Barbarian of Gor Chapter Forty Two

 

Note from your lovely, scatter-brained, blonde storyteller: And now, finally, the last chapter of not only Barbarian of Gor but the whole Roland Martell trilogy. Buckle up, dear readers. The pain isn’t over quite yet. 😊

 

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The flagstones of the market square were slick beneath my sandals, slick with crushed figs and spilled wine and, now, my own blood. I felt it warm and sticky along my ribs where one of the warriors had kissed me with his blade; just a shallow cut, but every shallow cut added weight to my limbs. The market had emptied into a ring of faces, voices blurring into a single roar that surged and fell like waves against a harbour wall. I tried to breathe, but the air tasted of dust, iron and fear.

 

Three of them; I kept reminding myself, as if counting might make it less true. Three blades circling, points wavering like the tongues of snakes. No shields among us, just steel and arms holding the steel, and the enticing lie that skill alone will be enough. I was wrong about that. Skill bends when numbers press on it from all sides.

 

And standing to one side, watching with a cruel expression on her face, was Svetlana – several sword thrusts perpetually beyond my reach. 

 

I stepped left, forcing my back towards a fruit stall so at least one of them couldn’t get behind me. My heel kicked a fallen basket, and oranges burst and rolled away, bright as little suns. I nearly slipped as I side-stepped a further thrust from a sword. Screams rippled through the crowd as we fought, as the market square was unexpectedly plunged into violence. One of the men feinted high, and my sword rose to meet him on instinct. I was quick – another benefit of the difference in gravity on Gor, but it wouldn’t be enough to counter their greater numbers. The second man was already there, cutting low. I twisted my body, feeling the bite of cold steel scrape my thigh, fire flaring white-hot. I hissed and stumbled, and the third man darted in, his blade whispering past my ear close enough that I felt the wind of it.

 

Death.

 

If this was to be my death day I would greet it with honour like a man should.

 

Maia. Maia was dead, and I would die fighting in her name.

 

It all seemed so unreal. Only ten ehn ago we had a future together. We were in love – master and slave. The happy ending that stories promise you. Only stories lie.

 

Ramsay Bolton, in the TV series Game of Thrones, summed it up best when he said, ‘If you think this has a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention’.

 

Well, I was fucking paying attention now.

 

My sword arm grew heavy. Each violent parry shook me to my very bones. It was an impact shock that throbbed from wrist to shoulder. I remembered my long hours of training with Rolfe, and the way his voice carried when he told me to keep my feet under me, to let the sword move, not force it. But here there was no room to move. Stalls hemmed me in, pillars loomed, and the crowd pressed closer, hungry for the end of it like vultures waiting to feed on the remains of a carcass.

 

They took turns now. One attacked, while another waited for the opening I had to make. Only my speed in Gor’s gravity had kept me alive so far. I slashed at the nearest face, not to kill but to buy a heartbeat. He jerked back, cursing, and I used that moment to breathe. My breath came out ragged. My vision tunnelled. Somewhere, a woman screamed as steel clashed again, sharp and loud as a hammer on an anvil.

 

Maia. My love slave. Kelly Milford. We would have lived and fucked and loved. We would have been so happy together.

 

And now she lay dead in the dust, a mere ten paces from where I fought. 

 

A blow landed on my forearm. Not the edge - thank the Gods - but the flat, enough to numb my fingers. My sword almost slipped. I tightened my grip, teeth bared, and countered, feeling my blade glance off another sword with a shower of sparks. The sound was both beautiful and terrible, reminding me that any mistake here would be final.

 

“Come at me then, you motherfuckers!” I swore, in English, not Gorean. My alien tongue checked them for a split second. 

 

And then they rushed me together from all sides. I couldn’t track all three; my eyes betrayed me, lagging just a fraction too slow. A cut opened along my shoulder, then another along my side. Pain stacked on pain until it became a single, roaring thing. My legs trembled. I retreated another step until my back hit a stone wall. Cold, unyielding. Nowhere else to go.

 

I just wished I could reach Svetlana. Just for a few ihn. Just the few precious seconds I needed to slit her throat ear to ear, the way she had killed Maia. 

