Barbarian of Gor Chapter Four

 

That last morning in Corcyrus, before I left for the city of Torcadino, I enjoyed both of my red silk girls in the furs of my bed.

 

“Master!” cried Clara, her eyes wide and dilated, her wrists fastened past her head in slave manacles to an iron ring set in the headboard. “Oh, Master!”

 

I was inside of her, pushing her on towards a slave orgasm. She thrashed wildly beneath me, responding fully to each stroke of my body. Beside me, my Scandinavian looking blonde slut, the sexually awakened Ornah, who had known the touch of men long before I had bought her, mewled softly as she kissed and rubbed my body with her breasts and nipples, plaintively trying to attract my attention away from using Clara. Her wrists too were secured to the same iron ring, meaning she could not use her hands on me. 

 

As I felt Clara shaking, I slid out from inside her and turned round to gaze at blonde Ornah. 

 

“Yes, Master, yes!” she cried, excitedly as I pressed her down onto her back, while Clara writhed and begged for me to return. I ignored wide-hipped Clara, and instead parted Ornah’s thighs and entered her now, gazing deeply into her eyes as I did so.

 

“I love you, Master,” sobbed Ornah. “I love you!”

 

“Quiet. Do not say that,” I warned. “You are just a slave.”

 

“A slave who loves her collar!” she wept as I pushed deep inside of her.

 

"Of course,” I said as I gazed down, cupping a ripe breast with one free hand and licking at her nipples, taking one gently between my teeth and sucking it. 

 

“Ohh!” She seemed to like that, judging by her frantic squirming. 

 

“Your collar suits you, slut.”

 

“I love my collar! I love my brand! I love you, Master!”

 

“Do NOT say that,” I warned her again.

 

“Yes, my love Master,” she cried as her body reacted to my thrusts. She was impossible. It was like scolding a cat. Really no point at all.

 

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I had feared the worst when I finally returned to the market of Kadriya in the Kadriyan district of the city where my new business had been established. I had been taken without warning by the city guard after saving the life of a young girl who turned out to be the daughter of the Tatrix, and there had been no opportunity to ensure that my slaves might be looked after. 

 

I owned five slaves: Iona, the black girl; Clara, the wide hipped and red silk mother of the young Bina; Scandinavian looking red silk girl, Ornah, and last but not least, the red haired Naja.

 

I needn’t have worried. Upon my return to the market of Kadriya I discovered that the slaver, Lady Herminia, had been feeding and overseeing my girls during my absence.

 

“You have my sincere thanks and gratitude, Lady. I feared the worst.”

 

“It is nothing. We share caste. You would do the same for me.”

 

Caste is a wonderful concept on Gor. Goreans observe caste traditions and obligations with the same serious minded veneration they give to Home Stone. So long as I had caste and a Home Stone, I was never truly alone. My caste would be my extended family. 

 

“But even so, Lady, I am very grateful.” Was it my imagination or were my slaves very happy to see me return? Clara begged to kiss and lick my feet, which drew condemnation from the other girls, though I saw how Ornah shifted uneasily in her chains, where she was secured on a cement platform. She, like Clara, was red silk, and had experienced sex with a man long before I had bought her. Unlike the white silk girls, she knew what intercourse felt like. I saw the way she looked at me now. She had been a slave for some time, and was developing strong slave needs. She knew only too well what Clara had experienced each night when I had put her to use, and now it was Ornah who whimpered softly and reached out with her chained hands as I passed by.

 

“Ornah begs use, Master,” she spoke softly, and was kicked by Naja for her slave like responses towards me.

 

“Slave slut!” hissed Bina, on the other side of Ornah. “Oh, listen to you! You beg use!”

 

Naja joined in the teasing of the blonde girl. “Oh, you are such a slave! You deserve the collar! You deserve the brand!”

 

White silk girls do not fully understand what their bodies desire. They have some inkling, but they are able to fight their secret feelings, and, in group company with other white silk girls, they can grow quite bold in the condemnation of their red silk sisters. I saw Ornah shrink back from Naja’s extended foot, but still she looked at me with wide eyes. “It has been too long,” she wept. “I beg your touch, Master.”

 

I smiled. Feelings grow within a girl when she spends time in a collar and chains. The market place, too, with its bountiful array of beauties in collars, usually displayed naked, is a reminder to the girl what she is and what could be done to her. It is impossible for her to forget she is a slave with burning slave needs in such a place.

 

“You wish to please me?” I asked Ornah.

 

“Yes!” she cried, pulling at her chains to come closer to me.

 

“Speak clearly.”

 

“Ornah begs to please her Master in any way he wishes.”

 

“Slut!” cried Bina. “Oh, you’re such a slut!”

