Outcast of Gor Chapter Thirty Two

 

And so, this was the day when my life changed dramatically once more. It was a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or perhaps the right place at the right time, depending on how you look at it. Whatever, today was the day when my life was destined to finally have some meaning on this planet. 

 

But I’m getting slightly ahead of myself.  

 

One of the things recommended by the caste of slavers is that a master should control and regulate the orgasms permitted to his slave. 

 

“Oh! Please! Please, Master, I beg you!” Clara writhed helplessly in my arms as I looked deep into her eyes. Her wrists were tied tightly to two separate slave rings, but other than that she was free to wriggle and moan to her heart’s content.

 

This of course assumes that a master is capable of reading the tell-tale signs in his slave’s body, and is able to determine when she is getting close to a possible climax. This knowledge takes time and patience and some effort on the part of her master, requiring him to know his girl, to understand the exquisite responses her body is capable of. But then, part of the pleasure of owning a girl is to know her completely. If you own a girl, you soon find you develop a keen interest in assessing and understanding all her quirks and mannerisms. She is yours, after all. You would wish to explore what she is capable of, in much the same way you would want to push the limits of an expensive sports car you had bought. 

 

Another thing they recommend is that a slave girl should only be permitted an orgasm when she is effectively restrained in some fashion. She soon begins to associate her pleasure with the sense of being helplessly restrained. Bondage soon becomes equated with sexual fulfilment, rendering her more of a slave, or rather, opening her mind to her natural slave feelings that she has possibly repressed for so long. Sexual repression is endemic amongst Gorean Free Women, to a degree not usually found on Earth. They are conditioned from birth to believe they must be cold, frigid, unfeeling, for fear of being thought a natural slave, otherwise. 

 

You have to feel sorry for Gorean Free Women, I suppose.

 

The women of Earth have more freedom to express themselves sexually, of course, but this comes with a price, in that they begin to secretly crave domination at the feet of a man, something their cultural norms will not permit them to seek out. And even if they did, the typical Earth man, of which I was one, is equally conditioned to be horrified at the suggestion that he should master the lovely girl who wishes to submit to him. Rather, we are taught to reject such a thing, to verbally chastise her, to make her feel wrong, to consider her damaged in some way for daring to voice what she desperately feels she needs. 

 

The relationship between men and women on Gor is very different, of course. 

 

Here, women know that men are masters, and thankfully for them, men know it too. 

 

“Please don’t stop. Please.” She was shaking, her body trembling. I was conditioning her to beg for her climax, and to understand that it was so powerful only because she was bound to a pair of slave rings. 

 

We had returned to my insula late at night, having observed the revelry in the city for some time. I had accepted some drinks of paga from men who wished me to celebrate with them, but after a time I walked Clara back home, past the market where my slave shelf was rented.

 

“Your daughter will be sleeping in the straw in the basement below that doorway,” I said to Clara. She leaned into me as we walked. Occasionally she would raise her lips, inviting me to kiss her. I ignored this. I would kiss her only when I chose to kiss her. 

 

“She is so young, still,” said Clara. “She knows nothing of men.” She touched my chest with the flat palms of her hands. 

 

Her great fear was that her daughter, Bina, would be sold. She knew it was inevitable, but she desperately hoped that day might never come. 

 

I confess I rose late that morning, and might well have remained on my couch bed with the lovely Clara had she not reminded me that my other slaves would need feeding.

 

“You have four girls chained in a basement, Master. You do not have the luxury of sleeping in all morning.”

 

“I am not tired of you, yet,” I said, taking her in my arms and kissing her. She was keen to respond to those kisses, and I heard the slither of steel chain as she moved – the chain that was locked to her left ankle. Slavers recommend a slave girl is chained at night, not just for the sake of security (where would she run to, after all?) but also to reinforce her state of bondage. Clara had confessed last night, when she was still hot and needy, that the ankle chain felt exciting. She had whispered this in secret, confessing certain things while I took her, so chained. 

 

“Do not despair,” I had told her, “it is a common feeling amongst women, free or slave.”