 

I raised my sword again, though my arm shook as if it belonged to someone else. I knew, in the hollow place behind my ribs, that I was losing. Not in some distant, heroic way, but right now, breath by breath, inch by inch. Still, when the first of them lunged, I met him. I always met them with my own blade. Only my speed was keeping me alive. 

 

They came at me again across the stones of the market square, three blades naked to the sun, and I tasted copper in my mouth before any steel touched me. The market had not fled so much as recoiled - vendors crouching behind overturned tables, figs crushed into purple smears underfoot, a domestic verr screaming from where it was tethered to a pole, unable to flee. Eastern Incense burned in a series of copper braziers at a shrine to the Priest Kings, now abandoned, near the basilica steps, sweet and wrong in my nose.

 

I breathed deeply as I kept my back to a fountain chipped with age. No shield. No wall. Only space and timing. My sword felt lighter than it should, as if it knew it would soon fall from my lifeless fingers. And then they fanned out the way men do when they’ve been told to finish a thing quickly - one straight ahead, two drifting to my flanks. Their swords caught the sun, short Gorean blades meant for close work, for stabbing in tight ranks. My arm ached from holding mine high, from the countless bone numbing parries, as more sweat ran down into my eyes, stinging like smoke.

 

Behind the men, now standing on the steps of the basilica, Svetlana watched the carnage unfold. She stood with her hands folded, jewelled bracelets chiming softly when she shifted her weight, her veils fluttering lightly, just enough that I could see the impression of her mouth - set, impatient as I made my final stand. 

 

The man in front feinted low, but I didn’t bite. The one to my right lunged too early, and so I twisted, steel shrieking as our blades scraped together. I shoved forward and forced him back into a fishmonger’s stall. Scales burst underfoot like silver rain.

 

No time to finish him.

 

The left-hand man slashed at my ribs again. I turned my hip, the blade kissing fabric instead of flesh, and answered with a cut that opened his forearm. He howled, more through anger than pain, and the sound was like oil on fire. The crowd scented it now: Blood. Fear. The end of times. 

 

They rushed me together, and so I retreated, counting steps without thinking, back toward the statue of some forgotten war hero. The man I drove back recovered quickly and thrusted at me once again. I barely beat his blade aside, the edge tearing skin from my knuckles. My grip slickened. 

 

I heard the chime of Svetlana’s delicate bracelets again. I imagined her eyes narrowing. 

 

I charged forward, surprising the three men. I slashed at the wounded arm, hacking, forcing him to parry with his bad side. His blade wobbled as mine bit into his shoulder. 

 

Maia.

 

Forgive me, Maia. 

 

A circling blade slashed my back, a line of cold that turned instantly hot. I staggered forward, and the man in front of me took his chance. His sword pommel punched into my face and with that I dropped to one knee. My sword scraped hard against the flagstones, ringing like a struck bowl as my fingers became numb. I looked up at Svetlana, at the white and purple she wore, at the marble calm of her face. She watched me fall as she might watch a scale settle.

 

“Enough. Seize him,” she said. 

 

Two men held me between them as Svetlana slipped a crude set of brass knuckles past the fingers of her right hand. 

 

“You would have made a pretty silk slave,” she said as she began beating me with the brass knuckles. Once, twice, then a third blow and a fourth. I began to cough up blood. 

 

“Two fingers. Right hand,” she said, stepping away.

 

I felt my right hand slapped against a rough stone wall. There was a sudden sharp stab of pain as one of the men removed two of my fingers with the edge of a heavy bone-cutting knife.

 

“You will never grip a sword again with that hand,” said Svetlana as I screamed. “Left ankle,” she then said.

 

I was thrown to the flagstone floor as the third man struck my ankle with a heavy piece of wood. I felt a bone snap and I screamed again. 

 

“Now you cannot fight and you cannot flee,” said Svetlana. 

 

“Do it,” I said. I was dribbling blood. “Just kill me. Go on!”

 

No one was coming to my aid. No one was going to interrupt any of this.

 

“I would rather you suffer, like I will suffer for the remainder of my life without my man,” said Svetlana. She turned to her men. “Did he say where he was going, when he was talking to his slut?”

