Gods of Gor Chapter Six

 

Chapter Six: Rite of the River Whisper

 

There’s a scene in an early episode of HBO’s TV series, Rome, where an entire Roman legion is standing around in a long column, not going anywhere, and then the camera tracks over to the side of a tree where General Mark Antony (played by the always brilliant James Purefoy) is fucking a peasant girl up against the trunk, and the entire Roman army has to wait for him to finish before they can continue marching. 

 

Well, I know what’s that like now, because this was day three of us sitting around in the village while Brinn fucked around with one of their Free Women.

 

“I thought you, as a rule, never had sex with Free Women, Master?” I said to him on the third day. 

 

“I never said that,” said Brinn as he sat on a cot bed beside a beautiful, sleeping, black skinned woman. I had seen her walking around the village, and she was as graceful as a gazelle, with long legs and a seductive smile. I knelt, lacing up his sandals as he yawned and stretched his arms. “When did I ever say that? Is it too early for paga?”

 

“Yes it is too early for paga.” I had already hidden his bottle. “Master, this is all lovely, I’m sure, but even Tijani is getting impatient. You have four slaves. You don’t need to…” I stopped talking as I saw the Free Woman stir in her sleep. A few seconds passed by and then when I felt sure she wasn’t waking up, I continued to speak in a quiet whisper. “And the village men here think you have companioned her.”

 

Brinn laughed at that. “You have quite the imagination, Emma. Companioned her – as if I would do that.”

 

“No, Master, listen to me – I’ve been picking up some of the language, and Mina filled in some of the details last night while you were…”

 

“Wasn’t there a paga bottle by my bed?” mused Brinn as he scratched his enormous hairy balls. The shaft of his penis looked impressive even while it lay flaccid. It resembled a short hosepipe. 

 

“I think you must have drunk it all, Master. But, please, listen to me… 

 

 

We had arrived three nights before, our canoe pulling ashore at this small cluster of thatched huts on stilts, where the dark-skinned tribesmen welcomed us with wary hospitality once Brinn had made an offer of our use - palm wine, roasted tharlarion, and curious glances at Mina, Saffron and me, chained as kajirae at the feet of our masters. That was the night when Brinn nearly started a war over the behaviour of the Lady Taleisha, until Tijani had smoothed things over with his charming words. The village was alive with the customs of the Ushindi interior: men painted in vivid ochre stripes for hunts, women weaving baskets from river reeds, and an undercurrent of rituals that seemed as tangled as the jungle itself. 

 

Among them was an exotic tradition, one I had pieced together from overheard whispers and the subtle gestures of the tribesfolk—the Garland of Claiming, they called it in their melodic tongue. In these equatorial tribes, where the forest pulsed with life and peril, a man did not take a Free Companion with steel or vows before witnesses. Instead, he wove a garland of rare jungle flowers - crimson orchids for passion, white lilies for purity, twisted with vines symbolizing eternal binding - and placed it around the woman's shoulders under the witness of the moons. It was a silent, sacred act, performed during feasts or under the canopy's dappled light, signifying that he claimed her not as property, but as an equal partner in the wild's dangers. Once done, the bond was unbreakable; the man pledged to never leave her side, to share hunts and hearths, to father her children amid the green shadows. The woman's kin would honour it immediately, granting the couple privacy for consummation, seeing it as a union blessed by the river spirits.

 

Brinn, of course, had stumbled into it unknowingly on our first night. The village had thrown a feast in honour of the visiting warriors with drums throbbing like heartbeats and palm wine flowing freely from gourd jugs. He had been deep in his cups - laughing with Tijani, his voice rough and merry - when a young woman named Meralisha approached, her skin gleaming with scented oils, her hips swaying in a modest wrap of colourful cloth. She was beautiful, with eyes like polished onyx and hair braided with feathers, a daughter of one of the village warriors. Brinn, ever the goat with a hard-on, had grinned and pulled her close, weaving a hasty garland from flowers strewn on the feasting mats - more a jest than anything, or so he thought, half-drunk on the sweet, potent wine. He draped it around her shoulders with exaggerated ceremony, to the cheers of the tribesmen, and she had smiled shyly, touching his arm before leading him away to her hut.

 

Brinn didn't understand, but he was hardly going to say no. For the next two nights, he had taken her - fiercely, passionately, as was his way - while the village looked on with nods of approval. I think he was a bit mystified by this, but different places, different customs, and so on. Her brothers and cousins, strong men with spears and painted faces, had permitted it without question, even guarding the hut's entrance as if honouring a sacred rite. They believed Brinn had claimed her as his Free Companion, that the garland bound him to her forever, that he would never leave her side in this life or the spirits' realm beyond. To them, his couplings were not dalliances but the sealing of a union; the river spirits demanded it, and to deny her now would be an insult worthy of blood.

