Kajirus of Gor Chapter Twenty Six

“Builder takes Rider of the High Tharlarion in my next move,” said Chelsea as she moved her coloured Kaissa piece five squares in a straight line to now threaten my Tharlarion piece. “You can only save your High Tharlarion by sacrificing another Spearman,” she remarked, looking pleased with herself. Little by little I was losing Spearmen pieces at an alarming rate. Chelsea seemed less interested in winning the game outright, and more interested in toying with me, delivering a victory of a thousand cuts, stripping me, piece by piece, until my Home Stone became vulnerable to her concentrated attacks. “You really are quite useless at this, as with so many other things,” she added as she sat back against the plum cushions on her couch. She wore a silk slip that was rucked up around her thighs, while I was naked. 

 

Kaissa uses a red and yellow hundred-squared board, with ten ranks and ten files. This is different from the normal Earth chessboard of sixty-four squares with eight ranks and files, and in Kaissa, there are twenty pieces to each side as opposed to sixteen in Earth chess. One side is typically yellow, while the other is red. The main pieces in standardized Kaissa include six Spearmen, a Ubar and Ubara, two Tarnsman, two Scribes, two Riders of the High Tharlarion, two Initiates, two Physicians and two Builders. Pieces in other versions of Kaissa included pieces such as Assassins and Spear Slaves, but Argentum typically follows the rules of the game set down and played in the city of Ar, as that city is the traditional ally of Argentum. 

 

The object of the game is the capture of your opponent's Home Stone. The Home Stone is not officially a Kaissa piece as it cannot capture other pieces, though it is able to move one square at a time for defensive purposes. It does not start on the board but must be placed on or before the tenth move. Such a placement counts as your move for that turn, and it must be placed somewhere on your rear rank. Thus, you cannot place the Home Stone before your second turn as your rear rank is full of pieces on your first turn. The timing and positioning of the Home Stone has many strategies and disagreements. Some players favour early or late placements. Others favour corner or central placements. The corner placement exposes the Home Stone to only three lines of attack, but limits its mobility. A more central placement exposes it to five lines of attack, but provides it with more movement options. Chelsea often favoured a late placement of her Home Stone, and whenever she did finally position it, she would mimic dramatic music from some film or other. Despite the fact that she was my mistress, capable of whipping me should she so choose, small things like that made me smile, and to her credit I think she made those dramatic sounds precisely to make me laugh. 

 

“Here comes the Home Stone! Dah dah, da, dah-dah!” she would sing, bouncing it across the couch, as if it were galloping across a sa-tarna field, or performing the Imperial March from Star Wars. 

 

Yellow moves first which is a major advantage. This is similar to the advantage of white which moves first in Earth chess. Players of equal strength, when they move second, usually try for a draw. Who plays Yellow can be decided in various ways, though the most usual method is to guess which hand holds a certain colour Spearman. Chelsea considered herself vastly superior to me, in the game of Kaissa, amongst other things, and so she would always let me go first. Lately she had even been allowing me an additional free move to begin with, for all the good it ever did me. 

 

“I didn’t see that coming,” I admitted.

 

Chelsea laughed and jabbed me in the arm with her small fist. “No, you didn’t. I think we’ve found something else in which women are the superior sex, Roland. Like so many other things.”

 

“Kaissa champions are generally male,” I remarked, as I gazed on the playing board that lay between us on the spacious couch. The Caste of Players are proud men, and they will often carry their wallet, or leather bag, filled with their Kaissa pieces slung over their left shoulder like a warrior would carry his sword. They do not train women to play the game.

 

“Only because the caste of players refuse to permit their women to practise the game. They fear what might happen if we did.” Chelsea lay back and regarded me, thoughtfully. “Women are clearly superior to men in all respects, save for a few minor physical details.”

 

I didn’t personally think the physical differences between men and women were really all that minor, at all. In a pre-technological age such as modern Gor, they mattered considerably. This was a world where brute strength was the reason why men tended to hold a whip, and women tended to wear steel collars. Yes, Chelsea was a Free Woman who was entitled to own a silk slave, but this was a status granted to her by men, and the fact was, men could change that status without too much trouble. Free Women were only free on the planet Gor, so long as men permitted it. 

