After the Bighorn, Chapter Eighteen.

 

After the Bighorn, Chapter 18

Narrative of Patrick Masters.

(Patrick imagined Chelsea Frick as a slave. Illustration by Palatine.)

After sitting for a while, I got up from the leather armchair. I took a poker and stirred up the wood fire, then crossed the room and poured myself another brandy and returned to my place. It is astounding how quickly one becomes accustomed to a kajira being present to carry out such little tasks as tending to the fire and fetching a drink. All of the slaves, though, were still locked away in the kennels, lest word get out of Chelsea’s disgrace. With no slaves available, I was in no hurry to go to bed. What would be the point? I missed my beloved Juli, so loving and loyal. Such a contrast between my own sweet slave and the cool, cruel Chelsea Frick. Yet I yearned to own both. Still, better follow the advice of that wise old lawyer, J Augustus Frick IV and forget about Chelsea, at least for now. For the next three years at least, she would be the Companion of Elliott Emery, an elder of a powerful family. Wyandotte needed the alliance to restore the standing of the Fricks among the North American families, and Chelsea’s indiscretion had given him the leverage he needed to make that happen.

I turned my mind to an errant Free Woman in my own firm: Jane Bennet, associate at my law firm. Back at my office in San Francisco, a Free Woman, a lawyer, had treated her superior, my friend Gerry Reiss with disrespect. She was chief of a section of lawyers working on the complicated patent case for the Fricks and was supposed to be reporting to Gerry. But she was taking liberties: calling him Gerry, instead of Mr Weiss, she was walking into his office without knocking or knocking and walking in without waiting for an answer. She was getting out of hand. But she was valuable as an employee, to a degree at least. Demoting her or encouraging the Fricks to collar her would be the cause of a great deal of administrative trouble. Competent staff, even difficult ones, were somewhat hard to find.

I decided to send the disrespectful Miss Jane Bennet a message. She would be removed from overseeing a section in charge of a portion of the case. Instead, she would be ‘promoted’ into a job with less direct contact or face time with her superiors and involve harder work. For this case with its large workload, we had hired a group of temporary workers to handle, file and track the vast amounts of evidence and exhibits. This group worked on a lower floor of our offices.

Miss Bennet would be exiled down to the fifth floor, there to manage our relations with the temporary worker agency and oversee all the tedious docketing of exhibits and evidence. Her knowledge of the case would be valuable there and it would send a message as well. She had a good job and could not afford to lose it.

The fire had burned nearly out. I rose and went up the grand staircase to my room. At the top of the stairs, doors opened to the various wings. To my right, was the locked door of the Free Woman’s wing, locked to keep them safe and from getting into trouble. Behind that door was a corridor that led to the room of Chelsea Frick. She would be recovering from the punishment delivered to her. The punishment was decreed by Wyandotte Frick and carried out by Zach Frick with a slave whip. Chelsea would be recovering for quite some time I guessed.

When I got up Sunday morning, I had a bit of a headache. It was, I conjectured a combination of the time I had spent the day before in the hot sun, the late hour I had finally gone to bed, and the brandy I had consumed the previous evening.

I showered, dressed and went downstairs. The house was very silent. In the front room, I saw Zach Frick sitting alone drinking coffee.

“The House is very quiet,” I said. My voice was low, it seemed wrong to speak loudly.

“We are very worried about Cousin Chelsea.” He glanced quickly at the slave girl kneeling by the fireplace.

“Has something happened to Chelsea?” I pretended I didn’t know anything due to the presence of the slave in the room.

Zach sounded very grim. “Poor Chelsea is very ill. She was out in the sun far too much yesterday, and we fear it is sunstroke. Either Mrs Magruder or Mrs Crandell is with her every instant to make sure she is properly taken care off.”

I nodded. “I hope she is okay.” I knew that the sunstroke from which Chelsea had suffered was in fact her punishment for trying to steal two slaves from a shipment bound for Gor. The secret though, had to be kept from the slaves and henchmen, that a Free Woman had been punished with a slave whip. That sort of them could not be allowed to get out, not if Chelsea was to have any value on the Marriage or Companionship Market.

During the night, I had had dreams that Chelsea had been enslaved as she had deserved. I had dreamt of Chelsea naked and in chains at my feet. I knew I had to stop thinking about that. She was not a woman to become obsessed with. Not with the Fricks as touchy and violent as they are. And anyway, my own sweet Juli is worth dozens of Chelsea Fricks.

“Let’s go and have brunch with the lawyers from my firm, downtown”, I suggested. Alone in the car, we would be able to speak openly.

In the car, I revealed to Zach that I wanted to make an offer to Mrs Magruder, the outgoing housekeeper of Frick House, to become housekeeper of Drysdale House, my place in San Francisco.