 

Naja and Iona added their own choice insults, but now all that was on Ornah’s mind was whether I might take her from this place once the market closed for the day.

 

“He doesn’t want you!” sneered wide-hipped Clara. “He has me! I can please him in ways you never can!” There was a slither of chain as she moved as far as she could on her own cement shelf. 

 

“Mother!” cried Bina in dismay. “Do not speak so!”

 

“It is true, daughter. You should know the truth. I am a slave.”

 

Bina began to cry and turned away from her mother, not wishing to hear this of the woman who had nurtured her all these years. 

 

“Enough,” I said, as I moved along the cement display shelf, stroking the flanks of each girl in turn. “Concentrate your pleas and your energy on attracting buyers. Now that I have returned, you are on sale once again.”

 

“Surely not me, Master?” cried Clara. She tried to pull against her short chains to reach me. “You would not truly sell me?”

 

“You are for sale, Clara. You all are.”

 

She looked shocked. Did she truly believe I might treasure her and keep her as some choice acquisition? I was a slaver. I bought and sold women.

 

“I owe you further thanks,” I said after I was satisfied, inspecting my lovely stock. “I understand you made enquiries on my behalf when I was taken into the palace?”

 

“I was concerned by the manner in which you were dragged away, and that no one had heard from you.”

 

“I owe you much, Lady Herminia. Truly, I will not forget this.” And there it was. Looking at the slaver, Herminia, in her modest robes and veils, I understood at last that I had made the right choice, of sorts, to join the guard that would serve to protect Laetitia. It was women like Herminia that I would protect by seeing Corcyrus allied with Torcadino, for it was women like Herminia that would be seized, stripped, raped and enslaved if the city walls were breached. Herminia was of my caste. Herminia shared my Home Stone. I understood now the way Goreans who shared caste and Home Stone shared a sense of family, if you like. I owed duty to these people, for they had not forsaken me. 

 

“There were some offers while you were gone,” remarked Herminia, “but I did not feel justified in saying yes or no. I told the men to return in a few days if they were still interested.”

 

“Who were they interested in?”

 

“The red silk girls, of course. Your white silk girls react like skittish vulos when they are touched.”

 

I nodded. 

 

“You should whip them,” suggested the Lady.

 

“They have done nothing wrong.”

 

“They need to fear the whip, and learn to crawl and beg and present themselves to customers. They need to feel slave heat between their thighs.”

 

“They will not truly feel that until they are red silk?” I suggested

 

“That is true. But they need you to teach them that they cannot hide themselves away in fright. They are slaves.”

 

“Iona?” I turned to the black skinned girl. “I will be watching you today. You will beg piteously to be bought by passing men.”

 

She looked frightened.

 

“You will cry out to them, piteously. You will pull at your restraints. You will desperately try to reach out to the full extent of your short chains. And if they choose to touch you, you will press yourself to them.”

 

“Please, Master, I am white silk!” cried Iona. “Do not make me do this!”

 

“She needs to feel the whip,” suggested Herminia. 

 

Hearing those words, Iona shrunk back on the cement shelf. “Not the whip!” Please, Master, no! I will obey. I will!”

 

“She needs to feel the whip,” said Herminia again.

 

“I will give her a chance” I said. “We shall see if she truly wishes to avoid the whip.”

 

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I lay on my back, gazing up at the ceiling, with my slaves curled either side of me. I had freed their wrists from the slave ring after I had finished taking my pleasure with them, and now they lay quietly in that contented half-life between sleeping and waking, enjoying the traces of warmth and pleasure that still lingered between their thighs. The girls had been eager and competitive to outdo one another and pressure me to favour one over the other.

 

“I was best, wasn’t I, Master?” Clara had said as she shot a warning glance at Ornah. “I gave you the most pleasure?”

 

“You know nothing, Clara,” hissed Ornah. “Your fumbling on the couch was little better than a white silk. Our Master preferred me.”

 

“You were both very good,” I said, lying there in contentment.

 

“The white silk girls hate us,” said Ornah as she began to kiss my chest and run her fingers down towards my navel. 

 

“They will not be white silk forever, and then their perspective may be crucially different.”

 

I felt Clara stiffen beside me, because of course her daughter was one of my white silk girls. I knew it distressed her to think that the young Bina would eventually be opened by a man. But Clara was a slave, and she knew to say nothing. It was not her place to protest. 

 

“Will you return us to the cement shelf this morning?” asked Ornah, hesitantly.

 

“Yes.”

 

She did not want to hear that. She hoped I might keep her. “But you must like me, Master?”

 

“You were very good,” I said, again.

 

“Please don’t sell me. Keep me, Master.”