 

“Truly, Master? You are not just teasing me?” She sought reassurance, I suppose, that her responses had not been abnormal. 

 

“You do not know?” I said, surprised.

 

“Know what, Master?”

 

“That females are hard wired to respond well to bondage? That you are aroused by chains and bonds?”

 

“I did not know that, Master. I was terribly afraid it might just be me.” She would often move her left ankle on the couch, just to experience the weight of the chain, and remind herself, in her excitement, that it was locked upon her.

 

“It is very common. Even amongst so-called Free Women.” I recalled my own bondage fantasies back on Earth, and how often women had been excited by the prospect of being tied up during foreplay. “You are not alone in these feelings of yours.”

 

“They are overwhelming,” she said, kissing my chest. “You have no idea.”

 

“The writer, Trakkar, has said that a woman only truly begins to knows herself when she finds herself in a collar.”

 

“I fear what I may find about myself.”

 

“Slave,” I said, pleasantly, as I kissed her again. 

 

“Help me understand my body again,” she whispered. Her hands reaching down to where my penis had risen hard.

 

“What of the other girls in the dark basement, awaiting their breakfast?”

 

“They can wait, Master,” she whispered, urgently. “They are only slaves.”

 

Just over an ahn later we returned to the market place where, typically, the Lady Herminia was already set up for the day; her girls all neatly arranged on her shelf space in their ankle chains, calling out to passers-by to be bought. 

 

“Your attendance grows later and later, each day,” said Herminia as she regarded the sight of a breezy, contented slave girl by my side. Clara had relished her climaxes and was now very attentive as I unlocked the door to my basement cell. I saw she had the common sense to quickly kneel before Herminia and lower her head. Free Women do not tolerate any foolishness or delay in deference from a slave girl. 

 

“I may have lingered over breakfast,” I remarked.

 

“Breakfast served by a slave girl?” she enquired with a raising of an eyebrow.

 

“The very best form of breakfast,” I said.

 

Clara received a frosty reception from the other four girls who knelt in the straw as she appeared by my side. They could see she looked content, well fed, eager to greet the day. It was only too obvious the sort of use she had been put to. 

 

“Slut,” said the redheaded girl as Clara knelt and handed her a bowl of slave gruel. It is routinely mixed from dry powder form with water. 

 

“Slut,” said the black girl, as she too was given some gruel.

 

“Slut,” said the blonde haired girl. Her expression was particularly vicious. She too, like Clara, was red silk, and so I supposed she was the most eager and ready of the others to be put to use herself, rather than sleep chained in a straw covered basement. 

 

“I despise you!” sobbed Bina, Clara’s daughter. She could barely look at her mother. “You have submitted to him! How could you shame me like this!” she wept. “You are a slut!”

 

“I am your mother,” said Clara, sadly, “but I am also a woman. And I will always love you. No matter what you may think of me.”

 

“Slut!” cried Bina again. Her eyes tearing. “Slut! Slut!”

 

She was white silk, She had no comprehension. Only frustration for something she didn’t understand. 

 

The writer, Trakkar, who is generally acknowledged as an expert on the bondage of the female sex, has often commented on the nature of hierarchies within a slave coffle or slave pen. Girls, whether in bondage or free, will tend to gravitate towards social groupings that can dominate their peers. This is often the case with the segregation of white silk and red silk girls in a coffle or pen. Whichever status is more numerous (and in my coffle, the ratio of white silk girls to red silk ones is three to two) tends to be dominant in the slave pen. It’s worth also noting that the dominance of the white silk girls was made more profound by the absence during the night of one of the two red silk girls – specifically the ample hipped Clara – leaving my single red silk girl on her own to contend with three indignant white silk slaves who had never known the touch of a man. How they must then have looked down at the poor blonde haired girl who had in the past been opened by a companion for his use. How they must have tormented her in the basement, informing her that her red silk status made her the least girl in the coffle. They would have united against her, affirming their own white silk status. Such hierarchies of course can change rapidly, Trakkar has observed, as and when white silk girls suddenly become red silk girls. Eventually the proportion of slaves with sexual experience then outnumbers the remaining nervous virgins, and it is then suddenly the white silk girls who find they must tremble in their chains and call the red silk girls ‘mistress’. 

