("`-''-/").___..--''"`-._
                     `6_ 6  )   `-.  (     ).`-.__.`)
                     (_Y_.)'  ._   )  `._ `. ``-..-'
                    _..`--'_..-_/ /--'_.' ,'
                   ((('   (((-(((''  ((((
                 K R I S T E N' S    C O L L E C T I O N
		_________________________________________
		                WARNING!
		This text file contains sexually explicit
		material. If you do not wish to read this
		type of literature, or you are under age,
		PLEASE DELETE THIS FILE NOW!!!!
		_________________________________________




			Scroll down to view text


















--------------------------------------------------------
This work is copyrighted to the author © 2006.  Please
don't remove the author information or make any changes
to this story.  All rights reserved. Thank you for your 
consideration.
--------------------------------------------------------

The Horsewomen
by Jeanne de Stein (address defunct)

***

In an alternate universe it's not so nice being a male, 
when females run the world. (Fdom/M, bi, nc, rp, tor, 
bd, fantasy)

***

CHAPTER 1: THE CAPTURE
----------------------

He ran, without knowing why. He knew that he was lost. 
They were mounted, he was on foot. They could have 
taken him anytime, but they were probably playing him, 
the way you play a fish on a hook.

Why, by the Nether Gods, had he been dumb enough to try 
to cross the Grasslands? Especially on foot? Out here, 
he was helpless. He should have found a way through the 
forest instead. It might have taken him two weeks, 
three weeks, but so what? He would have made it. But 
now... he tried not to think of what lay in store for 
him.

Instead, he ran. Not that it would change the outcome; 
but there are times when reason is not applicable. His 
breath seared his throat, his lungs fought for air and 
his legs were growing ever heavier. Still, he ran, 
while the horizon rocked slowly in front of him and the 
ochre grass grew fuzzy.

The Coastlands and the Marches were alive with the 
rumours of what the Horsewomen did to the males that 
fell into their hands. If you were lucky, they knifed 
you before cutting off your member for a trophy, but 
you could just as well be out of luck. Those who 
screamed were sometimes silenced by having their 
testicles thrust down their throats. 

If you were really out of luck, you would be spared for 
the moment, only to be slowly tortured to death later, 
for the amusement of the sisterhood. These women were 
said to delight in torturing males. Even staying with 
the Lord En-Tor and accepting your punishment for 
insubordination would have been better. At least, he 
would have stayed alive... presumably.

They were close now. He could hear the sound of hooves, 
hear the pursuers yelling in their harsh voices, like 
birds of prey on the wing. There were other stories of 
course, about how captive males were used, yarns that 
had been spun with delight mixed with horror. It was 
known that the horsewomen kept male slaves, too. But 
just now these stories lacked credibility. Therefore he 
kept running in a gathering red mist.

The ground was rising in front of him, and the horizon 
closed in. He felt his legs wobble. Near the top of the 
little rise...it was not six feet high...they folded 
under him and that was the end of it. The ground reeled 
under him. The grass was dry and coarse and tasted of 
dust, a bitter mineral taste. He heard the rumble of 
thunder coming up close; or was it the hoofs?

He stayed face down, desperately clutching at the grass 
that stung his skin, waiting for the cold steel between 
his shoulder-blades. He would have preferred to meet 
them standing, but his body deserted him. Now he felt a 
knee in the small of his back; he froze but caught a 
glimpse of a leather boot, and further away the other 
horsewoman, mounted, black against the sun and with a 
lance pointing in his direction. 

He fought desperately for air. The woman behind his 
back yelped a command and gripped him above both 
elbows. He felt her strap his arms together behind his 
back, very hard, very close to each other, and his face 
was again ground into the warm, bitter dust. His brain 
seemed to have ceased to function; his wits had 
deserted him completely.

She rose and nudged him between his ribs with the toe 
of her boot. Again she yelped; groaning, he rolled over 
and saw her as a shadow above him. Her foot against his 
shoulder, she pushed him down and tore off his 
loincloth. The mounted woman barked and they laughed, 
both of them. A knife flashed. His belly muscles 
contracted, but the dismounted woman put the blade 
between her teeth, and in her hands she held a long 
lariat-strap of rawhide. 

Then the knee again, and roughly, roughly the strap was 
tied around his testicle bag. Her hands were hard and 
purposeful and awakened no response in him. She jerked 
the lariat, no misunderstanding on his part was 
possible-- and she rose, standing over him with her 
hands on her hips, dark against the dark blue dry-
season sky.

So they would not kill him at once. The only thing he 
could do was to obey them and bide his time. Perhaps an 
opportunity to escape would offer itself, if only the 
two horsewomen would grow careless. His eyes were 
working better now, though his throat was still hurting 
and his heart thumped; he could discern the women 
clearly. He had never seen horsewomen before. 

They were naked like thrall-women... well, nearly... 
but they had no masters, that he knew. The mounted one, 
with the feathered lance that was still pointing at 
him, was older than the woman who had captured him. The 
young one had a quiver on her back, the strap tight 
between her breasts, the older one a rawhide-lariat 
with a eye made of bone, looped across her shoulders. 

The older horse witch wore her straight, raven-black 
hair in a topknot slightly to the side of her head, the 
young one had gathered it in the same place but in a 
waving plume. Both wore necklaces of animal fangs on 
strings. Their only real article of clothing was a 
crotch clout. From their broad belts, decorated with 
cowrie shells, hung pouches, ivory cases, knives with 
fringed sheaths and carved bone handles and the straps 
that held the crotch-length soft boots, also 
embellished with fringes and lines of cowries.

But the most striking thing was not their nakedness or 
their strange outfits but their tattoos. The dark blue 
patterns began at the hairline, changed their faces 
into cruel tiger masks, covered their arms and bodies 
and continued into the tops of their boots. Even the 
nipples of the young one were tattooed. 

The right breast was completely covered by a whirling 
pattern, on the left one the skin shone untouched 
between the starry rosette of the aureole and the 
ornaments of her chest, where birds and beasts seemed 
to be tearing each other to pieces among swirling lines 
and tatters of blue-black ornament. The older one was 
so dark of skin that her patterns were difficult to 
discern.

The impression of unbridled savagery was overwhelming. 
If the rumours were only half true, the impression 
would be correct.

Their horses were shaggy, with long manes and tails. 
The women rode with wooden stirrups and with furs over 
their saddles; when the hand-horse walked past he could 
see the bow in its case by the saddle. They seemed to 
use no other rein than a strap around the lower jaw of 
the horse.

The young one was jerking at the lariat again, pulling 
him to his knees. The horizon was still unsteady, and 
he was not getting enough air. An inner voice told him 
though, very insistently, that he must not make these 
strange women impatient. 

Submissively, he tried to rise, but got only to his 
knees, reeling. Now the woman was holding a leather 
flask. With her other hand she grasped his hair, with 
her teeth she pulled the plug and then she stuck the 
neck of the bottle into his mouth. It was water. It had 
a stale leathery taste, but it was life. He shook his 
head and he regained his feet, reeling. More water? He 
shook his head again, but gratefully, hoping that his 
emotion was showing. What more did he need? Freedom? 
Just keeping alive, perhaps.

The young one mounted her horse. She paid out enough 
lariat so that he could march behind her horse, and 
started out in an easterly direction at a walk. The 
older one brought up the rear with her lance 
nonchalantly balanced across the withers of the horse. 
What could a prisoner do, on foot, his hands tied 
behind his back and towed by his balls? They rode 
slowly, fortunately.

He felt dejected, as if walls had suddenly closed 
around him. He had briefly tasted freedom, and now it 
was gone. The sunlight and the sky had lost their 
sparkle. His limbs felt heavy, and there was a metallic 
taste in his mouth. Was it real, or was it the taste of 
captivity? The water had helped, however. He felt 
stronger, and soon he no longer experienced that 
stinging sensation in his back when he was thinking of 
the lance point. The woman in front kept the strap 
taut, however. 

He trotted along, his eyes fixed on her. They followed 
the back of her head with the tightly gathered hair, 
the slender but strong neck, where the pattern lines of 
her tattoos ran from her cheeks down to the muscular 
back; her shoulders, broad for a woman, her narrow 
waist and curving hips. Her buttocks rested in the 
saddle-fur but her thighs were hidden by the boots. 
Without noticing the change, he was starting to see her 
as a woman, not only as a mounted she-savage. She would 
have been comely without her strange body decoration 
and in proper dress...or completely naked, for that 
matter.

What sort of woman would she be, this being out of a 
tale only half believed, a story out of the plains that 
had given birth to so many legends? Was she a merciless 
killer, or an equally merciless user of male flesh, as 
some would have it...or was there some trace in her of 
humanity (whatever that might mean), or even of 
womanhood as he had known and appreciated it? She would 
not be soft and submissive, of course. Mastering her 
would be like taming a wild animal. Still, in spite of 
her fierceness, she would be good to touch, good to 
bed.

It was perhaps idle thoughts like these; perhaps it was 
the sight of her shameless nakedness, he was used to 
seeing civilized women, well protected from unchaste 
eyes -- or the constant pull of the strap around his 
testicles, but after about one hour's march he had a 
respectable hard-on. When he became aware of it, he was 
terrified: would his guards discover it and be 
offended? On no account did he want to arouse their 
ire, now that he was completely in their power.

He did not escape his fate however. The young one 
looked behind herself, saw his impudent erection and 
reined in her horse. His heartbeat came to a dead stop. 
But a grin cleaved her grotesque mask, and she called 
to her companion, who came up alongside them, thrust 
her lance into the turf, jumped off her horse and stood 
close to him; the corners of her eyes wrinkled merrily. 
Unceremoniously, she gripped his shoulder with one hand 
and his member with the other, while she exchanged 
comments with her companion. 

To his amazement, he felt himself grow even stiffer. 
How could this horse-witch make him horny, in spite of 
the fear that he felt of her (he admitted this to 
himself: when she laid her hand upon him, only his 
stiffness had saved him from pissing out of sheer 
terror). The young horsewoman put a question to the old 
one; the witch laughed and shook her head. She mounted 
her pony again and the caravan moved on. But for a long 
time, the two women continued to crack jokes about him 
and laugh loudly and without restraint, and he could 
only guess at what they were saying.

They travelled slowly and with many pauses while the 
sun drifted west. Near the evening, when the shadows 
were long and the sunlight was an orange glow suffusing 
the world, carrying only a memory of the searing heat 
of the day, the ground began to sink ahead of them and 
look greener. Bushes were growing in denser clumps now, 
and a little later, they became sparse trees; the 
steppe had changed into park-like savanna. 

They were now following a clearly visible track, 
running alongside a skittish little brook bordered by 
green foliage. The track rounded a rocky knoll where 
the boulders seemed to have been shattered like skulls 
by a giant's axe in ages past. Behind it, the brook 
tumbled noisily into a little pond edged by gravel and 
small stones, and there were sheltering walls of stone 
and a hut or rather a windbreak, open to the south, of 
loosely piled rock and with a simple ridged grass roof 
held down by more stones. Here they halted.

The women did not take the trouble to tether him. He 
could not hope to escape anyway, with his arms 
immobilised and without a horse. They busied themselves 
with the horses, which were hobbled with straps around 
their front legs, and then put out to graze on their 
own. The water-skins were filled. The older woman made 
a fire and fetched water in a leather pail. A bronze 
kettle was lifted from its hook under the ridgepole and 
put on the fire.

Now he could have a closer look at them. The young one 
might be twenty or a little more, it was not easy to 
judge the age of a woman of such strange aspect. Her 
skin under the tattoos was olive brown, smooth over 
firm muscles; she was very erect and walked with a 
nonchalant swagger that he had hitherto seen only in 
men and only in the strongest and most self-assured 
among them. 

The older one was even more difficult to assess, but 
she had a few grey hairs in among the black. None of 
them had an ounce of superfluous fat on their bodies, 
but while the young witch was made up entirely of 
muscle, the older one seemed to have been braided, 
knotted and twisted out of bundles of rawhide. Both had 
small, pointed breasts, the young one's firmer, but the 
older woman's were still springy.

What did their faces look like behind their bestial 
masks? His first impression was that they were 
outlandishly ugly. They had slightly sloping foreheads, 
long prominent noses (the older one's boldly hooked), 
high cheekbones, broad mouths and receding chins. In 
the face of the older woman, wind and sun had wrinkled 
the skin around her eyes, and decisiveness and cruelty 
were written around the corners of her mouth. Both of 
them had peculiarly light brown, nearly yellow eyes, 
like animals. But boldness and power shone like an aura 
around them. They moved like lionesses, and suddenly he 
saw that, though abominable, they were beautiful.

The young witch rested her quiver against the saddle, 
by the wall, and without embarrassment she took off 
what little she had on. He tried not to show that he 
was stealing a look. With the aid of her teeth she 
untied the left arm's leather bowstring guard, unhooked 
the bronze buckle of her belt and stepped out of her 
boots. Her tattoos continued down to her toes. Then the 
crotch-clout, and she was naked, apart from the 
necklace. 

Without condescending to give the captive a look, she 
walked into the water-hole up to her hips and washed 
with visible pleasure. When she emerged from the water, 
she shook herself like a wet dog, shedding water in all 
directions while she passed close by her captive. Now 
she stopped and looked at him, covered with sweat and 
dust as he was. Then she smiled inscrutably, but still 
a smile... picked up the strap and led him into the 
water.

It was cool and refreshing; the bottom of gravel and 
stone was firm. She was quite considerate: she made him 
sit down and she washed his face and shoulders; she 
stood him up and rubbed him clean with her hands. Now 
they had the older witch for company, just as naked as 
they were, and she scrubbed his back and behind while 
the young one washed his member and balls carefully. 

She was very close now; while her companion washed, she 
grasped his shoulders and rubbed herself against him. 
Though he was tired and cold, her touch lit a spark of 
lust inside him. Her face was very close to his, but he 
could not bring himself to look into her eyes...perhaps 
he should avoid doing that and try to look completely 
subdued. Instead he looked past her and saw the older 
horsewoman, her arms raised while she gathered her wet 
hair; and to his amazement, she too fanned that spark. 
What could make him lust for women such as these?

Back on dry ground, the red sun was still giving off a 
feeble warmth, but he started to shake. He felt 
desperately tired. They rubbed him dry with a bundle of 
hay, as if he had been a horse, and put a coarsely 
woven riding cloak around him. When his shaking had 
ceased, they stood quietly watching him. The young one 
caught his eye, laid her hand between her breasts and 
said, "Sarissa." Then she indicated her companion and 
gave her a name too, "Atossa."

It was an introduction. Of all the things that had 
happened to him since his capture, nothing had 
reassured him more than this simple act of 
communication. You do not formally introduce yourself 
to somebody you intend to torture to death. He told his 
own name but got shakes of heads and two indulgent 
laughs for an answer. "Ha ha! Androu! Androu!" Were 
males not allowed names in their world?

They rested around the fire. He was beginning to feel 
warm again, and more at ease. Slowly, strength was 
returning to him. The women, who had dressed again (if 
one may call it that) gave him to drink and fed him 
strips of dried meat, boiled with herbs. His arms were 
still tied very uncomfortably together and they had not 
taken the trouble to remove the bag-strap either, but 
the fire gave comfort, the sight of female bodies was 
somehow comforting too, and the behaviour of the two 
women was not in the least alarming. 

Sarissa and Atossa talked softly between them; now and 
then they glanced at him with a mischievous look in 
their faces. By and by, they grew exhilarated. They 
laughed between them, sat down on both sides of him and 
pushed him over, felt and squeezed him.

Soon, they were caressing him. He was resting in an 
uncomfortable position, his back arched and his hips 
high as his arms were tied under him. Still, he felt it 
prudent to accept this. The two women set to work in 
earnest. They were good, even the young Sarissa seemed 
to know exactly how to make a male randy. An 
unreasonable but uncontrollable fear of what their 
hands would do to him, when they got down to business, 
possessed him at first. 

When finally this fear had abated, his real excitement 
began. He banished all thought of what would become of 
him and thought of the present only. He groaned with 
pleasure while Sarissa pulled the skin of his member up 
and down. Atossa tickled, pulled, wrenched, pinched and 
bit his nipples. She hurt him, but curiously enough, 
the pain increased his randiness instead of quenching 
it. They both observed him carefully: obviously, they 
did not want to lose control of him.

Atossa departed but returned with an oblong object made 
out of horn, in the shape of a thick male organ. He 
looked at it in dumb horror. He had begun to expect a 
pleasant night; had he misjudged the situation 
completely? Gesturing at their knifes, the women had 
him lie face down across Atossa's saddle. 

He knew better than trying to resist; after all, 
torture and death were not quite the same thing. 
Torture could be worse than death itself: he had seen 
this himself, and this fact was the very foundation of 
Lord En-Tor's rule. But it could also be a temporary 
horror, possible to survive. Atossa gave him a last 
shove, and then she put the tip of the unspeakable 
instrument to his anus. Then, slowly but inexorably she 
pushed the rod into him, impaling him. 

It hurt him, but he would not reward them with more 
than a groan, in spite of his fear. This seemed to be 
all that they required, however. Atossa pushed and 
turned the tool; when he felt it moving inside him, a 
warm sensation spread across his crotch and reached his 
sex in spite of the pain. Again, his member stiffened.

But his suspicion was aroused again when Sarissa 
hammered down four tethering stakes into the floor of 
the hut with a stone maul. Now they released his arms, 
but Atossa stood erect with her hand on the knife: no, 
he was not going to provoke her. Moving clumsily 
because of the rod, he suffered Sarissa to turn him on 
his back and tie his wrists to two of the stakes, then 
his ankles to the other two. The straps were pulled 
taut, and he was utterly helpless. He was telling 
himself again and again that nothing in their behaviour 
threatened actual death or mutilation, at least he 
tried to convince himself that it was so. 

Fear and excitement were struggling for his attention; 
excitement won. Then the two witches started their game 
anew. They threw off their crotch- clouts and were 
naked again, except for their belts and boots. They 
met, kissed avidly, sucked each other's breasts and 
stuck their hands into each other's sex in a rising 
fury. Panting, they rubbed their bodies against each 
other. 

Nothing had prepared him to believe that these women 
would actually make love to each other. With the usual 
smugness of the male, he had believed and nothing in 
the tales of the plains had suggested otherwise, that 
the horsewomen had to rely on males exclusively for 
their sexual pleasure. That this was not so was a 
deeply disturbing thought, but at least, they did seem 
interested in him in his capacity as a male. He was so 
fascinated with the spectacle of the two furies in 
front of him that the thought never occurred to him 
that his virility might desert him.

Finally, Atossa disengaged; she crawled all over her 
prisoner, straddled him and rubbed him with her wet 
vulva. Soon she was sitting on his face, and his mouth 
and nose were enclosed by her labia. She had a wild 
smell in spite of her bath. He saw her body in a 
grotesque but exciting perspective, the demon-like face 
looking down on him between the jutting breasts, and 
then she changed her position so that she was facing 
down his body. 

She pulled roughly at his nipples, and, half 
suffocated, he felt Sarissa sitting astride himself, 
burying her nails in his scrotum and member. He 
whimpered. His signs of pain seemed to increase their 
excitement. Atossa rose, and he saw Sarissa's dancing 
body and narrow, slanting eyes in the flickering light 
of the fire.

Atossa returned a second time. Horrified, he saw the 
two long, coarse skewers in her hand. He scarcely 
noticed that Sarissa raised herself and guided the tip 
of his member into her body. Again, Atossa's sex was 
all over him. They rode him unmercifully, and now he 
was aware that he was inside Sarissa and pleasure was 
rising like pain inside him. But there was real pain, 
too: she was coming down hard on his balls every time 
she rode down on him.

He was close, and they noticed it. 

This was when Atossa grasped his right nipple, pulled 
it savagely and thrust one of the skewers through the 
aureole. The pain was a shock that ran through his 
entire body. He screamed without restraint into her 
sex. The witches exulted and Sarissa took the gallop. 
Atossa pierced the other nipple while her dripping wet 
vulva suffocated his screaming and he came, unable to 
sort out the pleasure from the pain; Sarissa gave a 
cry. They collapsed on top of him while the jerking of 
his body slowly died away.

They were strangely gentle afterwards. Atossa was lying 
with her arm around him, panting, Sarissa was rubbing 
her face against his. But they would not set him free: 
that night, he had to sleep with his arms still tied to 
the stakes, and with both the rod and the skewers in 
place. 

His last thought, before his soul began its night-walk, 
was that a repetition of this evening's experiences was 
an idea too horrible to contemplate; but at the same 
time, he knew that he desired these two women so much 
that he would soon be willing to face the music again, 
just in order to earn their attentions.

***

Next morning, they continued their march, now with 
Atossa leading; she rode leaning back and swaying in 
the saddle; occasionally, both of them sang. His arms 
were still tied behind his back and Atossa was holding 
the lariat, but they had at least pulled the rod out of 
his ass-hole (and he had been made to wash it, of 
course, his anus still searing with the memory of it). 

Sarissa rode next to him when the ground permitted it, 
and once or twice she looked down and smiled at him. 
But the two skewers remained where Atossa had pierced 
him, and they were spreading a dull pain which changed 
into a sting whenever he moved his shoulders. He was 
still afraid of the two horsewomen, but for a different 
reason: now he feared their caresses, not their knives.

At noon, Sarissa reined in her horse, gazed at the 
horizon and exchanged a few words with Atossa, who 
nodded and urged her prisoner on again. But Sarissa 
trotted north and disappeared. Atossa walked him toward 
a shady umbrella-tree nearby, one that he had already 
cast longing eyes at for a while. Here they paused. The 
witch spread her cloak on the ground and he was allowed 
to lie down. The horse was free to graze, but soon it 
too withdrew into the shade. 

Around them, the grasslands quivered and danced with 
the heat. Atossa's mind seemed to have mellowed; she 
gave the prisoner water and felt his arms which were 
swollen around the straps. She thought for a moment. 
Then she tied his ankles together, freed his arms and 
pulled them up above his head. At first he thought that 
she would fetter him the same way as the previous 
evening, and to the same purpose, and for a moment, he 
was simultaneously scared and expectant; but she tied 
his wrists around the trunk of a sapling that grew 
close to the large tree, and then she untied the strap 
around his ankles again. 

Relieved, he understood her intention: she wanted to 
keep him under total control while she rested, but at 
the same time, she would give him a chance to 
recuperate. The new position was a relief to his aching 
shoulders. She went as far as unknotting the strap 
around his scrotum that he had worn for a day and a 
night now without respite. He felt a sting of lust, 
together with the crawling sensation of the blood that 
circulated freely again, but Atossa was businesslike 
and quick and it was soon over.

Now she bent over him and examined his nipples, still 
pierced by the two skewers. She grunted and fetched a 
box that contained a salve with a strong smell of 
herbs; she put on a little of it with her finger on 
each nipple. It hurt, but he kept a straight face. She 
clearly wanted to help and heal him, not torture him. 
And strangely enough, her touch awakened a vivid memory 
of the past night, and not only of the pain and the 
terror but also of the lust and the pleasure, which now 
seemed to him the greater and more important memory.

Involuntarily, he sighed. Atossa pricked up her ears. 
She regarded him for a while and this time he returned 
her gaze, looking straight into her yellow eyes. Not a 
muscle moved in her face. Then she laid herself down by 
his side and grasped his member. Gradually, it 
stiffened under her fingers. She squeezed, and then she 
began to caress him slowly. She took her time, lots of 
time. But when, after what seemed an eternity, his 
breath grew irregular, she pressed her nails into his 
rod and slapped it with her palm. 

She saw him grimace and she smiled a she-wolf smile, 
but her eyes were more amused than cruel. She gripped 
his testicles and squeezed them, but now he had 
gathered his wits and he did not show any fear. Atossa 
looked searchingly at him; then she rested again, still 
with his bag in a firm grip. He wished she would caress 
him again, but she did not. 

After a while, his excitement and his erection receded. 
Still, they were resting quietly, looking into each 
other's eyes when Sarissa returned much later with a 
little grass antelope slung in front of her saddle.

Again, the two women made a fire with a stone and a 
piece of steel out of Atossa's belt pouch. The meat was 
grilled and eaten, and the captive too was fed. When 
the sun moved west, they continued through the heat and 
the blinding light. Atossa was her harsh self again, 
but the memory of her unexpected charity remained. She 
was human after all. She could even be tender. 

His arms were tied behind his back again, but by his 
wrists now, and he was better able to move his 
shoulders. But he was still treated very 
unceremoniously. After a while, his bladder began to 
trouble him, but he dared not try to make the women 
halt. When the urge grew so strong that he could not 
restrain himself but began to urinate, writhing 
inwardly with shame, he had to continue to do so while 
walking. But when the women understood that he had to 
ease himself more, they stopped and had him squat in 
the high grass.

***

That night they slept in the open, under another 
umbrella-tree, warmed by a dying fire and by each 
other. Atossa shared her cloak with him. She seemed 
interested in his welfare, even protective. He had 
wondered, half scared and half expectant, if they would 
amuse themselves by playing with him again, but they 
seemed to be completely sated. He rested for a while, 
listening to the deafening night concert of the grass 
and tree creatures and the sound of the wind in the 
high crown of the tree, but at last he slept. What his 
spirit did that night, he did not know.

He woke up with a hard-on, and again, he felt Atossa's 
hand around his member while he disentangled himself 
from his night thoughts. But that was all, and after a 
quick and frugal breakfast, they continued their way. 
They marched for most of the morning, rested without 
eating, but also without tying him up, and continued. 
The ache and the swelling around the skewers were 
subsiding, but he wondered how long the march would be, 
and how many days he would spend walking on a leash.

Still, it was with some trepidation that he saw Sarissa 
halt on the crest of a ridge and understood that this 
was the end of the voyage. Below, a watercourse 
zigzagged through a nearly dry bed...months had passed 
since the great rains. Beyond it was a cluster of brown 
tents. Smoke rose, dogs barked, horsed moved on the 
slope beyond the camp.

Atossa rose in her stirrups and gave a call that seemed 
to turn somersaults in her throat. Human figures stood 
up and emerged from the tents, and the call came back, 
faint because of the distance. They continued down the 
slope, crossed the brook where the water felt tepid 
around his ankles, and the march was over. 


CHAPTER 2: THE CAMP
-------------------

They struggled up from the bed of the brook, he with a 
real effort. Women, girls and hags gathered around them 
as they entered among the tents. The women of the camp 
greeted Sarissa and Atossa with embraces. One of them, 
a girl of fifteen or sixteen, showed more emotion than 
the others; she reached out and touched Atossa briefly 
and the woman spoke softly to her in passing. All the 
onlookers were very curious about the prisoner; the 
skewers gave rise to lively comment. A few hands 
reached out and touched him, but Atossa growled and the 
fingering ceased abruptly.

