The slave girl Read online

  "Thank you." Her blush matched her stammer. "But if… I mean, if I do what… what those other girls do. If I have to be a… a sort of a whore for the pleasure of your soldiers… I'd try and be good at it. I honestly would. But then…? Would you want me sexually than?"

  He studied her intently. "That's important to you, isn't it?"

  "Yes." She twisted against the ropes. I'm not sure why."

  "North American mores, that's all. It once affected marriagability. The principle of soiled merchandise." Abdul Nour gazed, pointedly, at her sex, her breasts, her navel… then her face. "I would want you after a thousand men." He said simply.

  "Then you will give me to your men?" Her heart was thudding.

  "No, I will not, not yet." Again the intense scrutiny.

  "Either you are unusually intelligent or your time in the cell has worked miracles."

  "I am glad I please you." Corey's wits were working hard. "Am I permitted to ask a favour?"

  "Not if it's relative to your being untied."

  "No. I realize you want me like this. But could Audrey Cotswold and i be chained in the same cell?"

  "You are lesbians?"

  "No. But, tied up all day, and then the night… It's so lonely."

  "Suppose I had you chained to opposite walls, a short chain?"

  "If that pleased you.. yes."

  "Half a loaf better than no bread?"

  Corey flung her hair aside. "Is that not the axiom of slaves?"

  "I will consider the idea. Miss Cotswold has her uses. I am fortunate in collecting both of you. Would you care to marry me?"

  Shock! Outrage! Hastily quenched derision! Corey fell back on a cliche: "You must be joking?"

  "I am not acceptable?"

  "I did not say that. But I have to ask: Why marry me when you possess me utterly now?"

  "Marriage gives me more of you than a whipped vulva."

  Corey shook her head distractedly. "I just don't understand. The way I'm tied… like this. It's not the way a girl gets proposed to."

  "You are privileged. You have a proposal anyway."

  Abdul Nour saw the anguish in his captive's eyes. It was easy to read her thoughts. "May I explain a plan?" He asked gently. It is not a foolish plan."

  "Yes, of course." Corey omitted that she had no choose.

  "I take you to Cairo, to the best hotel, the finest wardrobe. You announce our marriage to the Press. You grant interviews. It is all of your own free will, your love for a man and for his Cause."

  Corey glimpsed logic. "Yes." She said slowly. "Go on."

  "The thing a guerilla needs most is respectability, recognition, money. I hold Assef Aslam. You can give me what he can not."

  "But I could go to the police! I could fly back home…!"

  The obvious burst from Corey's lips without caution.

  "Could you? Are you sure?" Abdul Nour was smiling at her animation. "You have forgotten Audrey Cotswold. I hold her as security for your good behavior. For a minor disobedience on your part she will be whipped. For a major defection she will die unpleasantly."

  It was neat and tidy. Corey could pick no flaws. "Please untie me." She begged. "I can't think properly like this."

  Abdul Nour whipped her four more strokes.

  He went away.

  Miss Corey Gibson hung suspended and alone. She hurt, hurt, hurt! In utter bafflement she wept.

  It was Corey's worst day. Her wrists screamed protest, her stretched legs implored release. She longed for covering, even a handkerchief over her pubic hair! But she hung in shame before the great man's desk… It was hours before Achmed came.

  "You have nice day?"

  "Oh, Achmed… Ohhhhh, oh noooooo."

  "Cell feel good after. Nice chain."

  It was different. This time her hands were tied behind her back. It did not occur to Corey to complain. Achmed was a relief. Soon she could not complain. Her mouth was stuffed with rag, a bandage was wound several times across her lips and tied behind her head. She could utter no word, nor could she scream. A rope to her collar was her tether as Achmad led her from luxury back to prison.

  It was a different post. It was placed where she could not see it from her cell. Audrey Cotswold was bound to it with considerable skill and an eye to aesthetics. She was gagged as Corey was gagged. The two girls exchanged anguished stares.

  "I do real good job of tie." Said Achmed complacently.

  He had indeed. Corey recognized its merit. Audrey could not move. She was clamped tight against the post by ropes above and below her naked breasts. By her neck. Her waist was doubly cinched, her hands were tied at the back as were her elbows. Her knees also bore the tight tight bands… Below them, Corey could not see. The tied girl's feet were buried by a pile of tinder dry bits of wood, twigs, branches, paper and assorted inflammables. "Is not nice way for girls to die." Achmed insinuated.

  The gags were a refinement of cruelty. The need of the girls to speak blazed from their wide and anguished eyes. Corey was choking with the urgency to tell Achmed this must not happen, that this lovely girl must not die by fire, that she herself would do anything… anything demanded… that she must be taken to Abdul Nour…!

  But she could utter no word. She turned to her grinning jailor and shook her head again and again.

  "Our Leader want you to be very good girl." Achmed explained blandly.

  Corey nodded and nodded again. What more could she do? Nonchalantly, Achmed struck a match. Looking straight at her, he dropped the small flame on the outer fringe of kindling.

