Slaver of Gor - Chapter Eighteen (Final Chapter)

 

 

I began screaming hysterically when I saw the kef branding iron in the wagon’s luggage. It was one of many items, including coal and charcoal, that Julian had bought at one of the trading jetties along the Thassa Cartius river when he had shopped for supplies. I don’t know whether I was meant to see it before its use, but see it I did.  

 

Nothing stopped my screaming. I couldn’t control myself. I was hysterical, in shock, as I set eyes on the long iron, with its insulted handle, and cursive tip, designed to sear the kef mark indelibly into the soft, smooth skin of a girl’s left thigh. 

 

Even when Beth slapped me hard about the face, I continued screaming. I fell to my knees, tears streaming down my cheeks, unable to comprehend what anyone was saying to me. There was a roaring in my ears and I found myself unable to focus until a sharp and fiery blow from a switch across my bottom snapped me out of it. 

 

“Control yourself!” screamed Beth as he sliced me with a second stripe. “You knew this day was coming!”

 

I dropped to her feet and began kissing her feet, pleading with her. I offered three times, four times, five times my original ransom, though of course I had no way of meeting that expense. 

 

“It is just a brand,” said Julian as he stood above me. “It will free you to be a woman in the true sense of the word. You won’t have to hide who you are anymore. A kajira without a brand is not really a kajira.”

 

“My ransom…” I sobbed.

 

“Did you really think I would risk taking you to Argentum? Aside from the fact the countryside between us and the city would be the playground for bands of looting soldiers, what sort of reception might I find in Argentum? I’m still legally a slave there. As soon as I returned you to your home, I might expect no reward other than a fresh collar about my neck.”

 

“No, no, I wouldn’t do that! I would pay you! You would not be my slave! I free you! I free you, Julian. You are a free man. I have no legal ownership of you. I renounce my property and free you.”

 

“Words,” he said as he ruffled my hair. “You would soon change your tune in Argentum. Your revenge would be swift and vicious. No, the only safe way I could ever return you to that city would be with a kef on your thigh and a collar about your throat, and legal papers of ownership stamped and sealed by a great city such as Torcadino.”

 

“No, please, no, please…”

 

“Because the moment you become a legal slave, you cannot own anything. No one will listen to you. No one will care.”

 

“I beg you. I beg you on my knees. I will do anything…” I continued to kiss and rub my face against his feet.

 

“Yes, you will do anything, because that is expected of slaves. And you will quickly learn to be an obedient and pleasing slave, 293. I watched you at work when you were free. I know how to punish a slave for disobedience.”

 

The girls of the coffle, myself included, had been lined up and made to kneel in the grass. We were chained by our ankles in two groups – silk girls on one side and kettle girls on the other. Julian wished to speak to us.

 

“We will soon reach the gates of Torcadino,” he explained. “That city will be your new home. It is where you will be sold.”

 

I was shaking now, my body trembling uncontrollably. I couldn’t think straight anymore; all I knew was fear – gut wrenching fear. I was going to be sold, which meant I was going to be enslaved.

 

Torcadino, on the flats of Serpeto, is a crossroads city. It is located at the intersection of various routes, primarily the Genesian, connecting Brundisium and other coastal cities with the south. Other trade routes include the Northern Salt Line and the Northern Silk Road, leading respectively west and north from the east and south, and the Pilgrim's Road, leading to the Sardar, and the Eastern Way, sometimes called the Treasure Road, which links the western cities with Ar. Traditionally, Torcadino, with its strategic location, was an ancient ally of Ar.

 

The city is famous for its aqueducts, which Dietrich of Tarnburg used to enter the city by stealth decades ago. The natural wells of Torcadino, originally sufficient for a small population, had, more than a century ago, proved inadequate to furnish sufficient water for an expanding city. Two aqueducts now brought fresh water to Torcadino from more than a hundred pasangs away, one from the Issus, a north westwardly flowing tributary to the Vosk and the other from springs in the Hills of Eteocles, southwest of Corcyrus. The remote termini of both aqueducts were defended by guard stations. The vicinities of the aqueducts themselves are usually patrolled and, of course, engineers and workmen attend regularly to their inspection and repair. 

 

“This will be a shock to some of you, more than others,” he said with a nod towards me. “Six of you are currently branded. All seven of you will be branded before we enter the city. There will no longer be any difference between you on that score.”