 

“The Tarn cots, Lady. His friend is waiting to fly him out of Torcadino.”

 

“Tell Stannis. Gather our men. Adam was the one who killed Rolfe. Now it is his time to die.”

 

“He won’t be there,” I said, as I spat out more blood. “He only gave me a little time to get back. He’ll be gone by the time you get your men together.”

 

“I think not. I think, regardless of what he told you, he will wait for you. He will wait as long as it takes. And then we will kill him. You can try to warn him, of course. I will give you that chance. You can crawl, inch by slow inch, to the tarn cots, screaming in pain as you go.” She turned to regard the frightened crowd. “No man aids him!” she declared. “By order of Stannis Assante, the Warlord of Gor!” Her gaze swept around the crowd. No one challenged her. “No one aids this man!” She bent down and lifted my head by my sweat drenched hair. “Yes, crawl, Roland. Try and save your last remaining sword brother. Crawl as quickly as you can, hoping to save him, and when you get there you may be in time to touch his warm, freshly butchered body.” And then she spat in my face.

 

“Remember – any man who tries to aid him will answer to Stannis Assante!” cried Svetlana as she rose and walked towards the crowd. She stared at a man to her left, and then a man to her right. The crowd parted before her like the parting of the Red Sea. And then she, and her warriors, were gone. 

 

I began to crawl. I tried to stand and hop, but each step like that was agony. 

 

No one came to aid me.

 

“Please,” I begged, through broken teeth. “Someone.”

 

The crowds parted before me as I crawled in agony towards the tarn cots. Blood was seeping from multiple cuts to my flesh but I wouldn’t give in. It would be so easy to just lie down and die. So very easy. 

 

Not Adam, too. He wouldn’t wait for me. Not Adam. I didn’t want him to wait for me. Not another death in my name. I crawled another few feet and screamed as my broken ankle jarred against the edge of the paving stones. The palms of my hands were slippery with my own blood. 

 

Another few feet, and then another few feet. “Please… someone… please…”

 

And then a woman knelt beside me. I felt her take my right hand and wrap a tight torniquet about it, staunching the blood flow from my severed fingers. I felt the woman lift me up to stand on my right foot, shouldering my weight with her own body.

 

“Match my steps,” she said. “We can make it to the tarn cots one step at a time.”

 

It was Nia. It was the former slave who had once been the Lady Livinnia Assante, the bold huntress of the Turian steppes.

 

“I… I don’t understand.”

 

“I will get you to the tarn cots and you will then grant me passage out of Torcadino.”

 

“What?” The market place seemed to be spinning about me as Nia continued to hold my considerable weight and make me hop one step at a time. 

 

“You will fly me out of Torcadino,” she said again. She wore a cheap peasant dress and little else. She was barefoot and her face was unveiled – both signs of abject poverty in Gorean cities. 

 

“Stannis rejected you, then?” I just about gasped.

 

“No.” her face was pained. “Stannis will take me back, despite the dishonour and shame I have given him. He will take me back - me, a freed slave who submitted herself to the collar. And still he will take me back, even if he must bear the shame in perpetuity. But it will be ruin for him. His men will leave him – a few at first, then more, then more, and then no warrior will ever stand beneath his banner again. I cannot do that to him. I cannot destroy the man who is Stannis Assante. He would give up everything for me. I do not deserve that for what I have done, and I cannot allow him to do that.” She paused for a moment and then added, “You wouldn’t understand. It is a matter of honour. You are a barbarian. I would never destroy my man.”

 

“I don’t owe you anything,” I said, as I limped along with her help. “I don’t even want to live anymore.”

 

“You do owe me. That day in the camp when I saved your slave. Remember my words? ‘You have accepted a gift from a Turian woman. Do you understand what this means. It means you are in my debt, no matter how small. I may one day call on that debt’. And now that day has come. You are bound to grant me this if honour has any meaning to you at all.”

 

“It doesn’t matter what I say. Adam owes you no debt. He won’t take you with him.”

 

“How little you know, Roland of Corcyrus.”

 

“There’s no point in even asking. He will send you away.” I coughed up some more blood. 

 

“I don’t think so.” Nia smiled at some secret that only she seemed to know. “Did you not see? Were you really so blind?”

