Barbarian of Gor Chapter Eight

 

“How are my capture knots?’

 

I couldn’t feel my hands when I woke. I was naked, stripped, and tightly tied between a couple of trees. My wrists were tied together and then lashed to a trunk. My ankles were tied separately to trunks either side, so that my legs were widely spread. And, as is always the case when I wake from sleep – whether naturally induced or not – I had a stiff morning glory erection. I’ve never understood why that happens to men. It’s not as if I’m always dreaming erotic dreams.

 

Though on Gor those dreams do come a lot more frequently than they ever did on Earth.

 

“You’re actually the first man I’ve had to tie as a captive. I’m just wondering how I did?” she asked. “Please, I’m curious. Indulge me.” 

 

“They’re good knots,” I said through gritted teeth. Leda was dressed again in the simple peasant gowns belonging to Laetitia. She sat in Tower position beside me, unveiled, and bereft of the slave collar. She had found the key, then. My pouches and sword lay close by. Hidden in one of the pouches was the precious serum I had to give to Laetitia before she might be tested for slave responses by physicians in Torcadino. No doubt Leda had been through everything. I had to hope she hadn’t given the vial any due consideration.

 

“You’re not just saying that to make me happy?” asked Leda. “You can be critical if you want. Women rarely master the art of capture knots.”

 

I flexed my wrists. Nope. No latitude to wriggle free at all. "They're good knots." There was an amused smile on her face that lingered as if she was waiting for the penny to drop. I was still groggy from whatever drug had been in that scratch, but I then understood. She had spoken to me in English, and without thinking I had replied in English.

 

“You have an accent,” she said. “A Gorean would not recognise it for what it is, and would just assume it’s a regional dialect they’re unfamiliar with, but  I recognised it last night when you spoke to me in the kitchen. So I know you’re English.”

 

I sighed. I was helpless, and there was nothing I could do for the moment. She was in charge. “You don’t have an accent.” I assumed now she was also an Earth woman.

 

“Thank you. Years of practice, I suppose. I would have had an accent to begin with, when I first came to this world.”

 

“When did you come to Gor?”

 

“Oh, many years ago. 2015. A lifetime ago.”

 

“So you’re an agent for some power on Gor?” I had heard that women only came to Gor one of two ways. Usually that was in a cargo ship bound for the slave markets. But there were exceptions to that rule. Goreans, it seemed, sometimes valued Earth women as agents for their subterfuge, though those lovely agents rarely lasted long, and when their usefulness was over their eventual fate was the same as the girls taken for the slave markets.

 

“Not as such.” She moved her hand and touched my erect penis. She slid her fingers down the length of the shaft. “You seem excited.” It seemed to amuse her.

 

“I’m always like this in the morning.”

 

“Oh? So it’s not the thought of being helplessly bound by a beautiful woman?”

 

“I’m always like this in the morning.”

 

“A lot of Earthmen have bondage fantasies. It’s in their blood.”

 

I thought back to my time as a kajirus, when I belonged to Miss Chelsea Frick. She had routinely secured me to her couch when she put me to use. I had grown to associate such practices with sexual arousal, though once I was free I reverted back to the more normal male dominance, common on Gor, if not on Earth.

 

“Who are you?” I asked. 

 

“You know who I am. I’m a woman stationed on the road to watch out for your group.”

 

Was she fishing? She might suspect that we had Laetitia, but she couldn’t possibly know. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

 

“You made a mistake, Roland.” She stroked the shaft of my penis, because it amused her to do so, and I groaned softly as I felt waves of pleasure from her fingers. “You were so cocky – no pun intended – and so overconfident. Do you know what your mistake was?”

 

“I suspect you want to tell me. Women have always enjoyed boasting when they have a glimmer of success.”

“Are we really so predictable?” she laughed, but her fingers continued to toy with me, to keep me aroused. That, but no more. She simply wanted to keep me erect. “I am looking for a young red-headed girl.”

 

“So?”

 

“You made the effort of dyeing Laetitia’s hair, but only on her head. When she disrobed before me in the small cubicle room, I clearly saw the colour of her pubic hair. Tch. Careless, Roland.”

 

Fuck.

 

“So I asked myself, is it just coincidence that when I’m looking for a young red-headed girl being secretly smuggled to Torcadino, I come across a young red-headed girl whose hair has been dyed brown?”

 

She did something with her fingers and I gasped in pleasure.

 

“Someone’s feeling virile this morning,” she laughed. “Add that to the unusual situation that a Gorean peasant has an English accent, and, well, I’d have to be very stupid not to put two and two together.”