He observed the horsewomen intently but fearful of 
appearing to ogle them. The young girls were still not 
tattooed and fairly light of complexion; they went 
completely naked except for some kind of charm on a 
narrow string around their necks. The adult women were 
much like the ones he already knew. Here around camp, 
they did not wear boots however, but half-high 
moccasins. 

It struck him suddenly that the difference in looks 
between Sarissa and Atossa was not simply caused by the 
difference of age: young or old, all the horsewomen he 
could see belonged to two obvious groups, one that 
mostly looked like Atossa and one that had more in 
common with Sarissa. 

The two groups had differently patterned tattoos, too; 
but what all this might mean he did not know, and he 
was not of a mind to be bothered about that just now. 
The hags were incredibly wrinkled and weather beaten, 
but straight and proud; their teeth were remarkably 
sound, though yellowed like animal tusks. But in their 
eyes, he discerned a glint of cruelty that worried him.

It gave him a nasty shock to discover that a discussion 
had broken out, and that he was the subject. Some of 
the women made gestures that could not be 
misunderstood, one or two even had their knives out. 
They were looking forward to entertainment, and one of 
them became quite insistent. But Sarissa and Atossa 
stood their ground. Especially the older woman spoke 
forcefully and with authority. 

In order to underline her point, she pulled the 
prisoner forward by the bag-strap (it had been put on 
again early that morning), squeezed his arm muscles, 
slapped his buttocks and finished by pulling his 
member. She raised her palms, quite a distance from 
each other, and there was general laughter. He did not 
bother to produce more than a tired grimace of a smile. 
But one of the women...he knew not which of 
them...cried aloud, fallou, fallou! And though he did 
not know it then, this was to become his slave-name.

Now one of the oldest hags spoke up. She seemed to be a 
person of authority, though she wore no outer sign of 
it. Everyone listened respectfully, and when she was 
finished, all nodded assent and indicated that they had 
accepted her verdict. Atossa and Sarissa looked 
relieved. He felt gratitude mingled with a strange 
warmth. They had defended him, energetically and 
successfully, and that old witch had saved him. When he 
had time to think of just what she had saved him from, 
he felt sick and his knees trembled.

He got no time to nurse his fear. Now he was marched 
toward of one of the tents. His owners...obviously he 
had to call them that...had a lively conversation with 
one or two of the other women; some of them were 
looking appreciatively at him, whispering between them. 
The recent decision was clearly not unpopular. Dogs ran 
after them and they sniffed him suspiciously. Now he 
also saw two or three males that stared back at him. 
One was a boy that had not yet reached puberty, the 
others were grown men. 

They looked sleek and healthy enough, but they seemed 
shy and they kept meekly out of the way of the women, 
who ignored them. Except for the boy, they wore thin 
golden rings through their nipples; so this was why 
Atossa had pierced him! One of the males stepped 
clumsily aside, and he wore leg-irons, riveted in place 
with a short chain joining them; leather rags around 
his ankles protected them from chafing. Had he done 
something improper to deserve this punishment? Or was 
this just an example of wanton cruelty?

Bending over, the prisoner entered the tent they had 
led him to. His eyes, blinded by the strong noonday 
light, perceived at first only a darkness inside. There 
was a smell of sun-scorched canvas and hay. Stumbling, 
he was brought to a resting-place and pushed down on 
it; furs tickled his skin. At last the strap around his 
sex was removed, but he was not relieved of the one 
around his wrists. Atossa spoke sternly to him, and he 
understood that he must remain here. Then he was left 
alone.

For a moment, he thought of escape. But he knew too 
little about his situation and its possibilities as 
yet, and his back-bound hands were a difficult obstacle 
anyway. Later, he would think that he had abandoned his 
escape plans with suspicious haste. 

Now when he knew that he would live and that the 
rumours had told the truth about the horsewomen's use 
of their man-slaves, the need to escape did not seem so 
urgent any more. Anyway, he would be safe from En-Tor 
here. He made himself as comfortable as possible and 
reclined, listening to the sounds outside, the yelping 
of dogs, the clanking of metal vessels, voices, someone 
who was cutting firewood and a horse neighing in the 
far distance.

The darkness lifted by and by and he could take a look 
around. The tent was furnished with furs, painted iron-
bound travelling chests and variegated textiles from 
the coast peoples. Ornate fittings of iron and bronze 
and a hanging lamp of brass indicated a certain 
prosperity. He sighed and tried to doze. He did not 
dare sleep, and he was too excited anyway.

His solitude did not continue for long. The entrance 
darkened and a girl entered and squatted down beside 
him. She would be twelve or thirteen, and though her 
lack of tattoos indicated that she had not yet been 
taken into the circle of women, she had several animal 
teeth in her necklace. She looked faintly like Sarissa, 
a very young Sarissa. The girl scrutinized him without 
embarrassment for some time, and then she started a 
lively but for the moment somewhat one-sided 
conversation.

Her name was Niki. Like Atossa and Sarissa, she was not 
the least interested in his name, but she ferreted out 
where he came from. As far as he could understand, she 
was the daughter of someone called Lykomaki. Then she 
began teaching him the names of various body parts, and 
she laughed with a gleam of white teeth when he made a 
fool of himself. After some time she tired of the 
language lesson, fell silent and regarded him 
pensively. She felt the skewers. 

He did not dare show that she was hurting him: that 
might have led her thoughts in the wrong direction. The 
children were probably no less savage than the adults. 
Come to think of it, children were often more cruel 
than adults. She moved her attention to his sex and she 
took a hard grip on his member. He did not dare but let 
her have her way; that much did he understand, that he 
had no will of his own anymore, and that every 
horsewoman must be obeyed.

Still, he worried. What would happen if they were 
discovered? The girl was not sexually mature, and he 
belonged to Atossa and Sarissa anyway (mostly to 
Sarissa, he hoped). What if one of them returned? 
Slaves were usually punished for the wrongdoing of the 
freemen, and he understood that his position in the 
Sisterhood was still insecure. But he could not stop 
himself from growing randy, and from showing it.

Niki grew noticeably interested. She was obviously 
enjoying the impression she was making on him. At the 
same time, she was showing signs of excitement herself. 
That children too are erotic beings was an insight that 
was suppressed among his own people, but the years at 
En-Tor's court had disabused him of his innocence, and 
he was not surprised now. His apprehension increased, 
however. What was this girl-child going to do with him?

She sat astride him. But surely she would not... But 
she contented herself with rubbing her hairless vulva 
against the underside of his member. She looked down on 
him with moist eyes and panting, half-open mouth. His 
back-bound hands made his position very uncomfortable, 
still he found himself moving his hips rhythmically. 

Soon he had to concentrate on not letting his rising 
excitement run away with him. Now Niki leant over him 
and presented her nipples; she had no breasts yet. He 
kissed them obediently, and when she pressed herself 
against him he sucked them cautiously. Slowly, the 
pleasure ache receded in his abandoned sex. Her panting 
increased. She rose, and for a moment she was standing 
on all fours over him.

He knew beforehand what she would do. She sat down on 
his face and pressed her sex against his mouth. This 
was only the second time in his life that he had been 
forced to do the cunnilingus (at En-Tor's house, where 
women were objects of pleasure, fellatio was the thing) 
but he responded bravely. The sooner the girl was 
satisfied and left him alone, the better. But as he 
could concentrate on the act this time, he learnt more. 

Niki showed him clearly what she wanted and what she 
enjoyed. He kissed her clitoris, ran his tongue along 
her smooth labia and stuck it into the opening of her 
tight little vagina to the accompaniment of her 
encouraging squeaks and gasps. She tasted of salt; she 
must have urinated since she bathed last. All the time 
she kept a hard grip on his hair. At last she came. She 
jerked convulsively and she fell forward. This was 
exactly the moment when he discovered that Atossa was 
in the tent. His heart froze.

Niki looked ashamed. Where Atossa was standing, dark 
against the light from the tent door, he could not see 
her countenance. He sent her a pleading glance. But she 
gave her attention mostly to Niki. She spoke to the 
girl with a sternness which the listening slave 
suddenly discovered to be feigned. The child was sent 
out of the tent with a slap, and Atossa stood above 
him, looking down at him.

He was not punished. Instead, she leaned down and 
smoothed his hair, tousled by Niki. She regarded him 
for a moment; her face was immobile but she breathed 
heavily. Then she untied her breech-clout and took the 
girl's place. Without demur, he started all over again. 
By the bones of Hurri, he thought, I do hope they do 
not prefer this kind of pleasure all of them all the 
time!

But Atossa withdrew before reaching her climax. She 
left him after releasing his hands. He did not think of 
escape anymore, and she seemed to understand it. That 
evening he rested very quietly on a thin bed near the 
opening of the tent, covered head to toe with a black 
sheet which he did not dare throw off; but he heard how 
the two women made love long and intensely. Atossa 
cried out aloud from the crest of her ecstasy. Then the 
two rested together for some time, talking. They seemed 
to have forgotten him, and finally he went to sleep, 
still under the sheet. 

He woke up in the middle of the night, half suffocated 
and sweating, and pushed it away. The moon was up, and 
in the faint light that reached the interior of the 
tent, he could barely make out the sleeping figures of 
Sarissa and Atossa. The older woman's arm was thrown 
across the shoulders of her lover. He rested long, 
looking at them, without being able to untangle his 
emotions; but at last he went to sleep again and slept 
like dead until the morning.

Thus began his life among the horsewomen. His two 
owners kept him under strict surveillance, and he was 
constantly in their company, except when one of them 
was out hunting. Now and then, the two women were 
briefly joined by the very young but fully tattooed 
girl who had greeted Atossa with such affection on her 
arrival back in camp. And he gathered that she was 
Atossa's daughter, and that Halanna was her name, but 
where in the camp she lived and with whom he did not 
know. She visited her mother in her tent occasionally, 
but obviously she slept somewhere else.

His early weeks in the camp shaped up into something 
that he soon understood to be a kind of obedience 
training. He was constantly in the presence of one or 
both of his mistresses, and gradually, his entire 
conscious mind came to be centred on them. Never was he 
left to his own devices; instead, the two women were 
constantly forcing their will on him, and with less and 
less effort. This did not mean that their demands on 
him grew less. 

He was not only required to attend his mistresses and 
do chores such as fetching water and grinding grain, 
but was also burdened with tasks that were unpleasant 
and seemingly meaningless, such as being led, on a 
leash and on all fours like a dog, around the camp 
among amused women and giggling little girls, or lying 
immobile on his back on sharp stones.

Staring into the deep blue sky, he more sensed than saw 
his surroundings. The stones soon grew painful, digging 
into his back, but he was also uncomfortable because of 
the way his back was arched and his head was slumped 
down on the other side of the heap. 

His legs were slightly parted and his arms were thrown 
out to the sides; he did not dare move a finger, for 
Sarissa was standing guard, and she looked implacable. 
To his annoyance, he had an erection, and, again to his 
annoyance, both Sarissa and three or four other women 
noticed it. Damn it, why did these things stimulate 
him? He was not born a slave. 

Submission should not come natural to him, even less be 
pleasurable. But the fact was incontrovertible: he did 
enjoy it. Yes, he did enjoy it even though the stones 
were hurting him like hell, for he knew that this was 
part of the whole, of his entire relationship with 
these two women, and that relationship revolved around 
the moments of closeness and pleasure he experienced 
with them, in spite of the fact that they did not grant 
him sexual release. His celibacy was a mortification of 
the body, not of the soul.

It dawned on him that Atossa's methods (for it was 
mostly she that handled the dressage) were subtle 
enough. The obvious uselessness of the things they 
forced him to do made obedience itself the main object. 
And he obeyed. Attentively, he tried to read the 
gestures, faces and words of his two owners. His reward 
was that they encouraged him more and more often. 

He frequently gave them pleasure with lips and tongue, 
but he was always himself denied it, and his pent-up 
desire for the two women grew constantly. But this too 
was clearly part of Atossa's intentions. His fantasies 
about what he would do to them, given a chance, changed 
with time into expectation mixed with fear of what they 
would do to him next. He knew that he was not just any 
slave. He was a manslave, a tongue-slave and a penis-
slave, and the power and the glory of his two 
mistresses was his also. 

If they had tried to whip him into submission, he would 
have resisted or at least thought of escape, but games 
like these were something else, and he felt himself 
slowly being drawn into an implicit understanding with 
the two. The games were his too to play, and he played 
them. As long as Atossa and Sarissa continued to play 
by these rules, he would stay with them.

Already the day after his arrival in the camp, he had 
been pushed down on his back and tied, and then Atossa 
had pulled out the skewers. She had replaced them with 
short studs. It hurt and some blood came, but he was 
still relieved. The skewers had been far more 
inconvenient. His nipples healed rapidly around the 
studs, helped by Atossa's salve, and they were now 
permanently pierced.

He ate the same food as the women. By this time of the 
year it was frugal but satisfactory, consisting mostly 
of wild herbs, roots and seeds, with some dried meat or 
pemmican. He knew enough about the grasslands to 
understand that the game had dispersed over enormous 
areas now at the end of the dry season, and that large-
scale hunting was impossible. 

Groups of women went out every morning to gather 
foodstuffs, each accompanied by one or several man-
slaves. Even the chained man was relieved of his leg-
irons in order to participate in the labour. The 
threatening behaviour of the women made it clear that 
the prisoner had made an attempt at escape, had been 
captured and had been forced to wear irons as a 
punishment.

He was himself taken out to forage several times. He 
was kept to hard work, but Sarissa and Niki taught him 
to recognize and name many edible plants. But he was 
frequently left in camp while his two owners were out 
hunting. The first time this happened, they led him to 
a stake in the centre of the camp and tied him to it so 
thoroughly that he could not move a hand. Chest and 
hips, arms and legs were bound separately with 
crisscrossing straps. 

He was terrified though he did not dare show it; he 
thought that the women had changed their minds and 
would kill him slowly for their own entertainment, as 
was notoriously the habit of these people. His relief 
was great when Sarissa patted his cheek and rubbed her 
face against his before leaving him. Obviously, this 
was just-- just... part of the training he was 
undergoing.

Several other women had looked on with interest from a 
distance, but they left him alone for the moment. The 
straps were firmly but not brutally tightened, and 
apart from the burning sunshine, which had already 
tanned his constantly naked body a dark brown, standing 
at the stake was no great suffering. After some hours 
though, his immobility was growing intolerable, and he 
smiled again inwardly when he understood the cunning of 
the women. 

No pain, no threats and no excitement drew his 
attention away from the bonds themselves, which were 
instead constantly present in his consciousness and 
underlined his helplessness. He longed for the return 
of the two women, and he found himself hoping that they 
would use their hands on him before releasing him. 

The sexual fantasies which were now occupying all of 
his free time and which the combination of celibacy and 
constant stimulation made ever more torrid, had 
actually grown more and more cruel too. His experiences 
made it difficult for him to imagine himself as the 
active party in a love-game with Sarissa (not to speak 
of the savage Atossa). Being used by them meant being 
raped by them, and they would give him pain as a matter 
of course. He did not fear it. Well, not too much, 
anyway.

He was dwelling on thoughts like these when he 
discovered that two other women were looking at him. 
They saw that he had an incipient erection...he had not 
himself been aware of it until then and they smiled 
sardonically. They were Niki's mother Lykomaki and an 
old woman called Timesse. Both had been among the women 
who had demanded to be allowed to torture him; he hoped 
that his fear did not show.

But this was obviously not the kind of entertainment 
they had in mind.

They felt his straps and then they let their hands 
slide across his body. They continued by rubbing 
themselves against him with increasing excitement. Half 
against his will, he felt his own mounting randiness. 
Lykomaki clutched the skin at the back of his neck with 
one hand, and with the other she gripped his member. 
Her nails bored into its soft underside.

Timesse put her claws into his bag and squeezed his 
testicles. She increased the pressure slowly. Lykomaki 
massaged him brutally, but the pleasure was 
counteracted by the increasing pain from the balls. 
Finally, he had to groan. They squeezed with all their 
might, their eyes shining with lust. He barely kept 
himself from screaming, but his pain was there 
nevertheless for them to enjoy. Then they drew away. 
The pain died away, but he felt sick. He felt no 
pleasure anymore, and he understood that he had lost 
his hard-on. Niki stood at a distance, looking 
delighted.

Timesse departed and was away for some time. Lykomaki's 
hands were soft again, and slowly he regained his 
virility. She made reassuring sounds and he managed a 
smile. He would do well to ingratiate himself with 
these two women! When Timesse returned, she was 
carrying a long, soft thorn-vine. She knotted the large 
end around his sex. 

Handling the vine with heavy palm-gloves, she wound it 
as tightly as she could, turn after turn, around the 
bag and his member, while Lykomaki egged her on. The 
thorns stung and burned his skin. The thin end of the 
vine Timesse tied carefully around the tip of his 
penis; his foreskin had been pulled back as far as it 
would go.

It hurt like the very devil. All living and moving 
things of the grasslands avoided the thornvine with its 
thousands of sharp needles. Timesse and Lykomaki 
stepped back, cocked their heads and enjoyed the 
effect, cackling merrily. Then they departed, their 
arms around each other's shoulders.

Niki remained. With his eyes and with pleading sounds 
he tried to move her to relieve him of the vine, but 
without success. She was too obviously delighted with 
the experiment and was in no mood to interrupt it. 
Instead, she came up and tested the vine by pulling it. 
His pain increased and he grimaced. Niki found this a 
wonderful new game. 

She pushed a stick under the vine and twisted; while 
doing it, she looked at him attentively in order to 
ascertain his reaction. He begged her to stop it. She 
did not understand what he was saying, of course, but 
she understood very well what he wanted to say, and his 
entreaties had rather the opposite effect of the 
intended one.

At last she tired of the game, let go of the stick and 
skipped away, clearly thinking of something entirely 
different. His eyes followed her. In spite of her 
childishness, she was entirely a horsewoman, and a 
sexual being; he wondered what she would be like in a 
year or two? In spite of the pain, or perhaps because 
of it, he was now nearly desperately randy. He actually 
found himself wishing that Niki would come back to him, 
or even her mother.

Nobody else took pity on him. The women that walked 
past looked at him and smiled but did not come to his 
aid. He remained standing thus the whole afternoon; 
slowly, the acute pain changed into an ache that with 
time became intolerable, mostly because he could do 
absolutely nothing about it. Very clever of them! 

He invented complicated forms of revenge: the two hags 
themselves deserved to be tied with thornvines around 
their crotch and breasts (Lykomaki was only Atossa's 
age and attractive in her way, but for the moment he 
had no eye for her advantages). His owners returned at 
last, but they just laughed at him. They did release 
him from the stake after quite some time, but they 
prohibited him with threatening grimaces from touching 
his sex.

He had to wear the damn vine until nightfall. He was 
still wearing it when Atossa pushed him over on his 
face and impaled him on the horn-member again. This was 
nearly too much. The training in self-restraint that 
the women had given him, perhaps unintentionally, 
helped him to endure in stoic silence however, which 
obviously made some impression on his owners. They 
played with him speaking with mild voices, and their 
hands were tender.

They pushed him over on his back after a while and 
bound him in the same way as that first evening, when 
they had just captured him. He suspected that he would 
now collect the reward for his obedience. Again the 
women caressed each other, and he could now look at 
them with as little shame as they were showing 
themselves; he had learnt to accept that the 
horsewomen, all of them and not only Atossa and 
Sarissa, lived in loving relationships which were both 
intense and lasting. Their use of males seemed to be an 
entirely different matter; males were tools of their 
physical lust only (a fact which did not exclude an 
attachment of the kind we feel for pets).

It was Sarissa's turn to be served by his tongue. While 
Atossa was ridding him of the vine at last, Sarissa sat 
astride his face. In the dim light he saw her supple 
body above himself in a violently foreshortened 
perspective, which was at the same time peculiarly 
attractive; he wished intensively that he would have 
been able to caress her with his hands. She took her 
time, and Atossa was now relieving the stinging 
sensation in his member by holding it in her warm hand. 

Sarissa seemed several times to be balancing on the 
brink of orgasm, only to retreat from it again. When 
she came at last, with the tongue of her slave pushed 
as far inside her vagina as he was capable of, he felt 
a curious satisfaction, the cause of which he was 
unable to understand rightly; for his own lust was 
still a torture inside him.

Sarissa dismounted, still panting. It was Atossa, not 
him that she kissed gratefully, but he was nevertheless 
given a smile and an appreciative smoothing of his 
hair. Now it was Atossa who sat across his hips and 
looked searchingly at him.

What would she do with him? The last time around, she 
had caused him the most cruel suffering he had yet 
experienced, more cruel (though not more brutal) than 
any that he had expected from the minions of En-Tor, 
and still his member was stiffer than ever. But Atossa 
grasped it, and it slid slowly into her while she let 
herself sink downward.

He froze. The initial sensation of penetration was 
intensive, and he felt as if his own member was being 
pierced lengthwise. His eyes half closed and his face 
stiffened. Atossa seemed herself to notice his 
situation; the tattooed body of the she-savage, the 
face with the burning eyes, the waving plume of 
hair...she did not wear it in a bun today... all was 
still. Then she came down carefully in position on top 
of him.

She was quiet for a long time before she began to move 
like a reptile on top his body. Her face was only a 
couple of inches above his. Again his lust was rising 
in him. He raised his hips and met her, and his 
maltreated member ached inside her. He had to get a 
grip on himself, he had to continue to be useful to her 
until she came. 

He closed his eyes, for the sight of her face was 
making him lose control of himself, and as a diversion, 
he tried to recall to his memory the details of her 
back tattoos, but he found to his horror that the very 
thought of her backside was stimulating him; he began 
counting the horses of the Sisterhood instead. Atossa 
seemed to sense his predicament and reined herself in 
again.

The ecstasy subsided, changed its countenance and was 
transformed from a threat into pleasure. Now he felt 
that he could let himself be fucked forever without 
losing either his self-control or his ability.

He moved his hips, and the muscular female body on top 
of him responded rhythmically. Atossa was still 
piercing him with her eyes. In a state of intensive 
concentration, he felt his pleasure slowly intensifying 
and approaching the threshold of pain. 

Atossa noticed it too and quickened her pace. She 
gripped his shoulders mercilessly, and her breath came 
in bursts from her throat while she threw herself 
violently up and down as if she were trying to tear his 
member off his body. His anus contracted in cramps 
around the tool that had penetrated it. The horsewoman 
cried out like a bird of prey. He came. After weeks of 
abstinence, the orgasm was so brutal that it hurt 
physically; for a moment he thought that Atossa had 
harmed him.

She remained long on top of him, warm and heavy, until 
she had calmed down. Then she raised her head again and 
looked at him, until she rolled away and left him. When 
they freed him much later, he was granted an unexampled 
privilege: he was permitted to sleep by the feet of the 
two women.

There was no doubt that he belonged to Atossa and 
Sarissa (mostly to Atossa, and now he found this quite 
natural and even right). But it soon dawned upon him 
that this ownership was more of a prior claim than a 
monopoly. It was obvious that they had no exclusive 
rights to him, and they in turn found it natural that 
he had to serve nearly every postpubertal woman of the 
Sisterhood, one after the other, from half-grown girls 
of fifteen to wrinkled witches with breasts like pieces 
of leather. Atossa's and Sarissa's permission was 
always sought, but clearly only as a matter of form; 
the permission was always given.

Without exception he had to lie bound on his back while 
the women rode him. Several of them kept their knives 
hanging between their breasts during the ride, some 
wore their whips wound and knotted around their waists; 
but there was no need to chastise him and they all 
seemed to find him satisfactory. 

Remarkably enough, Lykomaki gave him one of his most 
satisfying experiences, and he wondered after it if the 
memory of the pain she had given him, and his fear of 
her, had not contributed. He had worried about his 
ability to be useful to the old witches, but was soon 
relieved of his fear. They preferred to make their 
rides at night, in the darkness of their tents, and in 
its cover their vitality and their clever hands made 
him forget their looks.

Afterwards, it was the common experience he remembered, 
and he was beginning to see their bodies as the worn 
sheaths of powerful, fascinating personalities. It was 
nevertheless these women who, next to the very young 
girls, showed the least consideration of his own 
feelings, and they often left him physically un-
released. No matter. To be allowed to satisfy them, and 
to receive proof that they were pleased with him in 
their reserved way, was a distinction. He found himself 
admiring these old women, queenly like greying old 
lionesses and the unquestioned mothers and leaders of 
their pride.

He found the girls touching like pups. Among the most 
interesting was Aryana, Hakki's daughter. She was still 
light of skin under her tattoos, which she must have 
received recently, just like Halanna; she was clearly 
proud of them and of her position as a full horsewoman. 
She was deliberately hard on her prisoner... she was 
actually the only one to deliberately give him pain. 

She had given him several lashes with a short scourge, 
while standing astride him on her knees. But he 
suspected that she had held herself back, that she 
wished to be a merciless and cruel brave, and again and 
again, the hard mask fell away momentarily and afforded 
him glimpses of another Aryana, merry and girlishly 
tender. He often found himself thinking of Niki.

Was this what she was going to be? He remembered the 
vine and how she had tightened it around his sex, and 
he thought, no; but then he saw her in his mind 
visiting him in the tent, on his first day in camp, and 
changed his opinion. 


CHAPTER 3: WINTER
-----------------

They tied his hands behind his back, not cruelly but in 
a matter-of-fact way, just to keep him under control, 
and marched him to Ariti, the smith. She had her little 
portable forge going and she was clearly expecting 
them. Sarissa offered to work the bellows. They made 
him kneel before the little anvil, and then Atossa 
carefully removed the studs from his pierced nipples, 
which had healed completely now. 

She handed the studs to Ariti, who had obviously lent 
them to her. Instead, rings of red gold were pushed 
through the holes, and he wisely kept as immobile as he 
could while Ariti bent the ends of each ring so that 
they overlapped, fished out a red-hot little rivet from 
the charcoal-fired forge and joined the ends together. 

She repeated the procedure with the second ring, and he 
was truly a horsewoman's slave.

He was told to stand up, and obeyed (he understood 
enough of the language now to know what his owners 
expected of him). Both Sarissa and Atossa felt the 
rings and looked very pleased. Atossa looked him 
straight in the eye while she twisted the rings gently, 
testing his reaction. He was not afraid of what she 
would do, and she sensed it. She smiled and patted him 
on his cheek. He had clearly been a good dog. All the 
while, the girl Halanna had been present, looking on in 
silence. And now he knew that Halanna lived with Ariti, 
and he presumed that they were lovers.

