Outcast of Gor Chapter Five

 

“Do I know you, slave?” asked the Inn girl. She gazed down at a kneeling Kelsee who, under her instruction, was wrestling with the subtle complexities of performing a satisfactory nadu position. The basic position seems simple enough, and you might be forgiven for thinking so, but a girl in nadu must not be stiff, unyielding, tense; rather she must flow like water, ripple like silk. I had asked the Inn girl to teach Kelsee a few positions, as I was aware that Rolfe and the others felt I was derelict in the training of my slave, particularly when it came to serving positions.

 

“I don’t think so, Mistress,” she said, anxiously. I felt sure that Kelsee had recognised the Inn girl. I felt sure that Kelsee didn’t want the Inn girl to recognise her. That was interesting.

 

I had told Kelsee to address the Inn girl as mistress while she taught her the positions. It was the way such things were done on Gor. There is a pecking order between slaves, and girls who don’t know one another are often keen to assert their authority over their sisters in bondage. 

 

Gorean roadside Inns are common place in the countryside. They act as shelter for weary travellers, offering rooms, food, and company, and they provide protection for men and women who are understandably reluctant to camp outdoors at night. The Gorean countryside, as I’ve previously observed, can be fraught with danger. Outlaws eke out a wild existence far away from towns and cities, and although the authorities make frequent attempts to safeguard the main roads, outlaws are ever present, like wasps around a picnic table. 

 

This was the Inn of Pontius Quirinus, and like most Gorean Inns it was surrounded by a robust high wall, with sturdy double gates shod with iron bands. During the day the gates were flung wide open, but at night they were barred and locked for the protection of the guests. This afternoon we drank and ate in the courtyard of the Inn, enjoying the warmth of the sunshine.

 

“You seem familiar,” said the Inn girl. She was a slave, of course. Around her neck was a steel collar. She would instinctively call free men, master. She had chestnut brown hair, and from her accent I could tell she was American. “I feel as if I know you?

 

“You do not know me, Mistress,” said Kelsee. Her head was lowered as she trembled slightly in nadu. 

 

Her nadu was still clumsy and unappealing. I could see why Rolfe dismissed her skills as barely adequate. Kelsee would have been whipped in a paga tavern for such clumsy positioning. She needed to learn if she was to be addeemed adequate by men. I watched as the Inn girl sighed and began to correct a number of small, obvious, errors.

 

“Pay attention, Kelsee,” I said.

 

“Yes, Master!” she said, quickly. She wanted this over and done with, I think. She wanted to be away from this Inn girl that she clearly recognised.

 

It was interesting that she was scared that the Inn girl in turn might recognise her. 

 

“Your nadu is clumsy, and your body is stiff and awkward,” said the Inn girl. “Are you perhaps a stupid slave? Mentally retarded, perhaps?”

 

“No, Mistress,” said Kelsee. “But I have had little training.”

 

“Hmm.” The girl paced around the kneeling Kelsee. Nearby I sat at a table and drank a cup of wine. After having had to make do with Rolfe’s rough sul-paga for over a week, a cup of decent wine was a refreshing and welcome change. “So, you are saying I am wrong? You are saying I don’t know a stupid slave when I see one? You perhaps think I am the one who is stupid?”

 

“No, Mistress!” Kelsee seemed alarmed. “Not at all.”

 

“So I am right, then?”

 

“Perhaps, Mistress.” Kelsee wanted nothing more than to get away from this Inn girl. I think she feared being recognised. 

 

“That is a woman’s drink,” said Rolfe as he eyed my cup of wine. 

 

“Men drink wine, too.”

 

“In the decadent cities, I suppose.”

 

“I am sure I have seen you before,” said the Inn girl again. “You are a barbarian, yes? A barbarian, like me?”

 

“I am, Mistress.”

 

“What was your Home Stone, on Earth?”

 

“Pittsburgh, Mistress.”

 

Pittsburgh was the generational home of the Fricks. It is the city where they built their fortune on the steel works that bear their name. It occurred to me that Kelsee was being somewhat evasive when referring to Pittsburgh. True, she had family connections to the city, but in reality she had spent much of her life growing up in Montana and, later, upstate New York.

 

“Did you ever live in Montana?” asked the Inn girl.

 

“No, Mistress.” Kelsee looked down at the grass as she said that. I think panic was setting in. 

 

“I am sure I have seen you before. I am sure of it.”

 

I got to my feet and left the table. I approached my slave. “Kelsee, run into the Inn and fetch me another cup of wine. Table three.” The Inn girl was perhaps surprised that she hadn’t been ordered to serve. She stood there, uncertain, as Kelsee rose and hurried away. Kelsee seemed pleased to be able to leave the presence of the Inn girl.

 

“Stay,” I said, as the Inn girl was about to leave and serve another customer.

