to touch a woman. He knows precisely how to touch a woman. I writhed and cried out. He found me very wet within sixty ihn of arousal.

 

“Her responses are within the expected range for a natural slave who has not yet been trained,” he said. “More or less. They can’t be expected to oil quite as quickly as an experienced kajira. It is unlikely she is telling the truth, that she is a free woman. A free woman doesn’t respond like that.” He smiled as he made that statement. “Everyone knows a free woman doesn’t oil like that.”

 

These things were noted on my papers. The papers bore the seal of House Andronicus and were headed ‘Niamh’.

 

“Your name is Niamh, isn’t it?” the slaver had asked, kindly.

 

“No! I am a free woman!”

 

My refusal to confess what he considered ‘the truth’ seemed to annoy him. 

 

“Perhaps the whip will encourage you to speak the truth. Give Niamh five lashes,” he said. I was tied to a whipping post and they left me like that for a few ehn while a man fetched a whip.

 

“I am not Niamh! You can’t whip me! I’m legally a free woman of Vonda!”

 

“Speak the truth and you will be spared the lash,” said the slaver. “The evidence is more than convincing already.”

 

“I am not Niamh!”

 

“Whip her.”

 

I received five lashes, at the end of which I was crying. 

 

“Do you wish to speak the truth now, Niamh?” asked the slaver. “Or must we put you in a slave box?”

 

The slave box is a terrible tool of punishment. Inside the narrow confines of the box a slave is crouched and cannot stand or move much. Very soon cramp and extreme pain sets in and she begins screaming to be let out. 

 

“My name is Niamh,” I said. I knew I was not strong enough to withstand the slave box. I am enough of a pragmatist to know that I would insist I was Niamh after just a few ahn confined to a slave box, so I might as well spare myself the torture.

 

The slaver nodded, as if this simply confirmed the truth, rather than a girl saying anything to save herself from pain. “I am glad that is settled. It would have been troublesome to have discovered a free woman in our pens. Our reputation would have been tarnished. A magistrate would have set penalties and fines. We would have been subject to various degrees of oversight for a considerable time. But see, it was simply a case of mislaid paperwork. And now that has been rectified.” He held the finished slave papers labelled ‘Niamh’ and showed them to me. They recorded every physical characteristic of my body. “We will ensure this copy is not lost, my dear.” 

 

Of course. They had to cover up the fact that I was a free woman. If they simply released me, there was the risk I would have complained to an officer of the law that I had been seized by mistake. It would have been very awkward for them. Slavers operate within the law of their city. They cannot make mistakes with the women they buy and sell. And therefore, officially, they never do make mistakes.

 

“You will be branded later on today, Niamh. Left thigh, common kef brand. You will be given some time to recover from the branding, and then your training will begin in earnest. You wish to be pleasing, don’t you?”

 

I stared at him from where I hung by my wrists from the whipping post.

 

“A slave who is not pleasing can be housed in one of the kennels on the lower levels,” he said with a trace of threat in his voice. “You have seen them, I think?”

 

“I wish to be pleasing,” I said. I had of course seen those empty kennels in the truly dismal lower basement levels where it was a life of cold nights, hard stone floors and walls, rusting iron, dripping water, and infested with urts. 

 

“I, and other men, will decide whether you are pleasing, Niamh. Try not to disappoint us. The lower basement levels always have room for a stubborn kajira.”

 

I knew now there would be absolutely no point in telling the men my real name. They didn’t want to know. They didn’t want to admit that I shouldn’t be in a collar. They knew full well that I wasn’t Niamh, but it served the integrity of their business that they could claim I was. They would probably sell me outside of Vonda so that my claims might never be heard by a citizen. Some far away market where no one cared whether a Lady of Vonda was in a collar or not. 

 

The horror of my situation closed around me. They would brand me, train me, and then sell me, and soon I would be forgotten. Just another raw acquisition processed and auctioned according to their business model. The House of Andronicus prided itself on never making mistakes, and so they never did.