By now, the women moved camp very frequently, as the 
game and the edible plants and the grazing of the 
immediate neighbourhood were rapidly exhausted. The 
high-wheeled carts were rolled up to the tents, and 
each household -- normally two women, occasionally 
three, or two and one girl -- loaded their belongings, 
hitched the horses to the vehicles, mounted their 
steeds, and the horde left what had been a lively scene 
just minutes before. 

Now only circles of flattened grass, the black hearths 
and the ubiquitous fettering-pole remained to tell a 
passer-by that horsewomen had lived here. The 
squeaking, ungainly carts made up the centre of the 
procession. Archers trotted off to form an advance 
screen, the main body of horsewomen rode ahead of the 
vehicles, and there was a small rearguard too. 

The older women kept close to the chiefess Hikati, the 
woman who had decided that the captive Fallou should 
live--and the girl who carried the standard, the light 
pole with its grotesque array of horsetails, red 
ribbons, brass bells and the white male skull with the 
dangling jaw. The slaves travelled on the carts, one or 
two of them driving (the other carts were usually 
handled either by young girls or by very old women).

There was one exception: he had to walk, and he had to 
do it just as when Atossa and Sarissa were bringing him 
home after the capture, his elbows held by straps and 
with a lariat tied to his balls. It was perhaps 
deliberate cruelty. He felt honoured. Women riding 
close by him sometimes smiled at him, and occasionally 
they lashed him loosely and playfully with the end of 
their reins, still smiling their friendly smiles. He 
returned them with what he hoped was the right mixture 
of frankness and deference.

These marches were not in any way exhausting. He was 
hardened now, and the Sisterhood travelled slowly 
because of the clumsy carts, and in easy day's marches. 
At night, they slept under the open sky, which was no 
hardship either in this hot and dry weather. Then his 
arms were free, but never his sex; and he would long 
remember these nights, when he rested between his two 
mistresses in the ring of sleepers around the 
smoldering night-fire. 

Nobody used him sexually while on the trail, but he 
helped keep the two women warm on chilly mornings. He 
enjoyed that. Those sleepy moments gave him much of the 
closeness that he craved, as a consequence of his 
growing devotion to his two strange owners.

At last, after just two days on the last campsite, 
there was a new tension in the morning air. Several of 
the old women stood outside their tents, sniffing the 
dry wind. He sniffed it too, but could not discern 
anything out of the ordinary. Then he saw the thin 
white chalk-lines across the morning sky, the high 
feather clouds that boded a change of the weather.

They broke camp again and moved to the northwest with 
such haste that he had to ride a cart...males were 
never allowed to ride horses, that was a taboo or a 
superstition among the women. A horse ridden by a male 
would be skittish and unpredictable ever after. Trees 
were more frequently seen now, and late that evening 
they came to the edge of the forest. 

The next day they entered it along a well-worn track, 
and after only three hours on the march they saw what 
was clearly the winter camp. It consisted of two 
longhouses, built out of sods and timber, and a couple 
of simple sheds for firewood, hay and diverse odds, 
ends and purposes. There were several hearths in each 
house, and little compartments around them, suitable 
for two or three to sleep. 

They moved in and settled for the season. Rainstorms 
came and went, with occasional glimpses of the sun in 
between. Life was easy enough. Hunting parties went 
out; it seemed that much of the game had moved into the 
forest, too. There were camp chores to do, and edibles 
to gather from the woods when the weather permitted. 
But there were also long hours spent resting on or 
between the furs and the covers spread around the 
fires, under the smoke-holes. The time was passed with 
storytelling and singing, in between long spells of 
plain dozing. There was lovemaking after dark, too.

Occasionally, other women used him, but it was mostly 
Atossa that rode him. Being used sexually in the 
presence of some twenty savage women and equally savage 
little girls was a new experience to him, but clearly 
quite normal to them. Fortunately, it did not inhibit 
his performance. On the contrary: he had served nearly 
all the onlookers, too, and whoever used him 
represented them all. In his mind, he saw it as a gang-
rape. 

He understood that a rape was a bad experience for a 
woman. He remembered the girl that had been assigned to 
him in En-Tor's house, and though he had at that time 
regarded himself a civilized person who had tried to 
rape her in a considerate manner, he now remembered the 
expression in her eyes and felt ashamed of himself. 
Living with these women had taught him not only to obey 
them, but to respect them.

Using a woman against her will was not only physically 
impossible, it was also unthinkable. But for males, 
this was clearly another matter. He loved it.

There was one thing that really was a mystery to him. 
By now, he had already had sex very often with both 
Atossa and Sarissa, and at least once with practically 
every adult member of the Sisterhood. None of them had 
ever tried to withdraw before the ejaculation, and he 
had not been able to take any precautions at all, of 
course. That was not his business, anyway. Still, only 
two of the women were pregnant, and they had been 
pregnant already when they had used him.

It seemed that these women could somehow control their 
child-bearing in a way that he could not make out. None 
of the -- often quite revolting -- methods of 
erminating a pregnancy that he knew of had been used. 
The whole matter remained an enigma. And, by the way, 
just why were the daughters so uncommonly like their 
mothers?

He did not know the answers to these questions until 
much later, after the end of this story, in fact, and 
then because he had asked about them, and received an 
answer. But there was something that he did learn, and 
that was the language. This was in fact pretty easy to 
do: the guttural pronunciation had hidden from him the 
fact that the structure and much of the vocabulary were 
closely related to the Coast Dialect, which he was 
quite fluent in.

The rest of the words, relating mainly to horse-
womanship and hunting, had originated somewhere to the 
east, among inland tribes that his people knew little 
about. Now when his two owners had time to spare, his 
understanding of the language progressed rapidly, and 
he was also learning to speak it, though more slowly.

Being able to understand Atossa and her lover, and to 
speak with them, deepened his attachment but did not 
otherwise change his relationship with them. 
Occasionally, he found his new role peculiar, not to 
speak of his easy acceptance of it. He had never 
thought of himself as a slave-nature. Slaves were of 
course different from freemen, submission was inborn 
with them. But come to think of it, many slaves had 
been freemen or freewomen earlier, was their nature 
different then? And he had also thought that women were 
naturally submissive, which patently did not apply to 
these ladies! Anyway, he found his slavery under Atossa 
quite natural. 

Indeed, he sometimes caught himself wishing that she 
would treat him sternly, that she would be demanding, 
even deliberately cruel to him, without him knowing 
why, perhaps in order to have her reassure him that she 
really cared about him.

Yes, even cruel. He had always been proud of his 
manliness, and he had taken for granted that he would 
not fear pain if it came his way. Now, the pain that he 
had been given, and was occasionally given again, 
served as proof of his fortitude. His very ability to 
make a good slave, and to bear his slavery with 
dignity, was a matter of self esteem. He did not care 
what they did to him, he could take it.

Correction. He did care about it. For with a slight 
feeling of amazement, he suddenly saw that the thought 
of being tortured by Atossa (and Sarissa, and any one 
of the more attractive horsewomen and girls, such as 
Ariti or Aryana or even Niki, but especially by Atossa) 
aroused him sexually. Whenever his thoughts dwelt on 
his piercing, and his first rectal penetration, and the 
infernal thornvine, and the straps and the indignities, 
an erection was the inevitable result. During his life 
with these women, cruel treatment and sexual pleasure 
had become inextricably associated in his mind.

As long as she would not kill or maim him (and the 
better he came to know her, the less he feared this) he 
actually longed for Atossa to give him pain. And he was 
not the slightest ashamed of himself because of this. 
He did not feel debased by this strange desire, on the 
contrary, he felt stronger, more fully alive; and 
Atossa would surely not cast him aside as long as she 
found it sexually exciting to torture him, which she 
plainly did. And though she was cruel, she was also 
careful not to harm him, and she even seemed 
emotionally attached to him. At least he hoped that he 
was right in thinking so.

He was not alone in eliciting this cruel response in 
the hearts of the horsewomen. They delighted in making 
all their man-slaves helpless, in fettering them, 
chastising them, and making them suffer before using 
them, or preferably while using them. They felt that 
way towards all of them, including Mikrou, the young 
boy.

His face was still beardless, his body hairless. He 
rested, fear in his eyes, on his back on the furs by 
the fire, while the women were all over him. At first 
sight, their behaviour was not threatening. On the 
contrary, it would have been motherly if it had not 
been so overtly sexual, and if their intention 
ultimately to use him had not been so obvious. Lykomaki 
was holding his wrists in a vise-like grip, his arms 
pulled up above his head. 

Ariti and Timesse controlled his widely spread legs. 
Sarissa, who was pinching his ear with two fingers 
while squeezing his little balls with the other hand, 
had her face close to his; Aryana was busy with the 
boy's penis. Would any of the women bother to use it? 
Between them, Sarissa and Aryana had given him a hard-
on that was quite respectable for a child, but it 
hardly seemed up to the job yet. The boy would not be 
ready for his first ride until two or even three years 
had gone by.

Sarissa raised herself a little and glanced at her 
companion, who let go of her toy, only to reclaim it 
when Sarissa came down on top of the boy. She rubbed 
herself voluptuously against him; he whimpered. Was she 
heavy? He nodded. Too heavy? He hesitated and she 
laughed out loud. He was still able to breathe, was he 
not? Both hands in his hair, she kissed him 
aggressively. She forced his mouth open and invaded him 
with her tongue. 

He gave a choked sound but seemed to respond. Perhaps 
this was not his first tongue-rape. Sarissa disengaged, 
and they looked briefly at each other, face to face, 
before she left him, only to be replaced by Aryana. 
Aryana kissed him too, just as brutally; but she also 
wanted her nipples sucked. The boy obeyed, and the 
onlooker felt a pang of longing: he had often wanted to 
do this, or even caress his mistresses' breasts with 
his hands, but he had never been given an opportunity 
to do it.

All the while, Atossa sat close by, looking on; but she 
was holding a long, supple switch in both hands, 
flexing it expectantly.

One by one, all the girls and the women followed 
Sarissa's and Aryana's example. After leaving the boy, 
they began forming couples. Soon, all of them except 
Ariti and Atossa were writhing and squirming all over 
the place, lips around nipples, tongues meeting, 
fingers deep in each other's sex. But they began 
sitting up and taking notice, when Atossa tied the 
boy's hands while Ariti held them.

When the boy understood what they were going to do to 
him, he first seemed to want to protest, or at least 
beg for mercy, but then to change his mind. That was 
understandable. Even these two women, who had not yet 
participated actively in the orgy, were clearly too 
excited to care about his opinion. Atossa threw the 
straps across a rafter, she, Ariti, Lykomaki and 
Timesse grabbed the free ends, and the boy suddenly 
found himself suspended by his wrists, his toes a foot 
above the floor.

The audience was delighted. Girls and women gathered 
around the subject, caressing him and each other, 
slapping him playfully, pinching him. The boy was 
terrified. Atossa elbowed the crowd aside. She stood in 
front of him, speaking softly to him.

She soothed him with her hands. Murmuring inaudibly, 
she held his sex between them and restored his erection 
and his arousal, which fear had repressed. They were 
both breathing audibly. It was understandable that the 
child was sexually excited; but Atossa too was visibly 
aroused, with parted lips and a curious light in her 
yellow eyes. She moved her hips a little, and suddenly 
Fallou saw that she was lubricating so copiously that 
the tattooed insides of her thighs were wet. The other 
women went back to their previous activities, but with 
an eye on the show.

And then Atossa stepped back, raised her right arm and 
started to whip the boy. In a panic, he tried to evade 
her strokes, but in vain: he managed only to produce a 
helpless dance that simply served to increase the 
enthusiasm of his tormentor. He screamed, and Atossa 
screamed triumphantly back at him. In spite of her 
savage excitement and his attempts at evasion, she 
managed to whip him systematically, half inch by half-
inch, from the shoulders down, until some twenty lashes 
later, she dealt the last blow just a finger above the 
root of his penis, which was now pathetically flaccid. 
Clearly, his only remaining sensation was pain. His 
shrill screams gave additional proof of this.

By now, the other horsewomen were quiescent. Ariti was 
the last to calm down: she had found Halanna and was 
busy with her. Niki rested beside a girl of Sarissa's 
age, Artanne. Atossa looked around and found her slave. 
She dragged him to his feet and gave him a quick and 
quite brutal version of the sexual massage that she had 
given to the boy. It did not take long: he already had 
an erection that he had been too absorbed in the 
spectacle to notice.

She pushed him toward the boy, who was covered with red 
stripes and had tears rolling down his face, and made 
her wishes clear.

He was to suck the boy off. That was really very nice 
of her, wanting to give her victim pleasure after the 
terror and the pain. But Fallou had never considered 
doing a thing like this, not even after his capture; he 
looked imploringly at her and tried to resist. 
Impatiently, she kicked him over and began whipping 
him. She stood over him, keeping him down with one foot 
on his belly while the lashes rained down on him. He 
could have evaded them, or at least tried to do so, but 
this thought never came to him. 

More in fear of Atossa's displeasure than of the pain 
she was giving him, he cried out his surrender. He 
would have to do it. He made no resistance as Atossa 
took him by his hair and dragged him to his knees. The 
onlookers cheered. He looked up and saw the boy's face, 
grimy, marked with tears, terrified and expectant. 
Bravely, he scampered forward, drew a deep breath and 
took the childish little thing in his mouth.

The owner squealed and swung his hips. Fallou sucked 
the penis cautiously and felt it grow on top of his 
tongue. He also saw Atossa take up position behind the 
boy, switch in hand. And then, the beating started 
anew.

Very deliberately, Atossa laid cut after cut across the 
boy's buttocks. Each time one of them landed, the boy 
jerked violently forward, ramming his member into the 
man that fellated him. Now he was crying out again, and 
the delighted screams and groans of the women kept the 
beat of the whipping. Hurri's bones, thought Fallou, 
the pain must slow him down. I'd better try to bring 
him as quickly as possible, that will be better for 
both of us. He sucked more energetically, and in 
between, he used the tip of his tongue on the underside 
of the gland, just as En-Tor's most experienced 
slavewomen used to do. With his hands, he held on to 
the balls.

He did not know how many lashes the boy had received 
when the penis suddenly began to jerk, and Mikrou came, 
ejaculating a thimbleful of salty, pungent come. The 
boy's cries took on another sound, and those women that 
had not yet had their orgasms had them now, to judge by 
the noise they made. Fallou swallowed convulsively, 
then he sucked once or twice, opened his mouth and sat 
back. Atossa threw down the switch.

And then she raped him. She did not bother to fetter 
him, she just bowled him over in the hay and then she 
was on top of him like a hawk striking her prey. At 
first she held his wrists, but she had to let go of one 
of them in order to give a helping hand to his member, 
and then she took a firm grip on his ears instead. She 
did not ride him but half-rested on top of him, her 
wild-animal face inches from his. He looked into her 
eyes, quietly jubilant. 

She did not try to restrain him when he touched first 
her face, then her breasts. He found her nipples and 
tweaked them cautiously, while the pain pleasure grew 
so overwhelming that his penis felt as if it had been 
cut open lengthwise. He pulled, and she gasped and 
forced his mouth open and tongued him brusquely; she 
did not seem to mind the lingering taste of the boy. 
Then she put both her hands behind his head and lifted 
it, pulling it close to her left breast.

For a moment, he saw it close up, the dark, tattooed 
nipple and aureole and the olive- coloured half-dome of 
the breast itself. Then he took the nipple between his 
lips and sucked it cautiously into his mouth. Atossa 
shoved herself at him, and he sucked a little bit 
harder and played the tip of his tongue again, this 
time over his owner's nipple. She groaned with 
pleasure, disengaged and gave him the other breast. 

He complied willingly and massaged the first breast 
with his fingers. Her movements were growing violent, 
and now she took her breasts away from him, pinned down 
his wrists and began kissing him instead. When she 
came, she cried out into his open mouth, and he cried 
back as her orgasm triggered his, and they came both of 
them together and now he did not know the difference 
between pain and pleasure. She had used him, that was 
enough.

She rested for a long time, slumped on top of him, 
without in any way trying to relieve her weight upon 
him. He liked it that way. They both breathed heavily, 
but neither of them moved until his shrinking organ 
softly left her of its own accord, and he felt 
something wet running down the inside of one of his 
thighs.

A little later, he stood by the brook cleaning himself, 
shivering and with chattering teeth in the cold grey 
light, and Atossa appeared in the doorway and called 
him back in a voice he had never before heard her use.

When he returned, they had taken the boy down and put 
him between Niki and Artanne. They seemed to take good 
care of him, but Fallou wondered what the experience 
had done to him. He was after all just a child. Atossa 
gestured Fallou to her side. She warmed him, and then 
they slept, half-waking when one or the other moved. 
Once, he nuzzled her face, and she responded with a 
drowsy kiss, a gentle one this time.

What was he to her? Not a lover; he dismissed that 
thought out of hand. The inequality between them was 
too great, greater than that between a man and a woman 
of his own people, greater even than that between a 
freeman and his slave woman. He could love her, of 
course, as long as he did not aspire to the standing 
that would entitle him to be loved by her. 

He wondered to what extent she understood his feelings 
toward her, and cared about them. Sometimes he 
suspected that she understood them very well, and was 
amused, the way a great lady might be amused by the 
clumsy calf love of a page, or by the tail-wagging 
devotion of a dog. That was perhaps what he was: a pet.

But you can appreciate a pet, its obedience and its 
love, and this was perhaps what she did. For there was 
this new voice she used sometimes, and there were 
little gestures and caresses that were quite 
unnecessary, if she just wanted him to perform 
sexually, and unnecessary by definition if she just 
wanted him to do her bidding. So perhaps she felt 
differently about him than about other slaves, or even 
than horsewomen did feel about slaves in general. 

If this was an illusion, it was at least a comforting 
illusion. And he also remembered how at first he had 
hoped that he would be Sarissa's slave, and not 
Atossa's; but Atossa seemed to treat him with much more 
consideration than her younger friend did, who was 
certainly amused, and even tolerantly amused at times, 
but always in a contemptuous fashion, and who would 
occasionally reveal that his feelings, his pain were of 
very little account to her. Atossa could be cruel; 
callous she was not.

Now and then, he was reminded that he was an outsider, 
in the Sisterhood but not of it, and with a limited 
understanding only of its mores. One day, for instance, 
the slaves were unceremoniously bundled out of the 
longhouses and had to huddle in the hay shed instead, 
with the wrappings they had managed to snatch before 
their expulsion. 

The women then seemed to redistribute themselves, with 
Atossa and Timesse and Halanna and Aryana and Pirritta 
and Artanne and their likes in one house and Sarissa, 
Hikati, Lykomaki, Ariti, Niki and so forth in the 
other... every pairing was dissolved. 

There was singing, of which he could hear little and 
understand nothing, and drums and rattles, and at times 
women crossed the yard, from one longhouse to the 
other, in complete nudity; and once or twice loud 
screams were heard that drowned among the voices of the 
other sisters. This continued far into the night, and 
the voices grew silent without any command or 
invitation coming to return to the houses; the sisters 
were probably too exhausted to care about their slaves.

He asked the oldest of them, Kakou, about this custom, 
but got nothing intelligible out of him except some 
obscure hints about spirits and unspeakable 
obscenities. He wondered briefly what an unspeakable 
obscenity would be, considering those that were nearly 
everyday occurrences here. But he got nowhere.

Instead he found that the boy Mikrou had crept up to 
him and was huddling close to him. That was 
understandable in the cold and the damp; but then he 
recalled that though the boy had been cruelly whipped 
on that evening a couple of weeks ago, he had received 
nothing but pleasure from himself. The lad seemed to be 
randy, in fact. Fallou had known men who had preferred 
or at least used young boys, of course. This sort of 
thing was common among En-Tor's retainers and quite 
accepted along the coast too. He had never practiced 
this custom himself...except on that evening, of 
course, but that was under duress. Still, he was not 
really shocked.

Instead, he was stimulated. He pinned the boy down with 
a knee and both hands and came down half on top of him. 
He could not use a woman the way a woman should be 
used...so why not the boy instead? He held both wrists 
and kissed the boy, who submitted without a sound. He 
thrust his tongue inside while rubbing his sex against 
the boy's thigh, and his own thigh against the boy's 
penis, which he could feel erecting. He was now fully 
on top of Mikrou, pushing his legs apart as if he had 
been a girl, rubbing sex against sex, and the boy 
panted and was clearly aroused. 

He pinched the boy's nipples, and the panting grew 
heavier; he pinched harder, and the subject gasped, and 
harder, and he whimpered; and then he pinned down the 
wrists again and kissed him again. He disengaged. The 
boy was either too randy or to scared to move. 

Fallou thought later that he should have asked himself 
which, but he did not. He took the boy's member and 
massaged it gently and the boy moved his hips 
appreciatively. He changed his grip on the wrists and 
brought one of Mikrou's hands down to his own sex. The 
boy took the member obediently and moved the skin up 
and down.

They rested a while, slowly masturbating each other. 
Then he grabbed the boy by the hair and pushed his head 
down. He had sucked him off once... now the boy could 
damn well return the service. Mikrou did not make too 
many difficulties. The Dark Ladies would know if he had 
not done this before. He did a passable job of it, too, 
apart from some choking when he had to take rather too 
much aboard. But when he proved his competence by using 
the tip of his tongue on the gland, Fallou pushed the 
boy away. He had got another idea.

He would use the boy for a woman. He turned him over on 
his face, got between his legs without listening to his 
whispered protests, and impaled him though his anus. It 
was tight. He hurt, both of them hurt, and still he 
pushed his way in gradually, into the warm soft little 
body that he could hear weep softly under him, gritting 
his teeth to keep his orgasm back. He took a deep 
breath; the immediate danger was over. He pushed his 
hands under the boy and took his nipples again; the he 
began thrusting gently.

The boy seemed calmer. He seemed to respond to the 
nipple-teasing: perhaps he was feeling more than just 
pain. Down to his penis. Masturbate him. Do it while 
you thrust, and in the same rhythm. The boy gasped. And 
suddenly he came, wetly, spurting pathetically while 
calling out into the rainy night. Quiet...be still.

Fallou was not done yet. He started his thrusting 
again, slowly, very slowly. It was cruel, of course: 
the boy had spent whatever lust he had known and had to 
endure the remaining torture. Mikrou panted again, but 
differently. The boy whimpered while his tormentor 
grimly held himself under control, seemingly for ever, 
until the pain-pleasure became unendurable and he could 
not hold back anymore and he banged away like possessed 
on top of the sobbing boy and then he climaxed and 
pumped his come into his victim.

He disengaged, trying to extract himself without 
causing more pain. Then for a while, he rested by the 
boy he had used in such an inconsiderate fashion, 
listening to the miserable little sounds he was making. 
He did not know what to do to comfort him, or even to 
ask forgiveness; his feeble command of the language 
failed him completely, the words he had learnt from his 
mistresses were harsh words of command and obedience 
only. 

He imagined that it would not do to just try to hold 
the boy. It occurred to him that whatever the women did 
to males, their slaves should not do it to each other. 
And he was completely powerless to explain his sudden 
insight to Mikrou. Damn it, he thought -- was this the 
regular lot of slaves among all peoples, including his 
own?

If he ever returned to claim his inheritance (a thought 
that he had very rarely now) then he would be more 
compassionate to his house slaves than he had once been 
taught to be.

And then he had to go down to the brook of course in 
the miserable dark and dank and stand on the soggy ice-
cold ground while he washed his sex, and no Atossa 
called him back in to warm his shaking body.


CHAPTER 4: THE RING AND THE STAKE
---------------------------------

Had he been too hard on the boy? In spite of his 
revulsion immediately after the act, he tried to 
convince himself that he had not; the boy did not in 
fact seem to avoid him or to bear him any grudge. Very 
probably, he had not been a virgin. But then he 
remembered that slave-girl again, and thought that he 
had seen something of the same expression in the boy's 
eyes. 

Being raped by a woman was a pleasant experience to a 
male, or could be one; he always thought of his 
copulations with Atossa and Sarissa and the other women 
as rapes. But being raped by a male would really be a 
different matter. After all, it had never happened to 
himself (except when Atossa had used the horn-penis on 
him, and then she had been a very different kind of 
male!) Perhaps he had hurt Mikrou more than he had hurt 
himself?

Again, he told himself that he should be more 
considerate in the future. If he wanted pleasure from 
the boy and the sodomy had been physically enjoyable 
while it was going on, then he should find out what was 
acceptable or not. And he had not liked that forlorn, 
deserted feeling afterwards. 

There had always been a sense of belonging, even when 
Atossa had slept in Sarissa's company after using him, 
and that sense had become stronger now that his 
mistress occasionally showed her appreciation. Did he 
actually think, without really being aware of it, that 
he had been unfaithful? Atossa ruled him absolutely: 
surely she should also be the absolute ruler of his 
sex. Yes, he should have sex with other partners, 
female or male, only when she ordered him to do it.

The weather grew colder. Snow fell at times. He was 
often miserable when he had to work out of doors, but 
he had enough to eat and the two horsewomen kept him 
warm at night. Then there was a storm, and immense 
quantities of snow came down, smothering the forest. 
After it, there was silence and whiteness under the 
blue-grey sky.

There was a bath-hut on the edge of the winter camp. 
After the great snowfall, a fire was made under the 
stones in its centre, and when they were red hot, a 
great throng of naked women piled in, and poured water 
on them, making a great cloud of steam. His mistress 
had brought him along, and there he sat wedged between 
her and Sarissa, half buried in a great heap of 
tattooed female flesh. He had seen all the women naked, 
or near-naked before, of course. He had even been used 
by them. Still, the situation was peculiarly 
arousing...perhaps it was the feeling of utter abandon 
in the crowded bath.

Steam billowed, half hiding the massed breasts and 
ornamented rumps and decorated backs, and he broke into 
a sweat. So did the women. Suddenly, switches were 
produced. Ariti whipped Halanna's back, Silini scourged 
Pirritta and the squealing girl was soon more red than 
pink and sweated profusely. 

In no time, a general whipping orgy developed, the 
women lashing out indiscriminately at backs, buttocks, 
bellies; women who were lovers even whipped each 
other's sexes. Only the breasts were spared. This was 
when it dawned on him that this was not just the normal 
procedure in a steam-bath, but sexual foreplay... a 
savage caress. Then Lykomaki discovered that he had an 
erection and lost no time in pointing it out to the 
other women.

There was a howl of delight. In no time, he found 
himself lying face down across two or three writhing 
female bodies that he could scarcely identify, his 
wrists and ankles held immobile by unseen hands. His 
head was tightly clamped between two thighs that he 
suspected were Sarissa's; he had difficulty breathing 
in the damp heat and he nearly got himself in a panic. 

Somebody... Atossa...? used the switch on his back. It 
stung him. The stimulated skin produced rivers of 
sweat, running in rivulets down his back, in the 
armpits and down the cleft between his buttocks. He 
gasped; women laughed and screeched and joined in the 
fun, using their birches on him.

