Gods of Gor Chapter Four

 

Chapter Four: Reflections from a Distant Past

 

We paddled eastward down the wide, sluggish river, Mina, Saffron, Chloe and I, our wooden canoe slicing through the steaming brown waters that carried us ever deeper into the equatorial jungle east of Schendi. I sat in front of Mina, our light steel ankle links clinking softly with each synchronized stroke of our paddles. Once the self-proclaimed Ubara of the Black Kingdoms – the captain of the feared pirate ship, the Larl of the Thassa - the former pirate queen now belonged to Tijani, the lean, muscled, dark-skinned warrior whose gold rings caught the fractured sunlight whenever he moved. I belonged to Brinn, whose ice-blue gaze rested on me with the calm certainty of ownership, seeing every bead of sweat, every tremble in my arms, every effort to please. The men lounged in the stern, voices low and rough with talk of coin, silk, and the kajirae prices they had seen in the markets we had left behind in Schendi, while we slaves drove the canoe forward—slow, deliberate, obedient.

 

The jungle pressed in on both sides, a green wall so thick it seemed to lean toward us, hungry and ever watchful. Towering trees strangled by vines as thick as a man’s arm arched overhead, their canopy filtering the sun into shifting bars of gold and deep shadow that played across my bare skin like fingers. Broad leaves dripped moisture onto my shoulders; heavy-scented orchids and crimson blossoms exhaled perfume that coated my throat, sweet enough to make me dizzy. The air was wet heat, clinging, making the thin cotton of my brief skirt slide and cling with every stroke, every breath. I felt Brinn’s eyes on the small of my back, tracking the way the fabric moulded to my hips, and my belly tightened in that familiar, helpless flutter.

 

The sounds never stopped. Cicadas throbbed in a living pulse that rose and fell like a second heartbeat. Bright birds screamed mockery from the treetops; closer, the jungle whispered - rustling leaves, the plop of fallen fruit, the sudden heavy splash of a tharlarion sliding from a log into the brown water. Once I caught the long, ridged back of a river saurian gliding beside us, yellow eyes locked on the canoe, on us, before it sank without a ripple. The river itself murmured against the hull, gurgling over sunken roots, carrying the sour reek of rot and the sharp bite of distant spice trees. Every noise reminded me how small we were, how exposed.

The channel narrowed; the current quickened. Giant ferns unfurled along the banks like waiting hands. Phosphorescent fungi glowed violet on rotting wood, even in daylight. Trumpet-shaped flowers sighed open as we passed, releasing golden pollen that drifted across the water and settled on our hair, our shoulders, our breasts, warm as breath. Saffron, kneeling ahead of me, turned once - only once - and our eyes met. In that glance I saw exhaustion, wariness, and the same stubborn, secret thrill that lived in my own chest: the knowledge that we were seen, desired, claimed. Our chains clinked against the thwarts with every stroke, a soft, constant music beneath the roar of the forest.

 

“Take a break, you hardworking kajirae,” said Brinn as he gazed at the sloping sides of the riverbanks. I breathed a deep sigh of relief and wiped sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand. In front of me, Saffron relaxed her shoulders as she placed her paddle down on the bottom of the canoe. Her long blonde hair hung softly in gentle ripples to almost reach her waist. I stretched my arms and shifted position where I sat. 

 

“We’re making good progress, friend Brinn,” said Tijani. He was eating slices of fresh citrus fruit from a bowl, and, after taking a few more pieces, he passed the bowl down to Chloe who began to ration the fruit amongst the rest of us. 

 

“That we are,” said my master. “This has been quite a pleasant journey. So much to see during the day, and such fine slaves to enjoy during the nights. I should undertake supposedly dangerous river journeys more often.”

 

Tijani laughed, low and rough, then reached forward and wound his fingers through Mina’s dark hair. He tugged her head back – slowly, deliberately – until her throat arched and her lips parted. He leaned close, murmured something too soft for me to hear, and I saw the shiver that ran through her, the way her lips faltered for half a heartbeat before she recovered. He released her with a satisfied sound, the same sound Brinn made when I pleased him well.

 

Brinn did not touch me then. He did not need to. He simply watched - silent, unhurried - his hand resting on the hilt of his sword, and his eyes expectant, as though danger might rise from the water or drop from the trees at any moment. I knew from the weight of his gaze that when we made camp tonight, when the jungle went quiet except for the insects and our breathing, he would call me to him with a single word. And I would go. Knees in the mud, my brief skirt pushed aside, wrists crossed behind me, offering everything because it was no longer mine to withhold.

 

I turned round on my wooden bench and regarded Mina. Our left ankles were locked to the same slither of chain that made us chain-sisters. “What did Tijani say to you?” I whispered. 

 

She smiled to herself. “What do you think, Emma?”

 

“Mina’s going to be furring tonight,” I said in a sing-song voice. This was good news, because it meant she wouldn’t be with Brinn. I glanced at my master with my best seductive look. When he half choked on a fruit slice I decided my ‘come here’ look had definitely worked. It usually did. “And how was your night of passion with my Master,” I asked. 

 

“Are you angry with me, Emma? You know I had no choice.” She bit into her piece of ripe fruit and sucked at the juice that dribbled down her lips.

 

“I know. But you were flirting with him all afternoon and evening.”

“Was I? How do you know what I look like when I am flirting?” She smiled softly. “Perhaps I’m flirting now, Emma?” 

 

“You know what I mean, Mina. You were trying to attract his attention in the village while you translated for him.”

 

“So what if I was? you are always telling me I am a slave. Well, isn’t that what slaves do? We are hot and needy. You can’t have it both ways, pretty Emma.”

 

“You have your own Master,” I said. “Leave mine alone.”