 

There was a ripple of laughter from the girls as they heard that. I sank, weak, to the grass. They could beat me for doing so, but I didn’t have the strength to kneel. I was numb with despair. 

 

“I am keeping Beth, but the rest of you will be sold on one of the common auction blocks in the city. New lives await you all.”

 

There was no pointless work for us that day. We were simply loaded onto the flat bed wagon one at a time and chained in place to the central rail. At no point was there any opportunity for me to try and escape. They were both surprisingly professional about it all. 

 

“I know it is a shock,” said Beth, kindly, “but in time you will adjust. We always do. And in time you will grow to love your brand, and what it proclaims about your sexuality to men. You will hunger for men. You will need their touch. You will beg their touch. I know you don’t believe it now, 293, but that day will come.”

 

Earlier that night I had knelt before Julian with an appeal. “Keep me! Please don’t sell me!” I feared a new life as some drudge of a slave in the city of Torcadino more than I did being Julian’s slave.

 

“I have no use for a pot and kettle girl,” he said as he gazed at me.

 

“Keep me for use in the furs,” I sobbed.

 

“What are you saying? You are not a silk slave. You are proud, haughty, confident in your freedom. You thought you were my mistress.”

 

“Please, keep me! Let me squirm and writhe in your furs! Use me as you wish, please, Master.” I said.

 

“Master? Well, I have not heard that word from your lips before.”

 

I pressed my forehead to his feet “Master me. Make me your slave. Don’t sell me please!”

 

“The proud, haughty, Amicia Katares, begging to be a personal slave of the man who was her silk slave. How times change.”

 

“I beg your collar. Do not sell me in Torcadino! Please!”

 

“I have no use for a pot and kettle girl who knows nothing of pleasing a man. You will be sold in Torcadino.”

 

And that was the end of my audience with him before I was chained in the girl wagon. 

 

 

 

“What do you think 293 will sell for?” asked a girl that night.

 

“Very little. Men in Torcadino are said to know a cheap useless girl when they see one. I doubt she’ll sell for more than ten coppers. She has no skills worth mentioning.”

 

“She can clean pots!” laughed one of the silk girls.

 

“If she’s whipped regularly.”

 

I lay there in the darkness, by the side of the wagon, not speaking, for what they said was true. Without any training, without any certified slave heat, I would be a routine sale, fetching ten coppers at best. There would be many girls entering the market now, as soldiers looted the countryside throughout this region. None of those girls would have any slave skills, and I would be in among them. Prices would be depressed for unskilled slaves. We might be sold in bulk lots. Sometimes, no matter how proud you may be, reality forces you to take account of your situation. I was going to be enslaved and sold. That was a statement of fact. The question was, what sort of sale did I want? Did I want the brutal hard work and drudgery of a common pot and kettle girl, or did I want to strive to fetch a better price on the auction block, and with it, a better level of slavery? I had often said to girls that I sold, your fate is in your own hands. I told them that, yes, they could walk onto that auction block numb with shock, and stand there like a statue, crying, but ultimately they would regret their choice in the long run when they found themselves bleaching leather hides in urine pits from dawn ‘til dusk, the skin on their hands becoming cracked and sore from the work. 

 

“Display yourself well on the block, and you may find a personal collar around your neck. You may become the property of a master who cherishes and prizes you above all his other possessions. But it is your choice.”

 

Most of the girls that I sold understood that and tried their best. I profited, of course, from higher sale prices, but some of the girls benefited too from better lives in better collars.  

 

I knew now that this was the question I now faced. What sort of slavery did I want?

 

That next morning I knelt before Beth, as we waited to be fed, for I had made my decision.

 

“Mistress, please teach me how to move like a slave. I don’t want to be sold for a handful of copper tarsks. Show me how to please men on the auction block.”

 

Beth smiled and knelt down beside me. “What has changed, 293?”

 

I cried softly. “I want a personal master. A personal collar. If I must be a slave, then I do not want to be a pot and kettle girl.”

 

“But you would be subject to a master’s lusts, 293! Consider your dignity. Surely it would be better to be forgotten and ignored in some workhouse, a dirty rag about your hips, your hair shorn for making catapult rope, each time it grows, safe in the knowledge that no man will bother to touch you while there are beautiful kajirae to choose from?”

