Barbarian of Gor Chapter Sixteen

 

I held Laetitia to me, feeling how soft and lovely her warm body was after so many days of sexual abstinence. She clung to me for comfort and reassurance, pressing her face to my chest, and snaking her arms about my waist. I placed my arms about her shoulder blades, rocking her a little in the way a mother might comfort a child who had endured some terrible nightmare.

 

“I thought I would never see you again,” she sobbed. “I thought I was alone.”

 

“Our assailant was a woman,” I said.

 

“I know.” Laetitia pressed herself close to me. Perhaps a little too close. I was a man, after all. “I was shouting that to you.”

 

“I didn’t hear you. I was focussed on the fight.”

 

“Is she dead?”

 

“No.” I smiled, thinking of her tethered in a slave bow, her wrists and ankles crossed and tied together, perhaps praying for my return. “She lives. She is my captive.”

 

I became aware that I now had an erection. Laetitia was dressed in a  brief, artfully torn slave tunic, and she wore a collar. Her body seemed to fit into my embrace exquisitely. And then she sensed the stirring in my loins, too.

 

“Roland…” she raised her head, perplexed. “Is that…”

 

“I’m sorry, Kayra. It’s not something a man has any control over.”

 

“Oh! You mean…”

 

“You are soft and very lovely. I have been without a woman for quite some time. Again, I apologise.”

 

“Do not apologise, Roland. I had no idea a man might feel that way about me. I am a free woman, after all.”

 

Hardly I thought to myself. You do not feel like a free woman right now. You feel like a slave. 

 

I did the honourable thing and stepped away from the embrace. I needed to compose myself. I still had work to do. 

 

“It’s the tunic, isn’t it?” said Laetitia. 

 

“And the collar,” I said. 

 

“But not me?”

 

“Kayla, this is not a conversation we should be having, especially not now.”

 

“It could be any girl in a tunic and collar?”

 

“Yes. Any girl.”

 

“Laetitia of Corcyrus is irrelevant, really. She just happens to be the girl who wears the tunic and collar?”

 

“You are a free woman,” I lied. I tried to forget that I had legally, though accidentally, enslaved her. She must never know that. By Common Capture Law, she had been my exclusive property from the moment I had locked a collar about her throat. The free woman, Laetitia, no longer existed. Even if she was freed she could never be that woman again. She would simply be a freed slave. It is an interesting aspect of Capture Law that suggests there really is no going back for a woman who becomes a slave. 

 

“But I am dressed as a slave. And you like that? It excites you?”

 

“Kayra, what happened here? What happened after I fell into the river?”

 

“Why do you change the subject? I have seen the way you look at me sometimes. I am not blind. I see your eyes, and more importantly, I see the way you pull your gaze away from me.” She moved close to me again. Temptingly close. I ached. I had been without a woman for far too long. “What are you afraid of?”

 

Failure, I thought to myself. I’m afraid of failing my city, failing the Tatrix, failing Adamus and Felix, and failing you, you brave, naïve, well-meaning, and innocent girl, like I’ve failed so many others in my time on Gor.

 

“So this is what it feels like,” she said as she placed her left hand on the stiff bulge under my tunic. “It’s hard.”

 

I gasped, for a woman’s hand was touching me around my loins. It was clumsy, untrained, but it was physical contact from a slave girl.

 

“Do you like this?” there was a trace of forlorn hope in her voice. “My hand, like this?”

 

I pushed her hand away and snarled. “Do not ever tease a man, Kayra. It is dangerous.”

 

“Oh? How so, dangerous? What might you do?”

 

“Nothing. But others…”

 

“Yes?” she moved close again, and again I stepped away.

 

“Stop this. Just tell me what happened.” 

 

Finally, she told me. 

 

“There were three other women hiding close by. They had blades, but more importantly, capture nets. I think the woman you fought had gone round the edge of our camp, having seen you on sentry duty, and intended to kill you quietly before her sisters moved in on Adamus and Felix. If I hadn’t asked you to unchain me…” she looked up at me, hoping I’d say something.

 

“Yes, it turns out that was fortunate. She was going to fire an arrow into me, but then I got up and moved.”

 

“I saved your life by needing the toilet?”

 

“Perhaps.”

 

“In truth… I didn’t really need the toilet.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“I just wanted to be alone with you for a moment. Tomorrow we would enter the influence of Torcadino. We don’t have many days left, together.”

