Outcast of Gor Chapter Twenty Three

 

Darian laughed. 

 

“What’s so funny?” I asked. 

 

“An outlaw complaining that other outlaws stole the girl that I suppose he stole from someone previously. That is what you are trying to tell me, yes?” said Darian. 

 

“She ran away last night. There was a lapse in my security.”

 

“Evidently so. My advice to you: learn from your mistakes and do better next time.” He turned to go.

 

“Her name is Kelsee. I know you have her. I want her back.”

 

Darian turned slowly back. “I am sure you want a lot of things. If I have your girl, it is because I paid good money for her. Your loss is not my concern, outlaw. Slaves are commonplace. Buy yourself another. And buy some chains while you’re at it.”

 

“I didn’t come here expecting charity,” I said.

 

“Good. Then you will not be disappointed.”

 

“I’m prepared to compensate you. Whatever you paid, and a reasonable fee on top.”

 

Darian ignored my remark. He gazed at Kulai instead. “Your tunic garment is rather daring, Lady.”

 

“It is practical for travelling through the wilderness,” she said. “A long gown will drag in the mud and slow me down if it is necessary that I run. Furthermore, I am a huntress.”

 

“I can see your lower calves.”

 

“But no bare skin,” said Kulai. “I am a Free Woman of Turia. I am dressed modestly.”

 

“Men will be the judge of that,” said Darian. 

 

“Kulai is not the issue here,” I said. “I want to see my slave.”

 

Darian smiled. “I can let you have half an ahn with her or any other girl in my camp for five copper tarsks.”

 

“I want to buy Kelsee back.”

 

“Describe this girl.”

 

“Brown hair, blue eyes, approximately five feet four inches in height, ears unpierced, and thigh unbranded.”

 

“Her collar size?”

 

“I don’t know that.”

 

Darian smiled again and fired off more questions. “Ankle circumference? Wrist circumference? Lower hip circumference? Waist circumference? Thigh circumference?” 

 

I was having to admit each time that I didn’t know the answers to any of those questions.

 

“Neck base circumference? Underbust circumference? Length of index finger? Do you know anything about this so-called slave of yours except for her height, hair, and eye colour?”

 

“Do those things matter.”

 

“They do for the purpose of identification. If I gave away a free girl to anyone who simply describes her hair colour, I’d be a poor man.”

 

“I said I’m prepared to pay.”

 

“Do you carry her slave papers?’

 

“No, I do not.”

 

“Go away. You are wasting my time.”

 

“Do you have her or not? She would have been brought in half an ahn ago.”

 

“I bought a girl from outlaws half an ahn ago, yes. She may have brown hair and blue eyes. A lot of girls do.”

 

I pulled a silver tarsk from my tunic pouch and held it up for Darian to see. “We both know she isn’t worth this. So look at this coin and understand I am not wasting your time. You would get nowhere near this selling her in a market in Argentum.”

 

“You must want that girl very much.”

 

“Let’s assume I do. Where is she?”

 

“In the branding tent.”

 

I felt a tightness in my stomach. “You’ve branded her?”

 

“Not yet. I’ve been busy.” 

 

“I’ll pay a silver tarsk for her.”

 

“Oh, I think you will pay rather more than that. You made a big mistake telling me you want that specific girl. You should have come here asking to look at all my girls. You should have expressed interest in half a dozen beauties, including the girl you want, and then you should have bought three girls to disguise the one you really desire. Yes, you made a mistake. I now know this girl is worth far more than a silver tarsk to you. Perhaps she is not for sale? Perhaps I shall keep her in my kennels for a time?”

 

I grit my teeth. I had to remind myself I was in Darian’s camp, where he could call on armed men at any moment. I considered reminding him of my connection with Stannis Assante, but that was the nuclear option. I had already dropped the name once. The ambiguity of my relationship would already be a factor in his mind. 

 

“Can we not be reasonable, here? Can we not do business like honourable men?”

 

“Business?” Darian smiled. “But of course.” He turned to regard Kulai again. “Brush back your hood, Lady. I would like to see your hair.”

 

“How dare you,” said Kulai. “No!”

 

Darian shrugged. “Then my business with your companion is at an end. My men will escort you both out.”

 

“Wait,” said Kulai. She placed a hand on my sword arm, sensing I was about to do something rash. “I am a Free Woman. A modest Free Woman. What you ask is clearly not acceptable.”