 

But for now I could see that the white silk girls were dominant in my coffle pen. A master of course must rise above such things and not seek to enforce any artificial discipline on their hierarchies. Slaves, for better or worse, are generally left to manage their own peer groups and affirm which girl is to be perceived as dominant in the social structure and which is to be considered submissive to the others. 

 

Clara seemed upset as I led my slaves up into the morning light. I watched them stretch their limbs and blink at the warm rays of sunshine. 

 

“They do not understand,’ I said to Clara as I led her to the shelf. 

 

“My daughter thinks I am a slut,” she sobbed, when she felt sure Bina might not hear her.

 

“You are a slut. But it is not something to be ashamed of. You are vital and respond naturally in chains.”

 

“I don’t want to respond naturally in chains!” she wept, angrily, now.

 

“The chains will leave you little choice. You are are hard wired for bondage, as are most women.”

 

“Oh, how I hate this! How I hate my body! What it makes me feel!”

 

I stood Clara to one side and told her not to move as I set about chaining the other four girls to the same shelf positions they had occupied yesterday.

 

“Are you not chaining one of the other girls to the plinth?” asked Clara. She had been on the plinth yesterday. She assumed perhaps she might be returned to the shelf today and another girl would take her place.

 

“I am keeping you on the plinth,” I said. It was an exposed position, and as a girl chained to that prominent place, Clara would be expected to writhe and present herself without holding anything back.

 

“No, no, no…” she wept. “My daughter will see me again.”

 

“It will be good for you.” I stroked her flanks. “You are already opening yourself to bondage, and being displayed like this will accelerate the process.”

 

The other girls seemed relieved that it would be Clara who would have to draw attention to my stock. While they too would have to be pleasing, there was less emphasis on a common shelf girl, while the plinth girl writhed for the attention of men and stood out in the market place.

 

“I can’t do this again,” she wept.

 

“Come.” I fastened a leash clip to her collar ring. 

 

“We are going somewhere?” she gasped. Suddenly she felt afraid. Why was I not chaining her to the plinth? Had she in fact already been sold?

 

“I promised I would show you the pleasure racks.”

 

Relief washed over her lovely features. She was safe for the time being. She had not yet been sold. 

 

“Ca you watch over my girls while I am briefly away?” I asked of the Lady Herminia. She nodded. We shared the same caste, or so it seemed. She would help me, the way I would help her. Caste is important on Gor. 

 

I bought Clara a small pastry that I allowed her to nibble at as we walked to the market of Caphius, where one hundred Free Women of Isurium would be fastened to the pleasure racks for the attention of men. 

 

The market of Caphius is perhaps the largest market within the walls of Corcyrus. It is actually a large open park space, around which market traders erect stalls and colourful striped pavilions, and it is this open green space at its heart that made it suitable for erecting the one hundred pleasure racks. Few other markets would have had the available space, I supposed. 

 

I walked past a number of stalls that were selling weapons, and this was of interest to me as I had lost my sword back at the slaver camp of Darian Athuk. I paused for a time, examining a number of short blades and knives that were arrayed for sale. There were also crossbows – a weapon with which I had a natural affinity, thanks to my experience of firing rifles on shooting ranges in America. 

 

“It has a good weight to it,” said the stall holder as I lifted a crossbow, wound back the string, and placed a quarrel onto the groove space on the stock. “You have fired a crossbow before?”

 

I nodded. “I’m rather good with them.”

 

“I have a target if you wish to try it out?” suggested the man. He motioned towards a wooden target that was safely enclosed within three wooden screens. 

 

I walked towards the line he had painted on the ground, levelled the weapon and placed the quarrel accurately within the centre of the target. “A good weapon,” I agreed. I then returned the crossbow and began to examine the blades of some of the short swords. Purchases would need to be made at some point. A man needs a blade on Gor. 