 

I knew then that I would kill myself. I had no way of escaping a slave pen. It was beyond me. Utterly beyond me. I would take my life before they made me a slave. It was the only way to escape. 

 

I was kennelled with the other girls. I was made to crawl into my kennel through the small front hatch. The other girls were delighted of course that I was joining them. As they laughed and jeered, I resolved to teach them all a lesson before taking my own life. They would learn the price for laughing at an Assante. The first girl to touch me would lose some of her teeth, and the use of two fingers of her right hand. Any more than that and I might face some time in a slave box. I knew where to draw the line. 

 

“You have no friends here,” said Lisivia, later that day as we were fed gruel. I refused to eat, and the men paid no attention. They assumed that hunger would force me to eat eventually. “Not after what you did to Asha.”

 

“Asha is a bully. Why should any of you care?”

 

“She looks after us. She protects us from the girls in the other pen who serve Jalilah. You broke two of her fingers and now she cannot defend herself, or us.”

 

“Then defend yourselves,” I snarled. “You are all pitifully weak. No wonder you’re slaves.”

 

“Jalilah and her girls are dangerous.”

 

“Jalilah will soon learn to avoid me,” I said as I lifted a little of the gruel slop with my fingers and let it drip back into the wooden bowl. Filthy, disgusting stuff. 

 

“If you don’t eat, the masters will beat you.”

 

“They can’t be bothered right now,” I said, observing them playing dice in a corner of the room.  

 

“If you want to survive here, Niamh, you will need to submit yourself to a first girl. That is the way things are. You won’t survive alone. It is hard for a girl to live outside of her chain sisters. There is no one to look out for her.”

 

“Let me make something very clear,” I said in a cold voice. “You’re the reason I’m here. The only reason I haven’t gouged your eyes out while you talked to me is because the guards would place me in a slave box for doing so. That is a rational response on my part. But sometimes I can do irrational things if someone angers me. That is your only warning.”

 

I paced about the cell, seeing the way the other girls regarded me with malice. Lisivia was right of course. Eventually a girl has to go to sleep and then she is vulnerable. They were waiting until I made myself vulnerable. 

 

And of course tonight I would be in agony because of the slave brand on my thigh. The pain and shock of the branding would weaken me. They all knew that. Tonight they would come for me as a group. I still had time to abase myself before them, beg forgiveness and accept their abuse. 

 

I would die first before that ever happened. 

 

The churning in my gut grew and grew as I waited for the summons. The waiting was agony, knowing that men would lead me to the branding chamber, but not knowing when. 

 

“You’ll soon be branded like us,” hissed one of the girls from a safe distance. “The brand is forever.”

 

They didn’t like the fact that I had no brand. Ideally they wanted to watch me being branded. 

 

My mind raced with many impractical attempts to escape. They were all ludicrous. The idea that a girl could break out of a secure slaver house was pure fantasy. There are too many locked doors between a girl and freedom, too many guards, too many security protocols, and of course, even if I reached the street, I wore a collar that proclaimed I should be returned to the House of Andronicus for punishment. 

 

My life of freedom was over. 

 

Last night I had asked Mikos if he knew what separated a free woman from a natural slave. He seemed amused by my question and he had replied ‘the brand’. 

 

“No,” I had said. “The brand does not distinguish the difference between the two types of woman.”

 

“How so?”

 

“You would agree that a natural slave is a natural slave even before she is branded?”

 

“That is so.” He kissed my hair softly and stroked my thighs. 

 

“Any woman can be branded. Any woman can live with a collar. A natural slave will choose to live with her brand and collar. A free woman will not.”

 

Mikos chuckled. “You mean to suggest you would die rather than live as a branded slave?”

 

“That is correct. And that is what marks a free woman from a slave girl. That simple choice. A woman who does not take her own life is a slave.”

