Outcast of Gor Chapter Four

 

I was surprised by the change that was occurring in Kelsee as the days progressed. Gone were any thoughts of relating to me as a mistress. Gone were any pretences at dominance. Was this really the same woman who had once owned me? I began to think these changes had something to do with the steel collar locked about her neck. It seemed to me that the transformational properties of the collar acted as some form of release that bypassed the natural defences a female learned to build during her life. Her orgasms seemed to grow deeper, more fulfilling, as the days progressed. She moaned softly to my touch at night as we shared a banket under the stars. She cried out piteously as I took her, and there was no mistaking how her appetite for sex grew as she came to discover the glorious feelings that can consume a woman once she learns to submit. 

 

She kept telling me how much better the sex was now, than when she used to control such things back in Argentum.

 

It was the collar, I think. It was changing her. She could blame the collar for the way she was acting and enjoy the acts of submission with a reasonably clear conscience. More than once she would say to me, “I can’t help these feelings I have now! I wear a collar after all.” As if it was beyond the control of any woman.

 

But it was inevitable I suppose that we would eventually have our first lover’s quarrel. 

 

We lay together by the smouldering embers of the camp fire during our eighth night with the warriors. It was a still, clear night; warm, with no sign of rain. Our bellies were full, for the men had taken me out to shoot wild tarsk with a crossbow. I had enjoyed the use of the weapon and took to it with a professionalism that surprised them. 

 

“That was… a good shot,” remarked Rollo as I shot the tarsk through the side of its face. “You’ve done this before?”

 

“With another kind of projectile weapon.” Like any Brit moving to America, one of the first things I’d done on getting a working visa was to visit a shooting range and fire off all manner of rifles, hand guns and assault rifles. You don’t get to do that in the UK. Point of order to you Yanks – we Brits may shake our heads in dismay at your gun laws, but give us a chance and we’ll be like pigs in shit on one of your gun ranges. I remember the guy who ran the place asked me what sort of gun I’d like to try. All of them, was my reply. I got told off for posing with a .357 Colt Python, like I was some 1970s action hero. 

 

Tarsk cooked over a campfire tastes even better when you’ve shot it yourself. The men seemed pleased that I’d done something decidedly manly, all on my own. They toasted my kill with paga and insisted that I had the honour of carving the meat, which I did. 

 

Later, I curled up under a blanket with my lovely slave girl, feeling very satisfied with the day, and looking forward now to the soft pleasures that Kelsee might offer.

 

“Captive,” she said, quietly.

 

“What?”

 

“You keep calling me slave girl in private. Haven’t you noticed?” We were whispering quietly, while the men played with some dice on the other side of the camp. I had called her a slave, while we were alone, it seems. 

 

“Does it matter?”

 

“What?” she rolled her eyes and rested her head on the palm of her hand, her elbow to the ground. “That’s a joke, yes?”

“Not really.” I touched her thigh where normally a brand might be. I had been told many times before that a brand magnifies the beauty of a girl tenfold. That is probably a gross exaggeration, but I had seen Thea with her brand, and it was an exciting sight. Kelsee was beautiful, of course. But how much more beautiful would she be with a brand? It didn’t bear thinking about. 

 

But Kelsee didn’t have a brand.

 

“This is lovely, but it’s going to end when we reach Corcyrus. I’ll be free again.”

 

And just like that, the mood was ruined for me. I must have frowned for she touched the side of my face with her hand.

 

“Is something wrong?”

 

“No.” The truth was, I didn’t like to think of this ending. The last few days had been, well, idyllic; almost perfect. 

 

“I’ll be rid of this collar in Corcyrus,” she said. “Things will be different then.”

 

“Oh. How different?”

 

She smiled and kissed me. “We’ll still be together. I just won’t be your captive anymore.” 

 

Slave girl.

 

Not captive.

 

And then it hit me. I didn’t want this to end. Not really. But she was right. It would do, when we reached Corcyrus. The collar would be removed and she would be a Free Woman once more. I had promised her that much.

 

“We can still, you know…” she smiled softly as she touched my chest with her fingertips, “have fun.”

 

Fun. It was more than fun. For both of us. While she wore a collar this was all real. It was powerful. It was primal. It wasn’t something I would dismiss as merely fun. And I had seen the genuine and heartfelt way she had submitted to me; the way she surrendered to feelings she had kept deeply repressed when she had been free. She needed this as much as I did. But things wouldn’t be the same again if she wore robes and veils. 

 

How could they be?