 

“Master?” she said as she dropped to her knees in a lovely nadu that my girl, sadly, wasn’t yet capable of matching.

 

“What is your name?”

 

“Cindy, Master.”

 

I smiled.

 

“And your name when you were on Earth?”

 

“Also Cindy, Master.”

 

I knew it would be. 

 

She had never seen me, of course, but I had seen her. 

 

“Tell me, Cindy, how were you enslaved? Did men, for many months, observe and stalk you? Were you secretly assessed, placed on an abduction list and then, finally, after many months, seized one night from your apartment?”

 

“No, Master. I was a wyld wyman. Do you know of us?” She recognised, I think, my own accent.

 

I nodded. “The wyld wymen of Montana. I have heard of you. Continue.”

 

“I strayed on to a ranch owned by a powerful family. I saw something on that ranch, and before I could escape, I was seen and captured by men.”

 

I remembered Cindy. I remembered how I had come across her that evening, after I had left the house, after I had punched Dexter Bannon. I had seen Hawkins and the other men take her into a cement floor outhouse where they stripped her to her underwear.

 

I had hurried back to the house to inform Chelsea. Later that night, Chelsea had assured me that she had ordered Hawkins to stop what he was doing. Chelsea had spoken to Cindy, and after some partitioning of blame, Chelsea had written Cindy a large cheque as compensation for her assault. Cindy had stayed in a guest room overnight, and in the morning had been driven inn to the nearest town.

 

Or so I had been led to believe at the time.

 

Chelsea, it seems, had lied to me. Any way I looked at it, this was a troubling development. I had assumed, until now, that Chelsea was herself essentially a victim of the monstrous Frick family. Everything she had told me had painted a vivid picture of an abusive and controlling childhood, where the Frick daughter was forever under the watchful eye of a strict Governess and the assembled matriarchy of the Grannies, and where she was kept largely ignorant of the outside world until she was old enough to mingle with girls her own age in a private school. 

 

I had never assume Chelsea was completely innocent – I’d be naïve to think that – but I wanted to believe the best in her. 

 

Was I wrong?

 

“Tell me more.”

 

“I was taken to a collection of outbuildings close to the main house,” she said. “There I was stripped, interrogated as to what I saw, and brutally raped on an old mattress they kept in one of the sheds for that purpose.”

 

Chelsea had sworn to me that the men had only set out to scare Cindy, that the men had gone no further than to strip her to her underwear. Chelsea told me she had recovered the girl safely, and had looked after her from that moment forward.

 

“They were just men?”

 

“No, not just men.”

 

My blood chilled. I glanced back at the front of the Inn. Kelsee was inside, waiting to receive another cup of wine. Kelsee would not know for sure that I had recognised Cindy. It had been dark, and I had only seen the girl from a distance, and then only for a few minutes. Kelsee couldn’t be sure that I would recognise her now in a steel collar, in a simple slave tunic, kneeling, offering to serve. I had shown no sign of recognising Cindy. None at all. 

 

Kelsee would be understandably worried that I might in fact recognise Cindy, that I might speak to her, and that I might learn the truth of what actually happened that night. She would be torn between wanting to escape the attention of the Inn girl, but would fear me being alone with the girl and remembering her face.

 

I have a very good memory for faces.

 

“Who else?”

 

“The woman of the house. I think she was a Frick daughter. She arrived after I had been raped.”

 

There was that, then. Chelsea had arrived too late to prevent the rape. I felt pleased to know that. Perhaps I had misjudged Chelsea? Perhaps she had told me the truth, as she understood it, and it was Hawkins and the men who had concealed the truth from her?

 

I wanted to believe that. I wanted to believe that Chelsea hadn’t lied to me. 

 

“She ordered the men to release you, as you were both women? As you share the same sex?”

 

“No.” Cindy’s face seemed pained from the recollection. “She was angry. She told the men they had been careless. That a guest in the house had seen them. She criticised a man called Hawkins in front of the other men. It must have been humiliating for him, to be dressed down like that by a woman, in front of his subordinates. That’s how I know this woman was important, that she must have been a Frick daughter, for she could stand there in her evening dress finery and rebuke these violent men, without a care in the world. They had to accept her sharp words.”

 

“She wasn’t angry with what they had done to you?”

 

“No. Just angry that they had been seen. She said this made things awkward for her.”

 

Awkward. 

 

“Did she say anything to you?”

 

“She called me a slut. She looked down at my body, and she called me a filthy, troublesome, little slut.”

 

I glanced back at the Inn. Kelsee would be a while before she was served. The Inn was busy today.

 

“And then?” 

 

“The woman told Hawkins to have me kennelled with the other slaves. She said the current coffle was full, but that I should be included in the next one leaving Priest’s Hill.”

