Continues from part one
Part 2
By the next morning I thoroughly hated Cosnians, with a hatred I would not have believed I could possess.
I was brutally and casually raped more than a dozen times throughout the night by the drunken bastards. The next morning they decided to take me into town to sell me although two of them almost came to blows wanting to keep me at least for a few more nights. It turned out they ran across a slave caravan with about a dozen naked women in a cage being driven on a cart. They hailed the slave master and after about twenty minutes of haggling I was sold to him. I couldn't hear how much I sold for; if Doc heard, which I suspect he did he was embarrassed to tell me. His men paused long enough to take off and discard the ankle bracelet and replace it with a traditional neck collar. They locked a chain on my ankle then ran me inside the cage with all the other women attaching the other end of the chain to the bar running down the middle of the floor. I was far too tired from lack of sleep and hurting and sick from what had been done to me to put up resistance. My journey had taken a turn for the worse.
What does a girl have to do to wake up? But that line of thinking was sounding really hollow. This had been the longest dream I had ever had...
There wasn’t much talking. Doc warned me to silence: the brute outside with the whip for the cart tharlion wouldn't hesitate to give me a taste of it if we did. Besides, what was there to say? Hi, how’d you wind up here and a slave? Damn, what does it take to wake up from this dream? But more and more the thought bothered me. Yeah some dreams seem to run a long time but if this was a dream, why haven't I woken up by now?
One of the girls, a smaller brunette, two girls to my left, was quietly crying. Busty, thin. long trunk. “No, please let me wake up. Please let this be a dream.” She was speaking in English.
“Sorry, sister, it’s not a dream.” At least not for her. She looked up at me with an almost terrified look in her eyes. “You speak English! I’m so glad to find you. Nobody speaks in any language I've ever heard until you."
Recent capture, Doc informed me, different clan. No teaching aid in her head. No brand on her thigh yet either. Real bad news for her. “Where are we and why are they doing this to us?” She asked, a hint of hopefulness creeping into her voice.
Her name was Eileen. The man with the whip didn’t interfere probably because he knew she was a raw barbarian and hopefully I would calm her down. I explained about Gor as best I could to her. When I got to the point that we were all slaves now and would be so for the rest of our lives (or until I woke up) she got agitated, “No, I’m getting married in three months! I've missed two days of work now! They'll fire me! Where are my clothes? No, no, no!” She lapsed back into the crying and I gave up trying to talk to her. She eventually wore herself out and fell asleep. None of the other women bothered her; if she woke up she'd just start crying again and that could be trouble for all of us. Everyone in the cage was eying everyone else but no one was talking.
As the cage rolled northward down the stone road I thought this wasn’t the first time I’d been naked in public. Not like this but there was one other time when I was 16 and was the stupidest thing I had done in my life. Got raped as part of it but it sounded like a good idea going into it.
I was sixteen and new to love and deep in it with Sam. I was also at the stage where I was discovering just what sort of influence a female who was not afraid to use her body could have on males. I was always pretty much a tomboy (or at least not a girly girl), out hiking and playing sports and martial arts and being active. I had huge breasts for sixteen, not surprising if you looked at my mother, 38Cs high and tight and not sagging at all. Still aren’t. I really didn’t do the frilly stuff but I could really rock a short spandex skirt and heels. Coupled with a tight top I knew I was devastating. I had always been a game player anyway and I enjoyed the way I could reduce the boys around me to drooling idiots if I decided to.
I had gone to school once or twice in a shelf bra just to see how the boys would react. My nipples poked hard through the t-shirt and stayed that way with the rubbing they got just by being there. I enjoyed the feeling and the way that it made the boys stupid until one of my girlfriends told me that I had picked up a new nickname with the boys, “38 Special” because of the “bullets” in my shirt. I never did that again.
But I was in love with Sam, the stupid kind of love that sixteen-year-old girls get into. Where their heart gets them to do anything and their mind isn’t invited. Sam decided he wanted to shoot a sex video. Tony, one of his good friends would be the cameraman.
Sam lived on a small ranch property. They had one horse and a large tack room with storage for hay over part of the stall. In the video Sam wanted to shoot the story would be that a group of boys and girls were playing capture and I would be a prisoner taken into the tack room and played with (by Sam) while (as the story went) the game went on outside.