 

“You’re white silk, Kayra. I can’t change that. You will be examined thoroughly when you reach Torcadino.”

 

“I hoped for nothing more than a soft kiss,” she whispered. “And a declaration of feelings. That is all.”

 

“Your tunic is torn in several places, Kayra.”

 

“I must have snagged it on thorns as we travelled. The rep cloth is thin. I was careless.”

 

“Really? The tears are artfully done. They present themselves in enticing places. They draw the eye of a man.”

 

“Surely you do not think…?”

 

“Of course not. You are a free woman,” I lied. “You don’t understand such things." Of course, the fact was she was a red head, a fire crotch. A man can expect their behaviour to be significantly different from the average blonde or brunette. The fire crotch, even while free, will have stronger needs than most women and they are likely to be more daring, and bolder in their approaches to men. It comes naturally to them. The eminent slaver, Trakkar, has spoken at length on the topic before, and is considered a leading expert on the natural proclivities of women with red hair.  

 

She was my slave. I felt a giddy sensation thinking I actually owned her. 

 

“The captain and Felix never had a chance,” she said. “The nets were cast as they tried to rise, responding to our screams. They became entangled, weighted down on all sides. And then the women pounced.”

 

“Were they killed?”

 

“No. They were bound and made helpless. I watched from hiding. I knew there was nothing I could do.”

 

“There wasn’t.”

 

“But I should have done something.”

 

“You would be a captive, too, now, had you tried. Instead you can help me. Which direction did they take?”

 

Laetitia pointed in a direction away from the camp, away from the river bank. “They are moving slowly, I think, because of their captives, and they spent a little time searching the camp. They were looking for a girl with red hair, now dyed dark brown. They were looking for me.”

 

“These women ride as skirmishers with the forces of Stannis Assante. I know them from long ago. One of them is particularly dangerous and cruel.” I thought of Livinnia, the woman of Stannis Assante. “They mean to turn you over to Stannis, and he in turn would deliver you to the Ubar of Argentum as a prize of war. You would be used to exert pressure on your mother to submit.”

 

“I would kill myself before I would allow my mother to be shamed like that.”

 

“Many free women say that, Kayra. Few can actually face that choice when the time comes.”

 

“You doubt me?”

 

“I do not doubt your courage, your heart, or your desire to serve your city. But choosing an honourable death is a difficult decision to make for any woman.”

 

I had a hard decision to make now, and it was a decision between two kinds of honour. Whatever I chose I would be failing in my responsibility to someone. I could honour my oath to support Adamus and Felix by going after them, or I could honour my oath to the Tatrix and use the time I had to get Laetitia to Torcadino. The border to Torcadino’s area of influence was tantalisingly close. If I decided that my greater duty was to Corcyrus, then logic would lead me to abandoning Adamus and Felix to their fate, and taking the opportunity to head off to Torcadino with the Tatrix’s daughter. No one knew I was alive, and by the time they considered that the slave girl they had briefly glimpsed was Laetitia it might be too late for them to catch me.

 

But that option left both Adamus and Felix to an uncertain fate. They were in effect my sword brothers and I had a duty to them as well. Sword brothers do not abandon one another.

 

So two choices, each one honouring an obligation, and each one dishonouring another obligation. The question was, which code of honour trumped the other?  I suspect the Tatrix would want me leave now with Laetitia. She would consider Adamus and Felix expendable, if it meant Torcadino would ally with Corcyrus. That would be the greater good. In war sacrifices have to be made, however unpleasant. I was reminded of when Britain cracked the Nazi Enigma code in World War 2 and was then able to decode German intelligence. They learned that the city of Coventry was going to be bombed, and they could have acted to prevent that, but to do so would be to tip off the Nazis and then they would realise their code was compromised and they would change it. The greater good would be to use further intelligence to ensure a successful landing on D Day. And so Churchill allowed Coventry to be bombed. What an agonising decision that must have been. But that is war. 

 

But my sword brother, Rolfe, would tell me a man does not abandon his friends. He would argue that I might still get Laetitia to Torcadino after saving Adamus and Felix. How could a man assume only one of those things was possible? I was on the horns of a dilemma. I had a nagging feeling that I now had a chance to get Laetitia safely to the walls of the city if I took advantage of this head start while the huntresses were occupied interrogating their captives. But could I honestly do that knowing I had a chance to save both men?