 

Only I had worked it out, piecing together the fragments like scattered beads. As Brinn's kajira, I knelt nearby during the feasts, serving paga and observing the subtle shifts - the way Meralisha's kin glanced at him with familial warmth, the elder women whispering of "the flowered bond," the absence of jealousy or challenge from the village men. Mina had noticed too, her eyes meeting mine in silent question, but it was I who understood the depth of the custom from a hushed conversation between two women weaving near our fire. By the third morning, as the mist rose off the river and birds screeched their dawn chorus, I knew I had to warn him.

 

I approached him quietly as he woke in Meralisha's hut, his tunic rumpled, a faint smile on his lips from the night's pleasures. Tijani was already at the canoe, packing supplies, and Mina and Saffron were helping him, under the watchful eye of First Girl, Chloe, but I slipped to Brinn's side, dropping to my knees on the soft dirt floor, my voice an urgent whisper. "Master," I said, eyes lowered but heart pounding, "the garland - you must know what it means here. They think you have claimed her as Free Companion. The flowers bind you; they believe you will never leave her. Her brothers watch you as kin now, but if we sail on without her..."

 

I wated for some sign of shock and concern on Brinn’s face, but instead he simply shrugged his shoulders as if I’d just explained he’d bought the wrong colour tunic in the marketplace. 

 

“You’re certain about this, Emma?” he asked, after he glanced down at the sleeping form of Meralisha.

 

“Yes! Master, this is very serious… she is no longer white silk. You have had her. Many times.”

 

“Hmm.” Brinn rose from the cot bed. “So I have, kajira.” He grinned. “Many times.” He seemed to be very proud of the fact. 

 

“It’s not funny! She has brothers… cousins… you have taken away her silk! She has been spoiled for other men to consider her as a white silk companion.”

 

“I’ve faced worse problems,” remarked Brinn as Meralisha began to stir in the bed. 

 

As if this wasn’t and enough, Tijani had been spending some time. with the Lady Taleisha. At least in his case it seemed to be platonic.

 

“Master, I know it’s not my place to tell you how to spend your time, but…”

 

“There’s always a but with you, isn’t there, Emma?” said Tijani with a grin on the morning of the second day.

 

“It’s just that, the Lady Taleisha is going to be companioned to Jafari of the Kuumu tribes, who, I’ve been told, can throw a hunting spear further than any man along this river.”

 

“It must be an impressive sight,” agreed Tijani.

 

“She is almost certainly white silk, Master. Ignorant of the touch of men, as Free Women often are.”

 

“How charming,” said Tijani with another grin.

 

“Master, you have been seen walking with her, frequently.”

 

“It turns out the Lady is a charming conversationalist and very knowledgeable on the subject of the river tribes further up river. And she enjoys my company. She’s not nearly as spiteful and haughty as she seemed to be when she wanted to buy our kajirae. Once you get to know her she can be quite lovely.”

 

“Last time she saw me, Master, she called me over and whipped my thighs with her switch, for, and I’m quoting directly here, looking like a slut.”

 

“Well, at least she’s perceptive, Emma.”

 

Oh – very funny, I thought to myself, drily. “Master, you were seen holding hands… some men were talking.”

 

“You really are picking up the language quickly, aren’t you Emma?”

 

“I’m very good with languages, Master. Almost as good as I am in the furs.”

 

That was a hint. Men sometimes need reminding of what I can do.  

 

Tijani placed his fingers beneath my chin and lifted my chin so I looked directly up into his eyes. “It’s just conversation, kajira. Nothing more.” 

 

Mina had been telling me of some of the common tribal customs within Schendi and the river settlements as we sat idle while our masters enjoyed themselves elsewhere.  

 

These were not the grand ceremonies of distant cities like Ar or Ko-ro-ba, but the intimate, living ways of people who lived so close to the jungle and the wide, brown Ushindi lake that the wild seemed to breathe through them. Schendi itself, as the great coastal port, blended many traditions - those of the black-skinned Ushindi tribes, the coastal fishermen, the inland jungle clans, and even echoes of distant Tahari or northern influences carried by caravans and ships. But east of the city, where the river narrowed and the trees closed in, the customs grew wilder, more tied to the spirits of water and forest.

 

One that struck me most was the Rite of the River Whisper. On certain nights when the three moons aligned in a perfect triangle over the water, the village women would gather at the riverbank, naked save for necklaces of river pearls and feathers from the tospore bird. They would wade into the shallows up to their waists, faces turned upstream, and sing low, wordless songs that rose and fell like the current itself. The men stayed back among the huts, never interrupting; it was said the river spirits - great, invisible serpents coiled beneath the surface - listened only to women at such times. The songs were invitations, pleas for safe passage, bountiful fish, protection from tharlarion and river saurians. 