Sam asked me what I thought of Tony. I thought he was all right: a nice person but that was all. He, like most boys around me, got teased by me (I was an equal opportunity flirt, but just that, I was with Sam) and would probably screw me silly if given the chance but chances were given to no one but Sam and even those were not freely given. The conversation worked around to if he had to watch Sam and I do things in the video he’d probably be in pretty dire need by the end of it. Would I consider letting him do me just once at the end? Just once, for Sam?
Well, that answer was no and it closed me off to the whole concept for a while. I was (stupidly) willing to make the video but was not happy at all about anyone but Sam being present. I finally conceded someone had to run the camera and finally agreed to give Tony a blow job if things went real well and I wanted to at the end of the video.
A couple of weeks later, when Sam’s folks were out for the weekend on business we shot the video.
Sam and Tony walked me into the tack room. The camera at that point was set up on a stand. I was in a t-shirt, no bra. Breasts stretching the too-small garment and it hugged all my curves and in it my nipples were making a cameo appearance. Along with it I wore a loose denim miniskirt, almost a micromini, and my Keds. My hands were tied securely in front of me and as soon as I got in and they closed the door I had duct tape pressed down around my mouth. There was a bit of dialog as to how they were going to keep me here. It ended up that Sam would guard me and Tony would go back after more girls. They didn’t want me running away so they settled on attaching me to the winch that was used to raise bales of hay to the loft. It had a horizontal bar about six feet long at the end and with a little bit of play-struggling from me they untied my wrists and then tied them to either end of the bar. They raised up the winch until I was held in a standing position. Tony bent down and took off my shoes and took them with him “so I couldn’t run”, leaving me barefoot and quite vulnerable. He said he was going to rejoin the hunt. As he left he told Sam not to have too much fun while guarding me.
Tony came back in and grabbed the camera and the scene continued. Sam walked around me asking me if I would tell him where the other girls were hiding. I gave a definite no through the gag. He reached out and fondled my breasts through the t-shirt and as in the script I kicked at him. This gave him a reason to tie my ankles about four feet apart to handy things on the floor with me grunting and carrying on as much as I could while gagged the whole time. Now that I was unable to kick him he took his time rubbing me through the shirt, then under the shirt, finally pushing it up over my breasts and rubbing and licking my nipples. They got some close-ups of that. Done there he ran his fingers up the inside of my legs to my violent gagged protests and rubbed me under my skirt.
He backed the work desk up behind me and lowered the winch until he could lay me so my feet were still tied to the floor but I was laying flat on my back on the table. He secured the bar and with it me to the table and then spent more time running his hands over my body. Next he untied one wrist, slipped the shirt off of it, then re-tied it even while I fought him with the temporarily free hand. When he repeated this with the other wrist I was topless and still tied to the table. He played with my breasts more, rubbed them and tweaked my nipples which felt kinda nice. I struggled and made noises to stay in character.
He untied my feet and pulled me so my butt was hanging a little off the table. It left me in a good position for you-know-what even though I was still wearing panties. He took rope and tied my ankles to the rafters, forcing them apart and making my plain white panties on full display to the camera. I was still struggling and mmmphing the whole time. He looked at the angle and decided my legs were too close together. He then untied them and tied them to the next rafters out, leaving them both at about a forty-five degree angle from the table. He liked that. One leg got untied and with much negative gagged pleading from me my panties were pulled down and off that leg. Of course that ankle was re-tied and the process repeated on the other. Me in that short a skirt and with my legs tied widely spread left my pussy exposed to the camera when it was below me and me only the scant cover of my micro-mini from other angles. He took off all his clothes (he did have a nice cock).
At first he just slapped himself around my pussy while I sounded properly terrified. Then he climbed on to the table and I acted appropriately more terrified as he kissed me around my neck. He then moved down to nuzzle and molest my breasts, and then climbed off. The camera caught it in a closeup as he ran his cock up and down my slit and then barely pushed it in, parting my lips just barely as my squeals turned to begging. That changed to pushing in and out just a little and then finally with a huge sigh of enjoyment sinking full depth into me. It was shot in glorious closeup as I gave a long gagged “Nooooooo,” wailing offscreen.