  It flared instantly. Corey screamed against her gag and tore free of her leash. In frantic disregard of pain she stamped her bare feet up and down on the eager birth of conflagration.

  "Is lucky girl." Achmed observed complacently. "You love her very much." He looked down at the blackened and scattered twigs and at her feet. "Is hurting?"

  Corey shook her head. It had been too swift for injury. It was not until she had been led to her cell and the gag taken from her mouth that she was able to seek motives.

  "Achmed, she's not really going to be burned…? She isn't! Is she?"

  "Not if you very good girl."

  She sighed in relief. The girl bound to the stake was not a trick, she was a demonstration of intent, a warning. Abdul Nour was serious in his fantastic plan. In one of the swift analyses with which she was constantly confronted, Corey ruefully supposed she would be better off as his wife than as his army's whore. "Are you going to untie Audrey?" She asked hopefully. "It's too cruel for her to stay tied like that… not knowing?"

  "Give good scare. Very frightened of burn. She be very good girl too when let loose."

  "Achmed, please untie her now. Oh please! And what's going to happen to her… afterwards?"

  "She make good whore. When you naughty girl she get whipped. You run away she get burned." Achmed disposed of such trivialities with a wave of the hand and a benevolent smile. "Now you give Achmed fine fuck."

  Miss Corey Gibson folded her nudity to the floor. Wryly, she supposed she was no worse off today than yesterday. Laughing, she pointed out an omission: "Achmed, my hands! We've forgotten my hands. They're still handcuffed behind my back."

  "No forget. Is good that way."

  What did it matter! Obediently, the daughter of vast wealth arched her back upon her manacled wrists and spread her legs.

  Alone, sitting on her bench before seeking sleep, Corey Gibson reflected on the nature of girls. Girls were property. Girls had to do what they were told. Scarcely more than a couple of centuries of social usage had rubbed off on them its patina of equality. But it was easily erased. A few days as the captive of men had brought her to where she was, grateful for the emotional release of being fucked by her jailor every evening, thankful when she was not bound with rope, finding a strange pride in being desired by the male, even as a whore. Escape no longer bothered her. Girls did not escape! It was as simple as that.

  Corey was amused by the sudden realization that Ac
hmed had gone away and forgotten her handcuffs. Even more significantly she had forgotten them herself. A girl must indeed be both physically and spiritually enslaved when such an acceptance of chains was carelessly automatic. She made her familiar tug against the steel bands. They were tight as ever. She would not escape them. She shrugged away the loss of her arms in resigned indifference. She was still sitting on the boards when Achmed returned with Audrey Cotswold.

  Corey did not believe Achmed cruel. What he did now must be under the spur of urgency, orders, or a preoccupation of his own. It was done swiftly in silence. Her own exclamations died unborn against the gag he thrust into her mouth and buckled behind her neck. Audrey was already gagged and twisting her arms fretfully against the handcuffs at her back. Her collar was instantly tethered by chain and padlocked to the opposite wall. Corey's own chain was unlocked, gathered to half its length, then locked again. Two startled girls stared at the bars as the door slammed shut behind their departing jailor.

  It was frustrating to the point of tears. Confirming instant suspicion, each chained girl stepped out to touch, to make contact with beloved flesh. Their tethers snubbed their necks within a yard of union. They stood, so close, helpless, defeated, denied, and gazed at each other pathetically. They made strangled sounds against their most efficient gags, they motioned despairingly with heads compressed by straps. Convinced of the denial of their need of each other they returned to their respective walls. Audrey sat on the floor, Corey on her bench. Both were equally hard on female bottoms.

  They slept. Both girls had become inured to chains, their metal collars, and an unsympathetic surface on which to lay. It was the deepest dark of night when Amrah opened the barred door and unlocked the padlocks at their necks. Without pause, she used the shorter chain to join their collars four feet apart. Padlocks clicked again. Hurriedly, she pushed them from the cell to the waiting figure of a naked girl. It was Josie. Josie's plight was a duplicate of their own. She grinned a mute greeting. But gag and handcuffs permitted no more. In seconds she was collared and linked to Audrey's neck. Where one went, so would the others.

  "We get away." Amrah's whisper was both urgent and demanding. "You better trust Amrah or we get caught."

  She emphasized her demand by a firm tug on the leash she had prudently fastened to Corey's slave neck iron. Dazed, the three helpless girls followed where they were led.

  Should she have struggled, kicked, resisted this nocturnal rescue? Perhaps! But Achmed had left the two of them sufficiently helpless to enable Amrah to handle them with ease. There had been little choice. And suppose Amrah was a friend! Suppose she was leading them to freedom! The method of her doing so was not illogical. Three dubious and argumentative girls would have been far more difficult than the three gagged nudities now slipping so silently into the night. They were a package Amrah could control. She herself would be fleeing her enslavement as an unpaid whore. But the keys! Where had Amrah got the keys by which to take them from their prison? Corey rejected the stress of speculation as she strove to appease the pressure on her neck. If they were being led to freedom by this unorthodox handling, so be it! Freedom, by any means, was vital. Nothing else mattered.