 

“I am a slaver. I do not keep girls.”

 

I felt Ornah push back tears. Girls fear the uncertainty of the sales block. Who knows what kind of Master, or Mistress might buy them? Clara, though, said nothing. I think she still held out some hope, having been with me now for several nights, that when push came to shove, I would refuse offers on her. I would keep her. But she didn’t want the same principle to apply to Ornah. 

 

Later that morning I permitted Clara to lace and tie my sandals, kissing them and my feet as she worked. Ornah busied herself cleaning the apartment as I would be leaving Corcyrus later today, and could not say when I might return.

 

“A man might make an offer for me while you are gone?” Clara said, nervously. All the girls desperately wanted to know what instructions I had left with Lady Herminia, pertaining to them. Did the slaver have a framework by which to consider offers of purchase, and, if so, what might I intrust her to accept?

 

“A man might.” I sipped a small cup of black wine as Clara gazed up at me from the floor.

 

“We would not really be sold while you are away, Master, would we?”

 

“The Lady Herminia will look after your cement shelf. You will obey her every word as you would mine.”

 

Clara gave me a pained expression. She knew from the time I was held in the palace just how strict and uncompromising the female slaver could be with collared girls. I understood it had not been a relaxing time for them. 

 

“Would you not prefer me to be here to greet you when you return to Corcyrus, Master?”

 

I said nothing. I simply drank my black wine. 

 

Later that morning I walked my slaves ahead of me, towards the market of Kadriya. The girls wore very short tunics and I enjoyed gazing at the swish of their long legs as they were walked at a slow and graceful slave pace. The skirts of their brief tunics barely covered their ripe bottoms. 

 

And of course they both knew I was gazing at them the way I was. Each girl wiggled from time to time to keep my interest. They wanted to make it harder for me to sell them, I think. 

 

Despite being a slaver. I had yet to actually sell a girl. I had, to the amusement of Lady Herminia, declined an offer on Iona yesterday. In truth it was a couple of copper tarsks more than what I had originally priced her at, but I felt I could get even more if I waited. Iona had done her best, under the threat of the whip, to appear pleasing to men. Despite her white silk virginity, she was learning to display her ample charms. Had I not been leaving the city today, I think I would have been tempted to take away her white silk status myself. 

 

“She should still be whipped,” observed Lady Herminia as we sipped cool sherbet drinks in the shade of the market canopies. 

 

“She is trying her best,” I observed. 

 

“She would try harder still if she had been whipped.”

 

“Possibly.”

 

“That builder made a good offer for Iona. You should have accepted it.”

 

“I’m sure he’ll be back with a higher offer still,” I remarked. It had been a good offer. Why hadn’t I simply accepted it?

 

“You could buy three new girls, raw to their collars, only recently branded, with the money you would have received for Iona. There is a caste private market later today. There will be new stock to peruse.”

 

I gazed at Iona and then at my other girls. They were all naked, collared, secured with ankle shackles, displayed on the cement shelves of my personal market space. I watched as they began to call out to passers-by again. I suspected they were not so eager to please when I wasn’t looking. 

 

“I begin to think you do not want to sell any of them,” remarked Herminia. 

 

“They are all for sale at the right price.”

 

“Even Clara?” asked Herminia. I gazed at Clara and watched her present herself to a man who plainly wouldn’t be able to afford her.

 

“Clara is a slave. I sell slaves.”

 

It was strange. I had known Herminia for some time now, but I still had no idea what she looked like under her robes, veils and concealing hood. Was she attractive, or shrewish? I had no idea. She remained a mystery to me. I couldn’t even be sure what colour hair she had. 

 

“I will be leaving soon,” I remarked as I gazed down at the veiled woman with whom I now shared caste. “In just a few ahn. I don’t know when I will return, or even if I will return.” I hadn’t told Herminia where I was going or anything about my mission. She was an intelligent woman, though, and it wasn’t hard for her to guess my journey might be of importance to the city we owed allegiance to. 

 

“I understand, Roland. These are dangerous times, and I tell you nothing you don’t know when I say you should not travel unless it is important.”

 

“It is important, Lady.”

 

“Then I shall look after your slaves while you are gone. It is the least I can do. They will swiftly learn to fear my lash.”

 

“I am sure they will, Lady.”

 

“May the Priest Kings protect you, Roland, and may they guide your hand in whatever it is you now do for our Home Stone.”

 

I spent a few ehn with each of my slave girls, stroking the curves of their bodies, and telling them to obey Herminia perfectly. Iona surprised me when she said, “take me with you, Master.”

 

“I cannot. I have business that must be conducted alone.”

 

“I am scared,” she said. “The Mistress is harsh with us.”

 

“But fair. She is not cruel for no reason.”