As per the script he pumped me slowly but just a few times and then stopped. He reattached and cranked the winch back up until I was off the table then moved it out of the way, leaving me hanging in the air, legs still suspended from the rafters. He pushed into me, stepped forward a bit, then pushed me forward, almost off his prick. When he let go he enjoyed it as I sank back on to him. He did that a bunch of times but did not finish himself in me yet.
He lowered my head down still further until it was about at the level of his cock. He removed the gag and fed me some water. After that he proceeded to deep-throat me. They both loved the sight of his cock bulging out my throat and got close-up footage of that too. After a few minutes and more than one or two gaggings he was done with that too. I was re-gagged and winched back up to standing height and my legs untied and they fell to the floor. He unzipped my skirt and told me I could keep it on as long as I wanted to. I gave an “oh really” grunt since with it unzipped all I would have to do was wiggle enough and it would fall off. After watching me sweat it for a few minutes Sam grabbed a riding crop and a few deft strikes to my breasts later my last piece of clothing hit the concrete floor. I was now tied up, hanging, completely nude. A little sweaty but I thought I looked good.
Then they did some things they hadn’t told me about. They stood me up and put a sawhorse between my legs, ankles again tied apart. They arranged a dildo on a stick. After they tied it to the end of the sawhorse they settled me on to it. Sam then fucked me with the winch, up and down on the dildo.
When he got tired of that after about ten minutes he got the leather polisher, about a ten-pound device almost like a hand-held floor buffer and leaned it against the stick and the dildo firmly embedded in my pussy. And then he turned it on.
The vibrations ran straight up the stick into me and I screamed through the gag. I tried to struggle but couldn’t get away. It was relentless and I was already tired and it was way too much to fight. I just moaned and wiggled what little I could, not acting any more, just reacting. My moans rose in pitch until I came in a thunderous orgasm, better than any I had ever had before. All caught on tape. It quickly turned to pain because the buffer was still going but Sam turned it off as soon as he saw that I had gone over the edge. So there I was in the now-quiet tack room moaning as I came in waves down from the orgasm. All of it recorded on the camera. They just kept filming me moaning and my heaving chest until I was completely recovered.
Then he did something I really didn’t like. He took the dildo down then tied my ankles to my waist behind me. Then he lowered me slowly down, squealing all the way, on to the sawhorse using it as a wooden pony. This had not been discussed (with me) either, but I was naked and gagged and helpless so they could do that or anything else they wanted to me. It didn’t feel good at all even at the start and got rapidly worse over time as my full weight came down and rested on the wood with my crotch.
It hurt and as they do it hurt more when you moved so I tried not to move. Sam got the riding crop back out and used it on my breasts and butt and the front of my hips, making me squeal and yell as I moved helplessly. painfully on the sawhorse. I was sure he had no clue how much this was hurting me and if he did he would stop it immediately. Gagged I just couldn't tell him and I believed he just thought my sounds and struggling was only acting.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of pain Sam ran up the winch and pulled the sawhorse out of the way. I was mad but I was also confused why he would hurt me like that. He must not have known how bad it would feel, he surely wouldn’t have done it had he known. But we were back on script and next was a session with the riding crop.
Sam ran me up until I was standing and walked around me, striking me with the crop. It hurt, he wasn’t being gentle, but it was understood he wouldn't. He was trying to leave marks on me and succeeding but wasn't getting the grunts and cries out of me he expected. I had pretty tough skin. The whip could mark me and hurt me like anyone else. From things that had happened in the past I knew what marks were put on me would hurt and burn like they would with anyone else but I had always been rather immune to the actual pain involved when it happened. So he hit me harder, much harder than he had expected to, until he got the grunts and yells he was looking for. And he was leaving a much nastier red mark every time. At first with my feet on the ground I could twist a little as he whipped me, but then he raised me up a little off the ground and played with the loose rope on my ankles to make a point to the camera that I was helpless and off the ground even though the ropes on my ankles were loose. He whipped me a little more, including between the legs I was no longer able to close, and I could only flex just a little to avoid it.
Then he raised me up tight until the ropes on my ankles were taut and then a little bit more. Taut was too far. The little extra hurt even more but gagged I couldn’t tell him that and they just assumed my squeals and groans were part of the theatrics. He plucked my ankle ropes again showing there was no slack at all and how tight I was stretched. Then he laid into me once more with the whip. He spent much more time on the inside of my thighs and crotch, even at one point hitting me on the clit a few times. It wasn’t any fun anymore but I couldn’t communicate that to Sam and Tony. Sam whipped me hard, but aside from moans and muffled yelling when he hit me, and shaking of my head, there was nothing I could do. He whipped me for what seemed like forever but actually was about ten minutes. He hit me everywhere, my back and legs. My breasts and pussy must have been seas of solid red.