Atossa called out. The whipping ceased, but only in 
order to give the women a chance to turn him over on 
his back. Bodies closed in on him, cutting off his 
view, hands were laid upon him, his member and his 
balls were squeezed, his nipples pinched. When he was 
securely held by the expectantly grinning women, a girl 
pushed forward between them. It was Niki, clutching her 
switch. Her eyes were half closed, her mouth half open; 
she knelt between his widely splayed-out legs and 
raised her right arm, and then she started to whip him.

She whipped his chest; it hurt, but no more than it 
used to do. She whipped his flanks; she beat his belly, 
and that hurt more; she lashed at the insides of his 
thighs, and finally she whipped his private parts. Half 
suffocated, he made incoherent sounds and fought, but 
the women that held him were strong. New rivers of 
sweat were flowing, brought forth by the sting of the 
switch and by his struggling. Dimly though the steam, 
he could see that Niki's face was contorted, that her 
nipples were erected and her labia swollen. She was in 
a fury, or an ecstasy, of sexual arousal. The little 
bitch, he thought. The infernal little bitch.

Throwing down the switch, she fell upon him. She 
crawled all over him, rubbing herself against him, 
helpless to put out the raging fire within. She 
scratched him; she kissed him, forcing her way in and 
using his mouth with an aggressiveness that was amazing 
in such a young girl... but of course she was not an 
ordinary child but a young horsewoman. For a moment the 
slave thought, as he had briefly done at their first 
meeting, that she would forget her limitations and try 
to impale herself on him. But again, she sat on his 
face, and this time he understood her commands and the 
obscenities that she was hurling at him.

Desperately, he pushed his tongue into her. He sensed 
that another woman was straddling his chest; she leant 
briefly to one side and he glimpsed her face; it was 
Aryana. She was sitting behind Niki, caressing her 
body, kissing her neck, tickling and pinching her 
nipples. Niki gave a half-gasp or a half-scream, came 
and collapsed on top of him. 

She rolled away and her place was taken by Aryana, but 
not until the new rider had given him six or seven of 
the best with her own switch. The performance was 
repeated, and all the time, he felt other women's hands 
on his body. When Aryana was finished with him, her 
place was taken by Sarissa. He served her too, panting 
and slavering away. Hands were tugging at his sex, 
masturbating him.

Several of the women wanted to follow her, but Atossa 
sang out harshly. She produced a long rawhide thong. 
With Sarissa's help, she tied his wrists together 
behind his back, then she lashed them to his balls and, 
holding the free end of the thong...it was still four 
or five feet long, she brutally jerked him to his feet 
and out through the door.

The winter air was a cold slap across his face and his 
dripping body. He reeled down the path to the brook, 
walking behind Atossa; she stood him on a stone and 
then she emptied a leather bucket full of ice-water 
over him. The shock nearly robbed him of his 
consciousness. When he could see again, Atossa was 
repeating the procedure on herself. She gave a hoarse 
cry as the water splashed all over her, from her loose 
hair to her feet.

He was not cold. On the contrary, he glowed. Atossa 
shook herself like a dog, collected herself and tugged 
him away. They had not to go far. She pushed him over 
in a large snowdrift; nearly buried in it, he was 
ridden at a gallop until first Atossa, then he 
climaxed.

It was over. Lying on top of him, she shook 
uncontrollably. Then, dazed, she got to her feet, made 
him stand up and took him down to the water again. She 
washed his penis and her own sex. Then she walked him 
to the longhouse and freed his hands, but not his 
balls, and they rubbed each other down as if they had 
been two female lovers, and got in between the furs and 
rested, holding each other tightly. 

She tied the leash to her own left wrist. He felt 
completely exhausted, released, clean. When she decided 
to use him as a mattress, lying on top of him with her 
arms around his neck, he felt that this had absolutely 
nothing to do with being used. There was only a great 
closeness. He did not deserve it; it was a privilege. 
His mistress was very good to him.

There were times when he still worried because of this 
carefree abandoning of himself to his savage goddess, 
Atossa. He had been born a freeman. This had raised him 
above the slave herd; slaves were of course 
contemptible, and he should have despised himself. He 
also should have sought a way to free himself, to 
escape. But he did not: being owned and used by his 
mistress, obeying her least wish, longing for signs of 
her gracious appreciation, seemed perfectly natural to 
him. He existed only in and through and for Atossa. 
That might be an unhealthy situation, even a dangerous 
one. But it bothered him only occasionally.

Instead, he dreamed. When a long time had gone by since 
his last ride, his early morning fantasies explored 
alternative relationships between himself and different 
women or girls. What if... what if he returned to his 
own people, and to his place among them, with one, two 
or three captive horsewomen? What if they were his 
slaves, for him to use as he pleased?

He would be stern. He would bend them to his will, the 
way you break a filly or a wild animal. That would 
serve them right. He would use them as they had used 
him, fettered, helpless, raping them brutally. And 
still with consideration, respecting them; for he could 
not help but seeing them as they were, wild and free, 
and he could not completely jettison the notion that 
they were superior to him, and would remain so. And the 
writhing bodies did not long remain anonymous, either. 
He always found himself thinking of individual women. 

He let his thoughts dwell on most of them, even on 
middle-aged ones like the robust Ariti or Lykomaki. He 
considered the young girls and especially the delights 
of using Aryana or perhaps Silini, Hikati's daughter 
and Ariti's younger sister; but curiously enough, Niki 
was also there. He was not clear about what he could 
reasonably do with her, if anything, but she always 
wormed herself into any scenario he could dream up. 
Even in real life, he stood a good chance to be the 
first male to enter her, of course.

But he returned always to Sarissa and Atossa. 
Especially Atossa. It would probably be necessary to 
keep them chained. He would tie Atossa's hands (or 
Sarissa's?) to a ring in the wall and whip her... who? 
Sarissa, probably. No, Atossa... until she screamed. It 
would be difficult to make her scream. 

She was tough, she was proud. Yes, obstinate, more than 
any other of these self-willed, obstinate women. But a 
curious transposition always made the dream end with 
her whipping him instead, until he screamed. He did not 
think that he would be obstinate. He would scream 
freely, giving her the stimulation that aroused her so. 
She would be more cruel, more vicious than she had ever 
been before. And he had an erection, and here she was, 
close to him, and he moved over, edging closer, hoping 
that she would wake up and feel just a little bit 
randy, as she used to do in the morning, and hold him 
and perhaps order him to kiss her breasts.

Atossa was holding whispered conversations with Ariti. 
He wondered idly what they were up to; Atossa seemed to 
draw something with her fingers in the air. Ariti 
nodded. Then the two women giggled together like little 
girls that have played an unmerciful joke on somebody. 
Perhaps he should worry about their cabal? The joke 
might be on him, after all.

He was right. They came over to him and pushed him over 
on his back. Atossa restrained him and Ariti started to 
masturbate him slowly. She was really quite good; he 
rested on his back looking up at her and could not help 
admiring her. She was the most powerfully built of all 
the women, with strong shoulders and arms, and she had 
a little bit more fat on her body than the others, too, 
which actually looked good on her sturdy frame. It was 
easy to respond to her ministrations; would she use 
him? That would be nice.

She worked up a really good hard-on. But she did not 
use it, instead, she seemed to measure it with her 
fingers. She nodded and told Atossa that 'it' (whatever 
it was) should work out very nicely, and they laughed 
again. Then they released him. Ariti went out to her 
little shed.

Nothing more happened for a couple of days... nothing. 
Atossa caressed him mornings and nights, each time 
bringing him close to orgasm, but never all the way.

He felt frustrated. Was this a new stint of celibacy, 
intended to soften him up for more dressage? But on the 
evening of the third day, Ariti brought Atossa 
something small and bright. Atossa was delighted and 
showed the thing to Sarissa, who was very interested.

They got up. Ariti and Atossa went out, while Sarissa 
pushed away furs and hay until black earth showed. The 
two women returned, Ariti with a maul, Atossa with four 
iron stakes which Ariti hammered into the ground. So 
they would tie him again, and probably use him. Just 
about time, too.

The nagging question was, what more would they do to 
him?

He arranged himself in the usual manner without making 
any fuss, the coming ride uppermost in his mind. They 
tied him very securely. Then they looked at each other: 
Atossa nodded at Ariti, who undressed while Sarissa 
piled more wood on the fire. Ariti sat down by him, 
took his member between her hands and very slowly, she 
got him going.

It was very pleasant, in spite of the restraints. To be 
quite honest about it, he got a thrill out of the 
restraints, too. Ariti handled him with considerable 
finesse, in spite of her calloused hands. After a 
while, he had a very large and very hard erection. Then 
Atossa handed her the shiny little thing, and Ariti 
demonstrated and explained it to her captive, who 
listened and looked with rising consternation.

It was a brass ring. It was large enough so that the 
gland of the erected penis could be drawn through it, 
but it would be a very tight fit. It was very cleverly 
shaped to the contour of the underside of the gland 
itself; it would sit exactly where a male's sex is most 
sensitive, to pleasure and to pain. And that was indeed 
the point, or to be exact, the points. 

All around the circumference of the ring, directed 
inward, there was a succession of sharp little barbs 
which would bite and claw mercilessly when the ride 
started, pulling the skin of his sex sharply back and 
forth. Two of the points were larger than the others. 
They were placed where the curve of the ring made a 
sharp upward bend, and they would press into his skin 
where it was most tender, on the underside of the 
member, on both sides of the little skin fold there.

Chuckling merrily, Ariti pushed the ring down over the 
tip of the member as far as it would go; then she 
pinched the gland between her thumb and her first 
finger, and pulled. It hurt. Not terribly, but very 
noticeably, and he grimaced; Ariti saw it, and she 
loved it and beamed at him. Gradually, a fraction of an 
inch at a time, she massaged the ring in place, until 
it was home. 

Then she took a hard grip on the member and pushed down 
violently. That really hurt. It must have shown; Ariti 
was delighted. She straddled him, rubbing the underside 
of his penis in the cleft between her labia. The pain 
seemed to balance the pleasure exactly. She came down 
on top of him, very heavy, and kissed him; he loved 
that. Then she sat up, and there was a short stick in 
her hand.

She pushed the stick through one of his nipple-rings 
and turned it full circle. Still holding it, she stuck 
one finger through the other nipple-ring and turned 
that too, and then the free end of the stick went 
through this second ring, so that both of them were 
held under tension. This too was painful, not 
unendurable, but impossible to forget. And so she gave 
him a friendly smile and guided his member into her 
vagina and sat down hard on him.

Now he knew precisely what the ring did to him. The 
fact that the pain was given in exactly the same spot 
as the pleasure made for a most curious effect. He 
simply could not distinguish between them. As she rode 
him at a steady pace, his face stiffened into a mask; 
he must not come this early, Ariti might be displeased 
with him; but she noticed his predicament and froze. 

She was perfectly immobile while he fought the orgasm 
back. She rested for a little while on top of him, then 
she withdrew and made place for Sarissa. She too rode 
him for a few paces, but when she had reached the 
breaking-point, she remained sitting, looking 
sarcastically down upon him. His next rider was Atossa.

Atossa behaved more like Ariti. There was a strange 
expression in her face when she observed her steed; was 
there tenderness in it? But there was no doubt about 
the main ingredient. It was cruel amusement. He had 
expected that Atossa would be his last rider, but she 
too reined herself in, dismounted and handed him back 
to Ariti.

She kissed him and took possession of him. His gaze was 
fixed on the powerful torso above him, but he did 
notice that Atossa and Sarissa fell upon each other and 
made love a little to one side. So they would not use 
him: Ariti would be the last to ride him. He liked 
that, she was very attractive to him, and she had of 
course made the ring. Ariti panted, her mouth half open 
in a grin that made her teeth show, but it was plain 
that she was very close to her climax now. She gave a 
hoarse cry, dug her fingers deep into his arms, and 
withdrew into the seclusion of her orgasm.

As soon as she had regained mastery of herself, she 
increased the tempo of her ride, mauling his sex 
ruthlessly. He cried out; she rode even faster, hurting 
him even more, and he too came deep inside her and he 
cried out, and Ariti told him of her own pleasure.

And then she rested on top of him again, and she was 
heavy and warm and told him, in a very friendly 
fashion, that Atossa's invention had been a very good 
one, and that she was very pleased with it, and with 
him. She would ask Atossa's permission to use the ring 
on him on all occasions in the future. Her expression 
when she told him this was such that he returned her 
gaze boldly and told her that she was welcome.

He had expected his member to be stained with blood 
when it at last emerged from Ariti's body, but the 
points had only dug into his sex, not pierced the skin. 
The pain and the pleasure had intensified each other 
until he had become quite unable to judge the level of 
either. It had been a very strange experience. Just 
now, he wanted no more of it. But, knowing himself, he 
admitted to himself that soon, he would want just that 
again.

He did not have to wait long. From now on, Atossa used 
the ring on him very often, and Sarissa always. The 
innovation caught on, and a couple of other women 
ordered penis rings for their own males too; and when 
friends borrowed Atossa's slave, they borrowed the ring 
with him. But he still felt that of all the horsewomen, 
only Atossa and Ariti really had the right to give him 
this kind of pain, and those two alone could awaken in 
him the kind of anticipation that stimulated him... the 
anticipation he felt when he knew that someone he liked 
and desired very much would torture him sexually.

The winter was short. The snow melted and new 
vegetation sprouted from the damp earth. The horsewomen 
stayed put until the ground was firm enough to carry 
the carts; then they broke camp and moved out into the 
plains again.

The old routines were resumed. Hunting parties went 
out; at first, they killed only for the immediate needs 
of the Sisterhood, but it was good to have plenty of 
meat again. Even the males could eat their fill. 
Atossa's slave at least had never gone hungry, but red 
meat was better than both gruel and pemmican. Slowly, 
the weather got warmer, and the women discarded their 
trousers and jackets and cloaks, and the slaves their 
rags.

The grasslands were green, not brown and ochre and red 
as the slave had seen them last. Life was good. The new 
intimacy between Atossa and her slave deepened. He saw 
even the ring as a symbol of it: it seemed quite 
natural that if a horsewoman felt affection for a male, 
then considerate sexual torture was her way of 
demonstrating it. But at least in Atossa's case, it was 
not the only way. 

There was a different mood to her games with him before 
using him; and after he had served her and given her 
his pain and his service, she would rest by him, 
holding him and telling him of her pleasure, especially 
the pleasure that his suffering had given her. He did 
not grudge her that. It was her right, after all. Her 
behaviour was curiously reminiscent of that of a strict 
but loving husband. All right, then he would be a 
loving and submissive wife.

It was simply too idyllic to last. One evening, a 
patrol returned to camp with a male prisoner. They 
explained that they had surprised an illicit hunting 
party that had dared enter their territory. It was of 
course generally understood that the inner grasslands 
belonged to the horsewomen, and that you went there 
with their permission, or with an army. But some people 
would never learn, young bloods perhaps who had bragged 
a bit too thoughtlessly, carried away by drink at a 
feast. Now the reckoning was coming.

The women had not bothered to bring the captive home 
slowly on foot, as Atossa and Sarissa had done once. 
They had simply slung him, bound hand and foot, across 
the back of a loose-horse, though that horse would have 
to be ritually cleansed later in a special ceremony; if 
he had actually defiled it by riding it, they would 
have killed it.

Now they dumped him in the middle of the camp, close by 
the stake.

The Sisterhood gathered around the victim, very 
excited, in a cacophony of voices. The agenda of the 
discussion was the same as when Atossa and Sarissa had 
brought in their captive, but it was clear that the 
outcome would be entirely different this time. The 
prisoner was not regarded as especially useful or 
desirable; he was a smallish, swarthy, ungainly fellow 
with an unpleasant face, and nobody spoke in favour of 
him. They would kill him. There could be no doubt about 
how they would kill him -- unpleasantly, or 
entertainingly, depending on your point of view.

Fallou did not care for the coming show and tried to 
keep away, inventing some unnecessary chore that would 
keep him busy on the outskirts of the camp. But it was 
immediately made clear to him that his attendance was 
required, as was that of the other slaves. They had 
better see what horsewomen did to males who did not 
please them. He was dragged along and deposited on the 
periphery of the excited crowd, but with a good view. 
Other women tied the captive to the pole, face out. The 
show could begin.

First they whipped him. They did it two at a time, 
using large, heavy rawhide whips, to the accompaniment 
of his screaming. They all got in a few lashes, or 
rather more than a few, depending on their various 
degrees of enthusiasm...Hikati and Timesse, Lykomaki 
and old Ekebbe, Ariti and Pirritta, Niki and Aryana and 
the others, while the screaming got ever shriller. And 
Atossa and Sarissa, of course. But the most cruel of 
the women, those that did not limit themselves to a 
dozen or half a dozen lashes but hogged both the whip 
and the victim, were the old hags, but also the really 
young girls. This last discovery was really shocking. 

All his experiences, both at home and in En-Tor's house 
and among the horsewomen, should have taught him that 
children and young people in general can be more 
ruthless in their passion, more inconsiderate and 
cruel, that those with more experience of life, and 
with personal knowledge of pain and suffering. Still, 
he felt that especially Niki behaved in a bestial, even 
devilish way. 

This was something different and more evil than her 
childish cruelty to him, different even than the 
thornvine torture...for now she was ready to maim, and 
to kill. But all the girls joined in, even children so 
small that they could not wield the heavy whips but had 
to use smaller child-whips, toy-whips. He shuddered.

But this was only the beginning. While the last, 
panting whip-wielders rested, Pirritta and Aryana 
fetched torches, burning branches from the campfire. 
While the other women gave air to their contempt of the 
man, to their disgust with his behaviour and 
transgression, with his looks and even with his 
maleness itself, the two girls proceeded to burn his 
sex. 

They pushed their torches against it repeatedly until 
it was all black, with soot but perhaps even charred by 
the fire, and the screams were hoarse animal screams 
now; but they had become the solo part in a chorus of 
howls and insults. The prisoner was still trying to 
evade the pain, but to no avail of course. His 
struggling only served to excite his torturers even 
more.

Ariti came up to him. She was holding two tongs, large 
ones that she used for iron work. To the cheering of 
the bystanders, she gripped one nipple with each tong, 
and tore them out with one tremendous pull. Ariti, of 
all people... The victim's voice broke and was silent. 
But the Dark Ladies did not extend their compassion to 
him; he was still conscious.

They used a horse to pull his balls and male member off 
his body. Then they flayed him, cutting strips out of 
his hide and pulling it off, again with Ariti's tongs. 
He was completely silent now, but for a moment, the 
slave caught his eyes. He wished he had not. They were 
the eyes of what was no longer a human being, but a 
breathing corpse. 

He was no longer alive; but neither could he die. And 
this was when Atossa went up to him. She spoke to him 
in a voice the slave had never heard before, and hoped 
that he would never hear again, and only the eyes 
revealed that the victim heard. Then she drew her 
knife, set its point below his left collarbone, and 
pushed it slowly into his body until at last it reached 
his heart and he was truly dead.

This last moment Fallou never saw. He was on his face 
on the ground, shaking uncontrollably, and the women 
closest to him were too absorbed by the spectacle of 
the death of their victim to care or even notice. 
Neither did he see how the cadaver was dragged out of 
the camp. He stayed where he was, clutching the grass, 
and he was back where he was caught by Atossa and 
Sarissa, on that little rise far out in the grasslands 
more than half a year ago. He had thought that he had 
learnt to know these women, or at least Atossa; he had 
not.

His two owners came and fetched him and brought him to 
their tent. They sat talking far into the night, 
sometimes laughing in a dry, unpleasant fashion. They 
ignored him completely, and he was grateful for that. 
Two days later, when Atossa wanted him to serve her 
sexually, he was impotent. Sarissa taunted him, 
suggesting that they should get rid of him as they had 
of the victim of a couple of nights ago. Was she 
serious? 

Atossa spoke harshly to her, and she was silent. Atossa 
seemed to understand him. She contented herself with 
holding him and speaking softly to him, soothing him 
with her hands on his face, even cooing like a mother. 
He lost control of himself completely and burst out 
weeping. She comforted him, and Sarissa seemed to 
change her mind suddenly and helped her, pressing 
himself against his shaking shoulders and buttocks 
while Atossa was embracing him face to face. So perhaps 
Sarissa had not been contemptuous after all, just 
thoughtless.

Atossa continued to hold him while his sobbing 
subsided. She continued to talk to him, trying to 
explain. What he had seen was a punishment meted out to 
a culpable enemy, a transgressor. His body had been 
dragged away by its feet, behind a horse, to a place 
where his friends would find it, and perhaps learn from 
his fate. 

The women's triumph and joy was righteous. But this 
would never happen to him, to Atossa's and Sarissa's 
slave: they would never permit it, and no other 
horsewoman would demand it. He belonged with the 
Sisterhood, as property, certainly, but as valuable, 
even cherished property. Yes, Atossa and Sarissa, and 
the other women too, Ariti and Lykomaki and Hikati 
even, did cherish him. 

Had he not understood that?

She was still holding him when he fell asleep. Unlike 
the two previous nights, his sleep was not disturbed by 
dreams of being in the dead man's place. He woke up 
with his mistress' hand around his member, and with the 
beginning of an erection which she tended carefully. 
But she did not use him until nightfall, and by then, 
he was in working order again. 


CHAPTER 5: RITES OF PASSAGE
---------------------------

They continued their slow and deliberate voyage across 
the grasslands. In a green field near a stream, flowing 
abundantly in this season, they camped and feasted with 
women of several other sisterhoods, women with names 
that were often the same as those that he knew, but 
with tattoos and hairstyles and equipment that were all 
subtly different. 

They eyed him coolly and commented on his advantages, 
sometimes complimenting Atossa on her pleasant slave, 
but they too had slaves of course. Some of them seemed 
to treat their males much more harshly than the women 
of his own Sisterhood did, sometimes even keeping them 
chained by their balls or, in two cases, by rings 
through the little skin folds beneath the glands of 
their penises. These two slaves were boys as young as 
Mikrou or even younger. One adult male had a ring 
through his nose. One or two bore whipping scars.

Slaves were traded, too. One sisterhood seemed to have 
a surplus to sell, but only Aryana bought one, an 
attractive boy with an open, trustful face, slightly 
younger than herself. The price was correspondingly 
high, six horses. One or two women actually asked 
Atossa the price of her slave, but she just laughed the 
offers away. Her slave was not for sale. Fallou warmed 
to her; it was nice to hear that you were appreciated.

There were games, horse races and foot races, archery 
and wrestling. Sarissa won the archery contest, leading 
away the prize horse, and Atossa beat all comers at 
wrestling until a giantess of a woman, nearly black of 
skin, managed to subdue her after a mighty struggle. 
After the match, they both went down to the brook to 
wash off the dust and sweat, and then Atossa followed 
the victor to her tent, amid much laughter and jesting. 

Sarissa, who seemed to be torn between merriment and 
jealousy, explained that this was the victor's prize: 
to possess any one of the women she had got the better 
of, and this time Atossa had been chosen. For a moment 
of horror, Fallou thought that Atossa would be a slave 
herself, and that he would be separated from her for 
ever, but Sarissa reassured him: this was for one night 
only, and it was even regarded as an honour. 

There was henceforth to be a bond of mutual obligation 
between these two women. But yes, there was actually 
one group, the Red Sisters, that took and kept and used 
female slaves. They scorned males completely. But these 
women were enemies, foes of all right womanhood, and he 
should not wish to see them!

If he ever did, they would kill him, and then they 
would eat his flesh.

There was much talking and some singing around the 
campfires that evening, but Atossa was not there, of 
course. When Fallou was alone with Ariti for a 
moment... his attraction to her had at last overcome 
the revulsion he had felt for some time after that 
scene by the stake...he asked her what would be done to 
Atossa. She looked pensively at him, hesitated but told 
him at last that she would be treated like a male. But 
it would not be proper, even for a Sister, to ask her 
afterwards what had been done to her. He had no further 
questions.

Immediately after this jamboree, it was clear that 
Pirritta, the un-tattooed young one, was to be singled 
out for special attention. She was repeatedly secluded 
in a tent with the old women. She went out with a 
hunting party one day and returned proudly with the 
carcass of a bush-cat that still had her short hunting-
spear through its body. The teeth and claws were added 
to her necklace, secret charms and preparations were 
made from other parts of the animal. 

Then something strange was done to the girl: she was 
buried alive, tightly bound in a pit in the ground, 
lined with hay and furs but completely covered with 
sods, resting on dry branches. Around the covered pit 
sat the hags, chanting and chanting for one day and one 
night, until at sunrise on the second day the girl was 
resurrected and her child-name was taken away from her. 

After a merciful time of rest, she spent the next night 
in a small leather tent with two of the oldest women, 
one of them being Hikati, the chiefess and resident 
witch. Strange herbs were burnt, and their smoke 
inhaled, and Atossa explained to her slave that spirits 
appeared out of the dark to guide the Nameless One 
along her passage to womanhood, and to fortify her for 
her coming ordeal. 

She told the slave, in a forthright but compassionate 
manner, that he had been designated to play a part in 
this ceremony. She let him know what it was, and for a 
moment, he was horrified. They were sitting, cross-
legged, opposite each other, and he felt all blood 
leave his face, but then he gathered all his courage 
and returned Atossa's burning stare and spoke to her. 

He would not only submit willingly to the treatment 
that awaited him, though his attitude would of course 
not make the slightest difference, but he would ask to 
be given all that was given to the Nameless One, 
provided only that it would be given to him by Atossa 
herself.

She sat silent for a while, gazing inscrutably at him. 
Then she told him that she would ask Hikati for this 
favour. She left him trembling with fear and 
excitement.

***

Evening came, and they marched away a short distance, 
an hour's walk or so, and came to the Passage-place. It 
was a small rise of the ground, crowned with four great 
upright stones, like fingers against the dark sky, 
groping for the moon. It reeked of holiness.

Fires were made. The women arranged themselves in a 
rough circle, all of them in company with their lovers 
and their males. Atossa however left Sarissa and Fallou 
standing outside the circle and joined the older women, 
the leaders of the ceremony. Fallou saw that the stones 
had been erected in pairs, and each pair was joined by 
a stout crosstree, making two great gates... and then 
he recognised them for what they were, two gallows. 

He felt a lump in his throat, the tongue seemed to grow 
in his dry mouth and his heart thumped. He was scared. 
His decision of the previous night seemed foolish, even 
preposterous. Why ask for more of this outrageous 
treatment than necessary? Would his courage and 
devotion be appreciated, would it even be recognised?

And then Sarissa whispered in his ear, and he knew.