 

“True. I do have a master.” She smiled at the thought of him, and what he could make her feel. “And last night he was with the First Girl. He is often with the First Girl, it seems. Why are you not angry with her?  You were gone a long time when you lived on board my ship. You left your master with your First Girl. I have seen the way he looks at her. Do you still have the root?” She had lowered her voice now.

 

“Yes.”

 

Mina smiled. “Men are fickle, unless we keep them in chains.”

 

“Well, that’s not going to happen anymore. Your days of chaining men are over, Mina.”

 

“Perhaps.’ She smiled again. 

 

“You didn’t answer my question.”

 

“Your master is… strong and virile” said Mina. “He knows what he wants from me. I submitted, of course. I no longer feel the Goddess inside of me, and so I must submit to a man like your master. After all…” Mina lowered her voice again. “You have rejected me.”

 

“I’m not sexually attracted to women,” I said to Mina. “Not anymore. I just don’t feel it.”

 

“And yet on the Larl there were moments when you squealed and writhed in pleasure beneath me. I remember even if you refuse to remember.”

 

“I… I don’t know what that was. I haven’t felt it since, Mina. Honestly, I haven’t. I don’t understand my body sometimes. Maybe it was because you were so dominant.”

 

Mina regarded me carefully, listening to each word. “I can be dominant again?” she suggested as she reached out a hand and played with the ends of my hair.

 

“No you can’t. It’s different now. You have a brand – a collar – it wouldn’t be the same. Subconsciously it wouldn’t be the same. I would think of you as a slave, not a mistress.”

 

“You are strange, Emma. There is nothing wrong with pleasing a woman. Or… taking pleasure from a woman.”

 

“Eat your fruit, Mina, before Saffron steals it.”

 

Further east the river bent and the trees leaned so close they nearly touched above us, sealing us in green twilight. Cool air breathed from hidden tributaries across my flushed face. Somewhere ahead rolled the distant thunder of cataracts we had not yet reached. With every stroke of the paddle we moved deeper into the indifferent wild, farther from the pens and silk markets of Schendi – and its fragile illusion of safety - yet the steel around our ankles never loosened, and the rhythm of our bodies answered - as it always would - to the will of the men who owned us.

 

I felt Brinn’s eyes still on me, steady, patient, promising. My arms burned. My heart raced. And beneath the fear of venturing deeper into this emerald unknown, beneath the heat, beneath everything, the quiet, shameful thrill of surrender coiled tighter still.

 

As the river’s current tugged our canoe eastward, deeper into the steaming green maw of the jungle, and as we picked up pour wooden paddles again, my mind drifted back to Schendi, that sweltering coastal hive where our journey had begun, on the day our ship had docked into its harbour. The paddle grew heavy in my hands, my muscles aching under Brinn’s watchful eye, but the memories flooded me unbidden, pulling me away from the endless drone of insects and the murmur of water against wood. I remembered the slave markets there, vast and merciless, where Brinn and Tijani had led Mina and me on leashes through the throngs, our bodies bared save for the clinging silk that hid nothing from appraising eyes. It was a place of unrelenting heat, both from the equatorial sun and the fire of submission that burned in my belly, knowing every step proclaimed me as property, as kajira.

 

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We had arrived at the docks of Schendi under a sky, laden heavy with the promise of rain, the air thick with the scents of salt from the Thassa Sea and the sharp tang of spices unloaded from swaying ships - cinnamon, cloves, and pepper that made my eyes water. Brinn had left his men to secure the ship, his hand firm on the loop of my leash, a simple leather thong clipped to the collar at my throat, while Tijani did the same with Mina. “Heel,” Brinn had commanded, his voice low and unyielding, and I had fallen into step beside him, my bare feet padding on the hot wooden planks, Mina mirroring me on Tijani’s side. “Let’s see what Schendi looks like,” he said, as keen to explore the exotic city as I was. 

 

The port buzzed with activity: dark-skinned sailors in striped tunics shouting orders, carts rumbling with crates of exotic birds whose feathers flashed like jewels, and chains of new captives being herded toward the markets, their wrists bound, eyes wide with the shock of having recently been enslaved. I felt Brinn’s tug on the leash, a subtle reminder that pulled me closer to his thigh, my silk brushing his leg, and a shiver ran through me despite the heat - the thrill of being so utterly controlled, so publicly owned.

 

The markets sprawled inland from the harbour, a labyrinth of stalls and platforms under vast awnings of striped canvas that flapped in the humid breeze. Schendi’s slave trade was legendary, home to the League of Black Slavers, and the air thrummed with the cries of auctioneers, the crack of whips urging girls to display themselves, and the low murmurs of buyers haggling over flesh. Brinn and Tijani moved through it with purpose, their strides confident, as if they were pirate-lords among merchants, and we followed, leashes taut, heads lowered but eyes darting to take in the spectacle. To one side, a row of iron cages held a few clusters of barbarian girls like me – Earth women, pale and trembling, newly branded and collared, pressing themselves against the bars as men poked at them with sticks, commenting on their curves or the fire in their eyes. “This one has spirit,” one slaver laughed, yanking a girl’s hair to force her face up, and I felt Mina regard the barbarians with casual curiosity, assessing them the way a Gorean kajira tends to assess a girl that she believes is her inferior. “Natural slaves,” she concluded, with a wry smile that bordered on cruelty. “Let them learn to fear the lash.” Brinn paused there, his blue eyes scanning the lot, and I stood still as stone, leash slack but binding, wondering if he sought to add to his holdings or merely to compare, to remind me of my place.