Finally he was done with that. He lowered me down but we had one more scene. I tried to tell him to stop, that I had way too much already and was done but he just thought it was part of the show and ignored me.
There was a bar that ran about two inches off the floor on one side of the tack room near the loft. There was a matching bar above it; it was used to stretch out leather pieces after washing them. They laid me flat on my back on the concrete, disconnected the winch from the spreader holding my wrists and ran the cable under the bar on the floor. I was way too gone to do anything but just lay there in a pain haze as they did this. The way my legs were tied, they could run up the winch and turn it into a de-facto rack. I just hurt everywhere from the whipping but the cool of the concrete floor felt good on my back and buns. It hurt a bit as they cranked up the winch, dragging me a little across the floor and stretching me out. Not too tight this time, they got it right, but I was spread wide and helpless to move.
Sam stood over me, hard cock in his hand, looking down at my helpless body. I just hurt. Sam, you were too hard with me, just do the last scene, fuck me now and get it over with. I hurt too bad, was too tired to move or do more than moan through the duct tape.
And fuck me he did. It hurt like hell at first, he had whipped my crotch pretty hard and that whole area was fairly raw. That faded since there was nothing to do about it but feel it happen. They weren’t understanding me, that I’d had far more than enough, so in and out he went. After a while which I had no clue how long it took I felt him tense up and squirt inside of me and then pull out. He let the last little bit of it dribble into my pussy hair. I didn’t care. I couldn’t care less. I just wanted it over. And now it was over.
As was in the script I was faintly aware of the camera going back on the stand. Tony came back in and with my pretty much broken body in the background they talked about how the game was going and that it would be over in a few minutes. Tony remarked on camera that Sam seemed to be using his time with me well and having a lot of fun to which Sam enthusiastically agreed. This was where Tony was supposed to get his blow job but it wasn’t happening now and after all the extras they'd done to me and how hard Sam had whipped me wasn't happening at all. Sam said he was going to take one more look around for maybe ten minutes and that Tony should keep an eye on me. Sam exited but came back and grabbed the camera to continue. And then things became the complete nightmare.
Tony, theoretically alone with me, stripped out of his clothes and stood over me. He had a look in his eyes that made my blood run cold and let me know that I was in a hell of a lot of trouble. I could see it in his eyes, the way he hungrily looked at my stretched-out body. This wasn’t the plan. He was supposed to just unzip and take the gag out and have me suck him off. Even though I desperately wanted this to be over I’d have still sucked him off just to be done so I could curl up into a ball with my pain. Per what I understood his clothes were to stay on. But he was naked and I could see he wasn’t even looking for a blow job. We were back to their original plan for Tony to have sex with me and despite everything else that had just been done to me would be rape. Sam made no reaction to the change so it became plain he was going to allow this.
I started struggling and trying for real this time to get loose. Tony stood over me, stroking his hard cock, watching me struggle as Sam filmed it. I could wiggle but I couldn’t get loose. Sam shot some from where my head was, my body stretched out, Tony standing above me, stroking his cock with a hungry heartless look in his eyes. He switched to Tony’s perspective of my naked and struggling body trying to get loose. Get loose before what I knew was going to happen did happen and knowing I was not going to. Somewhere in the back of my mind I held out that all of this was just for the camera and that Sam wouldn't let Tony do this to me but that hope was microscopic and fading fast.
Tony lay down on top of me and began to nuzzle my left breast. Sam was ready for the close-up so he must have known what was going on. It hit me that Sam must be in on it and I was truly alone and a prisoner. The video had become real. I thrashed and bumped his mouth. He reared up and I could see in his eyes the reaction to slap me. I couldn’t have done a thing to stop him but thankfully he caught himself. He shook his head then stood up and reached for the winch control.
