Chapter 1

 
Zoe cocked her head and glanced forward. Godfred was still checking bridle’s and harnesses. The man was obsessed with the details--every cinch cinched, every buckle buckled, and every strap strapped right. It was infuriating. He had impossible standards; he never let anything pass.
It was too cold to be standing still like this. They needed to get started; running burned energy, which generated heat, which fought off the cold. It would be different if the Lairds provided coverings, but tradition demanded bare skin. She shivered again and looked down; goose bumps covered her high breasts and her nipples looked frozen solid. She thought about Slava’s warm mouth and full lips sucking them gently, about the friction of her tongue, about the exciting threat of her sharp teeth.
She turned towards the Russian girl at her side. She was tall, blond, and incredibly sexy, sensuously sexy like the girls in Russian vodka ads. Her body could be the template for Russian mud-flaps. Did truck drivers use mud flaps in Russia, she wondered, or did they just let the mud splatter the cars that followed too closely.
Why am I thinking about such nonsense?
Slava was her yoke-mate, her sister in bondage, her alter ego. In their infinite wisdom, Ernehaven’s Lairds always paired look-alikes together. It was the aesthetic of the double image, the cock-hardening shock of two naked beauties straining to obey. One girl would conjure sex, but two ... two suggested an alternative universe where male domination of females was the natural state.
“Paired,” the word was a gross understatement of their bondage. They were an inseparable female organism in the Lairds’ minds--a notion they made real with astonishing cruelty. They forced them to sleep together, to eat together, to run together; they even punished them together.
Slava turned her head towards her. She had a sultry look about her, Zoe thought. Her eyes, nose, lips, hair all screamed sex. Everything about her was an invitation. Perhaps if she wasn’t so unbelievably attractive, they could go unnoticed more often; but no, they had paired her with a fucking goddess. It wasn’t fair, compared to Slava she was ugly--too slim, too leggy, too blond, too...
She smiled at Zoe then began to stamp her shod feet quietly, trying to keep warm. The sound was like a drum beat in the distance, more like a feeling than actual noise. Zoe’s eyes narrowed signaling her annoyance; it wasn’t enough, they needed to do more to hurry Godfred’s inspection. Slava stared at her, warning her with her fearful eyes. They had been here before; Zoe was unpredictable, prone to doing dangerous, foolish things.
“Slava,” Zoe thought, angry at the girl’s fear ... was this even her real name. She swore it was claiming it meant a person of fame in Russian. She had always doubted this explanation--the name was too close to the word “slave.” It was too coincidental that a girl who ended up a slave started out with the name Slava. Her theory was that some past master has christened her “Slava” and the name had stuck. She might think it’s her real name, but the odds are against it.
As for following the rules... fuck them. She brought her feet down hard on the road then whinnied loudly in protest. Slava’s face turned beet red and she shook her head. She had seen this look in Zoe’s eyes before, many times, and it had always turned out badly for them. She jerked their yoke to stop her, but it was too late--Godfred was already at their side looking annoyed.
Slava immediately dropped her eyes to the ground; but Zoe stared at him defiantly. “Time to move, old man,” her look shouted insolently. “It’s too cold to be standing here!”
Godfred’s eyes narrowed at the challenge. The tension between them was palpable. It was lunacy to provoke Godfred or any of the Lairds at Laney Farm. Their penalty was always swift and painful. It was also indiscriminate--they always punished both yoke-mates together regardless of who had committed the offense. Slava glanced at Zoe out of the corner of her eye, but she wasn’t paying any attention to her; she was staring back at Godfred defiantly, wordlessly criticizing his management of the chariot team.
Slava felt the hated rubber in her mouth. A week ago, Godfred had fit Zoe with a mouth curb after she had screamed out an epithet. Godfred had been flicking his whip on her ass. He said she was out-of-synch with the team. Slava couldn’t hear any discordance, but it didn’t matter, if Godfred said they were out-of-synch then they were out-of-synch. Incredibly, Zoe disagreed and expressed that disagreement verbally.
The mouth curb was a flat piece of rubber that attached to the bit to hold the tongue down. It prevented a defiant pony-girl from using her tongue to dislodge the bit. It also made human speech impossible. Slava had gagged on hers for hours until Godfred had mercifully shortened the length of hers. She had still not forgiven Zoe for her outburst.
“Still feeling frisky this morning, Zoe?” he said menacingly, moving to her front. “Would you be swearing at me now if you could?”