 

Another custom was the Binding of Scars. Among the inland tribes who traded with Schendi, when a warrior took his first serious wound in battle or hunt - usually a deep gash from spear, knife, or the claw of a larl - he would not hide the mark. Instead, on the night of the next full moon, he would kneel before the village fire while his kin heated a thin branding rod in the coals. The rod bore no symbol, only a simple straight line. The elder - often his father or uncle - would press it briefly to the wound’s edge, searing a thin scar-line across the original injury. This ‘binding scar’ was said to seal the wound’s spirit, preventing it from festering in the soul as well as the body. The man would then wear the double mark proudly, painting it with ochre and oil for hunts, showing that pain had been mastered and turned to strength. I saw this once when one of the young hunters returned from a failed raid on a neighbouring clan, his shoulder torn by an arrow. The ritual was quiet, almost tender; the hiss of the rod on flesh was drowned by the low chanting of the women, and afterward the warrior stood taller, the new scar gleaming red against the old.

 

The Dance of the Pleasure Chains was less solemn, more openly sensual, and very much a part of Schendi’s port culture, as opposed to the river tribes. On feast nights in the waterfront taverns - especially those catering to sailors and slavers - free women of the lower castes (and occasionally bolder ones of higher station, veiled or masked) would don tribal masks carved from wood, light chains of gold or silver, ankle and wrist links connected by delicate strands. They danced to the throbbing of tabors and the wail of flutes, the chains chiming with every sway of hip and twist of body. The dance was not submission in the kajira sense, but a deliberate tease: the chains symbolized the ‘bonds of desire’ that even free women might feel, a playful acknowledgment of the collar’s power without surrendering to it. Men watched, tossing coins or paga tokens onto a central mat, but no one touched the dancers unless invited - and invitation came only after the dance ended, in private. Brinn and Tijani had laughed at the spectacle one evening, but I noticed how their eyes followed the glint of chain and skin, and how Mina and I exchanged knowing glances: even free women played at what we lived, though such a thing would never occur in the central city states of Gor. 

 

There was also the custom of the Silent Hunt Gift. When a man wished to court a woman seriously - without the finality of the garland - he would undertake a solitary hunt into the deepest jungle, returning only with a trophy he deemed worthy: the iridescent wing of a tospore bird, the polished fang of a black larl, or a perfect white river pearl the size of a child’s fist. He placed it at her feet without a word, then left the village for three days. If she kept the gift, it meant acceptance; if she returned it to the river, refusal. No explanations were given, no arguments allowed - the gift and the silence spoke for them. 

 

These were the ways east of Schendi—blending reverence for the wild, acknowledgment of desire, and quiet strength in the face of danger. They were not written in scrolls or proclaimed by heralds, but lived in the rhythm of river and drum, in the hush of moons over water, in the glint of chain and scar and flower. Brinn sometimes mocked them gently, calling them ‘barbarian customs,’ but I saw how he watched, how he listened, and how - even in his privileged arrogance - he respected the power they held over people who had lived in the green veldt for generations.

 

“Have you whipped your slave today?” asked the Lady Taleisha as she gazed in my direction. 

 

“Firstly, she is not actually my slave,” replied Tijani, “and secondly, one should only whip slaves when they been displeasing, otherwise it confuses them. They are simple beasts.”

 

“I disagree, said the Lady Taleisha. “Slaves should be reminded of the pain of the lash, even if they have been pleasing. They then strive to be even more pleasing.” She stared at me as if I was an unpleasant jungle rodent come to steal the village rice.

 

“An interesting theory,” said Tijani. “But I should stress again that Emma is not my slave. She belongs to Brinn.”

 

“That man is lax with his discipline,” said Lady Taleisha as she walked beside Tijani. “And often drunk on strong palm wine. His slaves, in the meantime, run wild, showing little consideration for his authority. They are mostly idle and disrespectful when he is not pawing them with his brutish hands. See how that one looks at me,” she said, pointing in my direction. “Why is she not instantly kneeling in my presence with her forehead pressed to the damp soil, palms placed either side of her head, begging not to be whipped?”

 

“Emma?” said Tijani, giving me a stern look. I swiftly dropped to my knees and did as the Lady wanted.

 

“It hardly counts if you have to tell her!” snapped the Lady Taleisha. “Do you have a whip?’

 

“Not on me, no,” admitted Tijani. 

 

“You may borrow mine.” She uncoiled the whip she routinely carried on her hip and presented the handle to Tijani..

 

“Mercy, Mistress,” I begged. I kept my forehead pressed to the ground and didn’t dare to even gaze at her feet. 

 

“Oh, now she begs for mercy! See how swiftly the threat of the lash improves her demeanour?”

 

“You are a very clever woman,” said Tijani. “Your companion to be will of course treasure your valuable insights.” I could see that Tijani was trying to change the subject away from having me whipped. Tijani was never needlessly cruel. 