“What are you talking about?”

 

“Those days and nights as we travelled to Torcadino, when I wore a collar, a slave tunic, or was kept as naked as a slave? Did you never see the way Adam tried not to look at me. He tried so very hard.”

 

“No.”

 

“Men are blind,” said Nia. “They only see what they want to see. Did you never think it strange that he commanded you that I was never to be put to use?”

 

“You were to be our bargaining chip if Stannis ever found us. You had to remain untouched.”

 

Nia smiled. “That is what he said, yes. You were not to have me. You were not to put me to use.”

 

No. Surely I hadn’t missed that? But… I never could read Adam. I never had any idea what he was ever thinking. But Nia? Was he actually attracted to Nia? Had he been wrestling with feelings for her? 

 

“From time to time our eyes would meet across the camp fire. We would hold each other’s gaze for a few meaningful ihn before he turned away in frustration and went to sleep alone. In many ways he reminds me of Stannis when he was a young man. Adam is a strong man. Women are attracted to strong men. We despise weakness in a man. He has a great future ahead of him. While we travelled, duty had to come first. But now, I think he will take me out of Torcadino.”

 

Had I really missed all of that?

 

Step by agonising step, bleeding all the way. I leaned on Nia for support and was surprised by the endurance and stamina she displayed in carrying my weight. The hardest part was climbing the stone steps of the tower. Several times Nia almost collapsed with my weight, but each time she gritted her teeth, swore curses in the name of her Turian Gods, and forced herself to take some more steps, to not give up. 

 

She would not dishonour the man who had been her companion, by allowing him to lose his honour in taking her back. She would find a new life away from here, no matter what the cost to herself. 

 

And then we reached the summit, and we were on the platform looking out over the city of Torcadino. 

 

“Roland?!” Adam ran towards me. I saw Mark in the distance, one hand resting on the thick feathers of the tarn, letting it grow used to his presence. Nearby, Kayra lay on the floor of the platform, her knees curled up towards her body. She seemed in pain. Something had obviously happened while I had been away.

 

“What the hell happened to you?” asked Adam as Nia finally collapsed from supporting me. She gasped for breath as she lay on the floor, having made it this far. “Is that Nia? What’s going on?”

 

“They’re coming for us, Adam,” I said. “All of them. We have to get out of here.”

 

Adam’s eyes narrowed. “Where’s your slave?”

 

“Dead.” There were tears in my eyes. “They killed her, Adam. They cut her throat in front of me.” 

 

Adam glanced at my right hand and saw the stump where two fingers were gone. Obviously, he had questions – lots of questions – but he recognised those would have to wait. “Mark! Release the tarn! The clock is ticking!”

 

“What… what is wrong with Kayra…” I asked. Adam had knelt down to check my injuries, and by the look on his face my injuries must have been severe. 

 

“She told me, Roland. When you were gone I made her tell me why you had to swap the Lady Kalya for her.”

 

I closed my eyes. Oh no. Now what? Did Adam know how I had fucked things up? How I had lost the drug? How I had taken Kayra’s white silk? How I had killed Felix? But no, there seemed to be no blame directed at me in his eyes. 

 

“She told me the reason, Roland. Did you want to spare me the truth?”

 

Just what had she said? I looked at her lying there, obviously hurting. “What did she tell you?”

 

“The reason why you couldn’t present her at the assessment. She betrayed our city. She betrayed her mother. She betrayed us.”

 

Just what the hell was Adam talking about? Just what had Kayra said? Obviously she had had to come up with some reason for not being assessed, but what was it? When I didn’t speak, Adam simply said, “She told me she’s not white silk. She hasn’t been white silk for a long time. From well before we even left Corcyrus. There was a handsome guardsman back in Corcyrus, apparently. The slut gave herself to him. All the time we travelled, she knew she was red silk. She would never have passed the assessment. Why didn’t you tell me?”

 

“I…” my mind raced. Kayra had protected me. She had said nothing that would damn me, but she of course had had to say something. A guardsman in Corcyrus. That was the first thing she had thought of, so that Adam wouldn’t kill me for taking away her virginity. 