 

“Please, mistress, you said I was kind to you when I owned you. Be kind to me now. Show me how to move and walk before a man.”

 

“We don’t have much time left,” said Beth. “I don’t know how far it is to the gates of Torcadino, but we will be there soon.”

 

“Teach me anything. Anything is better than nothing! I can’t walk onto the auction block as I am. I am stiff, clumsy, I do not know how to exhibit myself.”

 

“Of course you do, 293. Firstly, you are a woman, and the knowledge is embedded in your body. You simply have to submit to the knowledge of who you are. And secondly, you have exhibited slaves many times. You have seen them move. You know what they did to attract bids on themselves.”

 

I nodded. That at least was true.

 

“Practice what you have seen them do before. Practice the way they walked and displayed themselves on the block. I will watch and correct you to make you better. I will not send you out onto the block as you are now. I am not cruel.”

 

And so that morning, much to the annoyance of the silk girls, Beth watched me move, walk and position myself as if I were on an imaginary auction block, looking down at a throng of men with money in their pouches. I was stiff and clumsy to begin with, but gradually I remembered how I had seen slaves move before on the block as I had observed their sales. And to my surprise, as I began to move that way myself, my body began to relax and my limbs began to move intuitively. As Beth smiled and nodded in approval, I began to walk better, as a slave might, with a subtle rotation of the hips, and a turn of my wrist and ankles. I learned to walk a number of paces and then, on the ball of my left foot, turn smoothly and gracefully, tilting my head, smiling, flicking my hair back, revelling in imaginary eyes locked upon my naked body.

 

“Men will bid more for a girl who seems happy. They will bid more for a girl who seems to want their touch.”

 

I began to practice walking towards Beth, displaying myself before her, turning to the left, turning to the right, placing a hand on a hip, smiling, running my hands through my hair, meeting her eyes briefly with a look of longing, and then lowering them out of respect, but raising them again for a moment with a look of need and hunger. 

 

“A slave is a sexual woman, and she needs a master. Show the men you have that need. Show them that they will regret not buying you if they don’t outbid the man next to them.”

 

Julian came out to watch, and he seemed fascinated by the transformation in me. He applauded with his hand against his shoulder as I moved towards him, displayed myself, and then spoke the words, “buy me, Master, I beg you! Buy 293!” 

 

“I may regret selling you,” he said with a smile. He placed his hands on my body, and this time I knew to smile and move to his touch, not away from it. I knew to purse my lips in a kissable pout and when he tasted me, I squirmed in delighted fashion to his touch, rendering him stiff through his tunic.

 

“She learns quickly.” He said.

 

“She always knew what to do, Master,” said Beth, proudly. “She is a slaver, remember? She has trained slaves to act this way. But also, she is a natural slave with deeply supressed needs and desires. Once she stops fighting those needs, her body knows what it must do, what it wants to do.”

 

“Good.” He caressed my bottom and then stroked my breasts.

 

“Don’t sell me, Master!” I said, meaning every word of it. “I can be your hot slut.”

 

“I have a hot slut,” said Julian. “I am not a man whose lifestyle can accommodate owning lots of slaves.”

 

“Take me to your furs, Master. Let me show you how well I can please you.”

 

Julian laughed. “I will regret selling you, in time, but I have to be practical.”

 

And then, despite my pleas, he sent me back to Beth. I felt rejected. Why did he not want me? I thought I was pretty, beautiful, even. I knew I had a slave-like body. That is why I had gone to such extremes to hide my curves and my breasts before now. And yet, Julian did not want to keep me. I didn’t know how I felt about this, truly. I should be relieved that a man didn’t want to keep me in his collar, and yet, what did that mean for my future? Was it possible that I was undesirable, and that no man would want me in his collar? That was a frightening thought, for I would still remain a slave, regardless. 

 

Beth seemed to read my thoughts as I knelt before her again.

 

“It means nothing,” she said. “Our master doesn’t want the responsibility of more than one slave. Other men will desire you, I promise. Just smile when you present yourself on the sale block, and show them you have slave needs.”

 

“Do I have slave needs?” I said, my voice trembling as I spoke.

 

“I think you do. You will blossom into your slavery. You will open up to a man’s touch like a spring flower.”

 

I despised myself for feeling this way. I was going to debase myself before men to save myself from a life of enslaved drudgery. And in exchange I was going to be worse than a whore. I was going to act like the very women I routinely whipped and sold. 