 

Deeper in, the main platforms rose like stages in a theatre of dominance, where girls were paraded one by one, their bodies oiled to gleam under the sun, wrists often bound high on poles to accentuate their helplessness. The auctioneer’s voice boomed, rhythmic and insistent: “Good men of Schendi, what am I bid for this exquisite kajira from the jungles? See how she moves – trained to please, eager for a master’s touch!” The girl twisted on the block, her hips swaying in forced allure, tears streaking her face as bids flew from the crowd – warriors in red tunics, merchants draped in gold, even askari with spears and shields, their dark skin glistening with sweat. Smells assaulted me: the musk of unwashed bodies mingled with perfumes dabbed on slaves to entice, the metallic tang of chains and brands heating in braziers, and the underlying rot of the nearby Ushindi River, carrying hints of the interior’s decay. Tijani pulled Mina close to inspect a dark-haired beauty on a low dais, his fingers tracing her thigh as the slaver nodded approval, and Mina’s breath caught, her eyes meeting mine in silent solidarity. “Kneel, my lovely little Ubara,” Tijani ordered her casually, and she dropped to the packed earth, knees spread, back arched, the position of the pleasure slave, her leash pooling beside her. I envied her then, the clarity of command, even as Brinn’s silence weighed on me heavier than words. We are all so utterly beautiful in nadu. 

 

Brinn led me further, through narrower alleys where private sales unfolded in shadowed tents, the air cooler but no less charged. Here, buyers could examine merchandise more intimately – fingers probing mouths for teeth, hands squeezing flesh for firmness, commands barked to assume positions that left nothing hidden. A girl whimpered as a potential master stripped her silk away, turning her this way and that, and I felt the heat rise in my cheeks, my body responding traitorously to the scene, the leash at my throat a constant pull toward surrender. Brinn stopped at one such tent, where a line of leashed slaves knelt in the nadu position, thighs parted, hands on knees, gazes downcast. “Display,” the tent’s owner called, and they lifted their chins, breasts thrust forward, a chorus of soft gasps escaping as whips hovered threateningly. Tijani chuckled, pointing out one with curves like Mina’s, and Brinn nodded, his hand absently stroking the leash where it met my collar, sending jolts through me. “Would you fetch as much as her, Emma?” he murmured, his voice for my ears alone, and I trembled, whispering, "Far more, Master, and you know it." 

 

We wandered for hours, the sun climbing high, sweat trickling down my back and making the silk translucent, clinging like a second skin. Crowds parted for Brinn and Tijani, respecting their bearing - the gold rings on Tijani’s fingers, the sword at Brinn’s hip - but avaricious eyes lingered on Mina and me, assessing, desiring. Once, a merchant reached out to touch my arm, and Brinn’s growl stopped him cold: “She is mine.” The possessiveness in his tone coiled tension tighter in my core, a reminder that I was not just leashed but branded, marked eternally as his. Mina stumbled once on the uneven ground, and Tijani yanked her upright, his hand lingering on her waist, whispering something that made her flush crimson. The markets echoed with the ring of coins changing hands, the sobs of sold girls being led away, the triumphant laughs of new owners. Exotic birds screeched from cages overhead, their colours rivalling the silks draped over stalls selling chains, whips, and branding irons. Spices piled in vibrant mounds - reds and yellows and browns - released clouds of aroma with every breeze, mixing with the earthy scent of oiled skin and fear-sweat.

 

By afternoon, as storm clouds gathered over the harbour, Brinn and Tijani had made their purchases - not girls, but supplies for the journey: bundles of cloth, jars of paga, and chains for whatever prizes they might claim in the interior. They led us back toward the docks, leashes short now, pulling us against their sides in the thickening crowd. My heart pounded with every step, the public display an exquisite torment - humiliation laced with the dark thrill of being so desired, so commanded. A final glance back at the markets showed a girl being auctioned, her body writhing in desperate appeal, and I wondered if that would have been me once, before Brinn claimed me. The memory faded as the canoe rocked gently, pulling me back to the present, the jungle’s whispers replacing the market’s roar. 

 

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That evening we camped close to the river again. It was Saffron’s turn to cook, so I lay on my belly in the jungle grass (but only having beaten the area with a long stick to get rid of all the snakes – no matter what Mina said, I knew they were out there, waiting, watching) and watched as Mina crouched beside Tijani and accepted food in her mouth one handful at a time. 

 

Chloe was with Brinn.

Again.

 

I clutched at the grass blades with my fingers and watched as she laughed and flirted with our master while sat on his lap. Very soon Brinn would roll her onto her back and use her.

 

I felt the hurt acutely. I had been gone a long time. Chloe had warmed Brinn’s furs in the Sardar throughout my absence. Chloe was now a natural fit in Brinn’s furs, it seemed. 

 

I let my mind drift into the past, to the Tahari where my slavery had begun. 

 

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Eleven years.

 

By my reckoning, I had lived on Gor now for over eleven years.

 

I remembered the Tahari souq as though the desert heat still clung to my skin, even now as the river carried us eastward through the jungle’s green embrace. Many years ago, even before Brinn claimed me, before Schendi and its markets, I had walked those narrow, twisting alleys for the first time - naked save for the short walking chain that hobbled my ankles, forcing my steps into small, measured paces that made the steel links chime softly with every movement. The sun beat down without mercy, turning the packed earth and worn flagstones beneath my bare feet into searing stone that burned with each step. Dust rose in golden clouds around me, clinging to the sweat on my body, while the air shimmered with waves of dry, relentless heat.