And ran it up until it was tight but didn’t shut it off. The winch loaded down and I felt myself beginning to stretch. Then he shut it off but I was tighter than a drum. All I could move was my head. Every joint up and down my body felt the burn of how much I was stretched. All I could do was quiet little moans. I had been harboring a small hope that they were bluffing, that they wanted to capture me really struggling on tape and wanted me to think Tony was about to screw me but he really wasn’t. If they’d do this to me Tony was going to rape me and Sam was going to do nothing except film it.
Tony lay down on top of me. I literally couldn’t move except my head, my hands and my feet. “Going to do that again?” He asked me. I closed my eyes and shook my head no, defeated. If he wanted to have sex with me I was stretched out and on a platter for him and Sam didn’t look to be stopping him. You’ve stretched me out too tight and you know it. I’m hurting and you know it too. I can’t get away so just get it over with and let me die.
Tony spent a long time kissing and sucking on and licking my breasts. They still hurt from the whipping but nobody else cared and I was gagged. He slid up me and nuzzled my neck and ears a bit. “I’m going to give you a hickey, right there.” He whispered theatrically loud. I didn’t want that either but was too afraid of what else they might do if I resisted. The whip was still in the room and there were other items and tools here. Like bullwhips. He rolled my head over and sucked and bit on my neck for a while until he was satisfied. I didn’t do a thing to stop him, just lay there moaning quietly in my pain.
He finished and sat between my legs, running his fingers around my crotch and up and down my thighs, eventually getting around to sticking them inside of me. It turned into him finger-fucking me. I couldn’t move anyways. He finished with that and then to my horror got the riding crop. I was really afraid of more whipping but he just ran it over my body then pushed it into me, running it in and out of me, fucking me with that for a while.
Eventually he got tired of that, and laid on top of me and mounted me, no condom. I heard him gasp how good it was, how tight I was. I didn’t care. He pumped in and out of me for a long while then seized up and I felt him squirt into me. When he finished his ride he got up and blessedly loosened the winch a bit until I was just laying there. He got dressed and left taking the camera with him.
Sam stroked my hair, told me how good I was, how he enjoyed it, how much he loved me. Bullshit. I just wanted to murder them both but was currently stretched out naked on his tack room floor so that would have to wait. He then let me loose, feet first, then wrists. I lay there unmoving from where he untied me, just curled up into a ball catatonic. You let him rape me, you bastard. He hurt me and all you did was film it.
He ran the winch back up and put all the rope away. I hadn’t the strength or desire to move. I was unthreatened and safe and right now I craved safety like the summer ground craves rain. But when he wet a washcloth and started to wipe down my face I found the strength and the anger boiled over me. I grabbed his wrist with one hand then rolling up slugged him right across the face with the other. He was taken completely by surprise and was bowled over. I grabbed my t-shirt and skirt and scrabbled back to the corner of the tack room by the door clutching them across me.
“You bastard! You let him rape me! I hate you! I want to kill you!” He started to move toward me but when I assumed a martial arts ready pose the look of pure hatred on my face stopped him dead in his tracks. I could see it hitting him that if I wanted to I had the training and ability to screw him up any way I wanted to and I was between him and the door. I dropped my hands to my sides. “Take a good look at this shithead because this is the last time you will ever see it. If I ever hear about the video from anyone or can get a copy of it I am going to take it to the police and throw you BOTH in JAIL for RAPE!!” I fumbled with the skirt, still crouched near the doorway. I was a dangerous and wounded animal and Sam knew it. The skirt went on and got zipped, the t-shirt went over my head and gingerly around my tortured breasts. Panties of course were nowhere to be found. “If you even so much as look at me ever again, either one of you, I’ll kill you. GOT THAT? KILL YOU!” I grabbed my Keds as I ran out the door not stopping to put them on and was gone.
I thankfully (for Sam and Tony) never heard a thing about the video they had made of me. I thought it beyond reach that it hadn't been shown to a few people and I sensed a change in a few of the guys I knew that might have come from seeing the video. Then again, I had created other reasons myself just as good.
Sam actually came up to me about three days later at school during a break. I had been gargling aspirin ever since then while trying to hide what had happened from everyone else and especially from my parents. Some spots where I had been whipped way too hard and repeatedly, including a few spots on my breasts still hurt three days later. There were spots between my legs where they had dropped me on the sawhorse that I could still feel every time I moved. I had told my girlfriends in a limited way what had happened and now there was no female who would come within ten miles of Sam or Tony. All I had to do to convince my girlfriends was show one or two of them some of the whip marks. That was just fine with me. And anyone who was dumb enough to think about it, well, there were plenty of other girls who could tell the idiot girl why that was a bad idea.