 

“Do you want to lose the collar?” I asked.

 

She drew away from my hand. “What? What’s that supposed to mean?”

 

“Forget I asked.”

 

“No, you can’t just say that and then change the subject! Look at me, Roland, and tell me I’m not a slave.”

 

Yes, the moment was ruined. Why did she have to say that? Why did she have to use my name?

 

“Kelsee…”

 

“No, look at me and tell me I’m not a slave.”

 

My tongue froze. I couldn’t speak.

 

“Fuck this.” Kelsee slipped from the blanket. She looked angry. The men were engrossed in their dice game by the light of a lantern. They hadn’t noticed our quiet argument. 

 

“Where are you going?”

 

“You can tell the men you didn’t feel like having me tonight. Tell them you sent me away.” She picked up a spare blanket and rose to her feet. “And don’t follow me.”

 

“Come back, Kelsee. Please.”

 

But she walked away and settled down beside the baggage packs. 

 

I lay there, on my own, feeling pissed off. On the other side of the smouldering camp fire the men continued to play with their dice. I was a man on Gor. With just a few coins in my pouch I could enjoy all manner of girls in paga taverns. It was my right on this planet. I could have a different girl every night and they would all be eager and motivated to please me, for fear of the whip that hung on the alcove wall. I had permitted Kelsee to leave my furs in a strop. I had done nothing when she slid from my grasp and told me not to follow her. Did I really want her, after all, when I could enjoy so many other girls on this planet with impunity?

 

Yes, I said to myself, I did want her. She was exciting and lovely and the collar was changing her. In the furs, she was a slave girl. There was no denying that. The collar gave her the courage to be the woman she secretly knew she was. Why did I let her struggle against her needs? 

 

A Gorean would have gone after his girl. A Gorean would have dragged her back to the furs and probably lashed her for her impudence. 

 

I did nothing. 

 

Come morning, Kelsee seemed sheepish. She was lighting a fire and preparing food for breakfast, as was expected of her, and I noticed she would keep turning her head to check on me while I seemed to still be asleep. Rollo was already up and was watching her. I could see that Kelsee had folded and returned the spare blanket to the luggage pile. It seemed she didn’t want the men to know we hadn’t been sleeping together last night.

 

I lay there, still, pretending that I was asleep, but I watched her through the narrow slits of my eyes. She crouched by the fire, ready to cook eggs and bacon in a pan once we were all awake. She glanced back again and seemed nervous. 

 

I felt angry. And more than that, I felt confused. 

 

Kelsee served Rollo his breakfast. I saw him thank the girl as he ate. Kelsee’s serve was clumsy, without grace. She had no training, after all. She didn’t even kneel in nadu. I knew the men had noticed and commented on that – how my slave didn’t serve them in nadu, and how I didn’t reprimand her for it.

 

I lay there, pretending I was still asleep.

 

Kelsee knelt beside me and then, with a trace of anxiety, it seemed, she slid back under the blanket with me. I felt her body settle down beside mine. 

 

“Master,” she whispered softly. “Master, are you awake? Please, Master, speak to me? Please?”

 

“I am now,” I said. There was no warmth to my voice.

 

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I was petty and argumentative last night. Will you forgive me?”

 

“You’ve changed your tune.”

 

“I missed you last night. It felt… uncomfortable, without your arms around me. I’m sorry.” She kissed me softly, but I held myself back and didn’t respond to that kiss. I think that startled her. “Master?” Why didn’t I respond to that soft, lovely kiss? “I didn’t want to sleep alone and unprotected. I missed you. I wish…” she blushed.

 

“What?”

 

“I wish you had come after me and taken me back to your furs.”

 

“You told me not to follow you.”

 

“The truth is, I need you. And more than that, I want you. I’m scared, Roland. I’m scared if I’m alone. I don’t want to be alone on Gor. A woman can’t easily survive by herself, alone on Gor.”

 

“A slave doesn’t use her master’s name.”

 

She froze. “Master?” she said. 

 

“I don’t want you to call me by my name, Kelsee. Not while you wear a collar.” I touched it. It is exciting to touch the steel collar that is locked on a girl. 

 

She drew a breath and I felt her tremble. I took hold of her wrists. Both of them.

 

“Are you…” she gasped.

 

“Am I what?”

 

“Are you treating me as a slave?”

 

“I am.”

 

She tried to pull her wrists free, and, when she was unable to compete with my strength, she whimpered softly.

 

I recognised the look in her eyes now. She was on heat. My unexpected dominance was arousing her greatly. “You are very strong, Master. Much stronger than me.”