 

The souq in Patashqar was alive, a chaotic maze of life pressed against the emptiness of the surrounding wastes. Narrow passages twisted between low buildings of sun-baked mud-brick, some shaded by tattered awnings of striped rep-cloth that fluttered in sudden hot gusts, others open to the blinding sky. Merchants shouted from every side, their voices rising and falling in the clipped, proud dialects of the nomads. The smells layered thickly around me: the sharp metallic bite of heated iron drifting from open forges, the rich earthy sweetness of pressed-date bricks piled high in baskets, the pungent sting of desert spices - cinnamon, cloves, rare pepper - mounded in vivid reds, yellows, and browns on low wooden stalls. Incense curled from brass burners, mixing with the musky odour of oiled kaiila hides and tanned leather, while charcoal smoke from the braziers carried the faint, acrid promise of branding irons waiting in the coals.

 

I passed stalls overflowing with bolts of animal-hair cloth dyed deep indigo and crimson, soft yet tough enough to withstand the desert’s bite. Weapons gleamed on racks - curved scimitars with hilts wrapped in kaiila leather, short daggers, heavy whips coiled like sleeping serpents. Exotic birds from distant jungles screeched in wicker cages, their feathers flashing jewel-like in the fractured light that pierced the awnings. Potters spun clay jars for water bags on foot-turned wheels, and carpets woven in intricate geometric patterns by oasis women lay unfurled across the ground, their colours vivid against the pale dun of the sand.

 

Slaves moved through the crowds with careful grace, many in light walking chains like mine, their soft chimes a constant music beneath the clamour. Some wore brief djellabas of striped rep-cloth, hooded and sleeved, riding high on the thighs; others, displayed for sale, stood naked or in gossamer silks on low daises, oiled skin gleaming under the sun, wrists bound high to show the curves of their bodies as buyers inspected with appraising hands. I heard the slaver’s cry ring out again and again: “Another lithe beauty from the northern caravans - trained to the whip, eager to please!” Chains clinked, tiny bells tinkled from ankle bracelets, and the low murmur of haggling blended with the bleat of tethered kaiila, the snort of beasts being bargained over, and the occasional sharp crack of a quirt correcting a girl’s posture.

 

Nomads in flowing burnooses and veiled keffiyehs rode tall kaiila through the alleys, their eyes sharp beneath the folds, palms brushing twice in greeting or sharing salt from wrist to tongue in the ancient rite. Free women, heavily veiled in black, walked with retinues, shopping for household goods, their movements modest yet commanding. Every so often a sudden wind whistled through the passages, carrying fine sand that stung my eyes and clung to my sweat-slick skin.

 

Deeper in, private tents offered shadowed spaces for more intimate transactions - where buyers examined merchandise closely, fingers probing, commands given to assume positions of display. At the edge of the souq, forges glowed fierce orange, sparks flying as iron masters heated brands, the hiss of metal meeting flesh a grim punctuation to the market’s endless rhythm. Yet beneath the clamour there was order: the men of the Tahari were proud, touchy of honour, patient in trade, and swift with steel if insulted. Water was shared sparingly, salt bound alliances, and the destruction of a well would have united every tribe against the offender.

 

I walked through it all on that short chain, sobbing from the agony of my recently applied brand, led by the bandit, Rashid, – my first master - feeling every eye that lingered, every whisper of appraisal, every gust of hot wind against my bare skin. The souq pulsed with fierce, unyielding life - commerce, conquest, submission, survival - all intertwined in the crucible of heat, dust, and desire. Even now, so many years later, with the jungle’s damp green pressing close around me, I can still taste the grit of that desert sand on my tongue, still feel the burn of the stones beneath my feet, and still hear the soft, inescapable chime of my chain as I was led deeper into the souq, and into the life that would change me forever.

 

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“The men are comfortable,” said Saffron as she approached and knelt beside me. “They have chosen their prizes for tonight.”

 

“So they have," I said, through gritted teeth.

 

“But you are a Pleasure Slave, Emma. Why would they not choose you?”

 

“Novelty. Variety. You can get sick of eating the finest sirloin steak after a while. Sometimes you just want a Big Mac.” I gazed at the vague shape of the beast with two backs that was Brinn and Chloe humping away in the darkness. “What does it matter.”

 

“When we began our river journey, I feared neither master would want me, with you being here. I was jealous of you. I feared you. Mina and I both knew how experienced you were with men. It seems I was wrong. I think you are going to lose your master.”

 

“And I think you should shut the fuck up if you don’t want to be face down chewing on some damp soil.”

 

Saffron shook her lovely head of long hair. “I am not scared of you, Emma. Mina tells me you are all bark and no bite. And Chloe has said we are not to fight. We will both be whipped, regardless of which girl started it.”

 

I turned away from Saffron. 

 

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I remembered the branding forge with a clarity that still makes my skin prickle. It was no grand smithy, only a low, open-fronted chamber carved into the mud-brick wall at the souq's edge, yet every detail of that place burned itself into me more deeply than the iron ever could.

 

The entrance faced the alley, a wide arch without a door, so the fierce desert sun poured in during the hottest hours, turning the threshold into a blinding rectangle of white light against the dim interior. Inside, the world narrowed to heat and shadow. The air was thick, almost chewable - laden with the acrid bite of burning charcoal, the metallic tang of heated steel, and the faint, underlying sweetness of date smoke from a nearby stall that drifted in on hot gusts. Every breath tasted of fire.

 

At the heart of the forge stood the brazier: a squat, open pit of blackened stone and iron, heaped high with glowing coals that pulsed like living things. The fire never slept; apprentices kept it fed with steady blasts from the bellows - great leather lungs worked by foot pedals that wheezed and sighed in slow rhythm. Each pump sent a rush of air through hidden pipes, and the coals answered with a sudden roar, brightening from dull cherry to fierce orange, then to blinding white. Sparks lifted in lazy spirals, tiny orange stars that drifted upward before winking out in the smoky rafters.