 

“What… did you do to her?” She remained lying on the floor of the tarn platform. I saw her move slowly, but in great pain.

 

“She betrayed her city. She betrayed Aliyyah. She had one purpose in life – just one – to keep herself pure so that she could secure an alliance with another city. That’s all she had to do, and the fucking slut opened herself to the first guard who smiled at her in the palace.”

 

“Adam, what DID YOU DO?”

 

“I had her branded. There is a metal worker two levels below this one. Common kef. I’m sparing Aliyyah having to make that same decision herself. It’s a kindness to Aliyyah.”

 

No.

 

No, please, no.

 

When will this nightmare ever fucking end!

 

“It’s not your fault, Roland,” said Adam as he placed his hand on my shoulder. “How could either of us have known? Our entire mission was a waste of time.”

 

“She…” I choked back the words. What good would it do to confess anything now to Adam. Kayra was now a branded slave. That brand would never go away. I felt Adam lift and carry me towards the tarn basket. Nia rose and followed.

 

“Where do you think you’re going?” asked Adam of Nia.

 

“With you. I need to get out of Torcadino. Once the companionship is consummated, my past affiliation with Argentum will mark me as an enemy of Torcadino.”

 

“Really?” Adam placed me inside the basket and pressed my good hand against a support rail so that I might grasp it. “And you think I care?’

 

“Yes,” Nia reached out and placed an open hand on Adam’s arm. I saw him stiffen. “I think you care.”

 

It was the first time I have ever seen Adam look slightly embarrassed.

 

“I suppose we can use the extra counter weight. Kayra on her own would hardly balance Roland’s weight in the other basket.” He placed his hands about Nia’s slim waist and lifted her easily into the second basket. For a brief moment they looked at one another and then Adam turned stiffly away to pick Kayra up and place her next to Nia. I saw Kayra’s face was streaked with tears, and, as the hem of her tunic rode up just a little, I saw the livid brand that was fresh and swollen on her pale thigh. 

 

I lay in the tarn basket, finally allowing my eyes to close.

 

I opened them again twenty eight ahn later. 

 

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The pain comes and goes now. I lay on the soft furs with my back to the earth, their coarse warmth pressed against my torn skin, and for the first time since the clash of swords I felt a sense of calm. The campfire crackled beside me, a low, companionable sound, and its light danced across the dark like a series of restless spirits stalking the night to cause some mischief. Each breath I took tasted of smoke, pine resin, and blood, gone rusty.

 

She knelt at my side, moving with a quiet certainty that steadied me more than any medicinal draught I might be given. When her fingers touched my shoulder, I flinched despite myself, and then she murmured something soft – some words meant to soothe me. Her hands were cool from the night air as she cleaned and freshly dressed my various wounds. I watched the play of firelight in her hair as if it were some small miracle I’d been specifically spared to see. The pain sharpened when she pressed the cloth against my flesh, then dulled again, receding under her soft caress.

 

Beyond the fire, the wild countryside lay hushed. Crickets sang their endless songs, and an owl-like sound called from the dark. Far off, a small Gorean town rested on its low rise, illuminated by a scatter of yellow lights like fallen stars. A city’s reach feels distant here - no orders barked, no standards snapping in the wind, just the quiet land and the slow work of healing. I wondered how many times I’d walked past pastoral meadows like these without seeing them, my eyes fixed on the road ahead.

 

I saw the light from the campfire make her steel collar sparkle as she tended to me. 

 

“Master is awake, I think,” said Kayra. I wanted to reach up and run my fingers through her long, soft, fiery red hair, but I felt too weak. Seated silhouettes moved around the campfire – silhouettes belonging to Adam, Mark and, presumably, Nia. They sat in silence as Kayra tended to me.

 

“Where…”

 

“Hush, Master. You are safe. We are safe.” Kayra leaned forward a little and kissed my forehead. I gazed at my right hand that seemed twice its usual size due to the thick wadding of bandages around it. I couldn’t feel any of my fingers. 

 

“Get some rest,” said Adam from across the campfire. 

 

“Does it hurt?” I whispered to Kayra. I saw her face flinch. Then she quickly nodded her head.