 

I pulled hard at the binding fibre with its near perfect capture knots, but to no avail.

 

“You serve the Tatrix?” she asked. 

 

“I serve my city. I am sworn to Corcyrus.”

 

“Then you’re on the losing side, Roland. Because Corcyrus is going to lose. I know where Laetitia is, now, and once I get word to Stannis, his men will come for her. We’ve spread a wide net. It’s just a shame I don’t have armed men to call upon at this very moment. But I will have.” She toyed with my penis a little more and enjoyed the soft gasps that emanated from my mouth. “Tell me, and I’ve always wondered this, but why is it that when a woman is lost in the throes of sexual arousal she is considered a slut, or a natural slave; but when a man experiences the same thing, well he’s just virile and a natural master?”

 

“I don’t make the rules,” I said, through gritted teeth.

 

“It just seems so one sided. So unfair.”

 

“Women are natural slaves. They enjoy bondage. They secretly long to serve.”

 

“Are you trying to make me angry?” She smiled. “You’re not in a good position to make me angry. The war of the sexes isn’t that simple, Roland.”

 

“Actually it is. And it’s only a war in the minds and hearts of women who fear what they secretly desire.”

 

“I see you’ve taken the indoctrination of the Gorean male to heart.”

 

“And I see you’re an English woman on Gor, but you’re not branded. Why is that?”

 

“You’re curious about me?” She leaned forward, her fingers still playing with my penis. 

 

“I’m just making conversation.” I flexed my wrists again. Some feeling was returning to my fingers. “I don’t have anything else to do.”

 

“My name is Miss Sally Reeve. And yes, I’m English, as you are. From Brighton.”

 

“I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Sally Reeve of Brighton. But what are you doing here on Gor?”

 

“I was sent to Gor as part of a small team to operate some computers.”

 

“There are computers on Gor?” This surprised me.

 

“Hidden ones. I worked onboard a sophisticated drop ship that lay submerged under a great lake in the northern forests. It was a monitoring station. I’m a computer analyst. Of course, no one actually told me in the job interview that I would be working on an alien planet. That would have been preposterous. I was innocent when I was taken to Gor.”

 

“Innocent?”

 

“In every meaning of the word,” she said.  

 

“The Northern Forests are a long way away. Were you made redundant?”

 

“In a way. The ship is gone. Destroyed, I believe. Luckily I wasn’t onboard when it was destroyed. But now I’m stranded here. I have been for a decade or so. Stranded on Gor.”

 

“And so am I. We have that in common, then.”

 

“I think we have very little in common, Roland. The life of an Earthman on Gor bears no resemblance to the life a woman experiences on this world. This must be a paradise to you. Slaves in collars obeying your every command.”

 

“It can be a paradise for women, too. Very few wish to return home when they have grown to accept their collars.”

 

“That is ludicrous. You expect me to believe a woman grows to love her bondage? Her collar? Her brand? Her submission?”

 

“I have seen it with my own eyes. Many times. I have seen how fulfilled women can be.” I lay there and smiled. “I think I understand your sex better than you do, Miss Sally Reeve of Brighton. I understand your frustrations, your secret fantasies, and your self-loathing for having such forbidden feelings. You are ashamed of yourself. But you shouldn’t be. Your feelings are natural, and healthy.” 

 

“Women and men are intrinsically the same, except for a few minor biological differences,” she informed me. 

 

“I’m sure that’s what the matriarchy has told you. You can believe what you want. It doesn’t change the facts. I notice you didn’t deny that you have secret fantasies?”

 

“You don’t know me. You can never know me.”

 

“So what now?” I lay there. I was effectively her prisoner.

 

“I have sometimes wondered what it might be like to…” she licked her lips, “enjoy a man who is helpless before me.” 

 

I watched as she loosened, one at a time, the linen bow ties about her simple peasant robes. I grew harder still as she revealed, first, a naked shoulder, then, drawing down the woollen robes, a breast, and then, finally, stepping from her garments, naked once again.

 

“You really are lovely, Miss Sally Reeve.” I was rock hard. The tip on my engorged penis quivered before her. 

 

“And you are as helpless as a slave, Roland.” She regarded me, one hand on her hip. She brushed back some of her hair. “I have been told how free women sometimes put a male to use.”

 

My breath grew tense with excitement. 

 

“The male is always restrained, of course.”

 

“Of course,” I said. “That is a sensible precaution. Men are dangerous.”