 

Tools hung everywhere - long-handled tongs of blackened iron, hammers of different weights, chisels, files, and an array of branding irons suspended from hooks on the low beams. The irons themselves were simple, brutal things: straight bars ending in the blocky, angular Kef of Taharic script, the vertical stem with its curling floral fronds at the base. They rested in the coals like sleeping serpents, tips buried in the hottest heart of the fire, slowly turning from dull grey to red, to cherry, to the pure, searing white that promised agony.

 

The floor was packed earth, blackened and scarred from years of dropped slag and spilled sparks, gritty under my bare knees when the men forced me down. I was hysterical by then, recognising what was to come. A sturdy wooden rack stood nearby, reinforced with iron bands, its leather cuffs oiled dark from use, the padding stained and worn where countless thighs had strained against it. Chains dangled from overhead beams, ready if needed, but for my marking they used only the cuffs - wide, thick leather that bit into skin without mercy.

 

The iron master moved like a shadow in the glow, his face and arms streaked with soot, hands callused and scarred from a lifetime of fire. He spoke little, only nodding when Rashid gave the order. When the chosen iron reached its perfect heat - white-hot, shedding sparks with every shift - Rashid himself took the thick leather gauntlets from the master's bench. The gloves were heavy, cracked, smelling of old sweat and singed hide. He lifted the iron from the coals with deliberate slowness, the metal sighing as it left the fire, a thin trail of smoke curling from its tip.

 

"Look at me, slave," he said, his voice low and steady. I raised my eyes to his, tears already welling. "This is your marking. You will bear my Kef forever, high on your left thigh, where only I - or those I permit - will see it. Scream if you must; the desert does not care." He stepped between my bound legs, eyes locked on mine, and pressed the iron firmly to the tender flesh. The pain was instantaneous, white-hot agony that seared through skin and muscle in a single, blinding wave. He counted aloud in the nomad tongue - one... two... three - each ihn an eternity as the smell of my burning flesh filled the forge, acrid and sickening. I screamed, raw and broken, body straining uselessly against the straps until my voice cracked into sobs. Then he withdrew the iron cleanly, lifting it away without hesitation, leaving a perfect, smoking mark - deep, clean, the blocky Kef etched forever into me.

 

The apprentices cooled the brand with salve, the sting sharp but welcome after the fire. They freed me from the rack, and my legs buckled; Rashid caught me, lowering me to my knees before him on the dirt floor. He lifted my chin. "Speak it." My voice was hoarse, trembling. "I am yours, Master. I am branded kajira." He smiled then and drew me against his thigh, allowing me to press my tear-streaked face to the rough fabric of his robes. The pain throbbed with every heartbeat.

 

The rawness of the brand had long since healed, but its echo remained in my flesh and soul, a reminder of the first time I had been truly owned. 

 

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“Kajira chain check,” said Chloe as she emerged from the darkness. I quickly rose from where I lay and extended my left ankle. There was a clink of slithering steel links. Beside me, Saffron did the same. Chloe knelt and, in the moonlight. felt with her fingers around the steel cuff of first my anklet and then Saffron’s. “Good,” she said.

 

I said nothing to her. She seemed to sense something was wrong. 

 

“Emma?” Chloe knelt beside me and brushed my head with her hand. “Emma? talk to me?”

 

“What?”

 

I felt her hand draw back. “Okay. Out with it, kajira.” Kajira – that’s what she called me when there was tension between us. 

 

“What is going on between you and Brinn?”

 

Chloe sighed. “I am the First girl, and Brinn likes to put his First Girl through her paces.”

 

“And I’m the mother of his children! Doesn’t that count for anything anymore?”

 

“You know what our master is like, Emma. I shouldn’t need to explain it to you. And you know my heart belongs to another master. You have nothing to fear.”

 

“I have everything to fear, Chloe. I wear a collar on the planet Gor, after all.”

 

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I remembered the Turian caravan as it crossed the southern plains with a slow, steady gait. It was many years ago, before the desert sands gave way to chains and the first of many steel collars, before Rashid sold me at the Floating Market of the Oasis of the Twenty-three Palms. That caravan belonged to a wealthy Turian merchant-slaver named Harl - or so the handlers called him - a man whose name was whispered with a mix of fear and greed across the plains. Turia, the opulent city of the south, the Ar of the southern hemisphere, sent out such trains regularly: long, slow-moving lines of kaiila and wagons laden with silks, spices, salt, and - most prized of all - flesh.

 

The caravan had stretched across the grasslands like a serpent of dust and chains. At the head rode the guards - hard-eyed Turian warriors in striped tunics of blue and yellow, the colours of their city's slavers, curved scimitars at their hips, short lances couched under arms. Their kaiila, tall and vicious, snorted plumes of red dust, bells jingling from their harnesses in a constant, mocking chime. Behind them came the wagons: high-sided, creaking things drawn by teams of broad tharlarion, their massive, herbivorous bodies lumbering forward with patient strength. The wagons carried crates of Turian silk - famous for its sheen and strength - jars of scented oils, bolts of dyed cloth, and casks of paga that would fetch high prices in distant markets. But the true wealth travelled in the slave wagons: iron-barred cages on wheels, draped with light canvas to shield the merchandise from the sun yet allow air to pass.

 

I had travelled as the Free Woman I was at that time. Men had graciously deferred to me. 

 

Try as I might, I cannot even recall the name I had used before my thigh was marked with a kef. 

 

It was so long ago. 

 

I saw the slaves as we travelled through the open desert. There were perhaps two dozen girls chained inside one such wagon. The floor of each wagon was strewn with straw to absorb the waste; narrow benches ran along the sides where the girls sat or knelt, wrists crossed and bound behind them with soft leather thongs, ankles linked by short hobble chains that permitted only small steps. The bars were close enough to prevent escape but wide enough for buyers to reach through and examine the girls during stops. The air inside was thick with the scents of sweat, oil, fear, and the faint perfume the handlers dabbed on the girls each morning to keep them ‘presentable.’ Light filtered through the canvas in golden shafts, turning the dust motes into swirling stars.