 

When I was finished, I led Clara towards the rows of pleasure racks. “You will point out the ladies Aurelia, Cressida, and Kostantia, when we approach them,” I said.

 

“Why is that, Master?”

 

“I am curious to see the Free Women who were your rivals in Isurium, my lovely little vulo.”

 

“They are nothing special,” she said. 

 

“Compared to you?” I suggested, with a smile.

 

“I am certainly more beautiful,” she said, quickly. “Kostantia is as ugly as a sand sleen.”

 

“Poor Kostantia,” I suggested. “And yet she was selected as one of one hundred maidens to be taken for the pleasure of men, before independent slavers might even bid for the remaining captures?”

 

“I suppose.”

 

“And you were not included in that selection?”

 

“Men have strange tastes,” suggested Clara. “I don’t know what they think, sometimes.”

 

I stroked her lovely bottom as we walked through the already bustling streets. Once or twice I heard a little gasp escape her lips. 

 

“That…” Clara seemed nervous now as she gazed at a woman secured with black leather straps to a pleasure rack. “That is Kostantia…”

 

“But she’s lovely,” I said. “Hardly a sand sleen!”

 

“She… well, normally she wears robes…” The look on Clara’s face was priceless. She knew, I think, instinctively, that Kostantia was more beautiful than she. There was no doubting that. In fact, I’d wager that, setting aside personal tastes, particular to any subjective gaze, the one hundred women secured to the pleasure racks were possibly the most beautiful females living in the town of Isurium. They had been carefully selected, it seems. The cream of the crop. 

 

“You are lovely, too,” I said. “You have delightful curves.”

 

Clara looked pained. She gazed out at the rows of pleasure racks, some now in use, and wherever she looked she saw women who would fetch a higher price than her on an auction block. That is not to say that Clara wasn’t beautiful, simply that she wasn’t empirically in the top one hundred girls of plundered Isurium.

 

The racks were cross shaped, fixed within a wooden square frame, with restraints that secured a girl by her wrists and ankles. Each cross was suspended horizontally by four sets of chains so that the girl lay flat against the x cross. If a man wanted to put her to use, he could lower the chains connected to the cross foot sections, so that the bottom of the cross now rested on the ground. The girl was then presented to him, with her legs widely apart, lying back at an angle. She was ready for use. 

 

Kostantia was not yet in use. 

 

“She’s a slut,” said Clara.

 

“Beware your words,” I said as we approached Kostantia. “She is still a Free Woman. You are a slave.”

 

“Oh!” Clara suddenly looked scared. She had forgotten perhaps the lack of brands on these women. They were still technically free, though now available for slave use. 

 

“Why is she free?” asked Clara, anxiously.

 

“I suppose it pleases the Tatrix that these women should shame their city. If they cry out with pleasure, they do so as Free Women, not as slaves. You cannot blame a slave for her responses, but for a Free Woman to react in that way is disgraceful. The honour of Isurium is ruined.”

 

I heard many women crying out as they were taken on the slanting crosses. 

 

“Listen to them!” cried Clara. “Have they no shame! They are free Women of Isurium! They must not cry out like that! So helplessly! So aroused!”

 

I smiled. The cries of these women were not dissimilar to the piteous cries Clara had made last night and the night before. She of course was a slave, so there was no dishonour in her making such sounds.

 

“It is a splendid revenge on Isurium,” I said. “The Tatrix is cruel, but clever. Were they slaves, there would be no dishonour to your former city.”

 

“My former city?”

 

“Slaves do not have a Home Stone. You are not the woman you once were. That woman is gone. It is as if she never existed. In her place now stands a lovely slave girl.”

 

“Oh.” Clara wrapped her arms about herself as she gazed at twenty or so of the women currently being put to use. 

 

“Are you Kostantia?” I asked, as I paused before the raised pleasure rack. “The Lady Kostantia?”

 

“Yes!” she cried out, surprised. She didn’t recognise me of course, but I apparently knew her. Was I perhaps a friend who might help her? “Yes I am! I am the Lady Kostantia! Please, Sir, you must help me! I have been secured to this rack! There are men! I am naked! I am so scared!”