 

“No.” said Iona. “But she expects perfection in everything!”

 

“Then do not disappoint her. You are very beautiful, Iona.”

 

“I am white silk,” she whispered softly. “But I have such feelings now.”

 

“I know.” I kissed my beautiful black slave and ran my fingers over those impressive nipples. 

 

“I… I hoped it might have been you… who… took my silk.”

 

“It will be another man, and you will serve him well. You will be a precious prize to him in time.”

 

“I do not know what to do! I have no understanding…”

 

“Talk to Clara. Talk to Ornah. They are your chain sisters. Call them ‘mistress’. Beg them to instruct you in things. It will aid you in the long run.”

 

I spent a little longer with the wide hipped Clara. She pressed herself to me and told me that she was my slave.

 

“Hush. You will be another man’s slave soon. You will be sold.”

 

She began to cry. Realisation finally dawned on her. She wasn’t going to be kept in my collar. 

 

“I hate you!” she said. “I hate you!”

 

“Be quiet, slave, or I shall have you whipped.”

 

She said nothing more, and then, ten ehn later, I left the market place to make my rendezvous with Adamus, Felix and the young Lady Laetitia. They would be waiting for me at the Eastern gate.

 

I had begun to notice large numbers of genuine refugees appearing in the city of late. They had fled from the fighting to the west, having lost homes and loved ones. Corcyrus was straining to look after them all, and many were being sent eastwards to outlying towns that so far had avoided the sharp end of the fighting. Conflicting rumours circulated as to the progress of the war, and you could take your pick which ones you believed. Some sources suggested great victories for Corcyrus. Other sources suggested our armies were now giving up ground and being forced further and further back to Corcyrus itself. 

 

There were those who said Ar was mobilising its own men and would soon march them to support the forces of Argentum. If that was the case, Corcyrus would be facing a threat from both the North West and the North East. Torcadino lay South East of Corcyrus, and was positioned where it could intercept the land forces of Ar should it choose. It’s military might could also march alongside the banks of the river Issus to engage Argentum’s legions. It was clear enough that the alliance with Torcadino was every bit as essential as the Tatrix had described. 

 

What worried me was that the Ubar of Torcadino would know this. He was perfectly positioned to make great demands of Corcyrus in return for this alliance. But the Tatrix would know this, too. 

 

I found Adamus sitting outside one of the more respectable taverns in the Eastern quarter of a city. Here, paga slaves did not lure men inside. Women were permitted to eat and drink in certain rooms, though others were reserved for men alone.

 

“You’re on time. I like that,” said Adamus as he rose to take my hand. Again there was no indication he recognised me, but then, I was working hard to ensure I didn’t appear to recognise him, either. Did he know who I was? He had targeted Felicity’s house, after all. I was only there by accident, and it had been dark. Until I knew more, I really couldn’t trust him, and so I simply smiled in a disarming manner as he gripped my hand hard in that way men do when they want to demonstrate their Alpha Male credentials. “This here, is Felix. He’s native born Gorean.” Adamus indicated a large, powerfully built man who nodded as he looked me up and down, assessing whether I’d be any use in a fight, no doubt.

 

They wore simple, plain, ragged clothing, consistent with the story that we were war weary refugees. I had dressed in a similar fashion and carried little in the way of obvious wealth, though I had some silver coins sewn discretely into the hemlines of my tunic.

 

“You’ll want this, said Felix as he handed me a blade in a scabbard. The scabbard looked cheap, tawdry, and the hilt well-worn and of poor construction. “Don’t draw it,” warned Felix. “The blade is the finest steel you’ll find in any city, and the hilt is deceptive in its quality. But we don’t want anyone to know that unless we’re sticking them with it.”

 

I nodded and slung the scabbard over my shoulder in the Gorean fashion. 

 

“Where is the Lady?” I asked.

 

“Your modest companion, you mean,” said Adamus with a grin. 

 

“That as well.” I still felt uneasy about posing as Laetitia’s companion. It felt wrong. 

 

“I hope she’s a good actress,” said Felix. 

 

“She’ll be fine,” said Adamus. “She knows what’s at stake.” He had lowered his voice and we all did likewise. 

 

And then I saw her. She wore cheap, patched garments – simple robes of crude peasant linen, roughly fringed at the cuffs and ankle hems with ragged embroidery, a rep cloth head scarf , and a single opaque cloth veil. She was a small, sleight figure, and at first I didn’t think it was her, for her hair was no longer red, but a muddy brown. She had dyed it.

 

“Tal, beloved,” she said, speaking softly, and curtseying before my supposed authority, as if she had known me for years. “Your obedient woman stands before you, ready to obey you in all things.”