 

The handlers - lean men in the blue and yellow robes of their trade - moved among the cages with practiced cruelty and efficiency. They carried quirts and switches, using them sparingly but precisely: a flick to correct posture, a stroke across the thighs to remind the girls of silence or obedience. "Turian slavers know flesh," one Free Woman told me as she watched them at work, their fingers tracing a curve or lifting a chin. "Turian slavers breed beauty like other men breed kaiila - strong, responsive, and profitable," giggled the Free Woman. At night, when the caravan circled and fires were lit, some girls were taken out to serve the guards or visiting merchants - kneeling in the firelight, serving paga, dancing if commanded, or simply displaying themselves for appraisal. The sounds carried on the wind: soft gasps, the crack of a quirt, the low laughter of men haggling over prices even before a city was reached.

 

The journey was long, slow, and merciless. We crossed the vast prairies south of Turia, skirting the territories claimed by the Wagon Peoples—the Tuchuks, Kataii, Paravaci - whose raids were a constant threat. Scouts rode far ahead and behind, watching for dust clouds that might signal a raid. The Wagon Peoples despised the ‘city vermin’ of Turia, yet they sometimes traded with them, exchanging captured girls for salt or steel. Once, we halted for a full day while riders negotiated with a Tuchuk patrol; I glimpsed the wild men in their furs and scars, their eyes hungry as they inspected the cages. No raid came that time, but the fear lingered like smoke.

 

We passed oases where the caravan watered the beasts – both four legged and two legged - and refreshed supplies - dates, water bags, fresh kaiila fodder. At these stops, slavers opened the cages for ‘exercise’ and the girls were led out on leashes, forced to run in circles or perform simple slave paces to keep muscles toned. Buyers from nearby caravans would gather, paying small coins for the privilege of closer inspection. Fingers probed, commands were barked—"Nadu!" "Display!"—and the girls obeyed, hearts pounding, knowing their value rose or fell with every tremble.

 

The bells never stopped: kaiila harnesses, ankle chains, the soft jingle of slave bells some girls wore at wrists or ankles to please the masters. The dust rose in choking clouds; the suns burned without mercy; the nights brought cold winds and the distant howls of predators. Through it all, the Turian slavers maintained their calm arrogance, speaking of markets in Tor or distant Ar, of prices in silver tarsks, of how a well-trained barbarian might fetch a fortune in the right pens.

That caravan carried me toward my destiny – my branding, toward Rashid, toward the desert oasis where Brinn would then claim me. Even now, with the jungle's green wall pressing close and as I listen to Chloe’s soft cries as Brinn takes her, I can still feel the sway of that loping caravan. I was free and above the suffering endured by the wagons full of slaves, but I learned first-hand that Turian slavers knew their trade - flesh was their finest silk, and on Gor women are woven into it, bound and helpless, until a master chooses to cut the thread. 

 

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Mina returned after a couple of ahn in Tijani’s furs. She settled down beside me as Chloe locked her ankle ring to the same wooden stake as my ankle ring. 

 

“How was it?” I asked, in the stillness of the night.

 

“Wonderful,” said Mina ss he curled up beside me, pressing her body close to mine for warmth and companionship. “Tijanis is a determined and fierce lover.” She stretched her limbs like a tired cat. “I have such strong sexual responses these days. Far more so than when I…” her voice faltered.

 

“It’s hard to compare, isn’t it? To the days when you were free?”

 

“Yes.” Mina nodded. “Those days seem adrift, floating just out of reach. I know it was a life I once had, but it seems strange now, and so far away. Do you ever think back to when you were free? You were free once, yes? You are a barbarian, after all.” She laughed, softly. “Though we say you are all simply uncollared slaves in your land.”

 

“I was free once,” I said. “Here on Gor, I was a Free Woman for a while.”

 

“Were you happy, wrapped up in your blankets and your veils?”

 

“Is any Free Woman truly happy?” 

 

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I remembered the moment Brinn claimed me amidst the desert sands. He was my enemy, still, that day, and I think he hated me. He bought me as an act of revenge, and, perhaps, because deep down he knew he wanted me. It happened that very night after my sale at the Floating Market of the Oasis of the Twenty-three Palms. The suns had set, leaving the sky a deep indigo streaked with the first stars, and the oasis palms rustled softly in the cooling air. The market had quieted; most caravans had circled for the night, fires flickering like distant eyes across the dunes. Brinn led me away from Rashid’s market pitch on his newly fastened chain, the steel collar already warm from my body heat, the links chiming softly with each step I took behind him.

 

Brinn did not speak at first. He simply turned the chain once around his fist, shortening it until I stood close enough to feel the heat of his body. His ice-blue eyes held mine - steady, unhurried, as though he had all the time in Gor to savour what was already his. With one hand he lifted my chin, thumb brushing the edge of the collar. “You knelt well on the sand,” he said, voice low and even. “You trembled well, little Kurii bitch. You will serve better.”

 

I said nothing. I think I was still in shock. 

 

He unclipped the temporary leash from the collar and set it aside. Then he removed the brief rag of rep-cloth that had been permitted for my sale, letting it fall to the mats. I stood naked before him, oiled skin still gleaming in the lamplight, the blocky Taharic Kef on my left thigh dark and fresh from the forge months before. He circled me slowly, as he had seen Rashid do, but without the performance - only quiet appraisal, his gaze tracing every curve, every tremble of my body. He hated me on that day. I had been his enemy. By rights he could have killed me, but men rarely kill beautiful women when there is an alternative. His fingers followed: light, deliberate touches along my shoulder, down my spine, across the small of my back, then lower, cupping one breast, then the other, testing the weight, the response. I gasped softly; he smiled, small and fierce.