 

“There is little I can do,” I said, sympathetically, for she was a Free Woman, not a slave, and so I thought I should accord her some respect. “I do not have the keys to your shackles, and there are guardsmen about.” There were indeed. They stood idly by, watching the proceedings. There was even a city tarnsman swooping high above the market, in the air, making a figure of eight with his bird. Tarnsmen are a common sight in the sky above a city. Patrols regularly circle the city walls and guard the high towers. This is a necessity when you consider that foreign tarnsmen consider it a great game to raid the high towers of cities, daring to try chain luck and seize a Free Woman, to abduct her, to take her back to their own city and strip and bind her high in the air during the journey home. I gazed up at the tarnsman in the sky. I couldn’t tell if he was simply guarding this part of the city, or whether he momentarily enjoyed the sight of the pleasure racks laid out below him. Either way, he was hovering above the market of Caphius with some interest. 

 

It's worth mentioning also that it was not only men who visited the market of Caphius this morning. While it is certainly true that the presence of the pleasure racks, with their tightly bound, lovely captives, was intended primarily for the pleasure of men, the sight of so many trophy women, loyal to the Home Stone of Argentum, was intriguing to some Free Women of Corcyrus. I saw here and there, mingling with the interested men, a number of Free Women who had come to the market to observe the bound captives themselves. There are many reasons why a Free Woman might wish to view such sights. Having been subject to the deprivations of the slave levy for so many decades, the Free Women of Corcyrus understandably hated Argentum, and they no doubt took pleasure in seeing the previously untouchable women of that city now helpless before their captors. Women can be bitter rivals, even more so when they don’t share the same Home Stone. 

 

But it’s also worth mentioning the views of Trakkar, who points out in his writing that Free Women can and often do show a curiosity in the bondage of their own sex. They will often seem to be silent, fascinated even, at the sight of other women chained, or tied, stripped, perhaps even prepared for sale on an auction block. They can watch such proceedings, trembling slightly, perhaps from fear, or perhaps from some disgraceful excitement. I am sure this is not the case for the noble Free Women of Corcyrus, of course, but perhaps some Free Women in other cities. 

 

No doubt, if you yourself are a lofty Free Woman, haughty and regal in your splendid veils and robes, and you are reading this, you must be astonished to discover that some of your peers take an interest in the nature of bondage and submission. How shameful, you must think. You yourself of course are chaste, demure, frigid, cold to the touch of men, and cannot comprehend such a thing.  

 

The dresses and gowns of the Free Women of Corcyrus tended to be inferior to the fabulous fabrics available in Argentum. This was understandable, as Corcyrus had suffered under the yoke of servitude and oppression as a conquered vassal state for over four decades. It was a poor city compared to its conqueror, and much of its wealth had been seized. But I did notice one young woman in the crowd who seemed to be impressively well dressed. She was accompanied by a guardsman, suggesting she might be quite wealthy. I of course could distinguish nothing about her, for she was veiled and robed. Free Women are anonymous as they move about their city. For a moment I idly considered it might be the Tatrix, herself, mingling incognito with her people, as she had in the past suggested she was wont to do, but her figure was different, and her bearing was not the bearing I had seen on the palace steps. No, this was simply a rich Free Woman who could afford to have expensive fabrics imported into the city and sewn into striking garments of particular splendour. Evidently she stood out amongst the other women, some of whom regarded her with envious eyes. Her garments were much finer than theirs, after all. 

 

Men though paid her little attention. Their eyes were simply drawn to the pleasure racks and the wriggling captives strapped helplessly in place. What man would spend time regarding a Free Woman, no matter how well dressed, when he had naked beauties before him, to view, instead?

 

“You seem kind,” said Lady Kostantia. Her body was spread-eagled before me. Her legs were thrust widely apart and secured by the ankles, permitting any man to reach forward and touch her intimately. She had long, light brown hair, and a slender body, less curvaceous that Clara’s, but there was an exquisite vulnerability to her that made men want to possess her. “Please, petition the guardsmen. Please, Sir, I beseech you! Explain I am not like the other women here. I must be freed! Already men less polite than you have been circling, examining my body. I fear one of them may well violate me before long!”