She continued to stare defiantly. He ran his hand idly down her naked side then over bare flank. The Lairds petted them frequently usually to comfort and calm a scared pony-girl. Skin-on-skin contact defused unwelcome emotion. This time was different. This time he was using the contact to remind her of his power over her--she was naked with her arms locked in a block of wood, away from her body; he could do whatever he wanted to her. Zoe got the message but continued to stare angrily.
“Do I need to use the burrs again today?” he asked.
Zoe blinked then seemed to realize what she was doing. Slowly, she dropped her head in surrender. After a few seconds, she began to make a plaintive sound in her throat. Like all the pony-girls at Laird Farm, pain intimidated her.
Bit burrs were hard-rubber spikes that pressed into the pony-girl’s cheek with every pull of the reins and caused agonizing face pain. Drivers used them sometimes for hard-to-handle teams. She could feel Slava’s body trembling through the yoke. Bit burrs for Zoe meant bit burrs for her.
Godfred put his hand under her chin and lifted her face. A full day’s pain hung on his decision. It was an even more powerful reminder that he was in charge; that he controlled their lives, that he determined when they felt pleasure and ... pain.
Zoe looked at him. Her irritation had passed and now her eyes were pleading for his mercy, for his understanding. She was not perfect, they said, but she wanted to be. Her defiance was part of her in the same way her submissiveness was part of her.
He continued to stare, revealing nothing of his intent.
She was submissive. She had no doubt about this anymore. She needed a man’s domination it was who she was. She welcomed and enjoyed his bondage, the feeling of helplessness. The threat of his punishment excited her, aroused her. She even found the pain itself, while terrorizing, a strange source of sexual energy. Her explosive orgasms during punishment were unlike anything she had ever known. It was all good, but she still had an obstinate streak that occasionally reared up. She could no more deny her defiance than she could deny her submissiveness.
Godfred raised his hands to her breasts and began to fondle them, watching her eyes. Slowly, she began to fade away; unconsciously, her tongue began to wet her lips. It didn’t matter that she was angry, standing naked and bound, shivering in a Scottish chill; his touch was enough to arouse her. In the back of her mind, she acknowledged his real power. Ernehaven had activated her long-dormant sexuality. He moved his hands to her nipples then pinched them slowly. His eyes continued to hold hers. She began to twist her body with the pain, but the arousal in her eyes continued to grow. To her dismay, he stopped suddenly.
“I like spirit in a novitiate,” he said quietly, “but not at the expense of harness discipline. I don’t care how cold it is, you will stand here quietly until I tell you to run, understand?”
She nodded her head, still panting with sexual need. There was no defense against him. There was no defense against any man ... for any of them. They were pony-girls; they followed his orders or they suffered.
She suddenly felt a lingering anger and pulled on her arms. It was an old habit. The padded wooden yoke on her shoulders held her tightly. The bit and mouth curb kept her silent. The ankle boots on her feet, which formed into a single hoof for each foot, reminded her that she was a runner nothing more. Her naked body, vulnerable to the whip from her neck to her ankles, reminded her of her helplessness.
She hadn’t wanted to provoke Godfred. Her defiance had brought her and Slava pain since the day she arrived at Ernehaven. Godfred knew her; he knew it was in her nature to resist. They all knew it. They knew there was nothing she or anyone could do about it--some girls just needed to be themselves, whatever the consequences. The goal of Laney Farm was to implant a sense of pride and power to complement their submissiveness and to curb their defiance.
“Don’t force me to restart you, Zoe”
She stopped breathing. “Restarting” their training at Laney Farm was too horrible a penalty to imagine. She and Slava were a good team--they pulled the six-pony chariot with the best of them; they were for the most part obedient and compliant; they were beautiful. Starting them again for her uncontrollable insolence was too harsh a punishment, far too harsh. She could feel Slava shaking through the yoke.
Zoe opened her eyes wide and begged his forgiveness. He knew that her resistance, although annoying, was secondary to her submissiveness ... didn’t he? He must know that. There was no other option for them, he must agree...
“I believe you,” he said quietly, responding to her non-verbal explanation, “but you do need to get your temper under control. I can’t graduate a yoke-pair who are openly defiant.”
She closed her eyes in gratitude. Anything was better that a restart.
“Perhaps these will help you remember.”
He was holding two piranha clips in his hand. The pain delivered by the piranha was terrible, but it was inconsequential compared to a restart.
He knelt then reached up between her legs and slapped her Venus mound. The pain brought it to life. While she was twisting, he grabbed her right cunt lip and let the piranha bite into her firm flesh. She jerked back from the metal teeth and gargled a scream, but there was no shedding the pain. He waited until she calmed then did the same to her left lip. A heavily weighted chain joined the two clips. He stood up and watched her cope with the pain. The pull of the weight as she ran would be agonizing all day.