“After all, Wyandotte has his own housekeeper in Mrs Crandell, and Mrs Magruder will be at loose ends. She can’t remain at Frick Mansion, and would not want to go the Lazy F. On the ranch, she would be subservient to the Grannies that rule the roost there. She has the experience in running a house with kajirae in it, she knows what it takes and what is to be done.”

Zack was dubious. “I don’t know what Wyandotte would say.”

“It would solve a problem for both of us. He has a discontented housekeeper who was loyal to Willard Frick, and I need an experienced person. I expect that he would want to Mrs Magruder to stay until after Chelsea’s Companionship Ceremony.”

Zach was non-committal. “We will see.”

Zack is reluctant, I find, to make decisions where his family is concerned. Perhaps because he is a distant cousin or a poor relation he is not as certain there as he is in other parts of his life.

Downtown at the Marriot, we found Richard Thornton, Dana Winter, and the two junior associates just coming down for the excellent brunch served in the hotel. All the men looked like they had been making a night of it; Dana seemed fresh and rested. I hoped that she had not been misbehaving while representing the firm. Such behavior by a woman reflects poorly on herself and her employers. Myrna Reiss and the New Feminists are right in that respect at least.

There seemed to be some discord between Miss Winter and Richard Thornton which was a difference from their usual friendly aspect towards each other.

We ate and chatted about inconsequential things. Miss Winter noted that I had seemingly got ‘a touch of sun’ recently and hoped that I would be careful due to the dangers of too much exposure.

“I was horseback riding yesterday, I had not been out much since my vacation in Montana around Memorial Day.” I smiled.

It was on that vacation that I had first stripped and collared Juliet. It was first done in fun and play and had later become deadly serious and the basis of our current life. Juli had strayed onto the Frick ranch, the Lazy F, and we had become entangled with the Fricks and the Gorean Society on Earth. Now I owned a slave, with the prospect of acquiring more.

I did not reveal that to Miss Winter though, nor that my activities on Saturday had involved slave-hunting. She would have been shocked.

Miss Winter nudged Mr Thornton. He ignored her. She spoke then.

“We have found something in some of the material turned over to us by the Vincent VanRijn lawyers; something we don’t understand. It might bear more study.”

Mr Thornton was shaking his head slightly.

She went on, “It is reference to something called The Laramie Project.” Even if it doesn’t have anything to do with the Frick Steel patents, it might be useful as a lever.”

Laramie is in Wyoming, reasonably close to the Frick property in Montana. I was intrigued. The Fricks had withstood a violent attack on their ranch while I was there with Juli.

I said, “That sounds like it might be worth looking into, good work Dana.”

Her forehead scrunched up a little. “That work was all Richard’s. He dug it out of a bunch of files, putting together pieces that were seemingly unrelated. The credit is all his.”

I nodded. “Good work both of you.”

I was happy that Dana had confessed that the work was Richard, once it had received approval from me. That showed character and honesty. These qualities are important in a Free Woman. Dana is a great deal different from Miss Bennet.

Talk turned to other things.

Narrative of Slave Nineteen.

(Nineteen returns to the Frick slave pens - unknown illustrator)

I am so hungry. I have not been fed since the night Seventeen and I escaped. We spent the night and the morning of the next day without food as we scrambled through the countryside trying to find the meeting place designated by the free lady who was going to help us leave this hellhole.

Then our recapture by those terrible beasts! Six legs and stinking of who knows what. They must be otherworldly. The young Slavemaster and the older Lawyer were so cruel. They forced us to march in the hot burning sun through the woods, across the wide meadow and then through the cornfield. I collapsed; I could not go on. But the Slavemaster picked me up and punished me by handling and fondling me the rest of the way back to this evil house that contains this slave dungeon. He touched me places that a man should not touch if he is not married to the woman. But as he told me, I am no longer numbered among the legal humans. I am an owned thing, a beast, a slave without rights. He reminded me, as I squirmed in front of him that I had confessed myself a slave, a true slave.

I certainly felt like a slave, as I was before him on his saddle, laid across the pommel, his hands making me feel things I did not want to feel. I remembered stories of the captives of Genghis Khan who writhed in the arms of the conqueror, the blonde beauties of Gaul who filled the slave markets of Rome, the women who filled the Casbahs of the Barbary Pirates; I reflected I was no different than they, begging their owners to stop tormenting them, and silently praying that they would not.

I was dismayed when we arrived back at the house of the slavers, for I knew that the pleasures of the ride would come to an end, and the punishments for escaped slaves would begin.

When we arrived at the stables, we were attached by short chains to a ring set low in the stable wall. Then Seventeen and I waited, panting for water, while the men took care first of the horses. The Slavemaster pointed out that they were far more valuable than we were. While the horses were unsaddled, rubbed down, and walked to cool down after their time out of the stables, Seventeen and I waited.