But Sam walked up to me in the hallway. I had seen him coming, and had been dreading it. My head was still in an awful place and I was still filled with rage at the two of them. I could control it as long as they intelligently kept their distance. Well, so much for Sam's intelligence.
I never found out what he wanted to say. I lashed out with a devastating kick to his crotch, the anger and the hatred giving it more strength than I knew I had. I was far from weak and had the training to correctly deliver a kick. Sam gave a yell of excruciating pain and collapsed into a gently rocking ball on the ground in front of me, moaning and sucking in lungs full of air.
I wondered if that was what I looked like, but without clothes, when the bastard had finally let me go after brutally whipping me.
It had been an extremely hard kick, perfectly delivered. I wondered if I had permanently broken anything down there. If not, it wasn't because I had tried to avoid doing that. Or cared.
I bent down at his head and grabbed the hair at the back of his head and jerked his head back a little. He stopped wheezing in favor of fast, short, much quieter breaths. In an ice cold voice I told him. "I don't ever want to see you or talk to you again, you or Tony. If you do you'd better bring an army because I will fuck you up beyond repair and you know I can do it. No matter what or how long it takes. And if you want to go complain to the school about what I just did you go right ahead. I'll be happy to explain to them in detail why I did it and send you both to jail. Go ahead. Make my day." I paused for a second. "Grunt if you understand me." He grunted immediately.
I stood up and walked away, never looked back. Only a few people in the crowd that surrounded us looked confused about what just happened. Good.
It was good that until I graduated and moved away to college no girl ever came near Sam or Tony. Then again no guy came near me. After what I did to Sam I wasn't entirely surprised by that. After what Sam and Tony had done to me I had zero interest in getting involved with another one anyways. It worked out.
But at college, with a new and different environment, after a few months and more than a few offers I felt like she was ready to try again. My first relationship, Paul, was a disaster. It was mostly me, I knew. He wasn't an angel by any stretch but I found I was still far more damaged goods than I knew. My heart and my head and Paul worked through most of the crap in my soul but when the smoke finally cleared we found the damage had been too much done and it was over. But damn he had tried, had sometimes suffered abuse for it, and deserved way better than who I had been to him. I hoped he eventually found the sort of woman he deserved.
And six months later came Jules. This one seemed to be going normal, just fine. The libido I remembered having pre-attack seemed to be back with Jules. That nightmare seemed to be finally over.
But what about the one I was currently in? What does it take to wake yourself out of a dream?
The caravan and the slave cart rolled off the roadway beside a large stream, almost a river. There was a medium-sized dirt open area for travelers to park their carts surrounded by grass in about a five-acre meadow which the stream ran through the middle. At the edges of the meadow was more of the endless oak forest with a few strong trees here and there in the meadow.
The men loosened and led the tharlion to the water while we waited. The air was warm and a little stifling now that the cart wasn't moving. We were all uncomfortable but all knew the peril of speaking, much less voicing a complaint.
But after a while, after everyone else had enjoyed the stream, they turned to us. Surprisingly they let us completely go, unchained our ankles. They gestured toward the water and told us to quickly drink and bathe before we continued the journey.
The stream was about five yards wide and mostly about six inches deep with a few deep spots and even a really deep semi-pool that seemed to have been hollowed out underwater for that purpose right by the bridge. The water was cold but not too cold; any ice-laden mountains being far away. Doc assured me that the things that made it risky to drink water from a Terran stream didn't exist here and the water was perfectly fit to drink. I drank my fill then waded into the deep spot to rinse. While I was there I contaminated the water a little bit. Better here than in the cart where we all would have to smell it. That had already happened. Incidentally and thankfully some of the slavers were washing out the cage's floorboard with buckets of water while the slaves were in the stream. We all finished our watering and rinsing and stood in a loosely guarded group to dry before being loaded and chained back into the cage.
"I've got to run." Eileen whispered to me while we were both standing there. "We'll never get a better chance. Come with me." One guard looked at Eileen and gave a warning grunt.