 

“You weren’t released in the morning? Given money, after a good breakfast, and sent on your way?’’

 

Cindy looked surprised at the suggestion. “Why would they do that?”

 

Why indeed.

 

I had been a fool. Kelsee had lied to me. 

 

What else had she lied about?

 

“One other thing,” I said, before I released her from her serving position. “What was it that you saw on the ranch?”

 

“A monster,” she said. “Like a sasquatch. An enormous monster, talking to the men.”

 

I sat at the table again when Kelsee returned with a fresh cup of wine. I could see her eyes darting to either side, wondering where Cindy was now. She caught sight of Cindy serving at another table, and I think she breathed a sigh of relief. And then she looked at me, looked for any sign at all that I had recognised Cindy. I simply smiled at he re-appearance of my lovely slave girl, as if everything was right with the world.

 

“Your wine, Master,” she said. She now knelt in nadu as I wished. She needed some more practice. I had told her that Rolfe and the other men thought it wrong that she might serve us in Tower. They had taken me aside last night and told me that, yes, Kelsee was my slave, but it was disrespectful that I should allow her to kneel in Tower before them. I had told Kelsee that from now on she would serve men in nadu.

 

“Like a slave girl?!” she had said, alarmed at the prospect.

 

“Exactly like a slave girl,” I had said. 

 

“I didn’t like that Inn girl,” she said, as she knelt beside me. I drank my second cup of wine. 

 

“Oh?”

 

“I am glad she is gone.” She gazed at me, trying to read any tell-tale signs in my face. Did I know? I couldn’t have recognised her, could I? It was dark after all, and I had only seen her at a distance for a brief time. 

 

“I thought she was pretty,” I said.

 

“Pretty?” Kelsee shook her head. “She has thick ankles.”

 

“Her ankles were lovely,” said Rollo, listening in to the conversation.

 

“If you say so, Master,” Said Kelsee.

 

“I am glad to see your slave now kneels in nadu,” said Rolfe. 

 

“She will do so in future,” I said. 

 

Kelsee’s thighs were open before us. I suspect it made her feel very vulnerable. 

 

“Do you think that Inn girl is available for use?” I asked Kelsee.

 

“Oh no, Master!” Kelsee pressed herself to me. “She will be very busy this afternoon. There are many men here. Besides, you have me.”

 

“I do, yes, but I probably put you to use too much,” I said. “You probably tire of my lustful attention.”

 

“Oh, no, Master, not at all!”

 

“I thought she was actually very pretty,” I remarked. “Perhaps I should enquire?”

 

Kelsee was suddenly all over me, pressing soft, delicious slave kisses on my body, touching me intimately, pressing herself against me in a delightful manner.

 

“Your slave girl is suddenly hot and excited!” said a surprised Rollo. “Such slave heat!”

 

“So she is,” I said with a smile.

 

“Let Kelsee please you, Master.”

 

“But that inn  girl can probably please me in the manner of a completely wanton slut,” I suggested.

 

“As can I, Master. I can be a wanton slut, too!”

 

“You? A wanton slut?”

 

She blushed and glanced round. The Inn girl was only a mere three tables away. “I can be that, Master! I can! There are some slut like things my pride has not yet allowed me to do! Forgive me, but I have shied away from them until now. I now urgently desire to show you those things!”

 

She really didn’t want me to spend any time in private with the Inn girl.

 

“What sort of things?” I asked.

 

Kelsee blushed furiously as she leaned forward and whispered in my ear. 

 

“I think I will not bother with the Inn girl,” I said with a delighted smile. 

 

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Later that afternoon, a few ahn after our delicious lunch, we were walking past a series of rolling meadows when Rollo spotted movement to the west and swiftly alerted us. We saw a number of men in the distance, on foot, without shields, fleeing at a rapid pace. The small figures looked like combatants who were in rout. As we watched, a number of light cavalry appeared over the horizon, pursuing them at a leisurely pace. I counted seven riders on what appeared to be light riding tharlarions, not the heavy tharlarions of lance cavalry, whose purpose it is to charge and break shield walls. 

 

The high tharlarion breed is a bipedal lizard and is commonly used as a mount, generally by Gorean warriors attached as cavalry support to great armies. It's two forelegs are useless appendages which dangle, unlike the lumbering draft tharlarion that walks on all fours. The creature is classed as being carnivorous and aggressive and seems to come in two distinct sizes. These, striding across the meadow lands, were the lighter riding tharlarions which are noted for their agility and speed. As with their cousins, the draft tharlarion, the high tharlarions are known for their sluggish nervous system and their near-imperviousness to pain, which accounts for why the heavier versions can be used to charge shield walls. By the time a heavy cavalry tharlarion realises it has been stabbed repeatedly by spears, and is dying, the men carrying those spears are long since broken and ripped to pieces, or trampled into the ground. 