We were on our knees on the hard stones of the stable yard and the six-legged beasts were chained near us, just far enough away that they could not reach us. They continually strained at the collars and chains striving to reach us. Their jaws were open, saliva dripping off their fangs on their chins, and down their fronts. Their smell was overpowering. They strained at the collars trying to reach us; we strained at our collars, extending the chains holding us to the slave ring as far as we could away from them. It was just enough for us to be safe.

Then the men, the men who captured us, who claimed to own us, reappeared. We begged the men for food and water, reminding them that we had submitted as slaves. They ignored us.

Our captors dragged the beasts away. As they did so, I learned from their talk, that the beasts were from the dreaded planet Gor, and that they were called sleen. I was so very glad that they were gone. I was very afraid of them. The Slavemaster and the older Lawyer reappeared from the sleen kennels. At last, we might be attended to, given food and water. We were women after all, delicate, even if we were slaves we should be taken care of.

The two brutes who captured us walked into the stable, and then returned with buckets of water, and with buckets that smelled of tasty food.

“Thank you, Master, thank you. I am so hungry. I am even more thirsty, I croaked.”

The Slavemaster stared at me with anger. “This is for more valuable beast than yourself, miserable kajira. This is for the sleen. Even if they weren’t more useful and valuable than yourselves, those beasts are male, you are female slaves.”

He was cruel to a poor Slavegirl. It seems Gorean masters are all like that. I had thought though, that I might have had more consideration from the older man, the one I called in my head, The Lawyer. Did he not recall how I had knelt before in the maze in the little walled garden and served him with my mouth? Taken his penis in between my lips, using my tongue as I had been instructed by Mistresses Jade and Kailieka? His was the first I had ever touched, the first that had ever touched me. I had knelt so submissively before him, ministered so gently to him, while he brutally, casually used me for his pleasure. How could he forget? How could he leave me here, parched with thirst, when he had done such things to me? Did I mean so little to him, had he forgotten the moment we shared? Surely he must remember me with some tenderness?

Or maybe all Masters are like that, use a girl and forget her; leave her pining for his touch? I hope not; I dare wish for some consideration from those cruel men who own me.

I watched with despair as the two men vanished into the sleen kennels with water and tasty smelling food. Seventeen just groaned, she had had an even tougher time than I. She had not been picked up across a saddle, she had marched all the way, falling several times. She had been forced on by the cruel older man. He had struck her with a rope, he had even dragged her for a while. She is tougher than I am. But she did not have to endure the groping and handling that I did.

Finally, the men came for us, the least valuable of all their beasts.

We were taking back to the slave dungeon where we were finally given water. We had been so long in the sun, and were so tired that we threw it up. We were given more until we could hold it down. They were very cruel to us. Our trainers, Jade and Kailieka had been placed separately each in a slave kennel. Each had a hood over her head, but I knew them by their bodies by now. It was clear that they had been punished.

Seventeen and I had our hands placed in wrist shackles and our arms were raised over our heads. We too were punished. Bruno was very cruel, and so was the Slavemaster. Seventeen and I were very sorry we had tried to escape, or at least very sorry we had been caught.

Eventually they stopped. I had a leather hood, similar to the ones over the heads of Jade and Kailieka placed over my head. First a padded leather gag was forced between my cracked lips. It was tied behind my neck. Then the rest of the hood was forced over my head. It had extra leather pads to cover my ears and my eyes. I would hear and see nothing while the hood was on me. With the gag in my mouth, I was feeling the need for moisture again.

After a long time, the hood was removed. I could see Seventeen, her arms high over her head, was now wearing a similar hood to the one that had been removed from me. Her sunburned body bore the marks of her punishment.

I was questioned as to how we had escaped. I was afraid to do anything but tell the truth, I dared hold nothing back. I too suffered greatly under my punishment.

“Would you recognize this free woman if you saw her again?” The man was insistent, angry.

“Yes, Master”, I managed to croak through my dry cracked lips and parched throat.

“Is she one of the women in this picture?” He showed me a picture on his phone of three beautiful women. I could not help but think that they were the type of women that these brutes collected. I did not say that of course.

“Yes, Master. She is the blonde lady, the one in the middle.

He nodded his head, satisfied. “That confirms, lucky for you.”

I was given another drink of water, a long squirt from a kind of drinking flask. Then another. Then the hood was fastened again on me, and I was thrust, alone, in one of the kennels.

I did know the fate of Seventeen, or of Jade or Kailieka. The hood has blocked out all noise. I don’t know if they were taken away or left here to suffer. I don’t know how long now I have been here in this kennel. I am very hungry and thirsty.

My head is hooded, my hands secured behind my back. I am a naked slave named Nineteen, at the mercy of my masters.