I looked. The nearest cover was twenty yards away. Yeah, we maybe could make it into the forest, naked and barefoot and then what? Five yards away, in another cage in the slaver caravan, were two hunting sleen. "Don't." I warned her. "You'll never make it. They'll hunt you down and escaped slaves are often killed as a lesson to other slaves."
“Why not?" She asked after making sure the guards were not looking. We talked in English, relatively comfortable the guards could not understand what we were saying. Not that they wouldn't punish us for talking, though.
"See those two animals in that cage?" I tilted my head toward the sleen. "Know what they are?" Of course Eileen didn't. What I didn't remember from the books my Doc-enhanced memory provided. Furred reptile, six legs, wolf or lion sized, flat diamond head, tongue like a snake that snapped in and out. One of the sleen yawned as we watched to show a double row of razor-sharp teeth. "They're called sleen. They make bloodhounds seem comatose and with a head cold. Let one of them smell a piece of clothing you wore and they will track you halfway across the planet on a three-month cold trail. And then eat you. Don't do it, Eileen, unless you want to die today."
"How can you know these things? I've got to run. I can't be a slave." It was too late. The guard had heard her again and his whip was coming up.
The first blow took Eileen, her back to him, completely by surprise flat across the shoulders. A slave whip has five broad strips of leather-like material, each about a yard long, on a two-handed handle. The strips were long and heavy to wrap around body parts and hurt but wide enough to not scar or readily leave deep marks. The slaver had years of practice with its use and brought it down hard on her. It dropped Eileen with a scream to her knees but he continued to rain blows upon her and she fell flat to the ground. The slaver cruelly kept beating her, meaning to send a message on obedience to Eileen and the rest of us slaves. But on the fifth brutal swing at the bare back of Eileen's prone and helpless body I couldn't take it anymore. I grabbed one of the straps and pulled the whip from the surprised slaver's hand. "Enough!" I yelled. Surprisingly, beyond the changing of the actual word there was no translation needed.
The meadow became deadly still, my shout almost echoing in the trees. Doc immediately grabbed my hand and threw the whip to the slaver's feet who had been wielding it. "For a slave to hold a weapon, any weapon" Doc told me "is instant death." All the other girls, except Eileen still sobbing on the ground, began to move away from me. Four of the slavers already had peasant bows, arrows ready, aimed at me or would be in less than a second. Three others had swords out and were approaching.
"The only way you will live is if you freeze solid and do exactly what I say, do you hear me?" Doc rang out in my head. "They may, if we are lucky, settle for a severe whipping but if you give them the slightest reason you're dead and not even I can help you out of that. Got it?" I froze solid and Doc could sense my total agreement. I thought it probably would have been proper to fall to my knees but Doc warned even against that. Any move at all and one or more of the archers might fire. Eileen, forgotten, had stopped crying and was looking up at the scene unfolding before her.
The slaver whose whip I had grabbed strode up to me. I knew it was coming but did nothing to avoid the backhand that threw me off my feet with a scream to a heap in the dirt.
"STAY STILL." Doc warned me as he helped me keep from moving. "No matter what you do, and you really won't like the next hour of your life, do NOTHING to resist them. Or they'll put four holes in you and cut the rest of you apart."
I'll do it. I told Doc. Help me hold still. Save my life. I felt his assurance he would.
The slaver who had hit me grabbed me by my collar and jerked me to my feet. My head was still ringing and my cheek still burning but I gave no complaint. Eyes down at Doc's prompting I loudly whispered "Forgiveness, master!" He just laughed.
He let go of my collar and reached for the binding fiber on his belt. Conscious of the longbow arrows and swords still focused on me and at Doc's prompting I extended my hands to him, wrists together. He wrapped the fiber tightly around it then tied a length of rope around the fiber, cinching it. He pulled me over to the nearest tree and threw the free end over a branch about ten feet off the ground and then made the free end fast to the tree, pulling it tight enough so my toes were barely touching the ground.