 

These light cavalry swiftly encircled the fleeing men and as we watched further, the riders began to shoot them with short bows. The riders were highly skilled, able to steer their mounts with their knees, while firing rapidly from the saddle to the left or the right as circumstances dictated. It was a technique made famous on Earth in centuries ago by the horsemen of the Asian steppes, amongst others. Two of the riders didn’t have bows, but carried spears instead. They seemed larger men than the mounted archers. 

 

“Any idea which cities they represent?”

 

“It is too far to identify any such colours or insignia. Be prepared to cheer for either Argentum or Corcyrus depending on who wins.”

 

I nodded. That seemed a sensible approach. To the naked eye we would obviously seem to be mercenaries operating as a free company. We would pose no immediate threat, and in fact might be persuaded to seek employment with the victorious force. 

 

“The men on foot seem doomed,” I said.

 

“I would agree with that assessment,” said Rollo. “They are caught in the open without shields, and the light riders can fire accurately while wheeling and turning. They are a rare sight.”

 

“Does Gor not have many mounted archers?”

 

“Not in central Gor, no. Perhaps, if you were to head far south, to Turia, but not here.”

 

The last two men dropped to their knees and appeared to beg quarter. They were shot dead where they knelt. 

 

“The riders do not seem to accept surrender,” I suggested.

 

“No, they do not.”

 

“Are we at risk?”

 

“Probably not. But do not make any threatening moves.”

 

“Such as?”

 

“Breathing in an arrogant manner.”

 

Great.

 

“What do we do if they choose to attack us?”

 

“Go to my pack and select a spare sword. Grip it tightly.”

 

“You think we stand a chance of rushing them before they might fire?”

 

“Of course not. Do not be ridiculous. We would all die before we even closed twelve paces. But at least if you grip a sword tightly you will go to Valhalla and feast with us in the great hall when you are dead and your mortal remains are but a pin cushion.”

 

“That’s… Wait! Did you say Valhalla? As in…”

 

“Hush. Here they come. Be prepared to cheer enthusiastically for either city.” 

 

The riders approached at a gallop, though they did not seem to be preparing their bows to fire at us. I copied Rolfe and the others who adopted harmless postures as if waiting to greet old friends. Their spears were held loosely in their left, not right hands, which is typically a sign that you have no intention of killing someone with it, though I suppose you could be left hand and surprise them; and they made no attempt to lift their shields from their backs. Although the shields were large and might provide some cover from a hail of arrows, it would only be a matter of time before the arrows found their targets. Preparing their shields, however, could be taken as a provocation by the riders.

 

“Greetings,” Rolfe called out as the tharlarion riders drew close. They fanned out into a crescent shape with a spearman on either side of the formation. 

 

And then, to our astonishment, we saw who the riders were. While the two spearmen were heavy set Gorean men, all five of the mounted archers were women!

 

“Greetings,” said a woman who seemed to be the commander of the troop. She reined in her tharlarion, fifty paces from us and leaned forward on the pommel of her saddle as her tharlarion snorted and pawed at the ground. She wore a brief long sleeved riding tunic of coarse wool, long brown hose on her legs, a scarlet cape and cap, and black boots with spurs. Her hair was tied back into a pony tail. She carried a short, yellow bow, of Ka-la-na wood, which could clear the saddle of the tharlarion from either side. A quiver of arrows, with yellow fletchings hung from the left side of her saddle. “Which city are you aligned with?” she asked.

 

“Which city are you aligned with?” said Rolfe, with a friendly, disarming tone of voice.

 

“We ride with the might of Corcyrus,” said the woman, proudly. 

 

“Hai Corcyrus!” cried Rolfe in sincere admiration. He raised his right fist in a potent salute. “Mighty are their blades!”

 

“Actually, I lie,” remarked the woman. “I ride for Argentum and hunt the warriors of Corcyrus. I suppose I must kill you all now?”

 

“Hai Argentum!” cried Rolfe, with equal sincerity, as he raised his fist in the air for a second time. “That is a relief. I hate those tarsk fuckers in Corcyrus.” He spat on the ground. “My apologies for the deception.”

 

“You are mercenaries?” she asked, with a wry smile.

 

“A Free Company, kind Lady, seeking employment. My name is Rolfe of Kassau. These are my brothers in arms.”

 

“I am no Lady, and I am very rarely considered kind,” she remarked, as the women who rode with her laughed. “My name is Livinnia, once of mighty Turia, but now the honoured Free Companion and favoured Shield Maiden of Stannis Assante, Gor’s greatest Warlord. Hai Assante!”

 

“Hai Assante!” cried her girls, each mounted on their own tharlarion, with their own ka-la-na wood bow.