 

That day we saw mounted tarnsmen in flight again.

 

“Do you think there has been another battle, yet?” I asked Beth as we law the late afternoon shadows lengthen. 

 

“Possibly. Cornelius Piu will have reached the Issus river several days ago. Our city may well have suffered a second defeat by now.”

 

I could barely comprehend the ramifications of a second defeat. If we lost a further four cohorts, we would be left vulnerable in the South. We would have to fight defensively from that point, surrendering all initiative to our enemy. But we didn’t know for certain that there had been a second battle, only that Cornelius would have pressed for one. Surely our general would have seen the danger and would have retreated, to buy some time.  

 

Two days later, with the gates of Torcadino shortly in sight, Beth told me I would be enslaved that afternoon.

 

If you are a woman, then perhaps like me, you tell yourself that slavery is something that could never happen to you. After all, you live within the secure walls of a great city, and you obey the law. You comport yourself with dignity and chaste sobriety. How could you ever find yourself with a brand seared into your flesh? It’s unthinkable. Only one in fifty women are slaves. The odds are always in your favour. And yet…

 

“What will happen?”

 

“You will kneel in the grass before your master and you will proclaim yourself ‘la kajira’, and then you will be branded on the left thigh with the kef.”

 

Beth waited in silence as fresh tears flooded my eyes. Her features softened a little and she lowered her voice. “I’m going to tell you something now, Amicia, something that I’d be whipped for telling you, if anyone found out.”

 

She had called me Amicia… I looked up with some vague sense of hope.

 

“I spoke to our master last night. We spoke about you. I have convinced him not to sell you in Torcadino, at least, not immediately…”

 

I gasped, and felt that sense of rising hope.

 

“Don’t say anything!” she warned. “But he is going to keep you. You’re not supposed to know.”

 

“Thank you! Oh Mistress, thank you!” I kissed her hand repeatedly, and meant every word of what I said. I had feared the auction block! Every girl does on her first time standing there. 

 

“You will have a chance to prove to your master that you are worth keeping.”

 

“I will, I will! I’ll be the perfect slave!” I was babbling now.

 

“Those are just words, Amicia, but you’ll have to be that perfect slave from now on. You will be kept under strict discipline. The expectations will be high. He is of two minds about his. It won’t take much for him to choose to sell you instead.”

 

“Thank you, thank you, thank you.” I was crying again, but tears born of relief rather than sorrow. 

 

“Our master will be setting up home in Torcadino. He has enough money to do that. He will work again as a metal worker, and there will be much to do, during the day, as well as the softer duties at night. You will obey me as first girl.”

“I will! I will, Mistress!” I sobbed. I wasn’t going to be sold! I couldn’t believe my luck! 

 

“I will be hard to please. You will have to learn quickly and well. There will be no second chances after this one. But life will be easier for you with your current master, and of course me.” She smiled and stroked my cheek. “I wanted you to know this. It will make your branding easier for you.”

 

I nodded quickly. “Mistress, I am very grateful.”

 

“Good. I think you will make a wonderful slave, Amicia, in time. And I confess, I will enjoy having you as a chain sister.”

 

She rose then and looked down at me. “Dry your tears. In just a few ahn you will be a kajira.”

 

The remaining hours ticked slowly by. I was still terrified at having the brand seared into my flesh, but at least now I knew I didn’t have to face a further terror of being exhibited on a sawdust covered auction block to apathetic men who were probably only there to buy cheap girls in bulk and then ship them to foreign workhouses where they might spend their lives toiling away for twelve hours a day. Instead, I would be a personal slave, in the collar of a man who… I blushed thinking about it… was not undesirable in the furs. Would it be so bad? I thought back to the ecstasy I had experienced when Julian had… yes, I admit it now, mastered me… to have those nights again would be pleasurable, to say the least.

 

But once I was branded there would be no going back. I would be a slave forever, and Julian could sell me at a moment’s whim. And there was no guarantee he would want to bed me in the furs, for he seemed very fond of Beth. But surely he had taken pleasure with me that night when I had unchained him from beneath the wagon and brought him into my tent? I couldn’t be mistaken in my memory of that night. His own cries of passion had been, well, intense. 