 

“I am, yes. I’ve been thinking last night, too, after you stormed off like you did. I can’t do half measures, Kelsee. While that collar is on you, you will relate to me as a slave girl. Nothing else. In private as well as in public.”

 

“I am so hot for you right now,” she said, trembling. 

 

“I thought you might be.”

“You have no idea.” She began to part her thighs without being told to.

 

“No,” I said, firmly.

 

“No?” she seemed surprised. 

 

“You have to serve breakfast, and then you have to tidy the camp. You have many chores. In this camp you serve as a pot and kettle slave for the men during the day. You will have to simmer and wait.”

 

“Simmer and wait!” I had never refused her before.

 

“Simmer and wait.”

 

“Oh!” She wriggled piteously. “You have no idea how much I want you to put me to use now,” she said. 

 

“I have some idea.” I touched her intimately and found her juicing with little to no stimulation. 

 

“Please.”

 

“I would put you to use as a man commonly puts a slave to use. Is that what you beg for now? Be clear.”

 

“Yes!”

 

“Kelsee, so long as you wear a collar, I will consider you to be my slave. Do you understand that?”

 

“A slave?!” She tossed her head, angrily.

 

“That means from now on you are under full slave discipline. If you act again the way you did last night, I will have to punish you.”

 

She pressed her thighs tightly against my hand. “You could do that?” she whispered. “If I disobeyed you?”

 

“Even If you were simply displeasing. We are changing the dynamics of our relationship, Kelsee, while you wear a collar. It feels the right thing to do. This starts now.”

 

“While I wear this collar,” she gasped, as she touched her collar.

 

I smiled. I had not said this collar, I had said a collar. I felt it was an important distinction, and perhaps one she had missed. 

 

“Master, it is actually exciting and deeply arousing to hear you say that.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“I know I shouldn’t feel this way. I know this is wrong.”

 

“It is not wrong. What you are feeling is actually perfectly natural. You are a woman. On Earth you weren’t allowed to be a woman. Here on Gor, Goreans will insist you be a woman. You will have no choice. The collar forces you to embrace your femininity.”

 

“All my life I’ve been taught that I shouldn’t feel these things. And now I feel them. I dream of submitting to you, but my body fights me.”

 

“I think, rather, you fight your body. Your body knows what it wants. It always has done.”

 

“Please can you put me to use? My needs are so urgent this morning. Please.”

 

“You have to make and serve breakfast, girl. And then you have to clear camp. You will be too busy to please me this morning.”

 

“Please, Master!”

 

“Go.” I watched her slip out from the blankets, and hurry back to the camp fire, for the other two men were now beginning to wake and they would be hungry for their breakfast. I saw her rub at her eyes with her left hand. I think she was crying. 

 

---------------------------------------------

 

On the ninth evening that we camped together, while it was still light, Rolfe produced a folding gameboard from his pack, along with a wooden box full of playing pieces.

 

“Do you play Kaissa in Newark?” he asked me.

 

“I do play, but not very well. You should play Kelsee. She’s rather good.”

 

The men laughed. “Your slave? Play your slave?” they found the idea funny. “Your slave plays Kaissa? I should consider that an insult to the great game.”

 

“She played as a Free Woman.”

 

“That is almost as bad.” Rolfe laughed again. “Free Women do not know how to play Kaissa.”

 

“The rules aren’t that complicated,” I said.

 

“They may know the moves, but they do not know how to play. Not play to win against a man.”

 

“You might be surprised. She is rather good.”

 

Again, the warriors found this very funny.

 

“Why don’t you play her?” I suggested.

 

“I suppose I could allow her to have the first move,” said Rolfe. “That grants an advantage.”

 

“Master is kind,” said Kelsee, with a soft smile, “but I would advise him not to do that.” She knelt beside me, brushing against me, inadvertently, it seemed. I had not put her to use since our quarrel. I would let her simmer for a while longer.

 

“And I suppose I could grant her a free move. That might help extend the game by a few ehn.”

 

“Again, Master is very kind to a slave, but he shouldn’t really do that.”

 

“Still, it will hardly be a contest.” Rolfe began to set up the pieces as Rollo and Hergessvar gathered round to watch.

 

“Kelsee? You don’t have to play if you don’t want to.”

 

“I’ll play, Master,” said a beaming Kelsee. She knelt down in the grass and watched as Rolfe set up the pieces. 

 

“Master, would you like two free moves?” she offered.