 

“You’re thinking of your next move?” she asked.

 

“I am, Mistress.’ I studied the board. Chelsea’s pieces were red, while mine were yellow. There were more red pieces on the board now than yellow ones. Chelsea had decided to teach herself Kaissa – the great Gorean board game that superficially resembles Earth Chess, though with a larger playing surface. Goreans revere the art of Kaissa almost as much as they revere the Priest Kings in their shadow realm in the Sardar mountains. Their fascination with the game exceeds the fascination that many Englishmen have with football.   

 

“Let me save you some time. You can either lose a Rider of the High Tharlarion, or a Spearman. The choice before you should be evident enough. Kiss my foot, Roland.”

 

I kissed her foot, and saw her sigh.

 

“I am looking for some long term strategy that may benefit me, even if I have to lose my High Tharlarion, Mistress.”

“Good luck with that, silk slave.” She seemed very pleased with herself. “I’m way ahead of you.”

 

And she undoubtedly was. Chelsea had a natural aptitude for Kaissa. She was better than me. She learned quickly. Gorean men would probably be quite annoyed and frustrated at how good she was at playing the game, with just a few months’ practice. 

 

“A woman can achieve so much if she sets her mind to things.”

 

“I am sure that is true, Mistress.”

 

Chelsea reclined against her plump cushions and parted her thighs. “Make yourself useful while you ponder your great strategy, Roland.” With her left hand she pulled the hem of her silk slip a little further past her thighs, revealing the moist lips of her aroused sex. I knew what I had to do. I had done it often now. I felt a sense of arousal at being commanded by my beautiful mistress to please her. I leaned forward and touched those lips with my tongue, licking and kissing.

 

“Oh!” she gasped and parted her thighs further. “Oh, yes! Roland!” She loved me doing this. It was noticeable now that I had been in her collar for so many months, that I was no longer routinely shackled to the slave ring at the headboard when we played together. I was obviously meek and tame and easy to control. If and when Chelsea wanted to ride me, she would still chain my hands, so that I might not, in my eagerness, forget my place and reach up and hold her. That she would not allow. Not during the act of sex, anyway. Often afterwards she might snuggle into my arms, and drift off to sleep, but such contact was never permitted during the congress itself. But at times like this, as we lay on the couch in the afternoon, she would leave me unbound so that I might serve her with my tongue.

 

I lapped and kissed and felt her writhe with her back against the soft surface of the couch. I felt her back arch, and I felt her raise her arms and, with her right hand, grip the slave ring as she felt her body tense and quiver. I don’t think she was consciously aware that she was gripping a slave ring, so lost was she in the physical sensations coursing through her body, but grip it, she did.

 

Some Goreans consider such an act shameful. For a Free Woman to grip an iron slave ring is almost an admission that she is a secret slave. I am not Gorean, and so I didn’t judge her for it.

 

I brought my mistress to an orgasm and watched her body convulse. She then lay on her back, breathless , her hands now gripping and ungripping the sheets as she sighed, enjoying the ripples that follow a female orgasm. 

 

“I am going to sacrifice my Spearman,” I said after a while.

 

“I knew you would,” she said. Her eyes were closed. She lay on her back beside me, momentarily content with her world.

 

A thought flashed into my mind, unbidden. I could seize those lovely slender wrists, turn her onto her belly, and take her for my own pleasure.

 

But just as quickly, the thought disappeared, and I was left feeling confused, thinking such thoughts, for she was my mistress. 

 

“I think you will win this game, Mistress.” I tried not to think of her writhing helplessly beneath me, crying out as I thrust deep inside of her sex. 

 

“Like so much else in life, silk slave.”

 

Any concern I had that that Chelsea had been rash in investing in the grain shipment, had turned out to be foolish. The grain shipment came in on time, the grain was sold, and from her initial 5 silver tarsk investment, she made a gross profit, on top, of another seventeen silver and thirty nine copper tarsks.

 

She looked so smug when she showed me the bank draft for the money. 

 

“Who was right?” she asked me, as I knelt before her. 

 

“You were, Mistress.”