 

“Are you white silk, Lady?” I asked.

 

“That is a vulgar expression!” she said, angrily. I had apparently insulted her by using that term. “I am a Free Woman!”

 

“Forgive me,” I said. One should not offend a Free Woman. They are precious and should be respected. “I come from far away and have yet to master some of the cultural subtleties of the language.”

 

She sniffed. “The words you struggle to remember are glana or profalarina.”

 

“Of course. Thank you, Lady, for correcting me.” 

 

She moved a little on the pleasure rack, her thighs spread widely open before me. She was very beautiful. I could see why she was one of a hundred choice women. 

 

“So, are you glana?”

 

She seemed uneasy now. “That is an intimate question. I do not even know you!”

 

“Forgive me, Lady, but you are strapped to a pleasure rack. I am simply enquiring if you have known the touch of a man before, or if you remain chaste and pure.”

 

“I do not wish to answer that question!” she snapped, the cheeks of her face reddening. “Please, kind Sir, speak to a guardsman! Have me freed. You will be rewarded.”

 

“Rewarded? How so?”

 

“I shall thank you with a sweet kiss,” said the Lady. “And you will have my gratitude, which is no small thing. You may then return home with the warm glow of knowing that a Free Woman has thanked you.”

 

“The soft kiss of a Free Woman, freely given, is quite something,” I remarked. “Though of course, placed as you are, men could take far more than a simple kiss from you if they so wished.”

“Such men would be vile brutes, hardly a kind gentleman such as yourself.”

“There is that distinction,” I said with a smile.

“Oh!” Her body suddenly jerked in surprise on the rack as I reached out and touched her between her legs. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING!”

 

“Determining for myself whether you are glana,” I said simply. I had not yet entered her with any of my fingers.

 

“DON”T DO THAT! I will tell you! I will tell you!”

 

I moved my hand away.

 

“I am not glana,” she said, hardly daring to look at me.

 

“But I thought men had not yet put you to use this morning?”

 

“I… I have been a with a man before today.”

 

“When you were captured?” I suggested.

 

Her cheeks reddened again. “No, before then. When I was not a captive.”

 

“Ah. You have been Free Companioned,” I suggested.

 

“She has not been Free Companioned,” said Clara, forgetting herself in the heat of the moment.

 

“Clarana?!” said an astonished Lady Kostantia, noting the slave for the first time, and perhaps recognising her voice. “Clarana Prisca Bellona?!”

 

“Her name is simply Clara now,” I remarked to Kostantia.

 

“You wear a collar!” declared Kostantia, to Clara. “And there is a brand on your thigh!”

 

“Yes, Mistress,” said Clara, lowering her head, instinctively, for she was speaking to a Free Woman.

 

“You are a slave! Clarana, you are a slave!”

 

“Yes, Mistress,” said Clara. She seemed mortified to be addressing her former friends and rival in this manner. 

 

“Do you not know to kneel before a Free Woman!” snapped the Lady Kostantia. Swiftly, then, Clara knelt, bowing her head again in the process. 

 

“She was your friend?” I suggested to Kostantia.

 

“Hardly. We knew one another. We mixed in the same social circles. We spoke politely in the market places of Isurium, and at the houses of mutual friends. But in many ways I had little respect for her. She was petty and spiteful.”

 

“Oh?” This was why I had brought Clara here. I had seen, in the past, examples of the passive aggressive friendship that occurred between Gorean Free Women. I wanted to see now whether there was any pity, any sympathy, when one such women might be reduced to bondage.

 

“It is so fitting that she is now in a collar,” said Kostantia. She laughed. “You are a slave girl now, Clarana. Gone are your petty pretensions!”

 

“Yes, Mistress,” sobbed Clara. 

 

“She was slow to kneel before a Free Woman,” observed the Lady Kostantia. “Have her whipped.”

 

“I choose not to do so,” I said.

 

“But she has not been pleasing.”

 

“On the contrary, I find her very pleasing, indeed. She squirms deliciously on my couch, in chains.”