Atossa had been impressed. And yes, she had secured 
permission to be his executioner. He was still scared, 
but now he felt surer of himself. Sarissa was holding 
him in a tight grip, and the feeling was somehow 
reassuring.

The Nameless One, who had also been kept waiting 
outside the circle, was now ceremoniously led in among 
the chanting women. The firelight that flickered on the 
four great monoliths shone bright red on her naked 
body; she seemed half dazed but walked erect and 
without hesitation. She joined in the singing. Sarissa 
took Fallou firmly by his arm and led him forward, 
until he stood between two of the stones, under the 
ominous crosstree. He saw that two heavy ropes hung 
from it, and he knew what they were for.

Sarissa called out softly, and three of the women came 
forward to help her. The slave's wrists were secured to 
the ropes with soft leather straps; the helpers took 
the loose ends and pulled the ropes until his arms were 
raised high above his head. For a moment, he thought of 
Mikrou. But Sarissa hugged him briefly and kissed him, 
and whispered again, and then she joined her comrades 
and helped them to hoist him aloft.

It did not hurt...not yet. His arms seemed to be pulled 
halfway out of their sockets, his wrists would begin to 
smart by and by (though he doubted that he would notice 
it) and his breathing was slightly strained. But the 
most immediate sensation was one of helplessness. With 
his feet twelve inches above the ground, what could he 
do to protect himself? Lying on one's back, tied hand 
and foot in preparation for the rape, should be just as 
bad. It was not. 

He remembered that he had once been told that peoples 
far to the south hanged criminals and sacrificial 
victims by their arms, not by their necks. They were 
just left to hang until they were dead. He knew that 
this would not happen to him, but the thought was still 
unnerving. He squirmed, just in order to remind himself 
that he was still alive. 

Sarissa looked up at him; her face was set in a mask of 
determination and he sensed that inwardly, she had 
already left him to the fate that awaited him. She had 
given him what encouragement she could, now she would 
just be one of the several participators in the rite. 
He felt his heart thump against his ribs.

The chanting ceased abruptly. The Nameless One had 
already been prepared for her own suspension, and 
Hikati asked her if she was ready for the ordeal. Yes, 
she was: her voice was quite steady. How many, to prove 
her worth as a horsewoman and a brave? Thin but clear, 
her voice rang out: four dozen.

A collective breath was drawn. Atossa had of course 
told Fallou about the ceremony, and what he could 
expect for himself...exactly what the Nameless One 
demanded. But this was more than the usual ration. He 
felt his heart sink. And then the women could hardly 
wait to see the subject properly suspended before they 
turned to the slave. And Atossa rose and came forward, 
and she was holding a whip. She spoke to him. 

He understood that these were ritual words, necessary 
words, but they still hurt. He was a male, and by 
definition a slave. Women were real people, but males 
were half-human only, little monsters that existed only 
to serve their mistresses. Women were hunters, 
warriors, braves. Males were timid, fearing for their 
skin, fearing pain. The whip would prove it; his 
screaming and begging for mercy would prove it.

Atossa raised her whip. But she did not yet swing it; 
for across the circle stood another woman, a young 
brave, Silini, daughter of Hikati. And she too spoke, 
to the Nameless One who was now also suspended opposite 
the slave, between the other two monoliths.

She spoke of pride and fortitude, the marks of the true 
horsewoman. The Nameless One had promised that she 
would take four dozen lashes on her naked skin, without 
succumbing to fear or pain, without debasing herself. 
Her courageous silence would prove, together with the 
sacrificial slave's screams, that woman was superior to 
man, that she was born a fighter and a ruler and he a 
slave. And the Dark Ladies, ever waiting outside the 
light of the fires, would receive and accept this 
offering, hallowing the name that the Nameless One 
would receive.

And so the ordeal began. Atossa swung her whip at last, 
and it made a dull sound, unlike any other, when the 
lash connected with the hide of the slave; and then 
Silini followed. Both subjects, the male and the 
female, jerked violently, dancing in air, their faces 
contorted with pain. But both were silent. The only 
sound, apart from the gasps of the subjects, the heavy 
breathing of the two executioners and the cracking of 
the whips, came from the onlookers who murmured in a 
chorus, counting the lashes: one, two, three...

He had never been whipped before. He had been caned as 
a boy, beaten as a man, but never whipped. He had seen 
men being whipped, though, as a punishment, and women, 
both for infractions of the arbitrary rules that wives 
and daughters and slave women had to obey, and for 
nothing but the amusement and the cruel pleasure of 
their husbands or owners. 

They had all screamed, sometimes even before the 
whipping had begun, always before it had progressed 
very far. But he had always understood that they had 
screamed more from fear than from pain. He did fear the 
pain, but he did not fear for his life: he would 
receive no more than the young girl opposite him. And 
she was expected to survive, and hunt, and fight, and 
rule men.

The pain was severe, however. Every lash burned like a 
branding-iron laid across his naked skin. He danced his 
pain-dance, clenched his fists and jaws, but he would 
not scream. He would show them. The pain increased as 
that of every new lash was added to that from the 
previous ones; still he conceded the women only gasps, 
no scream. He would show them that a male could be as 
courageous as a horsewoman.

For a moment he closed his eyes, but he opened them 
again at once: his only comfort was that it was Atossa 
who was doing this to him, and he wanted to see her, to 
see her face and her eyes, and be seen by her. His love 
of her was as important as his pride in carrying him 
through this ordeal. He caught a glimpse of the girl 
opposite; she too danced the whip-dance...and she too 
was silent. But their condition was not the same. He 
was expected to scream, but would not; she was expected 
not to, and must not. Thus, her ordeal was greater than 
his.

After the first dozen, the whip-wielders changed their 
positions and started to flog the backs of their 
subjects. That was worse: now he could not see Atossa 
anymore. He saw only the Nameless One, the girl who had 
been the fair-skinned Pirritta and who was now just a 
body, striped by whip-marks but animated by a soul that 
had to prove its mettle. 

He tried to concentrate on what he saw. He had often 
looked at her with cupidity, thinking how fine it would 
be to possess this young body, and always immediately 
how desirable it would be to be possessed by this 
straight and beautiful young soul. Now they were two 
contestants, and she had to defeat him. But he would 
show them.

After the second dozen, the third began. Atossa started 
anew with his shoulders, working down his back inch by 
inch. The buttocks had been less agonizing. But the 
pain was not increasing anymore, it had reached a 
plateau, a maximum. He felt as if he was being burned 
alive, but he was not consumed by the fire. The pain 
was unendurable, but he endured it and he was still 
silent.

Atossa finished with his buttocks for the second time. 
There was a new pause while she returned to her 
original position. For the first time, he heard that 
the women were murmuring excitedly between them. 
Fine... he was showing them! He was really proving that 
a male could be as brave as a woman. But his courage 
wavered when he saw Atossa and her whip again. 

She stared at him as in a trance, or a passion of 
anger; and she raised her whip and started on the last 
dozen. The body of the Nameless One was disfigured by 
the red welts that crisscrossed her chest and belly. 
How terrible it must be, in spite of all the 
preparation, for a young girl, a child really, to 
suffer thus.

And it struck him like lightning that he simply had to 
scream. If not, the girl would have to ask for more, 
and more, until he broke down, or she broke down, and 
if she did, then she would be disgraced. And if she did 
not, then she would still have suffered unnecessarily, 
because of his willfulness. 

She did not deserve that. She had never wronged him. He 
wanted to be her friend, not her enemy, both because it 
would be bad to have enemies among his rulers and 
because he wanted her, or wanted to be desired by her. 
He had to scream before the four dozen were all given.

Only half conscious, he counted one, two. These hit, 
the first above, the second below his nipples (which 
Atossa had not touched; she was a virtuoso with the 
whip). Then he released his grip on himself and did 
what he should have done all the time...screamed, 
howled his agony and his terror and despair, and his 
love and his compassion with the girl opposite. He 
continued even when Atossa had laid the last cut across 
his pubic bone and lowered her right arm. It was a 
relief, a release to do it. He screamed until he was 
unable to continue for lack of air.

It was over. Atossa stood like a statue in front of 
him, but with stooping shoulders and hanging head. What 
did she think, what did she feel? But the Nameless One 
was lowered to the ground, and released, and supported, 
and cheered like a victor by the women. She was led to 
the nearest fire, and they gathered around her, 
touching her, and there was a cry: four dozen! four 
dozen! And Hikati looked on while Silini held and 
kissed the girl she had whipped so cruelly, for her own 
good and for that of the Sisterhood, and then Hikati 
gave her a new name, Ginesse. And the women cheered, 
because she had vindicated them.

But not for long. Their eyes went to Atossa and her 
slave, and Atossa was still shaken by what had happened 
to her. And she raised her head and straightened her 
shoulders and screamed out, into the darkness, for the 
Dark Ladies to hear: five! five dozen!

Her sisters were clearly horrified. They thronged 
around her, begging her to retract her promise. But she 
would not: three dozen was what a girl asked for when 
her time came, and that was what she herself had asked 
for, and been given, when she made her Passage. 
Pirritta's four had been a challenge, a way of 
asserting herself and gaining esteem.

Now her own slave had taken three dozen -- even more 
than that -- in silence. Had they not counted them? Did 
they not know that her slave was brave, a woman's equal 
in courage? Now she would have to prove superior to 
him, for a woman must not be inferior to her own slave. 
Five dozen! Would they deny her that?

They would not. They did murmur and mutter, and 
indicate that they found Atossa's pride excessive, but 
it was also clear that they admired it. Or rather, they 
would if she could take it. And so, while Ginesse 
rested, warmed by a heavy cloak and caressed and 
congratulated by her friends, Atossa took her place. 
And Ariti had consented to swing the whip. 

Sarissa had offered to do it, but Atossa would not hear 
of it: for not only were they lovers (which Silini and 
Ginesse also were) and bound by holy oaths, it would 
also hurt her soul (and this she did not deny). Ariti 
was a dear friend, but not her lover.

The slave was not released. He remained suspended, his 
body one single dull ache that had spread, as he had 
known it would eventually, to his arms. He had the best 
view of Atossa's coming agony of any one present. He 
watched as she was swung from the crosstree and as 
Ariti, the friendly and cruel Ariti, prepared to whip 
her.

This was his second whipping on that night. For he 
suffered with Atossa, feeling the sting and the bite, 
the searing pain of the red iron, jerking and 
shuddering as each lash struck his mistress. And Atossa 
danced, her face a rigid mask of pain. A red reflection 
of the nearest fire, a hot coal in her dark face, 
revealed that she was looking at him, at her slave who 
had unwittingly caused this horror.

For a horror it was, and it seemed to go on for ever. 
First the usual dozen in front; with exquisite skill, 
the smith spared her friend's breasts. And then one 
dozen across her back, two dozen, three dozen; and now 
Ariti hesitated before each cut, placing it in her mind 
before she put it in place on Atossa's back. And still 
Atossa was silent. Now she was not looking at her slave 
anymore...she threw her head back, staring at the black 
sky and only the sky could see the expression on her 
face.

Four dozen; and Ariti, looking pained, came around for 
the last twelve. These were dealt out quickly, so as 
not to let Atossa suffer too long. And then she hung 
motionless, as if dead, until she could be lowered and 
set free. Then, she walked up to her slave, pushed the 
supporting hands away and asked for the whip. She 
looked up at him. She spoke.

Yes, she was proud of him. But he did understand what 
he had unwittingly done to his rightful owner and 
mistress, did he not? He did understand why she had to 
do what she had done? All right, then he would also 
understand why she had to do what she would do now, to 
him. He nodded dumb assent, and she seemed to 
understand him. She raised the whip and dealt him three 
mighty blows across his chest and belly, and he 
screamed at once. A great sigh was heard from the dark 
throng of waiting horsewomen.

And then they released him. He saw that Atossa was 
greeted by Sarissa, her lover, and her kiss was 
returned; and by her daughter Halanna who came rushing 
up to her, looking as if she had been in a great 
anguish. And then Ariti who hugged Atossa cautiously 
and kissed her and whispered long with her, and what 
they told each other he never learnt.

And when Atossa had been bedded down by the fire, next 
to Ginesse, then Sarissa and Ariti, and Lykomaki and 
Aryana and even little Niki (who was too excited to sit 
still for long, however) came to comfort Fallou and 
reassure him. They told him not to be afraid. Atossa 
had been so clever with the whip that his skin was 
unbroken, and she was not angry with him. He had not 
known what he had done, being ignorant of what the 
Nameless One would ask for, and of the consequences of 
his own silence.

He too was allowed to rest. His closest friends (yes, 
they were friends) sat around him, talking softly. He 
did understand that Atossa had to reassert her 
authority over him, did he not? And they were all very 
impressed; he was certainly courageous and they would 
think him very nearly the equal of a brave. But he was 
still their slave, and they would still do with him as 
they pleased, and they expected him to obey them 
without question; he did understand that, too, did he 
not? Yes, he did. 

He looked at their eager, sincere faces, and felt their 
gentle hands touch him where the whip had spared him, 
including his nipples and his sex and then up at the 
stars which had come out, and then he closed his eyes 
and let his soul drift away.

He was not required to do any work for the next three 
days. Instead he rested in the tent, or under a shady 
tree during the day, wrapped in a large woollen cover 
with Atossa. She would not speak of their respective 
ordeals. She had made herself clear already, had she 
not? But the other women were right, she was not angry 
with him.

On the contrary, her pride of him was mingled with an 
even greater pride of herself, for no woman of this 
Sisterhood had endured five dozen in anybody's memory. 
Now they all knew her for what she was, the bravest of 
the brave. And this was all because of his silly 
conceitedness! She kissed him, and then she actually 
took his sex and masturbated him and she told him to 
fondle her breasts and play with her nipples. He was 
capable of that much work, eh?

And the pain, his pain and her pain, would go away, and 
her wounds would heal (yes, her skin had broken under 
the whip in two places, in spite of Ariti's skill) but 
the pride would remain, and the esteem of her fellow 
horsewomen. When she was rested, she would use him more 
ruthlessly than ever, now that she knew that he could 
take it. 

He would not forget to whom he belonged, would he? 
Stammering, he tried to explain that he was more than 
ever her slave, and she rested listening with her eyes 
nearly closed, purring like a cat. After some time, she 
asked him if his erection had helped. At first, 
thinking of the hard-on he was presently enjoying, he 
did not understand what she meant. The one he had when 
the whipping began, stupid. Was he serious... had he 
not noticed it? She laughed tolerantly at him.

***

On the second day, she used him several times, mounting 
him and taking him into herself, but without riding him 
to the finish. Instead she rested on top of him, 
motionless until he could not hold his erection any 
longer, and even beyond that stage. His body was still 
aching, as her body must be too, but he did not 
complain. What she did served as proof of the sincerity 
of her words. On the third day, she copulated with him 
and rode him to orgasm, and this time she used the 
ring.

After the ride, she talked. She told him about the 
things that she would do to him in the near future, 
what she would have Ariti do to him. He would be 
treated more harshly than any other slave of this 
sisterhood, more cruelly. But she would do this because 
of her regard for him, and because he was braver than 
any other slave she had ever known or heard about, and 
clearly demanded a stern regime. And he told her, as he 
had done on that evening of the rite of passage, that 
he accepted whatever she would to do, and that it would 
not diminish the love that he felt for her.

Not until then did he remember that he had never before 
dared declare openly his feelings toward her. A slave 
should keep his emotions to himself, except when he was 
punished of course, or tortured for the pleasure of his 
owner, who would then find satisfaction in his show of 
distress. But Atossa was not displeased. Instead she 
conceded that she held him in higher regard than was 
common with mistresses and slaves. And that, he 
presumed, was the nearest thing to a declaration of 
love on her part.

On the fourth day, he got up and worked. As he was 
labouring at turning the hand mill, grinding cornmeal, 
Silini and Ginesse walked by, stopped and looked at 
him. Both his and Ginesse's body were still marked with 
the purplish stripes from the whipping. But she was 
proud and merry, and she and Silini cocked their heads 
together and whispered and giggled. They behaved like 
lovers. 

They were of course lovers, and it was perhaps a 
special favour that one had been given permission to 
whip the other. Silini spoke first to him. She wanted 
to borrow him. He indicated his submission, but she 
would have to ask Atossa's permission first. She 
departed; Ginesse made him stand in front of her while 
she scrutinised and felt his welts. Silini returned 
after a while, brandishing the pain-ring as proof of 
Atossa's consent.

In the tent that belonged to Ginesse's mother Timesse, 
who was out hunting, they pushed him over and played 
with him. Silini gave her friend a thorough 
demonstration of male anatomy and its use. Ginesse was 
made to toy with the nipple-rings, caress the slave's 
balls and squeeze and pinch his erect member. She was 
fascinated, but hesitant. Perhaps she should leave the 
male sex alone until she had received her tattoos? 

All right, if she felt that way, so Silini used him 
instead, tying him to the four stakes, pulling his 
gland through the ring and then mounting him and riding 
him very roughly, as if she wanted to impress Ginesse 
with her imperiousness and her disregard of the slave's 
comfort. She kept herself firmly under control, and as 
he was still tired and had been used by Atossa the 
previous evening, she enjoyed a long ride.

While the pain of the ring and the ache in his member 
rose and slowly drowned him and robbed him of his own 
self-control, he was still able to drink the sight of 
Silini moving rhythmically above him. She had lovely 
breasts, small and conical but so firm that they 
pointed out and up even when she was on her back, and 
with strange, long nipples that reminded him of 
almonds, and then his orgasm came and he was no longer 
a subject being used but one with his rider.

And then he was made to serve Ginesse too, lying 
between her thighs, kissing and licking her sex, 
caressing her breasts and nipples while he pushed his 
tongue as far into her vagina as he could. She was very 
pleased with him. Yes, he was well versed in the art of 
satisfying a woman now. 

Atossa had been a good teacher. 


CHAPTER 6: BODY DECORATION
--------------------------

Ariti was very busy. The rings had been a great hit 
with the women of the other sisterhoods, and many of 
them had ordered the genuine article, made by her. 
Women arrived on horseback to fetch them and to pay in 
shells or even with a horse. So Aryana had to wait for 
some time before her new slave Ippou could be fitted 
out properly, and with the extras that the girl had 
dreamt up. But when Ariti could give her attention to 
him, Atossa brought Fallou to watch the show.

A leather sheet had been spread on the ground; on it 
was Ippou on his back, tied down to the customary four 
stakes, and he was clearly very scared. Aryana was 
already busy with him. She was on top of him, kissing 
and pinching, and he was obviously not immune to the 
treatment. Slowly, his flaccid member rose and became a 
nice erection, which all the women present... Ariti and 
Atossa and Sarissa and Lykomaki, and soon Silini and 
Ginesse too and even little Niki, ever greedy for pain 
games, and of course Aryana herself... commented on 
favourably. 

Aryana did not seem to want to use it, however. She 
just sat astride him, rubbing her leather-clad crotch 
against his sex, massaging his nipples in preparation 
for the bloodletting. His eyes never left her face. He 
had been given more time to get acquainted to his owner 
before the piercing than Atossa's slave had got: did 
this mean that he was less or more afraid of her than 
Fallou had been of his captors? It was impossible to 
tell. 

It was obvious, however, that Ippou was fascinated with 
Aryana, who had of course a superb body and who was 
also the only woman of the Sisterhood who a male 
unaccustomed to horsewomen and their appearance and 
their peculiar allures would have found beautiful.

Now she was sitting very erect with his stiff, purplish 
penis in his hands. Ariti approached, holding two 
skewers. Ippou glanced at them, horrified; but surely 
he could not have been ignorant of what awaited him? 
Ariti smiled at him and sat down opposite Aryana and 
facing her, two large muscular thighs gripping the 
slave's head. 

He certainly had a view, the young Aryana and the rough 
but attractive blacksmith were both busy with him now, 
but it was an open question whether he enjoyed it as he 
should have done. He looked at Aryana with mute appeal 
painted in his face, but she just gave him a savage 
animal grin. She was enjoying herself hugely.

And then Ariti leant over him, casting her shadow over 
him, and took a little plier from her girdle. For a 
short but horrible moment, Fallou remembered what Ariti 
had done to the captive at the stake. But mutilation 
was not on the agenda, of course. She had put one of 
the skewers in her mouth in order to get one hand free 
for the plier. With it, she took a firm grip on Ippou's 
left nipple and pulled it violently outward. 

His face was contorted with pain and fear, but he was 
still silent. With her other hand, Ariti put the point 
of her skewer to the base of the nipple where it joined 
the aureole, and pushed.

A spasm ran through Ippou's body. The sound that he 
made was a grunt that was also a gasp but not quite a 
scream; and he came, and a jet of sperm spurted from 
his rod, between Aryana's palms, landing between her 
breasts. She cried out angrily; and the boy went limp 
with a sob while a white little stream ran down his 
owner's belly and a trickle of red blood found its way 
across his chest. His sobbing continued while Ariti 
took the other skewer from her mouth, moving the plier 
to her other hand. 

When she repeated the procedure with his right nipple, 
he screamed in what all the women deemed was a very 
satisfactory fashion. And then Aryana leant over him 
and slapped his face twice, once on each cheek, before 
getting to her feet and leaving them in order to wash 
herself.

Fallou recalled his own orgasm when he had been 
pierced. But that time, he had been ridden by Sarissa, 
and he had come inside her. So he had not reflected 
much on it. But this young fellow, who seemed normal 
enough and was freshly captured, had climaxed without 
benefit of a female sex, seemingly from pain alone. Was 
that possible? Would he too lose control of himself if 
he was suitably excited and then given violent pain in 
precisely the right place? Was this a property of the 
male sex in general? And what about women. Oh well, 
being hung from a gallows and whipped until the tattoos 
scarcely hid the stripes did not work, obviously.

He had observed the proceedings so intently that he did 
not notice until now that Atossa, who was sitting 
behind him with her arms around him, was pinching his 
own nipples and that he had an erection of his own. She 
was breathing heavily. She leant forward and whispered 
in his ear that she wanted to use him, but that the 
show was not over yet. And then she moved her hands to 
his sex. Oh my, he was really excited; did he remember 
what she and Sarissa had done to him once, that night 
in the windbreak far out in the grasslands? Yes, this 
was perhaps why he was having this hard-on.

Would she use the ring when riding him, please? He 
heard her chuckle.

Aryana returned. Ariti had wiped most of the come off 
Ippou's swollen but soft penis and fetched a new 
skewer. While Aryana looked on excitedly, she pierced 
the skin-fold on the underside of the slave's member, 
immediately below the gland, just where the pain-ring 
hurt the most. But the boy did not scream this time, he 
just made a miserable little sound. 

The onlookers were delighted, however. And then Ariti 
finished the piercing by pushing a curved skewer 
through a pinched fold of skin beneath the boy's 
testicle-bag. She leant forward, kissed him fondly and 
told him that he had been a good horse after all and 
that his owner would surely forgive his misdemeanour. 
Maybe he understood what she said, or at least that she 
wished him well. By the way, could she have the use of 
him now and then when the wounds had healed and all the 
hardware was in place? 

Aryana complimented her on the job, and she would be 
happy to oblige her.

And on this pleasant note ended the piercing session, 
and Atossa dragged Fallou away to her tent with 
unseemly haste and mounted him, telling him in a very 
friendly fashion that she would like to give him 
horrible pain in the future, because she loved him. And 
Sarissa hissed, what about me? what about me? until 
Atossa laughed and promised that she would make love to 
her too, but she simply had to rest for a while!

Hakki was the Sisterhood's tattoo artist. She was a 
good-looking woman...she was Aryana's mother, after 
all...but this specialty was her claim to distinction. 
Now she was attending to the decoration of Ginesse's 
skin, so essential to the girl's standing as a full 
horsewoman. Several women were there to witness the 
procedure, and the subject's comportment during it, and 
Timesse, her mother, presided over them. And just as 
during the passage-rite, the slaves were present in 
order to learn about the courage of a horsewoman.

Ginesse rested on a leather sheet, seemingly completely 
relaxed, her head on Silini's lap. Hakki laid out the 
design in vegetable dye with a small brush. It would 
soon fade away, of course, being a guide only to the 
permanent tattoos, and Hakki painted no more than she 
could cover in a week's work or so. Then she brought 
out her gear, needles with handles and larger multi-
pointed tools for lines and fills. Crouching over her 
living canvas, she set to work.

Ginesse was silent, as befitted a horsewoman. Her 
hands, open, rested at her sides, her legs were 
slightly parted. Only the thin lines between her 
eyebrows and at the corners of her mouth spoke of the 
pain she was experiencing. It was certainly less acute 
than under the whip, but it was more drawn-out. When 
Hakki felt that the left breast was too inflamed and 
red for further work, she moved over to the right one, 
and then to the belly and the mound, which had been 
shaved for the occasion. By now, Fallou knew from his 
own experience that these women were tattooed even on 
their outer labia; he hoped that he would be present to 
see this done too.

Ginesse did not get a rest until Hakki needed one. Then 
the woman stroked the girl's cheek, smiled at her and 
assured her that she appreciated her good behaviour, 
which would surely increase her reputation. And Silini 
leant forward and kissed her. After a meal and a short 
pause, the treatment continued. Would Ginesse like a 
really good nipple job? She would indeed. Silini smiled 
proudly: Ginesse was her girl.

These sessions were repeated, day after day, while 
ever-new square inches of Ginesse's smooth skin were 
covered by the expanding design. Shoulders and 
buttocks, brow and cheeks, thighs and belly blossomed 
with the time-honoured patterns and symbols that 
designated the girl a member of this tribe, this 
sisterhood and this moeity. 

Slowly their totem animals took shape on her cruelly 
maltreated hide, branding her with her identity, her 
duties and her rights as clearly and permanently as 
with a red hot iron. And Ginesse endured it, even when 
the holy signs that guaranteed her future fertility and 
the perpetuation of her lineage were drawn with the 
needle, first on the insides of her thighs and then on 
her very sex. Silini sat patiently with Ginesse's head 
on her lap or between her thighs, watching over her and 
giving her strength. Day after day, week after week, 
Ginesse suffered the sting of the needles and the slow 
ache without a murmur.

Ippou wore first the skewers, then the customary studs 
for nearly twenty days before returning for a new 
session with Ariti. This was not to be a particularly 
painful one, but he looked pale and nervous 
nevertheless. Perhaps Aryana had managed to tell him 
what awaited him, in spite of the language barrier. 
This time too, Atossa had brought Fallou to the show.

A large collection of ironmongery was laid out in front 
of the portable forge. Niki, always eager for cruelty, 
was working the bellows. The first item was an iron 
collar. It was a light one, and mercifully covered with 
leather, but still a cruel thing to wear. 