 

“Fetch the whip,” she said. I looked up in surprise. The Gorean five bladed whip hung on the wall. She had never used it on me. She had only used her lighter switch on me twice, and both those times she had been upset by something other than me. 

 

“Mistress?” 

 

“Fetch the whip, Roland. Kneel with it, kiss it, and then give it to me.”

 

I did so. This whip would hurt very much. Chelsea was a fraction of my size, my strength. It would be simple for me to overpower her, to tie her to the slave ring on her bed, to threaten her, instead, with the whip, but of course I didn’t dare. I was conditioned now to respond quickly to her commands. I was her property, and the full weight of Gorean law was on her side. 

 

“Kneel to the whip,” she said as she flexed her wrist, her right hand now holding the patent leather handle.

 

I did so, kneeling as a slave does when he is ready to receive his punishment. I felt the whip strands touch my back, and I felt the strands drawn lightly across my skin. I tensed and waited for the first inevitable blow. It would hurt horribly.

 

“You dared to object,” said Chelsea. “You dared to correct your mistress.”

 

“I am sorry, Mistress. I was worried for you!”

 

“I know, my sweet little silk slave. I do appreciate that, but you dared to correct your mistress. You mustn’t do that. Kelapina would expect me to punish you.”

 

Again, I felt the strands of the whip slither across my skin as she readied herself for the first swing.

 

I knelt, my muscles tensed, not knowing when the first blow might come. I tried to ready myself for what would be shock and trauma. 

 

“And now you have felt the whip,” she said, drawing the leather strands away from me. “I can honestly tell Kelapina you have felt the whip.”

 

I let out a tense breath. I wasn’t going to be whipped?

 

“Be careful in future, Roland. I will whip you if I have to.” And then she placed the whip between my teeth and told me to return it to the wall hooks.

 

And so, Chelsea now had some money that wasn’t simply money loaned to her. She felt reassured in her ability to be a shrewd business woman on Gor. She went out, flushed with success, and spent considerable sums on fabrics, commissioning a seamstress to create fabulous new gowns and robes for her wardrobe. She had new furniture built, and soft drapes and cushions from Turia, and expensively crafted lamps imported from the Tahari. Our apartment now looked very comfortable indeed.

 

“Our lives will be good, Roland. We will live well on Gor.”

 

And she did indeed buy me a prettier collar. 

 

I asked her sometime later whether she had now repaid the loan to Kelapina, and she laughed when I asked that question. Ruffling my (now longish) hair with her fingers, she replied, “it’s just as well you’re a slave, Roland, with a mistress to look out for you, for you don’t have the first idea how to run a business. The last thing you do is repay an interest free loan. No, you keep that loan and use the money to increase your personal wealth. I’ve invested in another grain shipment, with a much larger investment this time around. So, you see, Roland. Your mistress will be able to take good care of her silk slave.”

 

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Several days later I sat beside Amara again and asked her opinion on a matter that had been on my mind of late.

 

“I could be wrong, but I think my mistress may be having a secret relationship with a man.”

 

“Surely not,” said Amara as she lay on her back on the grassy slope of the city park. Slaves have a certain freedom within their own city quarter to come and go, according to the whims of their owners. In the course of our chores we were permitted to spend time alone or together. “You’ve seen this?”

 

“Of course not. I don’t think my mistress wants me to know. In fact, I doubt she wants anyone to know she has a…” I smiled softly, “a gentleman caller…”

 

“Hmm, I can understand that. Free Women like their privacy and modesty when courting. So, tell me more.”

 

“There’s not a lot to tell, truthfully, it’s just the conclusion I come to. She’s been spending less time with her Free Women friends of late. I’ve noticed that. At first I thought there might have been some falling out. You know how Free Women are?”

 

“Oh yes,” Amara turned onto her side and smoothed the lovely white tunic about her upper body. “Free Women don’t really have friends. They bitch and they gossip behind one another’s backs.”

 

That is very true, on Gor at least. Free Women socialise with one another, but it is a false and insincere form of friendship. I suspect many Free Women are actually very lonely. Slaves, on the other hand, develop deep and meaningful friendships between their bond sisters. There is nothing insincere about the friendship between two or more slave girls. A psychologist making a study of Free Women on Gor, and then kajirae, could no doubt theorise the difference a collar and brand makes on a girl. I’m not a psychologist, and so all I can say is what I’ve observed in the many months I’ve lived on this planet, in the city of Argentum. 