 

“If you are who you say you are – a Free Woman of Turia, and Free Companioned to this man - then I mean you no harm. I give you my word on those terms. Furthermore, I do not have a death wish. I am only too aware of what the infamous Stannis Assante might do to my camp, on principle, if I were to enslave a Free Woman who enjoys his protection. If you lower your hood, I will negotiate with your man. Nothing else will come of your action. If you do not, our business is now concluded.”

 

“You don’t have to do this,” I said to Kulai, but she understood, painfully, of course, how much Kelsee meant to me. She placed her hands to the edge of her hood and drew it back, slowly, revealing her beautiful hair.

 

She was doing this humiliating thing for me. 

 

“Ah,” said Darian, pleased with what he now saw. “Yes, that is dark Turian hair, if ever I have seen it. If I may…” despite my warning stare, and the way Kulai flinched, Darian reached out and touched her hair, running his fingers through the dark, silken tresses. “Exquisite. Did you know that Turian hair – Turian female hair – is highly prized? I know a man who owns many Turian slave girls in his paga tavern, mostly to harvest their long lovely hair at regular intervals. He makes money, then, not only from their carnal service in the tavern, but also from being sheared frequently.”

 

“Don’t touch me,” said Kulai as she stepped away from him. Her long hair slipped easily through his open fingers. 

 

“So now we negotiate, like businessmen,” said Darian as he casually regarded my, now, unhooded companion. “Follow me.”

 

We followed him through the camp. “We’ve been set up here now for about a week,” explained Darian. I feigned a semblance of polite interest as there was no value in antagonising him. He knew he had the advantage in that I wanted Kelsee, whereas he didn’t need to sell her. The sale of a single girl was largely irrelevant to his overall business model. “We follow the armies of Argentum and camp well to the rear of their battle lines. At present they are entrenched across a front that extends almost nine pasangs wide. From time to time they launch an assault, gain ground, and then set up a new battle line as the inferior Corcyrian forces fall back in disarray. We move forward with them and buy the women that are taken, usually at very advantageous prices. If you are a simple spearmen, and you are lucky enough to capture two Corcyrian women, you may enjoy them for a time, but then there is the impractical reality of keeping them in bondage on the frontline of a war. You know that very soon you will seize more women, so what do you do? You sell your current captives to the slaver camp in your rear for whatever you can get, and spend the money on paga, which by the way turns out to be a lucrative side-line of my business here, so I eventually get my money back. Everyone wins.”

 

“Except the Corcyrian women,” I remarked, drily. 

 

“They win, too. They will be happier in their collars and chains. Women secretly crave the domination of men. Freedom frustrates them. Wouldn’t you agree, Lady?” he turned his gaze round to Kulai.

 

“I have no collar fantasies,” she remarked. 

 

“No?” Darian smiled. “Never?”

 

“Never,” said Kulai.

 

“Such a noble Free Woman. You should be proud of her frigid nature,” remarked Darian to me. “She is as rare as a golden egg laying vulo.”

 

“I am very proud of Kulai,” I said, touching my woman’s fingers with my own. She turned her head and smiled at me. 

 

“We are passing the tents where we process new arrivals,” said Darian. “This is where girls are first arrayed.” He motioned for us to pass through into an open sided pavilion tent. We saw a number of white circles painted on the grass. Each circle was large enough for a girl to comfortably kneel inside. At present there were three girls kneeling. They all seemed scared, but all three quickly dropped to obeisance as we entered. They knelt, pressed their foreheads to the ground and placed their hands, palms facing down, by the sides of their heads. 

 

“They are technically still Free Women,” remarked Darian, “for the moment, anyway. They were brought in early this morning. As you can see they have been stripped and my men are currently making notes of their body measurements.” I saw two men in blue and yellow robes examining each woman in turn. A girl would be commanded to stand, usually in display position, within her white circle. One man would then measure her wrist circumference, her ankle circumference, and all the many other measurements that are routinely taken by slavers, while his colleague recorded the numbers on a scroll tablet. 

 

I glanced at Kulai and could see she felt uncomfortable being in here. 

 

“Suppose you had been brought here, Lady,” said Darian to Kulai. “You would have been face stripped close to the entrance, and then your garments would have been removed with knives cutting the fabric apart. We do not attempt to unfasten a woman’s garments for fear of concealed poison needles and pins. Once you were naked – even dainty slippers removed – you would be thrust to the ground on your belly, and your legs kicked apart. You would be ordered to place your hands clasped at the back of your neck. The next captive would be similarly stripped and positioned while you lay there. You would then be fitted with an ankle ring.” Darian picked one up from a table and held it for Kulai to see. “Number 79. Let us assume that is your number. Yes, for the purpose of this tour, you are now number 79.” He smiled, sensing her discomfort. He opened and shut the hinged anklet close to her gaze. “We do not assign names at this stage of the process. For now you are simply number 79.”