 

The men found this very funny. Kelsee looked very innocent now. She juggled her Home Stone in the palm of her hands. The Home Stone must be placed by the end of the tenth move, and the placement itself counts as a move. Kelsee, as I well knew, favoured a late placement in the game.

 

“Try and take as many pieces from me as you can, slave,” said Rolfe.

 

“Master is kind to suggest that,” said a now sly looking slave girl.

 

“I want you to enjoy the game as well as you can,” suggested Rolfe.

 

“Oh, I’m sure I will, Master. I’m sure I will.”

 

Seven ehn later the men were now gathered round the board in intense concentration, with furrowed brows. Kelsee played with a number of Rolfe’s captured pieces by the side of the board as the warrior tried to work out what was happening to him.

 

“What did you say, slave?” he asked as he looked up from the board.

 

“I said, I believe Home Stone is taken in three more moves.”

 

“Impossible,” said Rolfe. Again he gazed at the board. “I’m nowhere near taking your Home Stone yet.” 

 

“Forgive me, Master, but I meant your Home Stone.”

 

Rollo and Hergessvar gave one another puzzled looks.

 

Three more ehn passed.

 

“How is this happening?” cried Rolfe. He gazed at a tarnsman that was a move away from capturing his Home Stone.

 

“Those were interesting moves, Master,” said Kelsee as her finger hovered over her Tarnsman piece. “Much like the helpless wriggling of a slave girl in the grass, I would suppose, but ultimately there was nowhere for your Home Stone to hide.”

 

Rolfe looked astonished. “Women can’t play Kaissa!”

 

“I didn’t know that, Master,” said Kelsee, sweetly. “Thank you for enlightening me.”

 

“It is not possible!”

 

Rolfe groaned as he saw Kelsee move her Tarnsman onto the square where his Home Stone now lay undefended.

 

“I think I need some strong paga,” said Rolfe. 

 

“It was probably just beginner’s luck,” said Kelsee as she turned and kissed me. “Would you care for another game, Master? We might wager this time, for sweet pastries?”

 

Rolfe snapped the board shut and scooped the playing pieces back into the small wooden box. “I am going to pretend this never happened. No one is ever to speak of it. If they do, the codes of the warriors say I must meet them with drawn blades.”

 

“The codes say no such thing,” remarked Rollo as he tried, in his head, to figure out what Kelsee had actually done.

 

“They do now,” remarked Rolfe.

 

“I think I was distracted by the loveliness of my slave for the duration of the game,” I observed, “so I really didn’t see anything else.”

 

“That’s good,” remarked Rolfe. “See, I knew you were a sensible man. I would hate to have to kill you in a violent blood frenzy.”

 

“Not as much as I would hate to be killed in a violent blood frenzy,” I said.

 

“It is still impossible,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “Perhaps I was distracted by the loveliness of your slave?”

 

“Oh? I though you once described her as barely adequate?”

 

“I never said that,” remarked Rolfe, as he remained deep in thought. Had he missed the subtlety of one of her moves? “In the glow of the campfire last night her legs seemed especially pleasing.”

 

“She does have very good legs.”

 

“And I suppose those breasts, straining so fiercely against the thin rep cloth, are not without interest. Perhaps she should have played Kaissa with a sa-tarna sack draped over her distracting body? The sight of those nipples through the rep cloth made it hard to defend my Home Stone clearly.”

 

“She wouldn’t have been able to see the pieces or the board with a sack over her head.”

 

“Holes for eyes could have been cut. It was just an idea.”

 

I kissed Kelsee again to stifle her laughter. It was so difficult to stay angry with her. I just couldn’t keep up the pretence, especially when she kept brushing her body against me. “My lovely slave,” I said.

 

“My lovely Master,” she purred, sensing a change in my mood at last.

 

“Have I told you today how very beautiful you are?”

 

“No, Master, you haven’t!” Her eyes gleamed with pleasure.

 

“You are very beautiful.” As I said that, she wriggled in my arms in a salacious manner and laughed softly.

 

“And have I told you today how very submissive I feel when you hold me like this, Master?”

 

“No, lovely Kelsee, you haven’t.”

 

“I feel very submissive, Master, and desperate to please you.” She gazed up at me with those soft blue eyes. “Let me please you tonight. I beg you.”

 

“In the name of the Priest Kings, will you two stop that,” groaned Rolfe as he got up from the grass where he had been sitting cross-legged. “You can’t keep your eyes and hands off one another for more than a few ehn!”