 

“Quite. Well, she hasn’t been meeting with them quite so much. But she still sends me out during the day.”

 

“Your chores?”

 

“Yes, I suppose, though on certain days she pointedly arranges things so that my chores take longer.”

 

“Oh?” I could see the lovely kajira was interested. Her eyes sparkled.

 

“She tells me to come back late in the day. I don’t have a key to the apartment, of course, so she generally tells me when she’ll be back home, so I know when to return. On the days when she’s not socialising with her neighbours, she tells me to come home later than normal.”

 

“So she’s busy?”

 

“Yes, but not with her friends. I suspect that someone calls upon her on those days.”

 

“How exciting. A man?”

 

“I can’t see how it might be anyone else. Why else the secrecy?”

 

Amara nodded. “It could be true. And yet it’s rather bold to allow a man in to her apartment. Her neighbours would consider it scandalous.”

 

“Which is why I think she receives her caller on the days when she knows the other Free Women will be in a café together. They will not see the caller arrive. Nor possibly leave.”

 

“And you think she…” Amara considered this, “couches with this man?”

 

“That’s the strange bit. I don’t actually think that. Which is what makes it all so weird. When I do return that day, she seems particularly keen in the evening to put me to use. It doesn’t make sense that she’d want to use her silk slave if she had been sharing a couch with a free man only hours earlier. She would be, well, already satisfied in that department.”

 

“True.” Amara plucked a few long blades of grass and wound them about her finger like a ring. “You’re certain she puts you to use on the days when you think she has a man calling at her apartment?”

 

“Yes, I’ve noticed it. She climaxes quicker on those nights, too.”

 

“So, maybe she has a man calling upon her, and they don’t have sex, and she’s left excited and unfulfilled by his visit?”

 

“Perhaps. But in that case, if they’re not having sex, why meet in secret in her apartment? Why not meet in a café somewhere, or walk together in a park, if all they are going to do is talk and hold hands?”

 

“A café is public. She might be seen and observed.”

 

“It is public, yes, but no one would know who she was. The mystery of the veils, remember? The anonymity of the robed Free Woman?”

 

Amara nodded again. “You’re right. It does seem strange. I don’t know what to say, Roland. Perhaps she will soon be free companioned?”

 

“That’s what worries me. What happens to me then? Few Gorean men would tolerate their free companion owning a silk slave.”

 

“Oh!” Amara touched her mouth with her left hand. “I hadn’t thought of that. I can see why you’re worried.”

 

“She might be forced to sell me.” I considered that. Starting my life on Gor over again, with a different mistress. I didn’t want a different mistress. For better or worse I wanted to be owned by Chelsea. “I don’t want to be sold,” I said.

 

“You love your mistress.”

 

“It’s complicated. I don’t love her.”

 

“You do. You love her collar.” Amara nodded to herself. “It happens to kajirae, too. I love my collar.” She touched it with her left hand.

 

“I don’t want to be a slave.”

 

“But you are a slave, Roland, and you will be a slave until you die. No woman is ever going to free you. Only a fool frees a slave.”

 

“Then I want to be owned by Chelsea. But if she is free companioned, she may not have that choice anymore.”

 

“What are you going to do?”

 

“I don’t know.” I felt powerless. I had no rights. If Chelsea wished to sell me, here was nothing I could do about it. “Perhaps I should hide myself within sight of the building one morning, and wait to see who this man is?”

 

Amara nodded. “At least then you will know. I’m sorry, Roland. I know how scared I would be if I thought my master might sell me. Can I help?”

 

“I think I can lurk and hide on my own.”

 

“It might be easier with a friend by your side.”

 

“A friend?” I gazed at the lovely Indian girl in her brief tunic and collar.

 

“That’s all we can be, Roland. We are both property, and our owners would not permit us to mate. Even if they did, we would probably be hooded, and we wouldn’t even be aware of who we were with.”

 

Slaves are livestock, and their mating and breeding is carefully controlled and regulated. It is the primary reason why a kajirus is forbidden from touching a kajira. Having said that, most kajirae despise male slaves and would consider it a form of punishment to be touched or taken by one. Amara of course was an Earth girl, which accounted for her different attitude.   