 

Perhaps he did want me? I gazed down at my body, assessing my slave curves and my breasts. Did he find me desirable? How much convincing did he need from Beth? I didn’t know. He had made no attempt to bed me since my abduction. If anything, he gave the impression of being disinterested. But I would beg him now, crawl to him, serve him, be his pleasure slave, if it meant escaping the auction block. Better a master like Julian than the fear of the unknown, for there were many, many fates far worse than this one. 

 

That afternoon the branding iron was placed in the red hot coals to heat up as I knelt on the grass, trembling. I knew this would be unbelievably painful. I had heard enough girls scream in the past to know that for sure. The other girls had gathered to watch, but their expected taunts and jeers hadn’t materialised. Seeing my abject terror, even the cruellest of them found it difficult to taunt me now. They had all been here, in this place, before, and they knew what must be going through my mind as I stared at the insulated handle, rising up from the coals. Nearby was a fallen log with ropes tied to it. When the time came, once I had proclaimed myself slave, I would be tied securely to that log, with my left leg tied tightest of all. The brand has to burn cleanly into the flesh, and for that to happen the left leg must be absolutely immobile. 

 

“It is time,” said Beth, eventually. My mouth felt dry. My stomach churned, even though I had eaten nothing at all today. Beth had refused me food, knowing there was a risk of me throwing it up in terror. 

 

Julian approach, dressed in his slaver robes. He had no idea that Beth had confided in me that he would not be selling me in Torcadino after all. 

 

“Proclaim yourself slave, 293.”

 

This was it. The moment I spoke those words, I would become a slave. Once spoken, those words cannot be taken back by a woman. They seal her fate. 

 

It was hard to speak; my mouth felt so dry.

 

“La kaj…” I never got to finish the sentence. A javelin suddenly struck Julian between his shoulder blades, and, with immense force, penetrated his body, pushing through, emerging below his rib cage, impaling him, propelling him forward, and embedding itself deep into the ground, several inches past the metal tip. He seemed to kneel there now, his body hanging on the javelin shaft, slowly sliding down it, in tiny increments, as if he was lowering his head to my feet. 

 

I think Julian was dead in an instant. His eyes widened and his mouth twisted into a rictus of shock, but he hadn’t even had a chance to scream.

 

And then we saw him – the tarnsman, coming down from the clouds, with the sun at his back, swooping down in a power dive. The javelin had been propelled not just by the strength of his right arm, but also by the velocity of his descent. When thrown like that, by a swooping tarnsman, a javelin can strike its target with the force of a ballista. 

 

Suddenly everyone was screaming. The tarnsman levelled up, several feet from the ground, and then his terrifying tarn swept through the camp, beating its wings. He seized the first girl he could reach, by her hair, and threw her up onto the front of his saddle. While the tarn was still flying level to the ground, and now turning in a circle, he clasped the girls left wrist in a slave bracelet that was already locked to a large slave ring at the side of the saddle. With the girl now chained by a single wrist, he released her and steered the bird in a savage arc, flying straight towards two other girls who were fleeing close by. He caught up with them in an instant, the great bird knocking one to the ground, while the tarnsman seized the second by her hair, the way he had seized the first. She too was locked by a single wrist to another heavy steel ring stitched to his saddle leather. The captive girls were screaming, and clinging to the steel ring with both their hands as they were carried relentlessly along by the flight of the war bird. 

 

I was running without even thinking. We were all running! There was another loud tarn cry, as a second tarn rider emerged from the clouds. It too swooped down in a power dive, ready to level off and hunt girls at will. Every girl was running with no thought for anyone but herself, and we were all equal targets. 

 

But I, out of pure luck, was close to a large thicket of sa-tarna grain with its tall yellow stalks rising several feet high. I threw myself into that immense thicket as the first tarn rider wheeled away from me, intent on pursuing a silk girl elsewhere. I crawled quickly into the centre of the stalks and when I must have crawled thirty or so yards I lay down and froze, not moving, but praying to the Priest Kings that I might be invisible to the tarn riders. 

 

Time passed, the screaming fell to silence, but still I did not move. I felt paralysed. Gradually I became aware of the sun setting, and only then, only as darkness began to fall, and the three moons of Gor rose on the horizon did I dare lift myself slowly from the sa-tarna thicket. 

 

I was alive. I was free. I was alone, and I was mortally terrified.

 

 

((Amicia’s story, and that of the Argentum-Corcyrus conflict, continues and concludes in Legions of Gor))