 

“I’m very fond of my slave,” I grinned. I carried on looking directly at Kelsee as I spoke to Rolfe.

 

“And he is my Love Master, I think,” said Kelsee, though she didn’t or couldn’t look away from me. “When I find some talender flowers growing in the wild, I shall bind them in my hair!”

 

The talender is a flower unique to this planet, which, in the Gorean mind, is associated with beauty and passion. Free Companions, on the Feast of their Free Companionship, commonly wear a garland of talenders. Sometimes slave girls, having been subdued, but fearing to speak, will fix talenders in their hair, that their master may know that they have at last surrendered themselves to him as helpless love slaves. The flower itself is a delicate yellow-petaled one that grows in abundance in wild meadows. 

 

“Priest Kings preserve me,” said Rolfe. “Is it too early to start drinking?”

 

I laughed. “When you have a slave of your own, instead of just frequenting cheap paga taverns, Rolfe, you will understand.”

 

“A personal slave is too much of a responsibility and expense,” he said. “I shall content myself with the lovely sluts in those cheap paga taverns that you dismiss so rudely.”

 

“Then you are missing out on the true submission of a woman who desperately wants to be owned by you,” I said. 

 

“I desperately want to be owned by you, Master,” said Kelsee as she kissed me again. 

 

“It just goes on and on and on,” complained Rolfe. “Oh, I love you, Master! Oh, I love you, slave!” He walked away, shaking his head.

 

“I never knew it was so easy to get rid of him,” I remarked.

 

“We shall have to do this more often,” agreed Kelsee.

 

“Are you happy, Kelsee, despite everything?”

 

“I am, yes. Very happy.” She felt so good in my arms. It felt right to hold her like this, while she wore a collar and nothing more than a thin rep cloth tunic. It was so brief and highlighted her every curve. 

 

“I’m in danger of never wanting you to be free of that collar,” I whispered.

 

She laughed softly again. “Try not to think of that day, then, Master, if it troubles you so much.”

 

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On the tenth day I enquired of Rolfe where we now were in relation to Argentum and Corcyrus.

 

“I can in fact satisfy your curiosity. We have been walking together for ten days,” he declared.

 

“And?”

“We are therefore ten days’ march from where we found you. I believe it took you three days to get there. I can therefore confidently proclaim you are thirteen days out from Argentum.”

 

“I meant the distance, in pasangs?”

 

“I haven’t been measuring it,” he remarked. 

 

“You must know roughly where we are?”

 

“Indeed, on the road to Corcyrus.”

 

Great.

 

“Is this… normal? That you never actually know where you are?”

 

“Well…” he replied. “Look, see, a small sign,” he said, pointing. There was a large stone by the side of the road, embedded deep in the ground so that no scoundrel might turn it round the other way for a jest. It read Corcyrus and had an arrow pointing in the direction we were travelling.

 

“That’s, uh, helpful,” I said. There was no indication of how many pasangs we still had to go. 

 

“Blessed are the Builders who provide such excellent way points,” said Rolfe. 

 

“Yes, we could easily have forgotten that this road leads to Corcyrus.”

 

“Master! Master!” Kelsee seemed excited. She had seen something. 

 

“What?” I followed her gaze to where she was pointing at some ramberry bushes growing by the side of the road.

 

“Well spotted,” said Rolfe. “We shall wait here while your slave strips the bush bare. Perhaps a small cup of paga while we wait?”

 

“It’s barely noon,” I said.

 

“Then high time we consider enjoying a noon cup of paga.” He reached for the bota strapped to the heavy pack Kelsee was carrying. 

 

I declined the paga and went to help Kelsee picking fruit. While we filled a sack, we played together, smudging juicy ripe ramberries against one another’s lips, before kissing those precious lips, laughing.

 

“I can see you!” cried Rolfe.

 

“He can see us, Master,” laughed Kelsee as I smudged some ramberries against her nose and licked it clean. 

 

“I believe we are an inspiration to him, and his grumbling when we spend quality time together is simply a mark of his admiration.”

 

“And I can hear that!” cried Rolfe. 

 

When we returned, somewhat stained by ramberries, Hergessvar produced five copper tarsks and, tearing his eyes away from Kelsee’s nipples, clearly visible through the thin rep cloth tunic, looked at me hopefully. The sum had increased gradually during the week from the original offer of one copper tarsk. I shook my head, much to his disappointment, and he returned the coins to his pouch.

 

Five copper tarsks was a lot of money to put a slave girl to use. I was clearly a fool.