 

“But I think we are friends. If you want a friend?”

 

“I do.”

 

“Then I’ll hide with you. We’ll be a slave team.”

 

“Thank you.” I glanced quickly around and, seeing no one watching us, briefly touched Amara’s arm with my fingertips. 

 

I only had to wait three days. That morning I was sent out to the market, and told to carry out a series of chores, carefully devised, such that I would be kept reasonably busy throughout much of the late morning through to late afternoon. It was almost as if the chores were arranged so that Chelsea would know where I might be at any particular time of day, if she wanted to find me.

 

Obviously we wouldn’t have time to watch the building entrance all day, not if I had any hope of carrying out my chores, but I reasoned that we wouldn’t have to wait long. Whoever was going to arrive would probably do so before any of the Free Women living in the building might themselves emerge and be around to notice a man walking up the stairs to Chelsea’s apartment. There is, maybe, half an ahn early in the morning, during which time the building is quiet. This is followed by a period between the eighth and ninth ahn, when women come and go, after which the building is generally quiet again for a while, because they are meeting up for lunch at a café or at one another’s homes. By the thirteenth ahn, the building would see further comings and goings, and would then settle down again with little movement by the beginning of the fifteenth ahn. This was when a man might most likely leave the building, unobserved. Interestingly, I had been told not to return before the sounding of the sixteenth ahn. This is commonplace for slaves, none of whom would be trusted with a key to their owner’s property, and thus the slave would have to know when it was appropriate to return, so that his or her owner might let them in. Slaves are discouraged from loitering around in front of a building waiting for their master or mistress to return. Free Women do not like the sight of kajirae in front of their house, and men don’t want to have to look at a silk slave. 

 

Time keeping in Argentum is relatively easy, as each city quarter sounds a bell to mark the passing of each ahn. As on Earth, the bells will ring out a number of times equal to the ahn in question.  

 

“I think the man may be a warrior,” said Amara as she knelt down beside me. We were hiding ourselves behind some crates, at the entrance to an alleyway. The position afforded us a good view of the front of the building.

 

“Why do you think that?” Amara knelt close to me, close enough that our bodies brushed one another as we moved. 

 

“Oh, if I were a Free Woman, and I was having a man secretly visit, I would want him to be a warrior dressed in scarlet. He would get my juices flowing.”

 

I smiled. “You really are  a slave, Amara.”

 

“That I am.” She smiled and nudged me softly with her elbow.

 

We waited for fifteen ehn. Men walked down the street from both directions, and occasionally they might glance at the building fronts, but none of them stopped at Chelsea’s building; none of them opened the front door, and none of them climbed the stairs. 

 

By now I would normally be in the market, beginning my chores. I had quite a lot to do, but there would be plenty of time. 

 

“I think he will be rich,” whispered Amara. “Your mistress would court a rich man. You’ll be able to tell from the condition of his clothes.”

 

“I hope he’s ugly,” I said. 

 

“Ooh! Roland loves mistress,” whispered Amara in her sing song voice again. “Will you be jealous if he’s handsome?”

 

I knew I would be. 

 

And then I froze.

 

No.

 

I was seeing things. I must be seeing things. 

 

Amara saw it, too, but she obviously paid it no heed. Why would she? Why would anyone?

 

I watched as the door swung open, and softly, taking cautious steps, a beautiful slave girl emerged from the building. Beside me, Amara kept glancing to the left and to the right, waiting for a man to walk towards the building. The fact that a kajira was stepping out onto the street was of no consequence to her. It was the time of day when slaves would typically be sent out on errands from their homes.

 

The slave girl was a beautiful sight in her brief white tunic, her long unbound hair, her long, naked limbs, and of course the steel collar locked around her throat. I felt the blood rush to my head as I looked at her. She glanced quickly to her left, and then her right, and only then did she quicken her step, hurry away from the building, and, suddenly smiling, move now in the opposite direction I would have taken to the market. 

 

I was looking, of course, at my mistress, Chelsea Savannah Frick, dressed in the scandalous garments and steel collar of a slave girl.