And he laid into me with the slaver's whip that had just been used on Eileen. It hurt but I had my pretty high tolerance for pain. I apparently wasn't crying out loud or hard enough. Doc encouraged me to be more vocal or the idiot would swing harder and hurt me more. So I played my part. Once I was safely strung up the longbows and the swords went away and the slavers who weren't involved in getting the slave girls back into the cart (after giving Eileen a chance to quickly wash the mud off) were an enthusiastic audience to my punishment. All the women in the cart could see me twist as I hung there and hear my screams. It hurt, but it wasn't really marking me up, thankfully, or there'd have been parts of me that would have been exposed muscle after the twenty minutes of what I endured. After they untied me from the tree they threw me in the pool, rope still attached to tied hands, to rinse me off and then dragged me still dripping wet as I compliantly followed them back to the cart and was locked back to the center rail there. It hurt and I was red all over my front and back where they had whipped me but it was surface and there weren't even welts, so different from what Sam had done to me. There was no damage; I expected in a day you wouldn't be able to tell what I had been through. But I was glad it was over and I was still breathing.
Once the caravan was moving Eileen, who was now seated next to me, I guess because we were the last two put on the cart, looked at me. "I'm so terribly sorry. Thank you so much for saving me. You must feel awful. How can I help you?"
"Well, avoiding things like that in the future would be a good start." I cracked a smile at her. “Yeah, it hurts but I'll live. I have tough skin. And I'm used to pain. Anyone who has dated Jules, my boyfriend, is pretty good at dealing with that." I laughed.
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah. Those whips are designed to hurt but not to leave any welts or marks. It wouldn't do to damage the merchandise, you know. Besides, you got a pretty good beating yourself. Any welts from it for you?"
She looked puzzled for a second but confirmed there were not.
We continued to talk. She conceded that she still had to be in a dream, but while she was here she might as well get as much information as she could. She asked me again how I knew these things like about sleen and everything. We had both been here about a week and she didn't even know the language.
I didn't bother to tell her about the book series, that didn't matter. Doc said telling her about him could endanger her life. I told her she didn't have to believe a thing I said but this was what I believed to be true. I just somehow knew these things, I didn’t understand how but I did (Doc said thank you). I told her about counter-earth’s position in the solar system, the enforced low technology of the planet, the Priest-Kings and Kur. I told her about the different populations on the planet apparently seeded from different population groups back home. And how slavery was societally accepted here and how easy it was, especially for a woman, to become a slave. Eileen didn't like much of it but was an attentive audience.
The slavers stopped for the night and made camp. They laid out a large square with rope and released the slave girls into the square and told us not to leave the square. An adjacent square was also laid with a trench at the far end for the women's use as needed. Breaking the square to use the trench was permitted with permission of the guard. Four of the other women, Gorean natives, were pulled out to prepare the fire and food, which they did. After the men had eaten their fill small bowls of the meat stew were given to the women. It wasn't much but it was passable, along with a bladder of water to share between us. As the other women worked on the meal Eileen and I continued to talk. The guard initially didn't like that but one of the other slaves asked him to permit it. "I speak a little of their barbarian language." She told him. This was surprising since she was clearly a native Gorean. "Master, from what I understand she is teaching the barbarian the things a proper slave needs to know in the only language the barbarian understands right now. If you knew what they said as I do it would not anger you." After a moment and quiet enough that I couldn't hear but Doc could she continued. "Besides, the barbarian has been crying all day and no longer cries. The quiet is nice and it does not anger the men. Please let them talk." The slaver considered it for a second and then turned away, apparently satisfied.
We talked more as the night progressed. Three of the slavers came and picked three of the other slave girls to serve them tonight "in the furs" as it was put here. None of the three seemed unhappy at the thought. It surely beat being naked and sleeping in the open.
Besides the one slaver that took turns on guard duty they had let the two hunting sleen loose and they performed as guard dogs for the camp, both keeping any intruder out and insuring us slave girls stayed in.
We watched as a boar-type animal, a Tarsk, Doc told me, wandered out of the forests, apparently thinking it might rummage through the camp for a midnight snack. It crept closer almost silently but the sleen was even quieter as Eileen and I watched. The sleen pounced and with a single bite took off the tarsk's head. And then the sleen settled down to its own midnight snack.
Eileen turned to me, rather white. "Remember I wanted to run away this afternoon and you talked me out of it?" I nodded. "I believe now. Thank you so much." I just nodded.
I started teaching Eileen the language. "Kajira." I told her and pointed to the "K" on my leg. I had already told her what she would go through when she got her own. "Slave girl. You and I."
"Kajira. But I am not a slave girl."
I smiled sadly. "Suit yourself. But do know what the word means."