 

“My name is Kulai,” she said. “Kulai of Turia.”

 

“Here, a present,” he said, as he handed Kulai the hinged ankle ring. It bore the Gorean number 79 inscribed on the metal surface. 

 

He led us on through the other side of the open sided pavilion. 

 

“Of course, number 79 wouldn’t be walking so regally, so proudly,” he gestured to Kulai. “No, she would instead be marched, head down, a man’s hand in her hair, holding her to his waist. By now she would be back braceleted, as well as ankle ringed. All her particular external physical details will have been noted and recorded next to the number assigned to her ankle ring. She can now be easily identified, not just from her ankle ring, but by a simple comparison of her body with our records. Can you guess what happens to you next, number 79?”

 

“Do not call me that,” said Kulai.

 

Darian led us through into another tent. A girl was tied to a small frame that was set at an angle. She was naked, anklet ringed, and struggling.

 

“I’m a Free woman,” she cried. “I am not a slave!” A man stood beside a counter on which there were a number of identical vials of liquid. He picked one up, along with a tube like device with a funnel, and then approached the helplessly bound girl.

 

“No, please! I have drunk the wine of the noble Free Woman! You do not have to give me this! Please!”

 

“We give all our captives slave wine, and do so early on in their processing. Accidents can sometimes happen, especially with captives as sweetly curved as you appear to be, number 79. Men can sometimes forget themselves,” said Darian. “In theory the effects of slave wine could last indefinitely, but traditionally a girl is given further doses at regular intervals, perhaps once or twice a year.”

 

Kuali did not wear the loose gowns and robes of the Free Women of the city of Argentum. Although she showed no bare skin, her clothing, while practical for travelling, did nothing to hide the loveliness of her figure. Too, her hair was now uncovered. 

 

“No! You can’t do this! Please, no!” cried the captive girl.

 

A man opened the girl’s mouth and forced wedges between her teeth, holding her mouth open. The second man then produced the rubber tube and slid it down the girl’s throat, despite the incomprehensible sounds she was making. The man who had wedged her mouth open now pinched the girl’s nose closed as the other man poured the slave wine into the wide shaped funnel. The liquid passed down the tube and into the girl’s stomach.

 

“We leave you in place on the rack, number 79; your wrists and ankles restrained, so that the liquid has time to do its work, and you are unable to thrust fingers deep into your mouth to induce vomiting.” 

 

The girl was weeping now. She had suffered the humiliation of being force fed slave wine, while being secured to a slave rack. She lay there still, her fair limbs outstretched, putting her on display to anyone who might pass by.

 

“The same process can be used on you, number 79, at feeding time, should you be stupid enough to refuse your evening gruel. The tube device for feeding differs only in that it includes a plunger to force the liquid gruel mash down your throat. Slaves eat when their masters tell them to eat. You will find we control every aspect of your life going forward, number 79.”

 

“I told you, do not call me that.”

 

“Follow me.” 

 

We walked on and found ourselves in a third tent. A naked girl knelt in nadu on the grass. She had brown hair and large breasts. 

 

“This girl, then has been measured, documented, and given slave wine. She is now being fitted with a slave collar. We know her collar size already from the careful measurements in the first tent. We will not linger here long, for there is little else to see, aside from the girl being collared. We typically use steel mined and forged in the Voltai mountains, close to where I live.”

 

The girl gazed at us with pleading eyes. She was about to be collared! But she didn’t dare to break position. I saw red marks on her back and thighs from where she had previously been whipped. Had she been slow to obey orders? Had she protested her treatment? Had she perhaps, only at first, refused to run to the circles of assessment in the first tent when slavers had commanded her to do so? How foolish women can be when they are first captured and bound by men. 

 

A man in the tent, garbed in brown clothing, but with the identifying colours of his caste worn on his sleeve, approached the girl, with the requisite size collar in his hand. I held Kulai’s hand and felt it tremble as she was forced to watch this girl now ordered to a basic collaring position as the steel band was locked about her neck. 

 

“It is done,” said Darian. “She will wear that collar, or one very much like it, for the rest of her life.”