 

“It hurts very much, Master. I can’t lie on the left side of my body for the pain.”

 

“The pain will pass in time,” I said. “You… you didn’t tell him.”

 

“I didn’t tell him, Master. I was to blame. My needs were too great. And now…” 

 

“You can never go home.”

 

“I can never go home.”

 

“I was going to take you back to Corcyrus.”

 

Tears welled in her eyes again. She shook her head, not wanting me to see her like this. “I was already a slave. You told me so. The brand… it is what is done to slaves. What does it matter if a slut is branded.”

 

“But still…” I reached out with my left hand and softly caressed her cheek, wiping away a thin trickle of tears. “I will tell Adam the truth if that will make it easier for you?”

 

“How can it?” She wept. “I am a slave now. I have a brand. There is no going back from that. You can keep me or you can sell me. I have no say in anything anymore. What does the truth matter?”

 

“Corcyrus has her alliance,” I said softly. 

 

“Yes, there is that, Master.” Kayra raised the back of her hand to wipe tears from her eyes. 

 

“Your name will be celebrated and praised in the city for generations to come.”

 

“My former name,” she said. “I am no longer her.”

 

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The southern town of Keeta was as far as Adam took us. It was one of Gor’s smaller towns, situated south of Torcadino on the Sarpeto flats, some two hundred pasangs west of Talmont.

 

“There’s no point taking you any further south,” said Adam as he gave me a satchel with some provisions. “We’ll be at the tropical equator soon, with the jungles of Schendi stretching across the west, and then we’ll be at Kasra, and unless you fancy a life in the sand dunes, you don’t want to venture any further than that.”

 

I nodded as I leaned on a crutch. My left ankle was bound in a tight splint and I would be using the crutch for some time to come. My face still looked black and blue but was slowly healing. My right hand would never grip a sword again. 

 

“Adam, I wish you luck with Caitlin.”

 

He nodded. “What are your plans, Roland?”

 

“I don’t know. I have no plans. Not anymore.”

 

“You have a slave.” He indicated Kayra. She knelt in the dust just outside of our hearing. “That’s almost a responsibility.”

 

“I need to heal. I need to rehabilitate my ankle. And I guess I’m going to have to learn to hold a sword with my left hand. After that, who knows. I can’t think of anything I want anymore. I think my story is done.”

 

“Kayra loves you,” he said.

 

“I know. It’s a dangerous thing for any woman to feel around me.”

 

Adam smiled. “That it is. Are you going to keep her?”

 

I gazed into the distance, seeing the maze of streets that stretched beyond the simple gates of the town of Keeta. Some tharlarion drawn wagons were bumping and grinding their way into and out of the town. The place reminded me of one of those run down settlements you always saw in old cowboy films. 

 

“You didn’t answer my question?” said Adam.

 

“Now you know how I always used to feel,” I said with a half grin.

 

“Touché. Well, I guess this is it. I’d say, may the Priest Kings protect you, Roland, but frankly at this stage I don’t think anything’s ever going to kill you. Be well. You’re an idiot, but you were always loyal.”

 

We shook hands in the old Earth fashion and then Nia approached.

 

“This is where we part ways, Lady,” said Adam, gesturing to the unruly sprawl of streets that now lay before us. “You’ll find a new life in Keeta. Good luck.” For some reason he didn’t look at her.

 

“No, I think not.” The former slave, Nia, shook her head. “I will travel with you through the Tahari.”

 

“Will you, now?” Adam seemed amused by the presumption.

 

“Yes.” There was no doubt in her mind, it seemed.

 

“And why would I want a passenger?” asked Adam. “And, specifically, why would I want you as a passenger?”

 

“We both know the answer to that question.”

 

Neither man nor woman said anything for a few ihn.

 

“You are very bold, Lady. If I carried a freed slave there would be a price,” said Adam as he broke the silence.

 

“Of course.” She shook her head, letting her unbound, glossy hair flow about her shoulders. She stood up straight before him. “And I am prepared to pay your price.”

 

“And how would you pay? You have no money, Lady.”

 

“The desert lands of the Tahari can be cold at night, and you have a long road ahead of you. Why be cold?”

 

Adam laughed.