 

Although time was pressing, I explored the remains of our camp to see what had been discarded and left behind. All the weapons had been taken, unsurprisingly, but I found our binding fibre which I presume the huntresses didn’t need. I also found the discarded tunics that the men had worn. Women usually keep male captives in the nude. I placed the clothing in a small pack and handed the pack to Laetitia to carry. Adamus and Felix would want their garments if they were free again. I looped the lengths of binding fibre about Laetitia’s waist where I could make use of it when the time came.  

 

“We are going after the captain and Felix?” she asked.

 

“I don’t know. Kayra, we have an opportunity here to keep moving and get you across the border to Torcadino. But that means abandoning Adamus and Felix to their fate. Do you understand? I think I can get you to safety alone.”

 

“You would do that” She stood there in the dim moonlight and she considered what that would mean.

 

“I think so, yes. That is my primary mission.”

 

“We did not leave you behind.”

 

“Well, you should have. You should have left that first morning when I didn’t return.”

 

“But we didn’t.”

 

“What do you think we should do, Kayra?”

 

“I don’t need to answer that, Roland, because the question is irrelevant. I know what you ARE going to do.”

 

“I see.”

 

“I know the kind of man you are. You are a good man who has lost much in his life, but who will never let despair overcome his duty to others.”

 

“My duty is to you, Kayra.”

 

“And my duty is to my city, and its people, but are Adamus and Felix not part of my people? I have a responsibility to them as well as the many men and women who remain behind our walls.”

 

“There is the principle of the ‘greater good’, Kayra. The needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few. I can get you across the border now to Torcadino.”

 

“And I would forever live with the guilt of abandoning men who would die for me,” she said. “Must I live with that guilt, and the suspicion that we would also have reached Torcadino had we gone back for them?”

 

“The odds are better this way.”

 

“I know what you are going to do, Roland. I know. And so do you, my handsome warrior.” 

 

I sighed. The girl was impossible at times. “We will be moving quietly. Do not speak once we enter the area of the trees, no matter what. If you see something and you need to attract my attention, tap my arm once. Watch me at all times. If I lower the flat of my hand like this, it means you are to drop to the ground and hide yourself. If I turn my palm and raise it up, you are to regain your feet.”

 

“I understand.”

 

“This is going to be dangerous, Kayra. I mean to separate the women and take them one at a time. How I do that will depend on what we find when we locate them. If I end up having to fight, you will NOT try and help. Run and hide and await the outcome. If I die, remain hidden and do not move until the women are gone. Even then, wait several ahn before leaving your place of concealment.”

 

“I wear a collar. Where can I possibly go?”

 

“I do not know.” Truthfully, the outlook seemed bleak for Laetitia if I was killed. The best she might hope for was a slavery that did not involve being taken to Argentum. That at least would mean her mother could not be blackmailed to submit her city. “I will do all I can for you.”

 

And then she suddenly kissed me. It was a very bold move for her. She pulled back instantly and probably blushed in the darkness. I felt arousal again from the kiss of a clumsy, untrained slave. She didn’t understand how to kiss, but the genetic conditioning of her hair colour impelled her to at least try. 

 

“I am sorry. But if this is the end for both of us, then I have at last done what I have dreamed about doing these past few days.” She seemed breathless, nervous. “I am sorry it is me, Laetitia, who stands before you in a slave tunic and collar, and not…” she sobbed, “a girl you would prefer. A girl with more womanly curves. I know I am slight of body and… I know nothing of how to please a man…” she blushed again. “You will have known paga slaves. So, what am I to you? Nothing. I am laughable. I feel so foolish. Please forget that kiss. It will not happen again.”

 

I was rock hard. She had no idea. My blood was up. The kiss had been clumsy, laughable even, but she was dressed in a torn slave tunic and she was collared. Her long, glossy hair was unbound and could be seized. I had not had a woman for a long time.

 

“Do… not… do that again.” I tried to control my natural impulses as a healthy, vital man. I could not have Laetitia. But I wanted Laetitia. My blood was stirring inside of me. I had been far too long without a woman. Far too long. 

 

“I won’t,” she sobbed. “Why would I?” She turned quickly away from me. 

 

“Heel me, and stay quiet. We are leaving now.”