 

“Interesting as all this is,’ I said, drily, “I simply want to see my slave.”

 

“And so you shall, for she is in the fourth tent in this cycle – the branding tent. You may have passed it on the way to find me.”

 

We had. I had seen the two coal braziers heating up. Darian gazed again at Kulai. He could not of course see the lines of her own neck, for the veils and high collar of her tunic served to conceal it. 

 

“Are you okay?” I whispered to my companion. She was being very brave, and she was doing this for me.

 

“No, not really,” she whispered back. Her hand felt tense. It trembled.  

 

“I am here,” I reminded her.

 

“I love you,” she whispered, softly. 

 

I had been surprised by my own reaction to the sights and sounds that Darian was showing me, or rather my lack of reaction. Why was I not outraged, offended, shocked? The truth was, I saw these women, in the early stages of assessment, being fed slave wine, being collared, and I felt little more than a calm acceptance of their plight. It was, I thought, possibly the reaction of a Gorean man who was accustomed to the nature of slavery since birth. Had I become numb to the deprivations endured by slaves? Had I become somewhat accepting of the Gorean culture pertaining to slaves? Why did I not scream with outrage and deny to myself that this could even be happening to these women?

 

Or did I now perhaps simply see the slave sex – as Kulai had curiously described her own feminine sex – the slave sex, kneeling before me, now forced to comply with the manner in which nature had intended for them?

 

I was a man of Earth. I should be shocked. I should be outraged. And yet, I was not. I thought instead of how delicious these stripped beauties might be in time, once trained and made to revel in their submission to men. 

 

Women are extremely desirable in collars. Ignore the arguments as to whether they should be placed in collars and branded. Those arguments are largely irrelevant to the basic question: are they incredibly desirable if and when they are placed into bondage? I think the answer to that question is, incontrovertibly, yes. 

 

We walked on to the tent I had seen earlier – the branding tent. The lit braziers were now smouldering well, and I suspected the irons thrust deep into the coals would be red hot. 

 

“It is a branding tent!” whispered Kulai in alarm. She was being led into a branding tent by a slaver! Obviously the rational part of her brain knew that she was a Free Woman and that she would not, herself, suffer the indignity, the pain, and the loss of freedom that is associated with the brand, but the irrational, animal like part of her nature instinctively feared this place, as all Free Women do. I touched her fingers again and promised she would be safe.

 

“Come along, Roland, and number 79. The girl you seek should be inside,” said Darian, gesturing to the open flap of the tent. 

 

“He keeps calling me that,” whispered Kuali, “as if I am part of his livestock. As if he knows I will be his!”

 

“He is simply a cruel man,” I said. “He delights in playing with your emotions. Ignore it. Once we have Kelsee we shall leave.”

 

We entered the tent. Two girls knelt in great distress, chained by their collar rings to a slave post. Their wrists were bound behind their backs in a way common in slaver camps. A slaver's practice is often to put binding fibre, or binding leather, about a girl's waist, snugly, and tie her hands behind her back. This, of course, narrows her waist, rounds her belly, and contributes to the accentuation of the bosom. It is a beautiful arrangement, both practical in terms of security, and attractive to the eye. Both girls were naked. Both girls wore steel collars about their necks. Both girls looked lovely. One of the girls was Kelsee. 

 

She looked up at me in surprise and opened her mouth, but quickly, without speaking a word, she closed it again. She seemed agitated, scared, desperate.

 

“Is this the girl you referred to?” enquired Darian. Inside the tent was a large branding rack with shackles for the wrists and ankles and vice like implement designed to immobilise a girl’s thigh, ready for the kiss of the hot iron. 

 

“Kelsee!” I said.

 

She gazed at me in despair but did not speak.

 

“Kelsee!” I said, again. Why didn’t she answer?

 

“She cannot speak,” said Darian, casually. “She has been gagged by her Master’s will. She knows what will be done to her if she dares to break that discipline.”

“That is my slave,” I said, grimly. She was here in this tent to be branded. I had arrived in time, it seemed.

 

“Is she?” said Darian, rather amused now.

 

“Yes, she is.”

 

“We have something of a dilemma, then,” remarked Darian as he gazed at Kelsee, then at me, and then, his gaze lingering rather more longingly, on Kulai. 

 

“What sort of dilemma?” I felt the tension now hanging in the air.

 

“The girl claimed, before I gagged her by my will, that she is a Free Woman of Argentum, not a slave, and that, rather amusingly, she claims to know me, personally…”