 

“Perhaps,” said the Lady Taleisha, “though I have yet to meet him.”

 

“I am sure he will be entranced by your beauty, and will seek your advice on all important matters,” said Tijani. “Even now he has restless nights, turning in his bed, anxious to gaze upon your beauty.”

 

“I like you, Tijani,” said Lady Taleisha, the matter of whipping me now forgotten for the moment. She smiled softly and touched Tijani’s broad, muscled chest with the tips of her fingers. 

 

On the second night we were fortunate enough to witness the Rite of the River Whisper.

 

The villagers had accurately predicted the night when the three moons of Gor aligned in a perfect, glowing triangle overhead and during the weeks leading up to the lunar event, they gathered river pearls, feathers from the iridescent tospore birds, and bundles of sweet-scented herbs to burn at the water's edge. That night, as we watched, and as the sky deepened to velvet black and the moons cast silver paths across the Nyoka’s surface, the women of the village gathered at the riverbank. They shed their brightly coloured wraps of dyed cloth and beads, stepping naked into the shallows until the warm water rose to their waists, cool enough to raise gooseflesh yet comforting like an embrace from the river itself.

 

I watched from the shadows near our hut, kneeling beside Mina as Brinn and Tijani lounged nearby with cups of palm wine, their curiosity sharp but respectful. The women stood in a loose crescent facing upstream, faces tilted to the moons, hair unbound and floating like dark silk on the water. Around their necks hung necklaces of river pearls - small, luminous orbs that caught the moonlight and shimmered with every breath. Feathers from the tospore bird - long, iridescent plumes of green and violet - were woven into their hair or tucked behind ears, swaying gently as they began to sing.

 

The song had no words, only a low, wordless melody that rose and fell in waves, mimicking the river's own murmur. It started soft, almost a hum deep in their throats, then swelled - rich, harmonious, carrying across the water like a living thing. The sound wrapped around everything: the rustle of leaves, the distant screech of night birds, the soft lap of current against reeds. It was not loud, yet it filled the night, vibrating in my chest, making my skin prickle with something ancient and wordless. The women swayed slowly, arms lifted as though offering themselves to the moons and the river, water rippling outward from their bodies in silver rings.

 

The men remained silent on shore - never approaching, never speaking. It was forbidden; the rite belonged to the women alone, a communion with the river spirits - great, coiling serpents said to dwell in the depths, guardians of fish runs, protectors against tharlarion and flood. The spirits listened only then, when the moons aligned and the women's voices carried their pleas: safe passage for canoes, bountiful catches, mercy from storms and saurians, fertility for the fields along the banks. The song was both prayer and seduction, inviting the spirits to rise and answer.

 

If the river responded with favour, the water would grow suddenly still - unnaturally calm, the current halting as though the Nyoka itself held its breath. No ripples, no bubbles; only mirror-smooth silver under the moons. When that did actually happen, the singing faltered into awed silence, broken only by soft gasps and murmurs of thanks. The women dipped their hands into the motionless water, lifted it to their faces and breasts in blessing, then waded back to shore glistening, eyes bright with quiet power. They had performed magic, and every man respected them for it. 

 

Brinn watched with folded arms, a faint smile on his lips at first, murmuring to Tijani about lunar magic as the women stepped from their garments. He grew quiet when the water stilled. Not a breath of wind disturbed it; the moons' reflection lay perfect and unbroken. The women returned to the bank shining, water streaming from their bodies like liquid silver, and the village erupted in soft cheers and drums - joyful, reverent, alive.

 

“Powerful magic, friend Brinn,” said Tijani. Beside me, Mina pressed the palms of her hands together and recited some words in a language of the interior I didn’t yet understand. Saffron seemed scared by this display of supernatural events. She made a sign of the Priest Kings, as if to ward off powers that she feared. I saw her body tremble and she moved towards me for comfort.

 

“Chain sister,” she whispered as I felt her arms embrace me for shared security. 

 

“It’s not magic,” I said. “There is no magic.”

 

“There is magic!” cried Saffron. “And this place is full of it. I fear rat the Free Women of this village will curse us.”

 

I smiled at that. Let them try, for all the good it would do. Though… a thought suddenly crossed my mind.

 

“I lied, kajira,’ I said, as I stroked her hair. “There is magic. In my barbarian land, young women are taught the mysteries at an early age.”

 

Saffron looked up, suddenly fearful of me.

 

“Yes,” I smiled. “I, too, know of the mystic arts. I can, for example, work a charm that can mean you will never satisfy a man in bed, should I wish to.”

 

“No! Please, no!” cried the superstitious Saffron. I was a barbarian after all – who knew what strange customs took place in my far away land. 

 

I smiled at Saffron and stroked her hair again. “Keep away from my Master, and all will be well, sweet little kajira.”