 

She laughed softly and touched my penis with the toes of her left foot. It quivered again. “You don’t look very dangerous.” She knelt down and slid her hand across my stomach. I gasped with pleasure as she wound her fingers through my pubic hair, cradling my balls and playing with my shaft. “I believe the common technique is to sit astride the male.” She leaned forward and brought her lips very close to mine. Her breasts swung loose, her nipples touching my own chest. “And then the Lady lowers herself carefully onto his manhood.”

 

“Do so,” I said through gritted teeth.

 

She laughed again. “You do not command here, Roland. I am mistress here. And I will put you to use. I will take pleasure from you and prove a woman can be dominant.”

 

And so she did.

 

When she came, she gripped fistfuls of long grass with each hand and arched her lower back. And then she sat in place, her eyes tightly shut, her thighs gripped about my hips, sighing contentedly and feeling whatever it is women feel when they have not yet experienced the true raptures of a slave orgasm. 

 

In time she opened her eyes and slid carefully from her own impalement. She eased herself from me with another sigh of contentment. “You are vigorous, Roland. I’ll give you that.” I could see her skin flushed from what amounts to a free woman orgasm. Such a thing, by all accounts, is merely a semblance of the true orgasm a female is capable of experiencing when she fully submits to a man. Ask any slave girl who had once worn robes and veils, as she lies at your feet. She will tell you the truth as she begs for your touch. 

 

“You cried out exquisitely, Sally. Has it truly been so long?”

 

She bit her lower lip and nodded. “Free women cannot ask for sex. Not on Gor.”

 

“Of course. They must be frigid, disinterested. They must pretend their bodies are numb and unreceptive. They must share in their collective lies.”

 

“So, tell me, Roland, how does it fell to have been raped? To have been the one who was violated?”

 

“I don’t believe I have been. I gave you consent.”

 

“Consent?!”

 

“Of course. You are a beautiful woman, Sally. You have used your body to please me. My only criticism is that you neglected to call me master as you served me with your body. But you are a free woman, so that can be excused. Were you a slave, you would be punished for that in due course, I suppose.”

 

“My, aren’t you the smug one. I’d be punished in due course? And how would you plan on doing that?”

 

“You are familiar with the Gorean slave whip?”

 

She was silent for a moment. I think she had seen its effect on women during her years on Gor. 

 

“It serves to discipline errant females,” I added. “I would first make you crawl on your hands and knees to fetch it and bring it to me between your teeth.”

 

She shook her head, angrily as she sat up and withdrew slightly. “If I had a whip, I would use it on you now. You have all the arrogance and self-conceit of a Gorean!”

 

“I shall take that as a compliment, Sally.”

 

“It’s not a compliment. I despise Goreans.”

 

“Of course you do. You are angry that they have not yet recognised your slave potential. How frustrating it must be for you. Have you not given them enough clues? Have you not acted in a fashion, at times, that begs the collar?”

 

She rose to her feet and paced around me. “Enough.”

 

“Your behaviour in the Inn last night. It was provocative. You were calling attention to yourself. You were brazenly challenging the men there.”

 

“Enough.”

 

“You wanted to be noticed. More than that, you wanted to see who the strong dominant men were. The men who might not put up with your brattish behaviour. Men who might teach you that you are female. Those are the men who interest you.”

 

“I said enough!”

 

“Have I touched a nerve?”

 

She turned, angrily, and reached for her simple homespun gowns.

 

“I have not given you permission to dress, Sally,” I said.

 

“What?” She turned round, astonished. She held the woollen gown in her left hand. 

 

“You are pleasing to look at the way you are now. You will remain naked.”

 

A smile crossed her face then. “You are trying to rile me.” She shook her head. “It will not work. You think this is a game? You think you can intimidate me like this? YOU are tied and helpless, not me.”

 

I shrugged. 

 

“YOU are my captive, here.” She held the gown still in her left hand. 

 

“So, now what? As you say, I remain helpless. I hardly think you’re going to take me with you.”

 

“I could kill you.” She moved to where my tunic lay and there she drew my sword from its scabbard in a single clean sweep, discarding her gown in the process. She held the blade in both hands by the simple hilt and pointed it towards me. Although the hilt seemed plain and ordinary, the blade itself was of the finest steel that money could buy. “I could cut your throat.”

 

“Could you? Could you really? Do you have that streak of inhumanity in your soul? I couldn’t do that. Not to you, Sally. It’s no small matter to cut the throat of a human being who lies helpless before you. Are you the kind of person who can do that, Sally?”

 

“Perhaps I am.” She approached me, knelt again, and placed the razor sharp steel close to my throat. “It wouldn’t take much. A simple movement.”

 

I regarded her with my gaze. “I am not going to beg for mercy, Sally. I’m a man.”

 

“I could kill you. Beg for your life, Roland. Tell me how much you want to live. I want to hear you plead”

 

“No.”