“We can only remind you of your true nature, Zoe,” he said earnestly. “It is up to you to control your impulses especially those that fly in the face of who you really are.”
He moved to Slava’s front and clipped her cunt lips the same cruel way he had clipped Zoe’s. Water flowed down the side of the girl’s face as the metal bit into her tender skin. Zoe stared straight ahead unable to bear her painful looks of recrimination. Godfred moved away and continued to adjust the team’s reins.
Why am I still such a bitch after almost a year at Ernehaven, Zoe asked herself? She had long ago accepted her submissiveness; why were these insane moments of defiance still in her? They just made her new life harder.
She desperately latched onto thought of why she was here to distract from the pain between her legs.
She didn’t remember much of how she had come to Ernehaven. One day, horrible men were holding her and Marie hostage for some unknown reason; the next day, she was lying in a soft bed with an Ernehaven shackle and chain on her ankle. She seemed to remember Robert injecting her with something, but she didn’t know if this was real or just part of her dream. She had trouble now separating the dream from the reality of the incident.
No one from Ernehaven would explain anything to her other than she needed to obey. This was the lesson of her first week. She thought she would go insane; it was only the feel of Slava’s luscious body, the exquisite joy of her full lips and mouth that saved her. The second week, in which they learned the rudiments of slave love, was even more painful. Things started to improve after that as she slowly began to comply naturally ... almost instinctively. Incredibly, in her compliance she found ... happiness. It was as if she had arrived at the place she was meant to be. All the frustrations and loneliness in her life disappeared.
Of course, the orgasms helped.
She thought her affair with Robert, which occurred before the kidnappers had taken them, was the epitome of sexual pleasure. It wasn’t. It wasn’t even good vanilla sex. Robert had been leading her on, sparing her feelings; she could see that now. Orgasms driven by bondage and pain, by total submission, were so far beyond the vanilla-sex of their love affair that there was no reasonable basis for comparison. Robert had known this ... and Marie, her sister.
This was why they had delivered her unconscious to Ernehaven. She had shown her true character while in the kidnapper’s hands and Marie wanted her to have the opportunity to live the life.
After a month at Ernehaven, the Lairds had asked her if she wanted to stay. It was an impossible question--she could never return to her life in sleepy Tschlin; she could never be happy in Zurich with an ordinary man. People would call her a freak if she revealed the things she had learned about herself. In the end, she had begged them to let her stay, begged them! She had pleaded that they allow her to remain in this life ... as a slave. How could that be? How could she have begged for slavery? How could anyone consent to this suffering, this humiliation?
Yet, here she was.
The carriage whip cracking over their heads snapped her out of her reverie. Immediately, the six girls in the chariot team pushed off. She felt the yoke’s bottom cushion press into her bare shoulders. The bouncing weight between her legs pulled horribly on her cunt lips. She moaned softly; Slava yelped like a wounded animal. The pain, however, didn’t affect their performance.
Zoe felt a moment of pride in her agony. The pony-girl team was incredible--a magical orchestration of strength, beauty, and grace, so perfectly integrated and synchronized they could fly over the ground.
Her time at Ernehaven would end soon. She would become the ward of some Dominus master, who would in effect, own her. He would decide the total content of her life. The thought of it frightened and excited her--could she really submit so totally to a stranger? Could she sublimate her feelings so totally that they became ... irrelevant; could she subordinate her will, her dreams, and her very personality to his?
She stretched her long body as they built speed. Every muscle was now fully engaged in the run. She could feel her ass cheeks dimpling with the strain; feel her calves and thighs stretching, her abs bending her torso forward. She knew like Slava she was beautiful; she knew what the sight of her sleek body did to men; she knew how her bondage, her pain multiplied their lust. This all tied somehow to her submissiveness. Was it enough to sustain the lifestyle, she wondered? Was the ecstasy she felt in bondage something she would tire of, something she would regret?
She would soon find out. The very thought of it, the idea of one true master made her wet inside. Was this how her life was going to unfold? Was she destined to be always terrified and excited, always in excruciating pain and sublime orgasm, always needing to obey and needing to defy?
Godfred’s long carriage whip popped over her head and she refocused on her stride, ignoring the pain of the piranha between her legs. Would she ever see Marie again ... Robert? What would she say to them; what could she say to them? They had condemned her to a life of slavery and freed her from the living death of an ordinary existence.
How did one reconcile this kind of dilemma?