There seemed to be an articulation somewhere under the 
leather; Ariti opened the collar, adjusted it and 
locked it permanently with a red-hot rivet which she 
carefully hammered flat on the anvil while the boy 
knelt before it, as in prayer. A chain hung down from 
the collar, ending with a large ring that swung in the 
vicinity of Ippou's pubic bone.

The nipple rings were quite ordinary, except that they 
were joined by a chain. Ippou submitted to the chaining 
meekly, glancing only occasionally at the hardware. 
Instead his eyes were glued to Ariti when she was busy 
with him, and to Aryana in between. His owner stood by 
the forge, smiling benignly at him while repeatedly 
drawing the lash of a long horsewhip between her 
fingers.

Now he had to lie down on his back. Ariti examined his 
sex carefully, then she grunted approvingly. He was 
ready. He had in fact a half-erection that revealed 
that the treatment he was undergoing had its exciting 
side. Ariti began by pushing a ring through the hole 
made on the underside of his testicle-bag and then 
riveting the ring shut. 

Ippou's penis was now very large and just as stiff as 
when Aryana had been holding it before the piercing. 
Ariti stood up, straightening her back and stretching 
like a cat, her arms high above her head. She smiled 
first at Aryana, then at Ippou, telling him that he was 
a good slave and that it was a pleasure to work on him. 
Then she knelt by his side again.

Through the hole in his penis she threaded a ring, the 
same size as the ones she had put in place already. But 
a foot-long chain dangled from it, ending in another 
ring. Atossa grew excited and squeezed Fallou's member. 
He too was fascinated. What would it be like to wear 
such a brutal chain while you were being used? Ariti 
finished the job with the customary rivet.

Then Aryana too knelt, and she wrapped strips of pelt 
around her slave's ankles, tying each one in place with 
leather laces. Ariti followed them with leg-irons. One 
of them, the left one, was trailing a chain, about one-
and-a half foot in length, the other had just a ring.

Aryana thanked Ariti profusely, promising her the use 
of Ippou whenever she wanted. Then she turned the boy 
over on his face and tied his elbows together. This 
done, she rolled him over on his back again. Ariti 
handled her a padlock, the size of a small child's 
fist.

Padlocks were expensive things of course, made by 
clever locksmiths in the towns along the coast and 
traded against horses or even more valuable things, 
such as slaves. The horsewomen used them for locking 
the coffers with their most precious belongings. Aryana 
bent down, threaded the yoke of the lock first through 
the bag ring and then through the penis-ring before 
locking it shut. The boy's member had softened a little 
while his legs were being chained, but she still had 
some difficulty in bending it. 

With a second lock, she secured the loose end of the 
ankle-chain to the other leg-iron, hobbling her slave. 
The keys were on a soft leather strap which she hung 
around her neck, and now they dangled between her 
conical girlish breasts like a strange ornament. She 
stepped back and enjoyed the effect; then she turned to 
Ariti, embracing her. 

The smith returned the embrace and they kissed. Might 
they not use Ippou together, asked Aryana, enjoying him 
in each other's company? Ariti agreed. She told Niki to 
quench the fire of the forge, and then the two women 
walked their man-horse to Ariti's tent, Aryana holding 
his neck-chain and Ariti the penis chain.

Atossa took her own slave by his arm and led him home. 
She did not use his member, but she put him between her 
thighs, ordering him to kiss her sex slowly and to 
cease licking immediately when she told him that she 
was too close to an orgasm. While he ran his tongue 
lovingly between her labia, she told him how much she 
had liked what Aryana and Ariti had done to the boy. 
She would not be able to chain Fallou's penis of 
course, that would have made the use of the pain-ring 
impossible, but she had other plans for him, and he 
would look very handsome in the irons she was going to 
make him wear.

Ginesse's intermittent agony continued for nearly two 
months. When it was over, she showed off her marks of 
womanhood to her sisters with fierce pride. Even the 
slaves were required to admire the work, which they 
willingly did. Ginesse was especially anxious that 
Fallou should scrutinize and appreciate the beauty and 
the magic of her tattoos, and though he was definitely 
more interested in the girl than in her decoration, he 
obliged her willingly. Look, were not her nipples 
splendid? He must touch them...he would not see them 
properly unless he did. And he did touch them, and 
more, and she disengaged with obvious regret.

Silini was standing close to them. Now she produced the 
ring from her girdle, and she nodded confirmation; 
Atossa had consented to let them have him again. This 
time they did not go to the tent, but outside the 
encampment, to a place where green grass grew in a 
little hollow in the ground. Only a few grazing horses 
were near.

Silini spoke earnestly to him. Would he lie down on his 
back and let Ginesse use him, without being tied down? 
Would he good and obedient and helpful? He assured her 
that he was often used in this fashion by Atossa 
nowadays, and that it would be a pleasure to be used by 
Ginesse, just as pleasant as it had been to serve 
Silini. And the ring? Never mind the ring, he was used 
to it and would take it in his stride.

"Very good," said Silini. This was to be Ginesse's 
first attempt to take a slave inside herself, and if he 
did his best for her, they would think well of him and 
commend him to Atossa.

He could scarcely believe what he heard. Virgins were 
hard to come by in the grasslands, and had been a 
rarity in En-Tor's household too, they did not stay 
that way very long. Even before their initiation, most 
girls of the Sisterhood had used males, more or less 
surreptitiously. He looked at Ginesse and thought that 
he could discern a blush, or was it the evening sun? He 
reassured her. She could do as she pleased with him, 
and he would do his best to help her.

He laid himself to rest on his back. Ginesse knelt by 
his side and investigated him with her fingers. The 
nipple-rings were interesting. Her hands continued on, 
down to his sex; he breathed deeply and tried to 
contain the shivers that ran through him when Ginesse's 
soft fingertips travelled along his flanks. She 
acquainted herself thoroughly with his balls and then 
with his penis, and she giggled, half with delight and 
half with fear, when she felt it rise under her touch. 

She asked Silini if it really did not hurt when this 
thing entered one's body for the first time? "Well," 
said the older girl, "some women said it did, others 
that it did not." Anyway, it was the necessary prelude 
to the following delights, and she could vouch for the 
suitability of this particular specimen. 

Ginesse laughed and rubbed her crotch against the 
male's thigh and then she sat down on him. She took his 
wrists and raised his hands to her breasts, and he 
cupped them in his palms and tickled her nipples, 
setting her barbaric patterns in motion; she drew her 
breath sharply. He made her lean over him and he kissed 
first the right nipple, then the left one. She took his 
nipple-rings and tugged at them. Was that nice? More? 
He begged her to stop it, it was dangerously exciting.

Silini handed her the pain-ring. Ginesse slipped it 
over the tip of his penis, pinched and pulled. She 
glanced at him and saw him grimace. "Wasn't it 
pleasant?" He told her that it was, and he was dead 
serious. He was now very excited; surely Ginesse would 
devour him now.

Instead, Silini gave her a small leather scourge, seven 
thongs attached to a carved handle. She grabbed 
Fallou's wrists and pulled them up above his head. She 
told him not to struggle while Ginesse enjoyed herself. 
Ginesse gave him six lashes, alternately across the 
right and the left side of his chest, clearly aiming at 
his nipples. He felt the sting of the leather and 
gasped, but he did not try to dodge the lashes. Ginesse 
squeezed his penis encouragingly, dealt him six more 
lashes that landed on his belly, and then she rose, 
standing on her knees straddling him. She gave his sex 
a hard caress, raised her right arm and slowly and 
deliberately, she whipped his member.

He grunted. That hurt; but he did not try to evade the 
scourge or even protect himself. The girl would surely 
not harm the property of another woman. One, two, 
three. He felt his face contort. Four, five, six.

And then Ginesse threw the scourge aside and fell over 
him, squealing with delight, kissing and pinching and 
scratching. It was lovely, lovely. Silini had been 
quite right, whipping a male was wonderful. And then 
she sat up, took his member in both hands, put its tip 
to the entrance of her vagina and lowered herself 
carefully, eating it with her sex.

She was tight. Now it was her turn to groan, but she 
persisted. When the gland was inside her and she 
continued on her way down to a full sitting position, 
grimacing -- she too was obviously feeling pain -- the 
skin of his penis was pulled along ruthlessly, and he 
felt the points of the ring dig into his tender 
membranes and he whimpered. That pleased her. She 
continued but had to stop while one full inch of his 
rod was still outside her. She wriggled and started to 
ride him. The pain increased.

Please, could he have her breasts? Silini frowned, but 
Ginesse did not find the request impertinent. He took 
both nipples between thumbs and forefingers, gently 
twisting and pulling them. The girl leant over him and 
thrust her breasts at him: he took one in his mouth 
without releasing his grip on the other. Ginesse gave a 
gurgling cry and mauled his sex savagely, and herself 
too in the process. She came, and fell over him while 
he too came and pumped his come into her, unable to 
contain himself any longer.

She rested on top of him, panting. When she had 
regained her breath, she asked Silini if she thought 
that Timesse would buy her a male of her own? Silini 
laughed. Timesse was too stingy even to get one for 
herself. She thought however that Hikati would give her 
a slave next year, not to be bested by Hakki, and then 
they would share him between them, just as Atossa and 
Sarissa shared this one. 

Until then, she would have to make do with a borrowed 
male now and then. Perhaps Aryana would let them have 
the use of Ippou. The sight of him, in all those 
chains, was really very exciting. And by the way, what 
was wrong with making love with girls, and especially 
with Silini, daughter of Hikati?

They sent him down to the brook to wash himself. Then 
he must return to them. He obeyed. After the ablution, 
he walked back to the little hollow, still wearing the 
ring on his now flaccid and hanging member. The girls 
were holding each other when he returned, but they 
separated and ordered him down between them. Did he 
think that he might be able to give a repeat 
performance after a while? If he was given some help, 
perhaps? He told them that it just might be possible, 
and Silini patted his cheek.

Holding his sex in her hand, she rested close to him, 
talking. She spoke of his courage under the whip. Had 
it helped to have seen Ginesse being whipped too? She, 
Silini, had found it very thrilling to give the girl 
she loved so many lashes. It had made her quite wet. 
Yes, he had admired Ginesse, but he had mostly thought 
of Atossa. Silini nodded gravely, yes, it was proper to 
think of your owner, and she would be the most natural 
person to think of too, considering the circumstances. 
Had Atossa also been excited?

He did not know. Well, she would ask her. She thought 
that it would be a fine thing to string him up and give 
him forty lashes. Would he restrain himself as well as 
that time, before breaking into screaming? He did not 
think so, he had been so eager to prove his valour and 
worth in Atossa's eyes. No, he would scream willingly 
for Silini. She bent over him and kissed his cheek. She 
suspected that he was on his way to a new hard-on. She 
would read a dependable incantation over the thing. She 
was good at that sort of thing, well versed in 
witchcraft.

Besides being the chiefess, her mother Hikati was also 
the witch of this sisterhood, two functions that often 
went together. As usual, her daughter was following in 
her footsteps. Chiefesses Gynarkae were elected, but 
witchery was a gift that was usually inherited, though 
it might occasionally be found in someone who was not 
of a witch-lineage. 

In a way, Hikati's older daughter Ariti had also 
inherited the gift, for there was magic in the smith's 
craft too. Silini had been apprenticed to her mother, 
and she intimated that she was already well advanced in 
the art and that she had actually already spoken with 
powerful spirits. She was not afraid of spirits, well, 
not much!

As well as he could, he told her of his admiration of 
her and of Ginesse. She looked at him in a quizzical 
fashion and pointed out that the opinion of a slave was 
seldom sought. But she liked him, and it was good that 
he liked her...it might help to get him going again! 
Spells usually did not work unless you made an effort 
yourself. Anyway, whatever it was, it was working.

She came down beside him and started working on him. 
She also wanted him to caress and kiss her. They 
nuzzled each other's necks and ears and cheeks; and he 
found her mouth and ran his tongue along her lips, and 
she accepted it and opened her mouth and they kissed, 
tongues playing hide and seek in each other's mouths. 
With Atossa, this was a rare treat, an unusual game 
with dangerous overtones of equality between the sexes, 
and he enjoyed it hugely while it lasted, which was not 
long. 

Silini took a firm grip on his ears and set him to work 
on her breasts. Someone else, Ginesse, of course, was 
squeezing his penis, her hand between his thighs, and 
he was feeling the pain of the ring again. Obviously, 
he was having a new hard-on. Silini rolled over on her 
back; she pushed him down, thrusting his head in 
between her thighs, and he licked and tongued her 
willingly, while Ginesse, working from a position 
behind him, continued her good works. The closeness of 
the panting and lubricating Silini, and the help from 
Ginesse who had already given him such pain and such 
pleasure, combined to make him randy again, in a less 
hot and impetuous but more determined way than he had 
been when Ginesse rode him.

Silini took him by his hair and dragged him up on top 
of her. She got a hand in under him, grasped his member 
and guided it to its target. He was amazed...was he 
actually supposed to use her, not the other way around? 
But Silini told him, between her gasps of pleasure, 
that he must keep working, whatever happened to him; 
and what was going to happen to him was something that 
Atossa had given her consent to in advance. He looked 
over his shoulder and saw Ginesse standing over him, 
and she had unwound the whip from her waist and she was 
making ready to use it on him.

The following experience was most curious. Silini was 
squirming, crawling, jerking away under him, panting, 
scratching his back, screaming, hurling at him a 
mixture of obscenities and blood-curdling threats (or 
were they promises?) while Ginesse whipped his buttocks 
in perfect time with his thrusting hips. He screamed 
back at Silini, but wordlessly, only to express the 
hurt he felt. 

At first, the whip bit him terribly, then the acute 
pain changed gradually into a dull ache. Because of his 
previous orgasm, he was slow to come. Indeed, he felt 
that he would continue thrusting for ever and that the 
whipping and the torture of the infernal ring would 
never end. Silini, however, arched her body and cried 
out already after six or eight lashes; and still she 
told him, and Ginesse, to continue. 

Not until she had climaxed for a second time did she 
take pity on him. She made him lift his shoulders and 
chest off her, supporting himself on his elbows, so 
that she could reach his nipples. She gripped the 
rings, pulling and twisting, and at last he came, 
pumping what was left of his come into her, while 
Ginesse loyally continued her work behind him. He 
screamed and fell over Silini, who put her arms around 
his neck and switched instantly from threats to 
endearments.

Ginesse too threw herself down beside them and caressed 
the buttocks she had flagellated so thoroughly. The two 
girls were enthusiastic about his performance, his 
willingness and his obedience. Silini would tell Atossa 
how good he had been. They were as tender and 
protective as they had been cruel just a moment 
earlier. How absurd, thought Fallou, but only for a 
moment. Just now, it was simply too good. Better not 
scrutinize the gift horse too thoroughly.

He was allowed to stay on top of Silini until his wet 
and limp member slipped out of her of its own accord. 
The girls went down to the brook to wash themselves, 
and to watch him do the same.

Then they walked him back to Atossa's tent. And his 
right owner looked at his striped rump and laughed, and 
that night she too showed him great tenderness, but in 
a way that he could only describe as motherly, or even 
sisterly. She made no demands on him, but permitted him 
to sleep by her side when he had told her all that the 
two girls had done to him. And Sarissa joined them, so 
that he woke up between his two mistresses the next 
morning.

***

A few days later, they took him to Ariti again. There 
was a tingling feeling of anticipation inside him, 
mostly between his legs: he was very fond of her and 
she had always treated him well when she had him on 
loan from Atossa. But he was also a little bit scared. 
Whenever Atossa and Sarissa and the smith cooked 
something up, a male had to pay for it...

They made him kneel by the anvil. He was relieved to 
find that there was to be no piercing this time. But 
suspicious looking objects were heating up in the 
forge, which was tended by Sarissa; for once, Niki was 
absent from the show.

First on was a collar, similar to that worn already by 
Ippou, but with a chain that was somewhat shorter. He 
was very obedient and still while Ariti fitted the 
collar to his neck and hammered the hot rivet flat. 
Then he was told to rise.

Close by the forge an old tree trunk rested on the 
ground, propped up at both ends by stones that kept it 
a few inches above it. The three women grabbed him and 
pushed him down on his back on top of it and along it. 
Atossa and Sarissa held him while Ariti tied him to the 
log with rawhide ropes, around and around, very 
tightly, until he could not move a muscle. This was 
when he began to suspect that all would not be a bed of 
roses.

A soaking wet stripe of coarse cloth was wound around 
the base of his testicle-bag. Sarissa fetched a large 
hammer and pushed it up his crotch, hard against his 
perineum, supporting it against the log. Now Ariti 
produced an incandescent stripe of iron from the forge, 
and, manipulating it with two tongs, she dexterously 
fitted it around the wet cloth and hammer-welded it 
shut while water sizzled and small wisps of steam rose. 

There was a smell of burnt wool. Then she nodded, and 
Atossa threw a small bucket of water over the slave's 
sex, and there was more hissing and more steam. The 
women stood up and looked pleased. Then Ariti removed 
the protective wrapping and he felt the metal directly 
against his scrotum, still hot but not enough to sear 
him. 

Sarissa and Atossa were fondling and kissing each other 
excitedly, but Ariti stood close by him, looking at 
him. She smiled at him and told him that he was very 
handsome. Please, girls, could she borrow him already 
this evening? Atossa looked at Sarissa, who laughed 
aloud, and said, of course, provided that he was fit to 
be used after what they were going to do to him.

And then they proceeded to do it. Ariti bent over the 
forge and took something that had been buried among the 
coals so that only a handle had been visible. It was a 
small branding iron. Atossa appeared, a small tong in 
her hand. With it, she gripped the skin at the tip of 
his penis and pulled. Horrified, he understood at last 
what was to happen to him, and he cried out, 
incoherently but eloquently. The women found this very 
funny. 

Ariti pressed the iron against his member, counting 
aloud while she held it down, loud enough to be heard 
above his screaming, and when she lifted it, he bore 
the indelible brand of the Sisterhood on the part of 
him that the Sisters found the most delightful.

His lungs were empty and he was only able to hiccup 
disconsolately while tears streamed down his cheeks. 
They were in no hurry to release him, which was perhaps 
just as well. He also got until sundown to recuperate;

Atossa demanded no work from him but allowed him to 
rest. The pain in his branded member continued nearly 
unabated, however. His penis would continue to hurt for 
several days, that he knew. After the evening meal, 
Ariti arrived in order to fetch him, as part of the 
payment for work well done. He looked at her and found 
that in spite of what she had done to him, she was 
still very attractive to him and he longed to be 
possessed by her. 

He felt no shame: he would serve her by Atossa's 
command and would not dream of doing it behind her 
back. Thus he trailed Ariti to her tent, quiet and 
submissive. Halanna was with Ariti. She offered to 
visit a friend, but Ariti wanted her to stay. She took 
no part in the proceedings, however. Halanna was in 
fact the only woman in camp who had never used Fallou; 
was there perhaps a prohibition against a daughter 
using her mother's slave?

Halanna was certainly not indifferent to males...Fallou 
knew that she had been served by Ippou several times.

Ariti was very friendly that night. She alternately sat 
on his face, hugged him and talked. Atossa had been 
very right about the ball-band. There was a smaller 
ring attached to it, and his owners would lead him by 
it during the marches. The branding was also a rare 
treat. It was a pity that you could not brand the 
underside of the penis, only the top side. Otherwise, 
you might damage the urether, and then the slave would 
be unable to pee unless they cut off his cock! 

The horror came back to him. When he had pushed it 
away, he thanked Ariti for being so considerate. She 
did not mind the irony but went along with it, assuring 
him that nobody would want to ruin such a nice chattel 
as he was, and then she kissed him wetly and rode his 
face again. And the collar? She would demonstrate the 
use of it tomorrow morning.

And morning came, and she led him out to the log, and 
with a large clincher and a sledgehammer, she nailed 
his chain to it, and he had to stay there until the 
evening, when Atossa came to fetch him and pried him 
loose with a crowbar. Had he noticed that there were 
tethering-stones around all campsites, large stones for 
the horses, with iron rings in them? She had found a 
new use for them. 


CHAPTER 7: NIKI
---------------

Niki had got an idea into her head. It was a very 
persistent and fascinating one, and she was constantly 
pestering both her mother Lykomaki and Hikati about it. 
She wanted to make her passage to womanhood already the 
next spring, when the horde came to the holy place. She 
was a big girl now, did they not understand that?

She had indeed changed since that day nearly a year 
ago, when Fallou first had met her and when she had 
made him serve her in Atossa's tent. She had grown. Her 
body had become somewhat less childish, she was 
actually looking as if she would grow breasts...though 
she had certainly not done so yet. Her manner was 
steadier too, with a longer attention span, but she 
still gave proof of that engagingly spontaneous cruelty 
that had always characterized her. But she would still 
be quite immature in five or six months time. Normally, 
she would have to wait for one more year, or even two.

But clearly the spectacle of Ginesse's initiation, and 
of the unheard-of ordeal that she had passed, and of 
the unusual spectacle afforded first by the 
flagellation of Fallou and then by that of Atossa, had 
fired her imagination. Ariti was also heard to suggest 
that Niki was man-crazy and that the prospect of more 
access to the males, and that of even having a slave of 
her own, was her real motivation. Perhaps she actually 
longed to taste the whip herself! The more cruel a 
woman was, the less averse she was, usually, to the 
thought of experiencing sexual pain. 

Several of the sisters protested: the idea was 
abhorrent to them. Sex pain was for males exclusively. 
But some, Hikati and Atossa among them, agreed. Atossa 
called Sarissa as a witness. She did find rough 
treatment stimulating, did she not...if given by her, 
Atossa? Sarissa sat like carved out of wood until she 
at last laughed and admitted it. 

After that scene at the Passage-place, she had often 
had fantasies about being whipped by Atossa or even by 
Ariti; or, as she expressed it, the Dark Ladies had 
sent her the thought. (Ariti seemed pleasantly 
surprised and beamed a smile at her.) Then, two or 
three other women came out and agreed with her. And 
Atossa herself said, as to herself, that the memory of 
what Ariti had done to her made her horny. She pointed 
out that some males too were stimulated by pain, Fallou 
for instance, or Ippou... did they remember him coming 
when he was pierced by the forge? 

Those males were perhaps the most dangerous, those that 
had to be watched most carefully! They might be woman 
whippers in disguise! The other women relieved their 
embarrassment by laughing, and those that sat next to 
Fallou, they were Timesse and Silini pinched him 
playfully and accused him of being a dirty old male. 
"He should be hung by his thumbs and caned for it," 
said Timesse. But Silini whispered in his ear that she 
might be open to suggestions, if only to find out what 
she should punish him for.

The older women, however, were still turning a deaf ear 
to Niki's pleading. Then one day, when the grass was 
already yellowing between the spring and the small 
rains, a rider came to the camp.

She was female, but not a Sister. She bore no tattoos, 
but her face, the rest of her was wrapped in a black 
hooded cloak, looked stiff and unnatural, like a mask, 
and she seemed to have neither eyelashes nor eyebrows. 
Fallou caught a glimpse of her, and felt a cold shiver 
running down his spine. There was buruk, spirit power, 
in her. That power takes little notice of humans and 
their wishes, for it is really not of their world. Even 
witches have but little of it. The dogs, which had 
barked at the strange horse as they always did, 
scurried away whining, with their tails between their 
legs.

Great deference was shown. The stranger was offered 
salt and meat, but only Hikati, Ariti, Atossa and some 
of the older women dared approach her. Even Silini kept 
her distance. The visitor was invited to Hikati's tent, 
and some of the women of the camp were brought to her, 
first of them the two women that had given birth in the 
past year, and their daughters. Ginesse and Silini were 
also called to the tent, and then Niki and Lykomaki. 
These two stayed long in the tent, and when they 
returned, they both looked dazed. Word spread that the 
strange woman had told Hikati and Lykomaki to grant the 
girl's request for an early Passage.

She seemed to have found some desirable quality in her, 
for she had intimated that some day, she would take her 
to a place the women called Tarrati and from where 
women of buruk like she were supposed to come. It 
seemed to be a terrible place. Still, the women spoke 
as if Niki would be greatly honoured if she were to be 
admitted to it.

Then the two new slaves were ordered before the 
stranger's face. She sat by the fire, in the place of 
honour opposite the tent door, her face shining ghostly 
white in the gloom. Her cloak surrounded her with a 
greater darkness, but a foot and an ankle revealed that 
she wore boots of the same kind as the horsewomen's. 
She spoke the language of the plains, but with an odd 
accent. 

Fallou and Ippou were curtly told to kneel before her; 
they did not dare move a finger while she tested their 
rings and irons with her gloved hands, tugging and 
twisting. Neither of them felt the least stimulated by 
the procedure. Fallou felt a cold draft of horror 
across his back even when the strange lady inspected 
and handled his branded member. Then she laughed and 
smiled a stiff smile. This was the right way to treat 
males. Did their owners keep them under strict 
discipline? 

Atossa told her that she kept a stern regime, and that 
Fallou seemed to accept this; his will was completely 
bent to her wishes. Aryana too was breaking in her man-
steed in an appropriate manner. The strange woman 
nodded, indicating satisfaction. Then the two slaves 
were ordered out to the cooking-pits to fetch food, the 
best that the Sisterhood could offer. 

The leading sisters ate with their guest, who then 
requested the use of Hikati's tent for the rest of the 
night, and of Ippou to serve her. Hikati moved over to 
Ariti. Ippou obeyed orders, white of face and 
trembling. Aryana seemed to doubt that she would have 
him back alive, but Timesse reassured her. Whatever 
else the black women did, they did not eat males.

Fallou tried to make Atossa tell him what she knew of 
the terrible visitor. She was not unwilling to speak. 
The black women were said by some to be incarnations of 
spirits, Dark Ladies that had briefly taken on human 
substance in order to meet living women and males face 
to face, and body to body. 

But Atossa thought that they were women of flesh and 
blood, born and mortal like other females. Their power 
came from Tarrati: there buruk resided in other beings, 
and they had put the horsewomen into this world and 
they wished to know how they fared. Thus, they sent 
these emissaries out in the plains to visit the 
Sisterhoods. Did they wish the horsewomen well? 

Atossa said that she thought so, though they never 
intervened directly in their affairs. Where was 
Tarrati? Atossa would not tell, or perhaps she did not 
know. Were these superior beings gods, or goddesses? 
Atossa was certain that they were female, but what else 
they were, she did not know. She would not even give 
them a proper name.

They were sometimes called the Deathless Ones, but that 
was an averting-name only. Their real name no one must 
speak, even if she knew it. But she doubted that even 
Hikati did that. All the while, Sarissa listened in 
silence. She and Atossa did not make love, neither did 
they use Fallou sexually that night, although his 
branded member had healed well.