 

“So?” Nia regarded him, her gaze unflinching. 

 

“Climb onto the saddle, lie down and cross your wrists to one ring and your ankles to the other.” Adam paused for a moment before he added, “Lie belly down.”

 

“Belly down is the position for a slave,” said Nia.

 

“And you are a freed slave. Do not expect the same considerations afforded a Free Woman who has never been branded. You wear a brand. You have your papers of freedom to hand?”

 

Nia nodded.

 

“Show me.” Nia reached inside her cheap peasant dress and produced the folded papers. While Adam wouldn’t be able to read them, it was clear that they were stamped with a large ink symbol that any man might recognise as meaning she had been legally freed. “It is good that you have these papers, Lady.” He handed them back to her and watched as she returned them to a place of concealment between her breasts. “Whatever you do, do not lose them.”

 

I watched as Nia climbed the short wooden steps up onto the saddle. She then lay belly down, wrist and ankles crossed beside the slave rings. She was a freed slave, after all. It was appropriate. 

 

Adam lashed Nia’s ankles and wrists into place. Nothing more was said, to either her or me. Adam simply nodded in my direction – an acknowledgment that we would never see one another again. Kayra supported my weight as Adam joined Mark on the saddle of the great tarn. And then, without so much as a backward glance in our direction, he took to the skies and receded into the distance – an ever decreasing dot, high amongst the clouds.

 

It was over. It was finally over. I would never grip a sword in my right hand ever again. I had a red-haired slave and a heavy pouch of coins by my side.

 

“Master, I know you don’t love me,” said Kayra, “But I am your slave now. I will try so hard to please you.”

 

She wasn’t Maia.

 

She would never be Maia. 

 

No slave would ever be Maia. 

 

“Please don’t sell me, Master. Please. Not here.” She gazed about the makeshift town. There was little wealth here, so far from the great walls of a city. “I am your slave. I will be pleasing.” There were bright tears in her eyes as she kissed my forearm. “Whip me if I am not pleasing, but please do not sell me.”

 

I clipped a leash to the collar ring of my slave and slowly limped into town.

 

 

EPILOGUE: ADAM

 

The clouds parted at our passing, white veils shredded by the tips of those vast pinions. Cold mist beaded on my skin, then vanished in an instant as we burst into open blue, as the great tarn flew onwards to the distant lands of the Tahari. 

 

Stretched across my saddle, lying belly down, was the former slave girl, Nia. Her loose, unbound hair flapped about in the wind.

 

Below, the world seemed like an oil painting. Olive groves rippled in silvery waves, rivers coiled like living serpents, and the fields glowed green and gold. The cities we passed were like toys lying at the feet of a God; mountains, once immovable, now bowed beneath us. My heart pounded not with fear but with a fierce, exultant clarity and purpose. Soon we would begin to see the thinning out of grass and trees and the beginning of the sand dunes that would mark out the extent of the Tahari. Somewhere amongst the sand dunes, the oases, the caravanserais, the desert wells, the nomad camps, and the opulent cities, I would find a slave girl who had once been Caitlin Ambrose of Earth. 

 

I held the straps of the great tarn in my right hand and reached out with my left to caress Nia’s buttocks through the thin, torn fabric of her dress. I heard chain slither and jingle as she reacted to my caress. 

 

“Are we far?” Her voice rose above the rushing of the wind. Bound as she was, it was difficult to see much. 

 

“Perhaps seventy pasangs until we reach Kasra. That’s as far as we go by tarn,” I replied. I hiked the hem of her dress higher up her thighs and slipped my fingers between those thighs. I heard the freed slave gasp and wriggle against the smooth leather of my saddle. 

 

“That is so distracting!” she cried.

 

I smiled. “It’s difficult to ignore such a fine rump laid out in front of me. Besides which, I wouldn’t want you to grow bored during a long flight.”

 

“That’s so thoughtful of you,” said Nia. 

 

I smiled to myself and turned the great tarn in the direction of Kasra. 

 

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The end of Barbarian of Gor and the Roland Martell trilogy as a whole, but Adam’s search for the beautiful slave girl called Caitlin will continue in Devils of Gor, sometime soon. 😊