 

“We are enemies.”

 

“Perhaps.” I held her gaze as she held the sword. “Or perhaps our relationship goes deeper than that. Perhaps you have found a true master and your thoughts are confused as you kneel before him?”

 

Her hand hesitated for several moments before she conceded the fact that she was not a cold blooded killer. “I can’t take your life.” she said, visibly distressed as she found that, like so many people, she was incapable of cutting someone’s throat and watching them bleed out, choking to death. “You’re right. It’s a weakness in me.” She moved the razor sharp edge of the blade away from my throat. 

 

“No, you are simply human. There is nothing to be ashamed of, Sally.”

 

“We are enemies. So long as you live you might find me.”

 

“Yes. And I will find you, Sally. I promise you that.”

 

“Then I should kill you!” She turned again with the sword in her hand.

 

“I suppose so. But we both know you can’t. So put the sword down. Put it down before you cut yourself.”

 

“Stannis would tell me to kill you.”

 

“Stannis is not here. Stannis is not your master. Do you have a master, Sally?”

 

“No! I will never have a master!” She seemed angry again.

 

“And that saddens you. You are too proud to submit, like so many other women. And so you will never be happy.”

 

“You stole from me.” She rose again and went to my discarded tunic from which she produced her stolen purse. She held it for me to see. “Do you deny you stole from me?”

 

“Of course I stole from you. You were hunting us, and you appeared to be a traitor to your Home Stone.”

 

“Do you know what happens to a woman who lacks money on Gor?”

 

“I have a very good idea. Slavery, if she cannot pay her way, or find some fool of a man prepared to do so for her.”

 

“By stealing my money you practically condemned me to the collar! You would have enslaved me yourself!”

 

“I had no intention of enslaving you. I was simply going to use you as cover.”

 

“You expect me to believe you wouldn’t brand me with a kef?”

 

“As you say, I’m an Earthman.”

 

“Pitiful.”

 

“Oh? So now you condemn me because I say I wouldn’t brand your thigh? I really can’t win, can I, Sally?”

 

“Perhaps you think I’m not pretty enough to warrant a brand?”

 

“Oh, you’re pretty enough, Sally, be assured of that.”

 

Her face flushed again. “I didn’t mean that! I wasn’t asking whether…”

 

“The answer to your unspoken question – yes, were the circumstances different – yes, were I to find you on a sun-warmed cement sales block, stripped, displayed, collared, branded, I would find you of interest. But that does not mean I would routinely enslave you outside the protection of whatever Home Stone you claim.”

 

“I have no Home Stone,” she said, angrily. 

 

“I pity you then. A Home Stone is one of the most valuable things a woman can ever own on Gor. Aside from her modesty.”

 

“It is time for me to leave,” she said, with a tinge of irritation to her voice. “I need to find a line of refugees and join it before it becomes dark.” She reached for her homespun gown and began to dress in front of me. 

 

“I suppose you are going to send a message to Stannis at the first opportunity?” I asked.

 

“Yes. That is exactly what I am going to do. I know where the girl is now and I will be rewarded when she is brought before Stannis to be surrendered to Argentum. There will be no alliance with Torcadino, and the Tatrix’s daughter will serve as the lowest of slaves in the great palace of Argentum for the rest of her miserable life. Perhaps she will learn to love her collar. According to you it’s what happens.”

 

“And Miss Sally Reeve, once of Brighton, England, will be lavishly rewarded. She will have a Home Stone and a life of luxury on Gor.”

 

“Precisely. Do not condemn me. I am trapped on this world. I have struggled to maintain my freedom for a decade. I do what I have to do.” 

 

“And what of me?” I flexed my wrists again.

 

“I am going to leave you here. I can’t kill you in cold blood, but so long as you don’t return to the Inn, your friends will delay leaving, in order to find you. I think that will buy me enough time to send word to Stannis.”

 

“They will leave without me,” I said.

 

“I don’t think they will. The bond of brotherhood is strong amongst warriors. They will not abandon you. And therein lies the path to my triumph.” She was dressed now, looking every inch the refugee peasant girl as she tied the last of the linen thongs that held her gown together.  

 

“The road is dangerous for a lone woman,” I said. “You know that. Join me and I will guarantee your freedom. Join me and I will protect you. It’s not too late, Sally.”

 

She gazed down at me and laughed. “You have nothing to offer me, Roland of Corcyrus.”

 

“It is not too late.”

 

She shrugged and turned away. “Goodbye, Roland. Do not seek me out again. I think next time, if there is a next time, I will find the conviction to kill you.”