In the morning, Ippou returned to the living, pale and 
silent. Aryana threw herself at him, obviously relieved 
to have him back. She bombarded him with questions, but 
he could not tell her what had been done to him, or 
what he had been made to do. The visitor had breakfast 
alone with Hikati. Then she rode away, without much in 
the way of a farewell or of well-wishing. The women 
stared long after her, and the forenoon in the camp was 
unusually quiet. But Niki went about with an expression 
of half bliss, half fear: her ambition would be 
satisfied, and not only the glory but also the horror 
would be hers to experience.

Now when Niki was slated for passage within a few 
month's time, it was difficult to deny her male 
service. She let it be known that she wanted Ippou, but 
he was still having nightmares and nearly daily attacks 
of uncontrollable terror, with much shivering and 
weeping, and Aryana, unexpectedly protective, but who 
says a woman cannot be both cruel and nurturing, 
especially a horsewoman? Did not want to have him upset 
again and managed to make her decision stick. She was 
probably right; a session with Niki would have been a 
trial. 

So the choice fell on Fallou instead. It was not Niki 
herself however but her mother who came to Atossa's 
tent, sat down and asserted her daughter's privilege. 
It was certainly a privilege shared by every woman of 
the Sisterhood, and one impossible to deny her. Atossa 
nodded gravely. Did she want him at once, and with the 
ring? But the time was not right yet; the subject of 
these negotiations was not told why. He would have to 
wait a few days. And he waited, wondering all the time 
what would happen to him.

Meanwhile, the grasslands were slowly turning ochre 
again, between the spring and the summer rains, and the 
game was on the move. The women too were moving camp; 
the spectacle that had become so familiar, the 
commotion and the excitement, repeated itself. When the 
carts had been loaded, Atossa summoned her slave.

He stood in front of her while she attached the ball-
rope to him. This time, the rawhide strap had a small 
lengthwise slit at the end. First, Atossa threaded this 
end through the small ring that dangled from Fallou's 
ball-iron, then the other end of the lariat went 
through the slit and the whole length of the rope was 
pulled through. Atossa gave the lariat a couple of 
brisk jerks, and he felt the tug of the iron ring. He 
now expected to have his elbows tied, but to his 
amazement, they were left free. Atossa mounted her 
horse, and off they went.

During the march, it slowly dawned upon him that he was 
about as helpless as he had been with his arms 
immobilized. The way in which Atossa had attached the 
lariat meant that there was no knot that he might 
untie. To free himself, he would have to jerk the rope 
away from her. Such a tug of war, with an armed savage 
woman with a horse to help her, he could not win. So he 
was happy to find that he was again an animal on a 
leash, with no possibility of flight to trouble his 
mind. At the same time, it was a great relief to have 
one's arms free.

And so they marched along, Atossa leading and Sarissa 
riding guard...or keeping company. Again and again, she 
came up by him, leant over and stroked his cheek. Being 
led across the plains by his sex, this reenactment of 
his capture, had become a familiar ritual that 
reinforced the bond between him and the two women, the 
bond that the rawhide rope now symbolized.

One evening, Sarissa whiled away the time before the 
sleep by cutting two straps out of a piece of rawhide. 
They were a little more than one and a half hand long 
and one finger across, except near the ends, where they 
were nicely tapered. With the point of her knife, 
Sarissa cut a slit lengthwise at the broad end and tied 
the tapered end into a knot. And then she ordered 
Fallou to her side, and she pulled each strap through 
one of his nipple-rings and fastened them in the same 
fashion as the ball-rope. 

Now he had two convenient handles attached to his 
nipples. Atossa's merry laughter pealed out across the 
campsite and attracted curious horsewomen. They too 
laughed and came forward in order to tease the slave by 
tugging playfully at the tabs.

This, they agreed, was less cruel than the chain that 
dangled between Ippou's nipples, but more practical. 
And by the Nether Gods, the man had an erection! Did he 
want more nipple- pulling? Fallou, who until then had 
stood demurely in front of them with downcast eyes, 
raised them and said, yes, the more the better, within 
limits of course. 

This piece of cheek brought down even more mirth. 
Atossa, still laughing, ordered him to raise his arms 
above his shoulders and gave him three not too hard 
lashes across his buttocks with her riding-whip. A male 
should be submissive and respectful in front of ladies. 
He took it without flinching, and the giggling of his 
admirers was interspersed with sounds of appreciation. 

Fallou suspected that they envied his mistress. Serves 
them right, he thought. Serves them right for not being 
Atossa.

***

The land grew greener during the next day's march. Near 
the evening, they came to a pleasant little meadow near 
a brook that still had some live water, and Hikati 
decided that they should pitch their tents and stay 
here for a while. Rings of blackened stones marked the 
place as a campsite, but there was no pole in its 
centre. 

This night, Fallou was bedded down comfortably with his 
owners, but none of them made any move to use him. This 
might have boded evil, but they were after all busy 
making love to each other. He would have to be patient 
for a while. Was it not enough to be near them--for a 
while, at least?

Early the next morning, he heard the sound of Ariti's 
hammer. She worked all day, but he did not go near her 
place. Indeed, he gave little thought to the matter. 
For he had nearly forgotten Niki's claim to his body, 
and he was startled to remember it suddenly when 
Lykomaki appeared as her own daughter's emissary to 
fetch him. And she wanted to borrow the ring too, of 
course. Atossa put him on his leash and handed him over 
to Lykomaki, but not until she had hugged him and told 
him to be good and make her proud. And off they 
marched.

He was led to Lykomaki's tent. Inside it, a nasty 
surprise awaited him. It was a log, just like the one 
upon which he had been tied when he got his ball-ring 
and was branded, and to which he had been chained the 
whole next day. No, not quite. For it was graced by 
what was undoubtedly the fruit of Ariti's labour, an 
iron bracket, bent in a right angle. One end of it had 
been hammered into the wood. The other, horizontal part 
pointed along the log. 

While Niki jumped up and down with childish glee, 
Lykomaki brought out her whip and told him, first to 
sit on the log, one leg on each side, facing the 
bracket, and then to lie down on his back. The whip was 
of course perfectly unnecessary. He knew that he would 
have to obey, or risk Atossa's wrath and punishment. 
There was a rustling sound, and sunlight fell briefly 
into the dusk of the tent. Ariti had arrived. She came 
forward to pat his cheek and exhort him to be his usual 
brave self, then she stepped back to watch the show.

Lykomaki spoke again. Now he must move down, impaling 
himself on the bracket. She cracked her whip in a 
threatening fashion. He would have to perform. Fallou 
was stiff with horror but remembered that the iron rod 
ended in a merciful little ball. Good old Ariti. 

Bracing himself with his hands, he inched down until he 
felt the cold metal touch his anus. The ball seemed 
huge, but he told himself that this was just his 
imagination. It was no larger than the horn-member, and 
the rod itself was much thinner. He hutched and managed 
to get the thing inside his body. It hurt. A sudden 
cramp contracted his sphincter, and he felt himself 
blanch. Lykomaki clicked her tongue encouragingly, 
Ariti cackled in her corner and Niki screamed 
enthusiastically at him, telling him very explicitly to 
continue.

He tried to get a grip on himself and get done with it. 
The sooner, the better. Inching himself down the log 
like a worm on a twig, he felt the accursed rod enter 
him gradually. The cramps returned but subsided, giving 
way to another feeling that was similar to the one he 
had experienced when Atossa rammed the raping-tool into 
him, but still different. For then he had been 
completely passive, and the horn-member had moved. 

Now the rod was completely immobile, and he was moving 
on it like bait on a hook. The new feeling, terrifying 
and still not entirely unpleasant, rose and engulfed 
his lower body, but not enough to make him forget the 
searing pain from his anus. And the metal remained 
cold, cold and unyielding.

Finally, a new sensation came from the ball. His 
exertions brought him no further. Both Lykomaki and 
Ariti bent over him to ascertain the fact. Yes, it had 
touched the bottom of his hole. Lykomaki was pleased 
enough to actually smile at him. Even Niki was silent; 
but she was breathing heavily, and her eyes shone.

And then Ariti produced a clamp, made out of a heavy 
strip of iron, and fitted it across his throat. It was 
wide enough to accommodate his ordinary collar, but 
clearly not large enough to let him escape. And with 
two large nails, she hammered it down on the log and he 
was unable to free himself from the iron rod that 
impaled him. Even though his arms and legs were free, 
he would never be able to extricate himself. He would 
stay impaled as long as Niki and Lykomaki pleased. And 
glancing down, he found that he had a half-erection.

His limbs did not remain free, however. Lykomaki 
grasped his wrists and pulled his arms up over his head 
unceremoniously; Ariti was there again, tying them to a 
clincher he had not noticed. His ankles were tied too, 
so that his legs were on both sides of the log. He 
would not have been more helpless if his very flesh had 
been nailed to the wood. 

How long would he have to remain in this condition? 
Until the women had lost interest in playing games with 
him, no doubt. And he did not know what games they 
intended to play... except that he presumed that Niki 
would use him sexually. But if he knew Niki and her 
mother right (or Ariti, for that matter) that would 
come as the last act of a long and creative series of 
games. It was reassuring that Ariti was present, 
however. Ariti was a steady and sober old girl and 
would not let him come to real harm.

Niki was beside herself with delight. When Ariti 
stepped back, the girl came up to him and stood by the 
log, looking down on her captive with a light in her 
eyes that he had already learned to recognize and fear. 
Her chest heaved and her mouth was half open. She 
decided however not to waste time and effort on mere 
words. Instead, she grasped Fallou's nipple straps and 
pulled. She pulled until his aureoles were just the 
tops of inch-high cones of skin and flesh, and only the 
fear of encouraging the child unduly kept him from 
groaning. 

Niki released the pull, and then she pulled again, and 
again, each time a little harder, until Lykomaki 
actually spoke out and Niki let go and stood panting by 
the log, thinking of her next move. Decent of the old 
hag. But they should not of course want to damage a 
slave who was after all somebody else's property. For 
the moment, Fallou had completely forgotten that 
Lykomaki had been decent to him in her rough way and 
given him pleasure more than once.

Niki now turned her attention to the prisoner's sex. 
His legs were so far apart that she could seat herself 
on the log between them while attending to him. Fallou 
tried to concentrate on what the girl was doing, and 
not to think of what she might do. But at first, the 
little she-devil was surprisingly gentle. She seemed 
more intent on exploring his anatomy than torturing it. 
A word of guidance or two came from Ariti (good old 
Ariti). 

It was soon obvious that Niki actually wanted to give 
him a hard-on. She could of course immediately see what 
worked and what did not. Holding his balls in one hand 
and massaging his rod with the other, she had soon 
produced a perfectly satisfactory erection. Now, there 
was no point to hiding one's reaction. He allowed 
himself to breathe heavily and to make little sounds of 
satisfaction. And Niki took her eyes from her work and 
quite unexpectedly, she gave Fallou a brilliant smile 
which seemed completely devoid of any overtones of 
cruelty. But he knew better. 

Surely he knew better. Had he not seen her in action 
before? He allowed himself a short moment of curiosity 
about his ability to derive sexual stimulation out of 
fear and helplessness, and even pain. That erection had 
come very rapidly. But that was perhaps just as well: 
it pleased his tormentors and it might just conceivably 
shorten his suffering and bring him pleasure, even.

Now, Niki was satisfied with her handiwork. She stepped 
back and bent down momentarily; when she straightened 
again, she had a many-tailed scourge in her hand. She 
asked Ariti to help keep the slave going, and Ariti 
came and squatted down by his side, reaching out to 
caress his member. Decent old girl; he wished that he 
had been alone with her, it would have been pleasant, 
even hooked and nailed to a tree trunk like this. No, 
.especially like this. 

But Niki stood straddling him, facing him, and she 
raised her right arm, and she started to whip his chest 
systematically with the scourge. The pleasure Ariti was 
giving him mixed with pain now, more and more of it. 
Niki struck out, alternatively forehanded and 
backhanded, hitting him right and left, and she did not 
spare his nipples. 

He grimaced. Soon he could not contain himself any 
more, and panted, and gasped, until his gasps began to 
sound like screams. He had better scream, he knew that. 
When horsewomen were in the mood that Niki was in just 
now, then they loved to see signs of terror, and to 
hear the sounds of pain. Giving them what they wanted 
was -- or might at least be -- a way of pleasing them 
and of bringing relief nearer. But all the time, he 
kept feeling horny, and this was really amazing.

And then Niki wanted his sex, and Ariti let go of it, 
and Niki backed off a step or two to make room for 
herself. Fallou's worst fears were coming true. Niki 
began whipping his belly, and the rod that was lying 
exposed and helpless on it, and his ball bag and the 
insides of his thighs, and he thought, praise be the 
Upper and the Nether Gods that she is using such a 
light scourge, that stings and burns but does not 
bruise. But it did sting; and the utter absurd cruelty 
of it made him break down completely and he screamed, 
not because it was proper or expedient but because he 
had to, and he screamed louder and more desperately 
than he had done since he had been hung and whipped on 
that night, on the Passage-place on the hill of the 
fires. 

Niki had worked herself into an ecstasy, and she was 
yelling obscene abuse at him at the top of her voice. 
You man-worm! You dog, you dog-shit, you worthless 
offal, you silly breastless prick-bearer, you male! And 
then she told him what she would really like to do to 
him: whip every last patch of his skin, cut him to 
pieces slowly, crush his stones with Ariti's tongs, cut 
his member to pieces... and then nail his living 
remains to the log. Finally, it was Ariti who put an 
end to the performance. 

Niki stood, flushed, her tongue hanging out, and looked 
at her victim for a moment. Then she threw the scourge 
away, knelt and began ministering to him, taking his 
now flaccid penis between her palms and making soothing 
sounds, as if she actually felt compassion. 

Fallou gasped and hiccupped, trying to regain this 
breath. At last he got a grip on himself and reassessed 
the situation. If Niki really meant what she had said, 
then she must be insane (or, as his people expressed 
it, the Nightly Ones must have taken her reason away 
from her). But she had only been giving free reins to 
her fantasies, of course. At least he hoped so. More 
than ever, he was grateful that he was not left alone 
with this child-devil.

Strangely enough, his virility returned to him. How 
could this vicious little brat, quite immature as yet, 
have this effect on him? Or was it the situation, did 
he actually derive pleasure from it? He tried to forget 
his burning skin and enjoy the treatment. It did not 
continue for long, however. Niki darted away to a dark 
corner of the tent, and when she returned after a 
moment, she was holding the sex-ring.

So she was ready for the grand finale, at last. She 
pushed the ring in place, very roughly and after quite 
a bit of experimenting. He grimaced and she saw it and 
wrenched his member savagely and taunted him: that did 
hurt, did it not? Served him right, feeling pain where 
males got all their pleasure! That was not true, 
thought Fallou. 

He got pleasure from his nipples and his ass-hole too, 
even now. And there was that other pleasure, that came 
not from outside but from inside, and which he felt 
whenever Atossa handled him, or even when he just 
thought of Atossa. She had often done this to him, 
chastising his member before using it, and before she 
gave him the other, physical pleasure, and relief. And 
so he thought of her. 

Whatever was done to him, it was because Atossa wanted 
it to happen. Whatever he suffered, he suffered it for 
her. When Niki was giving him pain, then Atossa was 
guiding her hand...Atossa was the ultimate, the real 
pain-giver and pleasure-dispenser. And his thought, 
when Niki gave the ring a last tug, was that he loved 
Atossa.

Now Niki was massaging him again. Again, he responded, 
and his member was hard as a stick, and every movement 
of Niki's hands hurt. And Niki spread her legs wide, 
standing across the log and the man on it, and without 
releasing her grip, she started ramming herself down on 
his member, impaling herself on it.

She was extremely tight. The pain of the ring 
increased, but mostly because she was pulling the skin 
of his penis violently downward, for she had scarcely 
got even the gland inside her yet. He whimpered, and 
soon he screamed. Still, she was clearly hurting 
herself nearly as badly as she was hurting him. Gasping 
and contorting her face, she thrust and thrust and 
thrust, savagely, in a rage of cruelty to him and to 
herself. 

Her mouth was ajar and hoarse rasping sounds came from 
it, audible only in the intervals between the slave's 
screams. Her eyes bulged. Fallou saw this only dimly, 
for he was tightly enclosed in the shell that pain and 
terror had created around him, but she seemed to be 
having a fit.

And then Niki stayed herself. She straddled him, still 
grasping his sex but with scarcely two inches of it 
inside her, and she seemed completely oblivious of her 
surroundings, even of the male that she had impaled 
herself on. And then she howled with despair and pulled 
herself loose, clutching her crotch with both hands, 
and rushed away and Fallou could hear her wailing from 
the sleeping-place in the darkest part of the tent. He 
realized that she had failed. She had thought it all 
up, she had staged the show, she had intended to take 
out all her pent-up resentment and cruelty on him and 
crown it by raping him...and she had failed. The 
wailing was that of a lost soul.

Lykomaki moved over to her daughter and tried to 
comfort her. But Ariti came up to the log and stood, 
looking down at him. A ghost of a smile seemed to hover 
around her. She bent down and patted his cheek. Had it 
been bad? Was he in great pain? She did not leave him 
but remained where she was, gazing at him. The sparse 
light from the door fell across her from the side, 
sculpting her shoulders, breasts and belly into a 
female landscape that managed to arouse him again, in 
spite of the pain and the horrors that he had 
experienced. 

She spoke gently to him, "A little bit of sex would be 
nice now, would it not?" Perhaps she should mount and 
use him. That hook would presumably feel lovely inside 
him when Ariti was riding him at a brisk trot! She 
stood with her hands on her broad hips, her breasts 
thrust out and her feet apart, and she was fearsome and 
still lovely, and he said, yes please, do. "On the 
other hand," she continued, "it might do you good to 
remain where you are, nailed to the log, until the 
morning. A good night's rest and all that."

But Niki's sobbing and hiccuping continued, and 
Lykomaki spoke to Ariti, who went over to her, and they 
whispered together for a while. Then Ariti returned to 
Fallou and looked at him thoughtfully. She leant over 
him, and another whispered conversation was held. 
Fallou nodded consent and assured Ariti of his good 
will and his obedience; Ariti freed his arms and feet, 
then she fetched a crowbar and pried his neck loose. 
Moving like an inchworm, Fallou slowly disengaged from 
the hook. He paused when only the ball remained inside 
him. Then a last movement and a grimace of pain, and he 
was free.

Ariti steadied him when he got to his feet. He 
staggered over to Niki, fell to his knees in front of 
her and offered his services. She looked at him with 
large, red-rimmed eyes but was silent; Ariti however 
ordered him curtly to get on with it. He came down 
beside her, he spoke softly to her. She should not 
despair. She would grow up a great and fearsome 
horsewoman, a master of men, and men would fear her and 
delight in serving her. He too would serve her 
willingly, if it pleased her. 

He kissed her nearest nipple and tickled the other. She 
would go to Tarrati and become a sorceress, and she 
would learn how to rule and use males; and surely she 
would be given males to use, young boys at first, but 
in a couple of years she would ride grown men with 
ease. She squirmed and drew a deep breath and he kissed 
the other nipple, sucking it cautiously. He would lie 
on the log again when she returned, and she could do as 
she pleased with him, if Atossa permitted it. 

He returned to the first nipple and probed her crotch; 
she spread her legs willingly and he slid a finger down 
her slit. She moved her hips in response. His finger 
entered between her labia, and they were wet; he took 
her nipple between his lips and sucked again, a little 
harder. She groaned. His finger played around her 
vagina. She whimpered a little, but when he desisted, 
she told him in a thick voice to continue.

He raised himself on an elbow, looking down at her. He 
saw a child that had hurt herself...no, who had been 
hurt by the demon inside her...and he had no time to 
put a name to his own feeling at that moment. Instead, 
he rested himself between her legs and put his face to 
her sex. He kissed her. He used his tongue between her 
labia, he entered gingerly into her vagina. He made her 
raise her knees a bit, and sliding his arms up under 
her thighs, he reached her nipples and grasped them. 
Now he went seriously to work, serving her as he used 
to serve his regular mistresses, and she began moving 
her hips rhythmically while her hands found his hair 
and grasped it and pulled. He was relieved.


CHAPTER 8: FINALE AND CODA
--------------------------

They brought Hikati back to the camp unconscious, 
lashed to the back of her horse with her own lasso. The 
older women came to her tent, and Ariti and Silini 
joined them; the rest of the Sisterhood gathered 
outside, whispering between them. Ariti came out 
briefly and told them that the chiefess had cried out 
suddenly during the hunt, clutched her chest and fallen 
off her steed. Clearly, the thread on her loom had run 
out, for only rarely could an evil spirit touch a great 
sorceress such as Hikati. 

The horsewomen nodded agreement, and some of them began 
drifting away, but a few remained sitting outside the 
tent until nightfall. Nobody had any time for the 
males.

Both Atossa and Sarissa were very muted this evening, 
and Fallou deemed it wise to keep completely silent. 
Late in the night, Ariti entered, her face rigid with 
emotion, took Atossa aside and spoke to her in such a 
low voice that he could not hear what she was saying, 
but Atossa seemed to put a question to Ariti, she 
received an affirmative nod and fell silent for a 
while. Then she spoke to Ariti again, they embraced and 
Hikati's elder daughter left.

Fallou woke up in the hour before first light, when the 
spirit of man and woman is at low ebb, and the Nameless 
Ones walk the earth. He imagined at first that he had 
heard the scream of a distant bush-cat, then fear 
struck him and he thought, banshi... until it was clear 
that the wailing was human. The death-song had begun, 
and the old gynarki was dead. 

Fallou did regret her passing, for she had once made 
the decision that he would live, and not go to the 
killing-pole, and she had always treated him as gently 
as could be expected of a horsewoman when she was using 
him; but there was also a vague foreboding in his 
heart. Death walked among them. Would she be satisfied 
with Hikati's old hide and leave them alone?

His two owners rose and went out; he followed them 
discreetly at a distance. Women were already gathering 
around the tent of the chiefess, carrying torches, and 
Atossa and Sarissa bent down, smeared their faces with 
dirt and joined in the chorus. But when the sisters saw 
them, they fell silent and looked at each other; and a 
voice was heard, "Atossa! Atossa gynarki!" The other 
women raised their torches high and took up the cry, 
"Atossa gynarki! Atossa shall be our woman-ruler!"

Atossa gestured acceptance and embraced all the women 
as they thronged around her, old and young, and more of 
them arriving every moment. The grey streak at the 
horizon that no one had noticed grew red and was seen 
by all. A new day was coming, and Atossa was chieftess 
of the Sisterhood, Sarissa was the gynarki's companion 
and Fallou too had probably risen in rank... if any 
such thing could be said to exist among beings as lowly 
as man-slaves. Ariti and Silini emerged from the tent 
and joined them, very solemn, and were also embraced 
and kissed by Atossa. She entered the tent and was 
gone; Fallou suddenly felt the cold of the morning air 
and shivered, and Sarissa took him by his arm and led 
him home.

Hikati was decked out in her best finery and carried to 
the top of a small hill, just a long arrow-shot away 
from the camp. She was laid out on a platform built out 
of sods and covered with furs and fine patterned 
drapes, and the sisters gathered again in the cool of 
the evening to see her off to the Ever-flowing Springs. 
Fires were lit, torches were raised on poles to light 
the ceremony. The death-song was chanted again, rising 
and falling under a sky bright with stars.

Fallou sat with the other males outside the circle of 
women. Old Kakou, Hikati's own male, waited apart from 
the others, and close by him sat two of the women, 
Timesse and Ipparki. Fallou wondered what would become 
of Kakou now. A dead woman's companion usually 
inherited her slave or slaves, while the rest of her 
belongings went to her daughters, but Hikati had no 
widow. Kakou looked queer; his eyes gazed blindly into 
space and he was rocking slowly to and fro. But now the 
singing ceased, and Silini approached the platform, 
leading the gelding that had carried Hikati. 

The animal was uneasy, flicking his ears back and 
forth, and his eyes were red with the light of the 
torches. Ariti stood in front of the bier, a large 
sledgehammer in her hands; she sang an incantation 
while the sisters rose expectantly. The hammer swung 
and struck, and the horse dropped like a grotesque, 
articulated toy and the women screamed approval in 
unison. Blood was gathered in a bowl and brought to 
Atossa; she stood up, removed boots, breech-clout and 
all and smeared herself with it, head to foot. 

Again, the crowd roared. Two or three women started 
butchering the carcass of the horse; it would follow 
its mistress and serve her, as it had in life, but it 
would not need its body, only its spirit; anyway, 
horse-meat was a delicacy which could be had only after 
great sacrifices to the gods, and should not be left to 
rot. When the choice cuts had been sent to the communal 
pot, lower down on the hillside, the rest of the 
carcass was arranged below the platform. But the head 
was cut off and raised above it, on Hikati's own lance.

A hush fell. The waiting women glanced around 
expectantly. Then, Ipparki and Timesse appeared in the 
firelight, leading Kakou between them.

Not until now did it dawn upon Fallou that the man was 
drugged. He did not seem to see where he was going; his 
will, what little of it that remained after long years 
of slavery, had been taken away from him and his eyes 
were wide open but unseeing. The two women steered him 
to the foot end of the platform; there they threw him 
to the ground. Eager hands grasped him, turned him on 
his back and held him, arms above his head. Suddenly, a 
completely naked woman stood by his feet, looking down 
on him. It was Sarissa, looking like a painted demon in 
the firelight. A murmur was heard. She knelt and sat 
down on Kakou's hips.

She seemed to do something to him. By raising himself a 
little, Fallou managed to see what it was. She was 
caressing him, stroking him, and Fallou heard faintly 
above the sounds of the waiting crowd that she was 
soothing him with words. Kakou moved his head a little 
from side to side, but made no sound.

She was holding his member, working it, making it grow 
between her palms. Now, Fallou saw more than heard 
Kakou groan. Sarissa was in no hurry, but worked up a 
good erection; the onlookers commented favourably on 
it. Hikati would be pleased. Then Sarissa raised 
herself a little over the helpless body below and, 
guiding the member with her hands, she took it into 
herself and sat down on it, using him.

She rode him slowly at first, leaning over him, 
supporting her hands on his shoulders. She praised him 
loudly: he gave pleasure, he was good. He had served 
his mistress well and she would be well served by him 
again. All the while, she observed him closely. Kakou 
threw his head right and left and his body began to 
heave. Suddenly, Sarissa shifted her hands to his 
throat. Her fingers closed around it, she pressed and 
moved her hips violently, and not until then did Fallou 
understand what he saw. It was a human sacrifice: 
Sarissa was strangling Kakou while she raped him.

Kakou's eyes bulged, his face contorted, his tongue 
hung out of his gaping mouth and his body rose in a 
great arch under his rider, and in the moment of his 
death, he came inside her.