 

“Kneel, Kurii bitch, ” he commanded.

 

I dropped to my knees in the sand-strewn mat, thighs wide in nadu, hands crossed behind me, back straight, eyes lowered as custom and instinct demanded. The slave pens of Banu Hashim had taught me everything I needed to know to please a man. To please women, too, if it came to that. Our training is very thorough. But we rarely speak of such things. Brinn stood over me a long moment, letting the silence build, letting me feel the weight of his presence. Then he knelt before me - close, so close I could smell the fabric of his Bedouin robes, the salt and dust of the desert on his skin. He took my wrists, drew them forward, and bound them together with a length of black silk cord he drew from his belt - tight enough to remind, loose enough to allow circulation. The cord was soft, yet it bit when I tested it.

 

“You are no longer an agent of the Kurii,” he said, voice a low rumble. “You lost the Game of Worlds. You are mine. Branded. Collared. Claimed.” He reached into a small pouch at his belt and withdrew a thin silver ring—a Turian-style nose ring, delicate yet unmistakable. “This will mark you as mine in ways the brand alone cannot - visible, intimate, for any who see you.” He threaded it through the small hole already pierced in my septum during my time in Banu Hashim, a quick, practiced motion that stung but did not bleed. The ring clicked shut with a tiny sound, cool against my upper lip. I felt it with every breath - a constant, light pressure that proclaimed ownership even when the collar might be obscured.

 

“How I hate you,” he said, as he lifted my chin. “And how I want you. It’s a maddening contradiction.”

 

Breathless, I didn’t know what to say. 

 

“Oh, the Steel Worlds chose you well, you little bitch. The effect you have on men…” Brinn clenched his right hand into a fist. For a moment I feared he might strike me, but then he relaxed that hand and regarded me again. “You were a haughty bitch when I first met you.”

 

I said nothing, but I lowered my head, feeling the nose ring rest above my upper lip. 

 

Then he rose, drawing me up with him by the bound wrists. He guided me to the rug he had thrown on the sand, positioned me on my back, knees drawn up and parted, ankles spread, helpless, open to him. He stripped his own robes, revealing the lean, scarred body of a warrior who had fought and won many times. The lamplight played across the planes of his chest, the corded muscles of his arms.

 

He moved over me without haste. His hands roamed - claiming, not asking - tracing the Kef on my thigh, pressing fingers into the tender flesh until I whimpered. “Say it,” he ordered.

 

“I am yours, Master,” I whispered, voice trembling. “I am kajira. I am branded for you. I am claimed. Please do not kill me.”

 

He entered me then - slow at first, deliberate, letting me feel every inch of possession. I gasped at the size of him. The stretch, the heat, the weight of him pinning me to the mats. Rashid had not been this big. Nor had Seremides. I wasn’t sure my body was capable of accommodating him… until suddenly I squealed and realised my body most certainly could accommodate him. 

 

“You’re a tight little slut, I’ll give you that,’ said Brinn as he pulled at my nipples with his fingers. 

 

He took me thoroughly, unhurried, each thrust a statement: mine. Mine. Mine. My bound wrists pressed above my head; my body arched to meet his; soft cries escaped despite my efforts to stay silent. He watched my face the entire time, drinking in every gasp, every tear, every shudder of surrender. When the rhythm quickened, when the pleasure-pain coiled tight in my belly, he leaned close, breath hot against my ear.

 

“You’re close, aren’t you? Your body is at its tipping point already. Such a hot little slut – not a Free Woman at all.” 

 

I gave in, my body clenching around him as waves of submission crashed through me. He followed moments later, a low growl in his throat, filling me, sealing the claim with the heat and seed of his body.

 

Afterward he unbound my wrists, drew me against his chest on the rugs, one arm around me, the other hand resting possessively on the brand on my thigh. The nose ring brushed my lip with every breath; the collar weighed warm and familiar at my throat. He did not speak of love or tenderness - only ownership, absolute and final.

 

“I will sell you once I am bored, Emma,” he murmured into my hair. “Be certain of that. Soon enough, you little treacherous bitch. When I am bored. You will be sold to a harsh slavery – a mill girl, perhaps, subject to backbreaking work, twelve hours a day, praying each night that your ugly overseer will put you to use so the next day you might be given a lighter shift and better food in the evenings. That will be your life, Kurii bitch. That will be your reward for serving the Steel Worlds.”

 

I pressed my face to his shoulder, whispering, “Yes, Master,” the words simple, true, binding.

 

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I must have dozed for a while. I woke to a man’s hand on my thigh. I turned, feeling Mina’s sleep arm nestled around my waist. Mina half-woke, stirred in her semi-sleep, and Brinn pressed his finger to her lips, motioning her to relax and close her eyes again.

 

“Master?” I said in the darkness. my eyes gradually grew accustomed to the dim light. I have very good night vision, it seems.

 

“You are my slave,” he said.

 

“Master?” I didn’t know what this was supposed to be. I lifted myself on one elbow.

 

“I care for you, Emma. And I see the fear in your eyes sometimes. I’m not going to sell you.”

 

Relief flooded through my body now that he had actually spoken those words. 

 

“Master!” I cried. 

 

“The concerns of a slave are nothing to me of course,” said Brinn as he gazed down at me. “But there is no reason for you to suffer needlessly.”

 

“Please put me to use tomorrow,” I begged. “Please, Master.”

 

“Perhaps.” Brinn smiled at me in the darkness. “You do beg well, my little squirming slut.”