 

“I don’t believe you, Cassie.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“You think you might do that. Many free women believe what you believe, but when they face the moment of truth, when that time finally comes, their nerve fails them. Women have a strong survival instinct. You would learn to live with the collar and brand. You would learn to please your Master.”

 

Now it was my turn to smile. “Then you don’t know me, Mikos. You don’t know me at all.”

 

I understood now THAT is why I am not a natural slave, because I would choose death before dishonour. 

 

In time I heard the rattle of keys and the turning of a lock.

 

“I think it is time,” said Lisivia, sweetly. “They are coming for you.”

 

A taste of bile rose up into my mouth and I was suddenly gripped by a cold, terrible sense of fear. Another lock turned, closer than the first. The sound of heavy boots against flagstone floors preceded the appearance of two grim looking men with the leather aprons and reddened skin of metal workers. 

 

I no longer felt brave. I knew I had to be strong, for I was an Assante, but the fact was I was alone down here and my worst nightmare was about to come true. Already, a hot iron would be plunged deep into coals, waiting for me. I felt sick. I spat some saliva from my mouth onto the straw, tasting a little of the bile that threatened to rise. The other girls sensed my fear now and laughed. 

 

“And you called us weak,” said Lisivia as she saw how my body was shaking in terror. 

 

The men seized me and bound my wrists. I cried out and tried to bite one of them. But simply received a hard slap for my troubles. 

 

“We’ll remember that, girl,” said one of the men. “You’ll pay for that attempted bite in a couple of days’ time.”

 

It had been a stupid thing to do. A guard never forgets an insult. Never.

 

A man’s hand lifted me up by my hair and bent me over double so that I would walk with my face pressed to his hip. 

“Don’t give us any further trouble,” said the metalworker. They marched me from the chamber, past the kennel bars, and out into a corridor beyond. I passed through heavy iron doors that were locked behind me. And then I began to cry. It was too much. I wasn’t as strong as I pretended to be.

 

“Please, no, please no, please…” I knew my words were useless as soon as I spoke them, but I lost all sense of dignity and rational thought as I did what all girls do in my position – I pleaded for mercy. “I’m a free woman of Vonda! There will be a reward for me! You’ll be rich! I promise!”

 

“Be quiet, Niamh. Or do we need to gag you?” They had heard such words before, many times no doubt. 

 

I wept, and I couldn’t think straight anymore. What would Tacitus advise me to do? I couldn’t remember anything he had written. Not a single thing. I was going to be branded! They were used to girls crying,  I think, which is why they took no particular notice of my weeping. 

 

“I’m not a slave,” I sobbed. “Please believe me.”

 

“She says she’s not a slave,” laughed one of the men.

 

“She may as well claim a sleen is a larl,” said the other. 

I was led through further corridors, my head down, and then I was taken up a flight of stone stairs. All I could think of was the hot iron in the coal brazier; the branding rack with its clamps and the horror that awaited me. 

 

I felt a tight pressure in my chest and I wondered whether I was going to pass out. Maybe they would have to drag my unconscious body the remaining distance, but no, they would simply wake me with a bucket of cold water. A girl must always be awake when she is branded. 

 

The experience is an essential part of her training, and her acclimatisation to a life of bondage. 

 

I was then pushed into a room, where I was forced down onto my knees. I was weeping uncontrollably, and saying things I no longer remember.

 

“This is Niamh,” said one of the two men. “Is this the girl you described; the one you asked to see?”

 

“Yes,” said a voice I recognised. “I think she might be.” I looked up, startled, with tear strained eyes, and saw Mikos of Vonda standing there, looking down at me. He had his back to a window, suggesting we were on the ground floor of the house. The room was an assessment room of sorts where girls might be displayed to potential customers. Importantly, there was no sign of a hot coal brazier with a branding iron inside it. 

 

And then I think I fainted as a sense of utter relief washed over me.