Fallou fell to the ground while the women screamed 
insanely. It had happened again. One of the women he 
belonged to had killed ritually. The night rocked and 
rotated around him and as from a great distance, he 
heard the sisters raise the death chant again. A hand 
touched him, and he recoiled in terror. But a voice 
spoke kindly to him, and it was Ginesse; and she raised 
him to his feet and held him and reassured him. Hikati 
and old woman Death had got their due and were 
satisfied. 

She led him slowly down the hillside, both of them 
stumbling in the dark, following the singing women down 
to the cooking-fire and the pot. There she sat him down 
and waited, her arm around his neck. He could not keep 
himself from shaking, and was ashamed. His own people 
had after all done this sort of thing not too many 
generations ago. The custom had fallen into disuse, but 
he suspected that peace and rising prices of slaves, 
not better manners, had brought this about.

Ginesse was still holding him when Sarissa appeared in 
front of them. He froze. Sarissa knelt down in front of 
him, took his hands and spoke to him. Now Kakou had 
followed Hikati to the Springs, just as the horse had 
done, to serve her until they both faded away and were 
carried along by the night-wind. H

ikati would be pleased to have him; he would be much 
better off with her than in the world above, worked by 
all and comforted by none, living out his miserable 
years until his thread reached its end or until 
somebody took pity on him and clubbed him... would he 
not? He would be young again, and Hikati would be 
young, and they would never know hunger or thirst in 
the dry season, for surely the Springs flowed without 
end. She insisted until he calmed down and felt the 
tension and the fear gradually leave him.

She leaned closer: what had been done was done only 
when a great sorceress died. He would not be required 
to follow Atossa on her last ride, unless he asked for 
it; Sarissa would be his sole owner then, if she lived, 
or else she would have committed him to some other 
woman who would care for him. Ariti would be pleased to 
take him on, that she knew for certain. She knew that 
he liked Ariti...no, she was not displeased, she loved 
Ariti herself, but not as much as Atossa, of course. 
Ariti was very popular among the sisters.

Sarissa's presence would be required during the 
ceremonial feasting, and Atossa's, too. And Ariti and 
Silini would have to be there, as next of kin. But 
would Ginesse take Fallou down to Atossa's tent and 
comfort him? They would save some nice pieces of boiled 
meat for her return, the feasting would continue until 
daybreak anyway.

And Ginesse undertook this mission of mercy and led 
Fallou away to the camp, with a torch to light them. 
Inside the tent, she put the torch carefully away in 
the fire basket and put Fallou on the bed. She held 
him. She spoke to him; she insisted that he must agree 
that what Sarissa had said was true, and that the right 
thing had been done; and he was too exhausted and 
emotionally spent to gainsay her. Yes, the customs of 
the Sisterhood and of the Grasslands had been honoured. 
Ginesse kissed him and rolled him over on his back. 

For a fleeting moment, the image of Kakou flitted 
through his mind, but he banished it. She came down on 
top of him, held his wrists and pushed his legs apart 
with her knees, so that he would lie under her the way 
the unfree women, the horseless and weapon-less women 
did when men used them; she raised her hips a little 
and moved his member with one hand so that she would 
not hurt it. It came to lie between her thighs. 

Then she rested, silently, while he savoured the warmth 
and the heaviness of her body. She was not fully grown, 
of course, and he found himself wishing that she would 
have been heavier, robbing him of more of his will and 
stilling his disquiet better by pinning him down more 
decisively. But Ginesse was good; and soon he caught 
himself thinking of the grassy little hollow near where 
the horses grazed.

Ginesse let go of his wrists and suffered him to put 
his arms around her neck. She rubbed her face against 
his. The memory of what he and Ginesse and Silini had 
done worked its magic on him, and he was calm. But 
Ginesse felt his member stiffen and rise before he did, 
and she must have recalled their game too; for she 
parted her thighs a little, permitting his penis to 
come up and be held in her crotch, caught in the little 
space between it and the smooth insides of her thighs. 
She made a reassuring sound and squirmed on top of him; 
she too was pleased with the memory.

After a while, she broke her silence. He had been a 
good and obedient slave that time, when Silini had 
helped her. The thought of it made her horny. Would he 
be capable of serving her tonight?

Yes, he thought so; and stammering, he tried to convey 
to her his feelings toward her and Silini, and what a 
pleasant memory they had given him. Aha, said Ginesse, 
which had he liked best, the fucking or the whipping? 
Boldly he said, both. She laughed at him. All right, he 
would have both again. She wanted him to lie on top of 
her and use her (these were her actual words) the way 
he had done with Silini. No one was looking, so she 
would not lose standing among women, and he would keep 
silent about it. He assured her of his loyalty. But 
first the whipping. It was a pity that he could not be 
whipped while he was using her, the way she herself had 
done that time, but never mind. She would do it before 
the copulation.

So she rose and rolled him over on his face and 
uncoiled the whip she wore around her waist. The 
remains of the torch were still giving off a little 
light. She stood above him, with one foot on the small 
of his back, and then she gave him six lashes, but they 
were not as hard as she could have made them. And then 
she threw herself at him and he mounted her and was a 
man again, and he entered her and possessed her, 
working steadily in and out while she writhed under him 
and made curious little sounds that he had never heard 
a horsewoman make before. Briefly, he wondered if she 
was a pervert, and then he asked himself what that word 
meant, here among these women. 

He held himself back until he heard and felt her let 
go. After the orgasm, he remained as he was for quite 
some time, and Ginesse did not seem to object. The 
memory of the pleasure and the aching of his rump 
filled him. Then he rolled away, and Ginesse remained 
with him until he went to sleep. Later that night, he 
woke up and she was gone, but now he was calm. He 
listened for a while to the distant sounds of the 
carousing women, and then he slept again. 

When morning came, it was Sarissa who was sleeping by 
him, her arm across him. He did not move for fear of 
disturbing her. Only briefly did he feel queasy when, 
close to his face, he saw her right hand. Finally, a 
full bladder and an aching member forced him to 
disengage himself and rise, but Sarissa did not move. 
He found Atossa on Sarissa's other side. Both of them 
slept the whole morning away.

But on the crest of the hill, Hikati and Kakou and the 
horse waited for the carrion birds to pick their bones 
clean and release their spirits for the ride to the 
Springs, and he could already see the first of the 
black dots circling high above when he returned to the 
tent.

Being a chieftess made no great difference to Atossa. 
She had always been a very respected member of the 
Sisterhood, not least after her ordeal in the Passage-
place, and of course a chiefess had no power to command 
and coerce other women. Her new role meant simply that 
her advice was asked more often, and that common 
decisions were referred to her when there was no 
general agreement.

She led the communal hunts, of course, but hunting was 
done in small groups of two or three at this time of 
the year. Everybody knew when it was time to move camp, 
and where it would be moved.

Fallou did his chores as usual, and had not expected 
otherwise. Ginesse came by now and then, smiled and 
patted him, but did never comment on that night in 
Atossa's tent. But Silini and Ariti went about smeared 
all over with ashes, looking like ghosts, and no sexual 
intercourse with them was permitted. This taboo would 
be in force for three cycles of the moon. Gradually, 
his relations with Sarissa returned to what they had 
been: he honoured, feared and obeyed her, but no horror 
surrounded her anymore. She was a normal horsewoman, 
just like any other, except that she owned him. The 
women were savage, but fully human, dangerous, but not 
completely unpredictable. He understood them.

Having no witch was a problem, of course. Silini had 
been apprenticed to her mother, but was not fully 
qualified yet. There were still things to learn and 
ceremonies to observe. It was agreed that this autumn, 
Silini would ride to the camp of a great sorceress 
further east and ask to be accepted as her pupil for 
the winter; that would probably be enough, and next 
summer, she would be able to preside, with Atossa, over 
Niki's rites of passage. 

Ginesse was devastated, "Could she not accompany her 
lover?" But this idea was not received favourably by 
the women, and Atossa vetoed it. They would be three 
women short that way, and that was too much. Aryana 
spoke up, "Ginesse could move in with her, share her 
tent until they went into winter quarters, and share 
her furs and Ippou then. Silini would not mind, would 
she?" Silini looked long at Ginesse, sighed and 
accepted the arrangement. She must do her duty to the 
sisters, as the mores of the horsewomen demanded, and 
it would be very exciting to meet the famous old witch, 
of course.

So the life of the Sisterhood resumed its normal 
course.

The daily work was done, the territory was scoured for 
game, the time-honoured trails were followed. What else 
could a horsewoman do, or the horsewoman's slave? 
Fallou did his chores, served his two owners and their 
friends and trudged across the plains, towed by his 
balls by Atossa or Sarissa. 

One day, when they wanted to hunt together on the 
march, they handed him over to Ariti for safekeeping. 
And Ariti accepted the job merrily, and while she was 
putting him on his leash, she told him that she had 
rescued and saved the arse-bracket and the neck-band, 
and she had plenty of nails, too! 

When they were in winter camp, she would bring out the 
hardware and hook and nail him to a log and ride and 
use him, and then leave him as he was, impaled and 
helpless, perhaps for a day and a night and another 
day, and use him again, and again. Would not that be 
terrible? Yes it would, said he, and he feared her and 
he longed to be used by her, and it showed. She kissed 
him and then she paid out the rope and mounted her 
pony.

***

The storm broke without warning. Most of the women were 
out of camp, hunting together. One of the scouts -- it 
was Ipparki -- galloped in, screaming at the top of her 
voice that the Red Sisters were on the rampage, and 
approaching. An infernal noise broke out, women ran in 
all directions and the males tried to make themselves 
invisible. The women had scarcely time to arm 
themselves, find their horses and form up before a 
ragged line of yelling riders appeared over the crest 
of the nearest ridge, waving lances.

They were too many. Atossa screamed a command, for in 
battle all would instinctively follow and obey her, 
arrows flew and two or three gaps appeared in the line 
of the raiders. But still too many remained, and there 
was clearly nothing to do except to roll with the 
punch. 

The defenders swung out on the flanks, and the two 
battle lines dissolved in a series of individual duels. 
Fallou stood as transfixed. Then he saw one of the 
attackers and Aryana coming toward him with a noise 
like thunder, screeching and exchanging blows with 
lance-butt and club. The sight tore him out of his 
trance, and he dived under a cart. The horses flashed 
past but something big hit the ground with a thud. He 
raised his head cautiously.

It was the red woman. She was quite and unmistakably 
dead, her temple crushed by a blow of Aryana's club. 
She was on her back, her unseeing eyes looking into the 
sun. She was a sight: her head was shaved, and it, like 
most of her completely naked body, was painted with red 
in strange patterns. She was not tattooed. Her chin had 
fallen, making her look amazed at her own sudden 
demise, perhaps? Fallou could see that her teeth were 
filed. In the distance, the screaming, the neighing of 
terrified horses and the sound of hoofs died away.

Fallou looked around. The only living thing to be seen 
was the dead woman's horse. It must have been trained 
to remain with its rider, he thought, for its normal 
behaviour would surely have been to follow the other 
galloping animals. It was a nice roan mare, with simple 
tack, but a fine spotted fur was strapped across her 
back and a bow in its case and a full quiver hung by 
her side, with a large water-skin opposite. The only 
thing on the dead woman's body was a knife, the sheath 
hanging by a thong around her neck.

Without thinking, Fallou walked up to the horse. She 
shied a little at first, then she calmed down and let 
him catch its single rein and tie it to a cartwheel. 
There was still nobody near. Fallou looked at the dead 
woman again and tried to remember what he had heard 
about her kind and their habits. They were not nice. 
They kept female slaves, not males: captured males were 
tortured to death and then eaten.

Once, when Atossa had tied him on his back, which she 
still did occasionally, she had wanted to spin out the 
foreplay, and she had told him horror-stories about 
these terrible women. They used to crush the testicles 
of their captives, like this. Atossa had demonstrated 
the method with two flat cloth-beating sticks tied 
together at one end. She had not squeezed hard, just a 
little, and he had not been seriously alarmed, knowing 
Atossa and her ways. 

He felt completely safe with her, apart from the 
likelihood that she would inflict pain on him, and that 
he accepted as a matter of course. But the thought of 
what these strange women did had been terrifying; he 
knew that for a male, this was the ultimate pain, and 
that it would be intensified by the horror of knowing 
that he was being emasculated. He did not want this to 
happen to him.

He looked at the horse. Something within him made a 
decision. He must save himself. In a sudden hurry, he 
rushed into Atossa's empty tent and found a bag of 
pemmican. He returned, took the dead woman's knife, 
mounted the horse and trotted away, scanning the 
horizon suspiciously. Still without thinking, at least 
consciously, he chose a direction that would take him 
to the coast.

He rode with many pauses, keeping a sharp lookout and 
avoiding high ground. He did not want to meet these 
she-devils again. He saw nobody. But as he rode, he 
became conscious of his rings and his neck-iron and the 
dangling chain again, in a new way; he had of course 
not been on horseback since he left En-Tor's repulsive 
entourage. The experience made him think of his life 
among the horsewomen, and of the women themselves. That 
time had been a part of his life, and he had belonged 
among them.

What had become of them? Aryana had killed the woman 
whose horse he was now riding, but what had happened to 
Atossa and Sarissa? Were they dead on the ground, or 
wounded, or even worse, captives? And the rest of them, 
the sturdy and merry Ariti, Ginesse who had been good 
to him and who was bound to him by a common, unique 
memory, Silini with her hopes and ambitions, the frank 
and erect Halanna, Atossa's daughter... he even caught 
himself hoping that Niki was safe and sound. She was a 
terrible brat, probably utterly rotten, and still he 
recoiled from the thought of her body limp and dead in 
the grass, mangled by hooves, smeared with blood. Would 
she ever make her Passage? Would she ever go to 
Tarrati?

He tried to think of his home instead, the white city 
by the sea, the dark and cool house where he had been 
born in one of the high-ceilinged dark-panelled rooms. 
Wryly, he thought that he was back were it all began, 
as if more than a year of his life had simply vanished. 
He was on his way again. But then he felt the rings 
anew, and his mind returned, against his will, to the 
women he knew and had lived with, and been used by, and 
feared and loved, and his sorrow and his feeling of 
loss were unreasonable, perhaps, but he could not drive 
them away. In a sense, he would never be free again.

He found a water-hole, watered the horse and drank his 
fill, in spite of the evil taste of the bitter water. 
He had to save his own supply as long as possible. Then 
he rode on slowly until the sun sank below the horizon 
like a red hot iron ball and both the sky and the 
grasslands turned purple in the gathering dusk. At last 
he paused and let his steed graze.

He did not light a fire, but he chewed some pemmican. 
It grew darker, but he was finding his night-eyes and 
he could see a little. There was a rock outcrop close 
by; perhaps he should find out if anybody was bold 
enough use fire this night? He climbed it with great 
caution; it would not do to break a leg.

His heart stopped. Some distance away -- it was 
difficult to judge how far -- a fire burned on the top 
of a hill. Whose fire? He weighed the situation for a 
long time, but without conscious thought. Then he 
climbed down, armed himself with the bow and the quiver 
and started a long, stealthy approach, leading the 
horse. After half an hour or so, he felt it getting 
wind of something, and did not dare bring it along 
further for fear that it might betray him by a sudden 
whinnying. The people around the fire might well be 
deadly enemies. He tied the horse and continued alone, 
worrying about sentinels, but found none.

He had arrived at the foot of the hill. Horses moved in 
the dark, but made no sound. He could see but one human 
being, though there must be several around the fire. 
She had been tied to the broken trunk of a dead tree. 
Was she one of the Red Sisters? Then her captors would 
be his own horsewomen. Should he then steal away and 
try to keep his new-won freedom? Or was she one of his 
own.

Very cautiously, he crept forward on all fours. 
Somebody rose in front of him, near the fire, a black 
silhouette, impossible to identify. The captive woman 
started to sing, and he recognised words, words of hate 
and defiance. So she was a woman of his own Sisterhood. 
His hair stood on end, and he recognised her. It was 
Atossa.

He must save her. Forgetful of his resolve to regain 
his freedom, he continued his advance, crawling on his 
belly so as not to catch the light of the fire. He 
hoped to the Nether Gods that his rings would not snag. 

In front of him, the song rose to a savage crescendo. 
He raised his head, the enemy woman was standing in 
front of Atossa. With one hand, she grasped one nipple 
and pulled, with the other she plunged a narrow, 
shining object into and through her aureole, piercing 
it. He shivered with the memory, but Atossa did not 
scream, nor did her song of defiance falter. 

The enemy woman pierced the other breast. Fallou was 
now so close that he could see that there were two 
other women around the fire; both sat up now, their 
eyes fixed on Atossa. A little closer... it was an 
unfamiliar bow, and he was out of practice. And then 
his hand touched human skin, and a woman gasped and 
whispered: who's there? and he recognised Sarissa's 
voice. He bade her to keep silent and got his knife 
out; he could feel that she had been brutally tied with 
rawhide straps, crisscrossing her body, digging deep 
into her flesh. Her arms were bound behind her back; he 
freed them, handed her the knife and took store of the 
scene in front of him.

Nobody had taken alarm. The standing woman returned to 
the fire, but her eyes were blinded by the light and 
she did not see what had happened. She bent down, took 
a firebrand and returned to Atossa. He must act. He 
rose on one knee, drew the bow and shot her in the 
back. He heard the sound of the arrow hitting and she 
toppled, coughing. Atossa fell suddenly silent.

Where were the other two enemy women? One of them 
sprang to her feet, screaming with rage, a bow in her 
hands and looking for her unseen adversary. He loosed 
two arrows in quick succession and she froze, dropped 
her weapon and fell to her knees, then down on all 
fours before rolling over on the ground. A sound and a 
movement to one side caught his attention: the third 
woman was rushing him, a knife in her hand. There was 
time for one arrow only, and she ducked and was over 
him. 

He got one knee up, blocked her knife-arm and managed 
to get a hold on her wrist. But her other hand caught 
his throat, and he could not remove it. She was strong, 
and she thought of death only. She grew dim in front of 
his eyes and he thought, Kakou; and then she collapsed 
all of a sudden on top of him, blood gushing from her 
mouth. He pushed her away. 

Sarissa stood over them, knife in hand, and the blade 
was red to the hilt. He was weak with the shock, and 
his legs failed him, though he was repeating the name 
Atossa, Atossa, over and over. But Sarissa cut Atossa 
loose, put her on the ground and reached out to remove 
the two skewers from her breasts. Atossa shook her head 
and said hoarsely, "Don't. They will bleed too much... 
let the wounds heal." Sarissa hesitated, but obeyed. 

Instead, she pulled out a little box, and she treated 
the wounds with salve, just as Atossa had done that 
time ages ago, under the shady tree where her horse 
grazed.

Atossa made no sound. Fallou managed to rise and he 
stumbled over to her. Sarissa was peering attentively 
into the night.

There was nobody there. She checked that their foes 
were safely dead, then she collected two bows and a 
supply of arrows, knives, cloaks, water-skins and a 
lance. There was dried meat too, but Sarissa would not 
touch it. She told Fallou to stand guard and 
disappeared in the dark, returning with two horses; 
Fallou had told her that he had a mount of his own. 
They managed to get Atossa up on a horse, wrapped in 
the cloak of one of the dead enemies, and departed at a 
cautious walk, Fallou collecting his animal on the way. 
The place was decidedly unhealthy. They left the fire 
burning so as not to alarm someone who might be 
watching from afar.

They rode in silence for several hours, the horses 
stumbling occasionally in the gloom. The moon rose and 
improved the visibility, but did scarcely increase the 
danger; it was not possible to see very far. With the 
moon nearly overhead, they found a deep little canyon 
with fresh grass and low trees, and a sound of running 
water. Here they should camp for the rest of the night, 
said Sarissa, breaking her silence for the first time. 
Atossa nodded agreement but seemed content to leave the 
decision to her lover. She seemed dazed by her close 
escape.

They made no fire, but rested very close to each other, 
rolled up in their cloaks. Hesitantly, they began to 
sort out the events of the day. What were the losses? 
Nobody was certain. Ariti and Silini had got away, it 
seemed, and maybe Ginesse. Lykomaki was definitely 
dead: she had been seen going down in a swarm of 
enemies, her head bashed in while she was knifing one 
of them between her ribs, and leaving one other dead on 
the ground. 

Hakki had fled, doubled over the back of her horse and 
with an arrow in her shoulder, but nobody knew if she 
was dead or alive. The fight had continued after 
Sarissa had been struck down with the shaft of a lance 
and Atossa had stayed to protect her, and they had been 
taken captive after killing one adversary and wounding 
another badly. What had become of the others?

Nobody knew, but the attackers seemed to have had their 
hands full. And the males? They might well be both dead 
and eaten. Fallou felt sick; little Mikrou and the 
frank and guiltless Ippou deserved to live. It occurred 
to him that each human being is an endless source of 
possibilities, of future choices, deeds, words and 
songs, and that the loss of a life, even that of a 
slave, makes the world of men poorer...and the world of 
women, too.

Silence fell again. It was late in the night. Sarissa 
told Fallou to sleep by Atossa and keep her warm; she 
would stand guard over them herself. Fallou made her 
promise to wake him up after a couple of hours so that 
he might relieve her. The last thing he saw was 
Sarissa's black shape against the stars.

The moon was going down when he took the last watch of 
the night. Nothing disturbing had happened. After a 
while, the sun rose; the horses shook themselves and 
began to graze. Sarissa opened her eyes, stretched and 
scrambled up to the rim of the canyon in order to check 
the surroundings.

Fallou followed her with his eyes, then he brought out 
the pemmican. He found Atossa looking at him, gave her 
to eat and assured her that this was no cannibal 
abomination, but her own make. She grinned at him and 
ate; he was relieved to find her in such good shape. 
When she sat up, the coarse red cloak fell away and 
Fallou could see the outrage that had been committed on 
her breasts. She followed his gaze and said: 'So now I 
am pierced too. Do you think I would look as good in 
rings as you do?' He did not know what to make of the 
expression on her face.

Later in the morning, they moved up to a little hillock 
above the rim of the canyon. There were some large 
boulders there, and two or three low bushes, so that 
they could keep a lookout without being seen. Both 
Sarissa and Atossa agreed that they should not travel 
before nightfall. They would then try to return to the 
camp in a roundabout way, if the enemies were gone, see 
what other sisters had got away and try to pick up the 
pieces. Perhaps the Sisterhood could recover from the 
blow. If not, they would call on the friendship and the 
oaths of the Scithi Sisterhood further to the south and 
join them; later on, they might be able to establish 
themselves as an independent sisterhood again.

Then they both looked at Fallou. Atossa made a false 
start, shook her head and said: 'Fallou, you saved us. 
It would not be right to deny you your freedom. Go your 
own way, and may the Guardian Ladies watch over you. 
But remember us, and do not forget that I loved you.' 
And her savage face contorted, and she was silent.

She had torn the lid off a sealed jar. Fallou was in a 
mental turmoil; all his emotions and his thoughts of 
the previous day and night flashed past in a jumble. 
Then they suddenly arranged themselves in the important 
and the unimportant, without his conscious help, and he 
stuttered and was incoherent, but managed to put over 
his conviction: He would not willingly abandon them. He 
loved them. He wished to share the danger with them, 
serve them and adore them. The two women listened 
without gainsaying him. 

Then Atossa said, "But Fallou, you know that you cannot 
be our slave any more. I would be happy to keep you, 
and I would regard you as a friend and lover, and so 
would Sarissa too, I am sure. But you also know that 
any male amongst us horsewomen must be treated as a 
slave, whoever he may be. 

"Would you accept that, even if you knew of our love of 
you? Would you accept being walked on a leash after my 
horse? Would you accept to cook and clean and gather 
food, and to serve the other women when they want you? 
I know that you like Ariti and Silini and Ginesse -- 
may the Ladies have saved them... but the old women, 
and those that think that you are just a contemptible 
man-slave? Would you do that?"

And he answered, yes, yes, and yes. He would not shame 
them by behaving in a manner improper to a slave. He 
just wanted to continue to belong to them.

The women were silent for a while. Then Sarissa said, 
we may not be able to return. There may be too many of 
the abominable women around. Then we may not even be 
able to get to the Scithi camp, and we will die.

Fallou followed a sudden impulse. Then they should 
follow him to the sea, and his city. He was of a highly 
regarded and prosperous family; Atossa and Sarissa 
would be his guests, and he would continue to love and 
honour them. Atossa laughed, but not contemptuously. 
Were horsewomen not regarded as she-savages by his 
people? Would they be tolerated as anything but his, 
Fallou's, slaves? He insisted that whatever others 
thought of them, he would continue to love them; he did 
scarcely notice that Atossa had extended her hand and 
taken a grip on his member, and that it responded. 
"Yes," said she, "but would he not be obliged to treat 
them the way slave women were treated?"

Now it was Sarissa's turn to laugh. That would serve 
them right! The boot would be on the other foot! They 
would have to obey him, or else... Atossa joined in the 
argument, a curious glint in her eye. Horsewomen were 
an obstinate breed. He would probably have to chain 
them, and give them a good whipping now and then, to 
make them behave. 

Yes, he would whip them, and then he would perhaps 
fetter them on his bed, by their wrists and ankles the 
way they had done with him, and use them. Maybe that 
would be a good thing. Perhaps they needed chastising. 
And now that Atossa had been pierced, she should of 
course wear rings, too. And what should be done to 
Sarissa? Rings and a chain, like Ippou's? (And may the 
Ladies have saved him, too.)

They fell silent and watched him. Suddenly, he became 
aware of Atossa's caress and of his own erection. 
Atossa opened her cloak and rolled over on her back 
without releasing him. She parted her legs. He should 
use her right now, and she would find out what it was 
like to be a slave woman and a concubine. That might 
help her to make her decision. Now, what was he waiting 
for? He would please support himself on his elbows, so 
as not to press down on her lacerated breasts, but she 
would have loved to feel his full weight. 

After all, they had not fattened him unduly, had they? 
Yes, now she felt that being his slave would be an 
acceptable fate. He was no wimp but a man a woman could 
be proud to belong to, and to serve. She would probably 
be a difficult slave to manage, and need lots of caning 
and whipping, but he knew that she could take that. And 
Sarissa was just the same. But he would let them remain 
together, and make love often to each other, would he 
not?

He swore that he would be the most considerate, though 
stern, slave-owner of all time. In a peculiar enclosure 
out of time, and space, he worked in and out of her 
body, gazing down on her grotesque, beautiful face, and 
he knew that she was serious. They would not be parted. 
They belonged to each other, utterly and for ever. 
Whatever path lay before them, they would ride it 
together. 

THE END 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
This story was written as an adult fantasy. The author
does not condone the described behavior in real life.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Kristen's collection - Directory 48