 

“But I am a Free Woman! She has offended me!”

 

I smiled. There was something gloriously incongruous in Kostantia adopting this haughty outrage at Clara, while she too was held in bondage, albeit without the decoration of a slave collar or brand. 

 

“Have you no pity for Clara?” I asked.

 

“Why should I? She is a slave. She wears a collar! How superb! Yes! She should wear a collar and kneel before us! How very splendid! You are a slave, Clara! I am so happy to see you like this!”  

 

I noticed, again, the sight of the richly dressed Free Woman mingling with the crowd. It was interesting that she was accompanied by a guardsman who was armed with a blade. From the way he routinely glanced to the left and right, he reminded me of highly trained bodyguards to the rich and powerful on Earth – the kind of man who would follow, discretely enough, a member of our Royal Family when they were on walkabout amongst their people. The man was a professional. That much was evident from his posture and bearing.

 

I speculated idly again who this richly dressed woman might be. She certainly stood out in the crowd through the quality of her garments. I saw her stop near some of the pleasure racks and remark, softly, to her guardsman. Perhaps she was enjoying the sight of so many women of Isurium stripped and fastened to the racks for the pleasure of men. They were all technically women of her enemies. 

 

Her gradual passage through the market was bringing this finely dressed Lady closer to where I stood with Clara kneeling beside me. I saw her guardsman glance briefly in my direction, noting my stance and, in his professional manner, no doubt assessing any potential threat level. He would find none with me, and so he then glanced ahead and then behind. He briefly gazed up into the sky but saw only the uniformed tarnsman of the city, flying above the market place in a figure of eight, watching out for enemies. The sky it seemed, was secure enough. 

 

“What is going to happen to me?” cried the Lady Kostantia. “I am helpless! Sir, my wrists and ankles are bound.”

 

“Evidently so.”

 

“My legs have been thrust widely apart! I am open. Please, Sir, you must help me! Petition a guardsman. Inform him I must be freed.”

 

It would be very easy to put her to use. I noticed with amusement there was a small wooden box nailed to one vertical support of the frame. I couldn’t read the words tacked to the box, but the Lady Herminia had mentioned last night that the boxes were for the collection of donations to help arm and garb the Corcyrian military. Men would be invited, though not compelled, to make a small donation after they had taken their pleasure with a girl of Isurium. 

 

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she cried, as she saw the interest in my eyes. “I am a Free Woman! I am helpless! Please, no!”

 

In actual fact I was in no state to enjoy her. The lovely Clara had tired me out this morning, and it would be a while yet before I could use a woman again. Not that the Lady knew that. I glanced at Clara and saw her soft smile. She knew, of course. She knew I had nothing left to expend on Kostantia or any of the other women strapped to the pleasure racks.

 

“You’re smiling,” I said to her.

 

“I think my master is well sated from his slave, and the Lady has little to fear,” she said, with her head down. 

 

“Possibly,” I said, stroking her hair. “You were insatiable, this morning.”

 

“Slut!” said Kostantia to Clara. “Filthy slut!”

 

“Yes, Mistress,’ said Clara, not daring to look at her former friend and rival.

 

“Slut! Slut! Slut!” the Lady Kostantia repeated, as she pulled at her black leather restraints. 

 

I glanced up at the sky. The tarnsman’s swooping in a circle of eight seemed attentive on the area where I stood. I shielded my eyes from the hot sun and noticed that he was now lower in the sky than earlier. From time to time the shadow of his great bird swept over the grounds of the market, reminding the men and women of Corcyrus that they were safe and guarded by their warriors.

 

I glanced round and saw that the richly garbed Free Woman was now only ten yards away from where I stood. I saw her point at a woman secured to a frame, and laugh softly. 

 

I glanced back up at the city tarnsman and suddenly felt that sixth sense that something wasn’t quite right. The tarnsman seemed now to be holding a capture loop in his right hand.

 

And then, without warning, the tarn suddenly sky dived with lightning speed directly at the market area in which I, and the richly garbed Lady, stood.