 

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I remembered that night, many years ago, in the quiet stone house Brinn kept high on the cliffs overlooking the distant glimmer of the Thassa, far from the noise of cities or caravans – before he was gifted his sprawling estate in the foothills of the Sardar mountain range. The Sardar had called him - those forbidden mountains where no common man may tread - and he had answered, summoned by the Priest Kings themselves in recognition of what he had done for Gor.

 

He had saved their nest. Not with sword or lance, but with swift action and cunning: a rogue Kurii plot, several small nuclear devices smuggled from the wreckage of an ancient ship, set to detonate beneath the very heart of their hidden sanctuary. Brinn had uncovered the plot, raced through the passes with a handful of trusted men, disarmed the thing with his own hands while the Priest Kings watched from their unseen places. For that, they had granted him audience - an honour no human had received in centuries.

 

That was the official story, anyway.

 

He returned to me late, long after the moons had risen. The Priest Kings had conveyed him back home in the blink of an eye, it seemed. The door banged open, and there he stood in the firelight, cloak thrown back, boots still dusted with Sardar snow, cheeks flushed from paga and triumph. His ice-blue eyes sparkled with a boyish mischief I had rarely seen. He was a little drunk - delightfully so - not the dangerous kind that made him quiet and sharp, but the kind that loosened his tongue and widened his grin.

 

“Emma,” he said, voice rough with pleasure, and crossed the room in three strides.

 

I had been kneeling by the hearth, mending one of his tunics with a needle and thread, but I rose at once, heart quickening. Before I could speak he caught me around the waist, lifted me clean off the floor as though I weighed nothing, and carried me laughing toward the great bed piled with furs and cushions.

 

“Master…!” I gasped, half protest, half delight, as he tossed me down onto the soft pelts. I bounced once, laughing helplessly, hair spilling across the furs. I could tell I was about to be… ravished. 

 

He followed at once, coming down over me, bracing on his forearms so his weight pinned me gently but inescapably. His breath smelled of paga and mountain pine. “Quiet, slave,” he growled, but the growl was full of mirth. “Your handsome master has such tales to tell you, and  you will listen like the attentive kajira you are.”

 

He kissed me then - hard, hungry, tasting of victory - and I melted beneath him, arms winding around his neck, fingers threading into his dark hair. Between kisses he began to speak, words tumbling out in a rush, as though he could not contain them.

 

“They are not men, Emma,” he said, pulling back just enough to look into my eyes. His hands were already working at the ties of my silk, sliding the fabric aside with impatient fingers. “Not even close. Giant insects - beautiful, terrible things. Six limbs, segmented bodies that gleam like lacquer, compound eyes that catch every flicker of light. They move with such grace, so precise, as though they think in patterns we cannot imagine. And their voices…” He laughed softly, nipping at my throat. “Not voices at all. A clicking, a hum that vibrates in your bones. Yet I understood them perfectly. They spoke in my mind.”

 

I arched beneath him as his mouth moved lower, tracing fire across my breasts. “They honoured me, little kajira,” he murmured against my skin. “They led me into their deepest halls - caverns of crystal and light. and magic, walls alive with moving patterns. No torches, no fires - only their own glow. They showed me the wreckage of the devices we had stopped, now harmless, and one of them - taller than the rest - touched my shoulder with a forelimb. I felt… gratitude. Not words, but a wave of it, warm and ancient.”

 

His hands roamed, claiming, teasing, and I laughed again - breathless, giddy - as he rolled us so I straddled his hips. He gripped my waist, guiding me down onto him with a groan that vibrated through both of us. “They gave me this,” he said, lifting one hand to show me a small, iridescent disc set in silver - a token, he said, a fragment of their own carapace, polished to mirror brightness. “A sign that I may walk the Sardar passes unmolested, that their eyes will watch over me.”

 

I moved on him slowly, deliberately, watching his face as he spoke, loving the way his words faltered when I tightened around him. “They asked nothing in return,” he continued, voice rougher now, hips rising to meet mine. “Only that I live well, fight well… and keep my kajira close.” He grinned, wicked and happy, and flipped us again so I lay beneath him once more, legs wrapped around his waist.

 

He took me then with a warrior’s rhythm - deep, steady, unrelenting - yet every thrust was laced with joy. “They see everything, Emma,” he whispered against my ear. “They know what we are - master and slave, man and kajira - and they approve. They said so. In my mind. ‘This one is worthy,’ they hummed. ‘This bond is strong.’”

 

I laughed again, the sound breaking into a moan as pleasure coiled tighter. “Master…” I gasped, “tell me more…”

 

He did, words tumbling between kisses and thrusts: the endless corridors of crystal, the scent like ozone and old stone, the way the Priest Kings moved in perfect synchrony, six limbs flowing like water. He spoke of their regard - not worship, but respect - and of the quiet promise that the nest would remember his name.

When the pleasure finally broke over us both, it was fierce and shared, my cries mingling with his low growl as he buried himself deep and held me there, shuddering. Afterward he did not withdraw, only gathered me close against his chest, one hand stroking my hair, the other resting possessively over the brand on my thigh.

 

“You should have seen them, little kajira,” he murmured, voice softer now, the paga-warmth fading into contentment. “Giant insects who rule a world… and they called me worthy.”

 

I pressed my lips to his throat, whispering, “You are worthy, Master. To me most of all.”

 

He chuckled and pulled the furs over us both. Outside the wind sang down from the Thassa, carrying the faintest echo of ancient songs. Inside, there was only the crackle of the dying fire, the steady beat of his heart beneath my cheek, and the quiet, perfect certainty that - for one night - my master had been honoured by the Gods of Gor, and I by him.