  Eight padding bare feet, the clink of chain. Whispers of sound in the desert night. Amrah led them along the great wall to the door. When it closed behind them the sound spoke of no return. Beyond them now was limitless space, but in the foreground the dark shadow of a truck.

  Two men in desert garb. Then the incredible! Amrah passed to them keys, like coins in payment understood. She broke a string from her bare waist and gave them the handcuffs it had borne. She turned her back to present them with her wrists. She looked back across her shoulder with a wide grin as the cuffs clicked to make her captive too. Corey's leash was padlocked to Amrah's collar so that now it was four naked girls who stood in line to await the convenience of men. One by one they were lifted into the truck by strong male hands. The tailgate was raised and fastened, the engine whispered into life. Corey looked back at the rapidly diminishing immensity of Amphala, a place she had known only as a prison cell. Somewhere within the walls the brigand who intended to take her to wife would be fast asleep.

  It was a miserable ride of snubbed necks and tangled female flesh. Amrah was the only one with speech but she used it little. The others could ask no questions. "Now we get sold in slave market." She informed her companions with an immense and beaming complacency. "Rich man buy. We have fine life. Much better than whore to army."

  She giggled happily. "They want you too or won't take me. Now we all set." The innocently naive admission explained much. Now, Amrah's proud satisfaction with an astute deal added more. "Men buy our keys. In Amphala they pay much money in bribes to make us free. We lucky girls."

  Corey supposed it depended on the way a girl looked at it!

  Conversation languished. The truck rumbled and jolted. It was hard to find comfort. She suspected that girls chained together by their collars might easily become irritated with each other. There was a constant snubbing and jerking and the tossing of angry heads. The four prisoners did the best they could by sitting on the bed of the truck and leaning against one unstable side. Three jaws ached from gags, four sets of handcuffs irked eight slender wrists. "Is nice long ride to safe place." Amrah informed brightly.

  Corey would have liked to kick her.

  It was indeed a long ride. It took them into dawn and a country of scattered brush and trees. It took them to a tent and five more girls. Lovely girls in varying shades of coffee, and linked as they were linked. With the truck in view they were marshaled into a waiting line, sullenly curious, enticingly nude. Two sets of chain were joined to make a slave coffle of nine girls. One end of it was padlocked to a tree. Gags were taken from three grateful mouths. Handcuffs were unlocked from thankful wrists. The collars and linking chain would deny escape.

  Three men in quiet discussion. The passing of money. One of the trio returned to the truck and drove off in the way they had come. The remaining two turned their attention to their chained merchandise.

  Corey was fingering the metal circlet on her neck. It was heavy with chain. Even with her limbs free she had never felt more helpless. But her main concern was the men. They were rangy masculine types, one bearded, one clean shaven. They wore the desert haik. Un hurriedly, they took inventory.

  Strangely, no girl spoke. They were prodded and positioned but maintained the silence of resignation. The finality of their enslavement and the obvious intent of their condition left nothing to say. They had been captured into slavery and would be sold. There were no protests. The girls were frightened. Their new owners had steely eyes and a no nonsense approach to their abasement of nine girls. They commented to each other in the desert dialect, pointing out salient features on each slave. There was no other communion.

  Corey was made to stand with her hands clasped behind her neck. Their satisfaction with her body was all too evident. She was costly merchandise. Grim lipped, she endured the fingerings and probings. Her fortitude was shattered by a mid-western voice.

  "Some sort of an heiress, aren't you?"

  A Yankee slave trader! Why not, they did everything else! Sudden hope wilted under the sardonic gaze. Her response was forestalled by Audrey's angry outburst.

  "You idiot! She's Corey Gibson… The Plant Corporation. Neither she or I belong on this damn chain. You can get ransom for us. Tomorrow you could be rich and us on the way home."

  An amused and interested regard swung upon the girl's heaving breasts. The voice was tolerant. "Shut your trap, kid."

  "But, I tell you…!"

  "You don't tell us nothing we don't ask! You want that little ass of your's whipped?"

  Audrey Cotswold subsided into hurt silence. The sardonic eyes returned to Corey. "M'name's Seth Burdett, and I asked you a question."

  "Yes, I am Corey Gibson."

  A rapid exchange in Arabic. Burdett nodded at her and winked. Attention turned to the next in line. Core
y felt piqued. She exchanged a cocked eyebrow. But what could they do! The were helpless.

  It was Seth Burdett who gave them their set of rules. Like recruits in boot camp they stood attentively in line. His mention of a whip had earned respect. "We march at night, sleep by day. We'll cross country where a truck won't go. That means there's no one chasing us." He grinned up and down the naked line. "Don't any of you girls aim to be rescued or escape. That ain't going to happen. Any of you want to give trouble she gets her back sliced good with a whip. Any questions?"

  A long silence was terminated by a pale feminine voice. "Are we slaves… Mr. Burdett?"

  "Thought that went without saying, kid. In case you don't know, that way you're chained's called a slave coffle." He guffawed. "Keeps you in line."

  "Are we going to be sold?"