"...behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth..."

The Apocalypse

 

Introduction

 

Jedrik followed the old man down the stone steps. The flickering light of his torch cast eerie shadows on the cave walls. It was as if they were being trailed by two dark ghosts. He shook off the fear; he was 18 now--a man--men didn't fear shadows. The heavy wooden door was locked, but the bolt slid back smoothly to the old man's ancient key. He walked slowly around the edge of the chamber lighting the torches on the wall.

As the light increased, Jedrik could see two figures in the center of the room. They were slaves ... women ... girls, just about his age. Both were standing, naked; both had cock-hardening, hour-glass figures and piles of thick hair that framed their amazing faces. They were gagged.

Foxes, Jedrik decided immediately, the most sexually desirable of the female slaves. He had seen them from a distance. His friends talked about owning one of them someday, about fucking her until she screamed for mercy. That was forbidden of course until they were of age ... his age, 18. Today was his 18th birthday; today he became a man and men were permitted to own and ... fuck slaves.

They were locked in a two-person head-stock, a plank of wood supported by two stone pillars. It was laid flat, parallel to the ground, locking their necks and wrists in a fixed position, forcing them onto their toes. There was no way they could protect their luscious bodies from ... punishment, he thought. The standing head-stock was often used to punish slaves for serious offenses.

One of the girls was staring at him, her eyes angry. The other started down at the wood locking her in place.

"...Beautiful, right?"

The old man, Nathan, was standing just behind the two bodies. In his hand was a punisher, a three-strand leather flogger. He had seen a man whipped with a punisher once. The sound it made when unleashed on bare skin was terrifying. He could only imagine the pain.

"One of these is for you, a gift to mark your new life as a warrior."

Jedrik stared at him for a moment then turned to the girls. He couldn't believe it. Either of them was worth a fortune. Either of them was beautiful enough to serve in a tavern. Men would pay a lot to have them even if only for a few hours. He couldn't believe Nathan's generosity.

"Come on, choose one..."

Jedrik stepped closer. They had heard; two pairs of large eyes now followed him, appraising him as he was appraising them. There was no need to touch either; he could see they were both ripe. Their firm pointed breasts and perky asses seemed to be pulling him in. Their oversized mounds pleading to be touched, but he held back.

Nathan didn't do anything without a purpose. He knew that a strong and vital 18 year old could hardly resist touching such perfect female flesh. This was a test of some kind, a lesson. He had been teaching him lessons for his entire life, some of them painful. He wasn't going to fall for his tricks again. There was more to this than a simple gift.

"How...?" he asked. "How do I choose?"

Nathan smiled. Jedrik, his adopted son, was a fierce competitor, a warrior, but he was also smart. He knew when to hold his emotions in check especially his libido. He knew that the most dangerous times were those when your mind was disengaged, when emotions ruled.

"If it was me, Jedrik, I would start by removing their gags," he answered quietly.

Jedrik reached behind the first head, lifted her hair, and untied the gag. He did the same for the second. They both worked the stiffness out of their jaws. Nathan handed the boy the punisher.

"Perhaps you should question them before choosing. Remember, slaves are motivated to lie. A whip is the only way to get the truth."

The old man stepped back and sat on a stone bench near the wall. Jedrik turned to the first girl.

"Do you welcome me as your Master?"

She lowered her eyes and opened her mouth them showed him her tongue by licking her lips. He could see her legs opening slightly, revealing the promise of those lips between her legs. His cock straightened painfully inside his pants.

"I will love you as you have never been loved before, Master," she whispered.

He moved to the second.

"Do you...," he started.

"You can force me, savage, but I will never accept you as my Master."

There was a fire in her eyes. He knew instinctively she would attack him if she could. A cheetah, he wondered? Could she be one of the rare nymphomaniacs they caught occasionally? He stared more closely into her eyes. There was no insanity there, only burning hatred.

He glanced back at Nathan. The old man raised his eyebrows and shrugged then looked at the punisher in the boy's hands. Jedrik stepped behind and delivered a quick hard stroke to her ass. Her body jerked and she lifted a foot off the ground. He could sense her processing the pain. There was no scream. He hit her again in the same spot. Her entire body shuddered like a dog shaking off water. Again there was no sound.

He glanced at Nathan who shrugged. He stood there for another few moments watching her perky ass twitching, dimpling in pain then he delivered eight more strokes to her flailing legs and returned to her front. She was panting, her tits heaving with the struggle to catch her breath, but she had not screamed.

"What do you say now?"

The girl looked up at him. The pain in her eyes was obvious but so was the rage.

"As I said, savage," she hissed, "you can force me, but I will never accept you willingly while I own my mind."

The words shot from her mouth like arrows. He glanced at the other girl. She was frightened, afraid his anger at her companion would be turned on her. The submissiveness in her eyes was obvious. She was a woman who he could fuck without worry, a comfort to him. The other bitch, well...

"I choose the she-devil, Father," he said suddenly.

Nathan nodded and held out four binding straps.

"Bind both their arms behind at the wrists and elbows." He took two leather neck collars, the kind used for discipline, off the wall. "Put these on. Make sure they are tight."

The boy did as he was told. There was no problem even from the angry one. He was quite strong and practiced in the art of tying slaves. Nathan approached and circled each neck with a short leash. The angry girl was still trembling from her whipping.

"You go ahead, Jedrik. I'll follow, I move more slowly. Take the one you have chosen. She is yours for as long as you want. Use her in good health."

Jedrik turned and pulled on the leash. The girl pulled back and he lashed her legs, catching the inside of her thigh with the punisher's tip. She yelped and turned away to hide the tears, cowed for the moment. He turned to Nathan.

"Any suggestions...?"

The old man raised his eyebrows again.

"Think before you act," he said, "then act decisively. Over time, you will learn from your mistakes."

Jedrik stared at him slightly confused then turned and ran up the steps pulling his gift behind.

 

Chapter 1

 

Leah watched the men hobble their horses. The shin ropes would allow the animals to feed on the nearby grass unattended almost as if they were free. Free... She had never thought about freedom before, it was just there, like the air. Freedom was one of those things you didn't appreciate until it was gone.

One of the horses whinnied and reared up, skittish about the ropes. The boy tending him jerked hard on his harness then spoke to him gently while stroking his neck. The act surprised her; she had not imagined the Sicarii capable of tenderness. Most people thought of them as savage killers and sadists, animals devoid of all human feeling.

But not all ... one of her professors had described them as "a noble people." They were primitives, he claimed, but in a good way--throwbacks to a simpler time when men were a part of nature not its master.

"The evil we see in them is not evil at all," he said. "It's adaptive behavior."

Adaptive behavior ... adaptive fucking behavior...

She pulled fiercely on the ropes holding her arms outstretched. Her biceps corded with the strain. The two saplings to which she was bound bent a little then snapped back suddenly jerking her arms and shoulders painfully. She moaned with the pain; the sound was tinged with rage.

Her professors thesis was that the Sicarii's (then know as Finders) environment on the ark, the deep caves, had caused them to devolve over the centuries. By the time the ark landed on Quartos, they truly were savages, primitives. By then they had totally rejected the civilized values of modern colonial society. It was a question of survival for them.

His explanation sounded logical and was certainly favored by highbrow academics, so she accepted it, ignoring the terrible reports of Sicarii massacres, torture, and enslavement. It was easy to swallow this kind of liberal garbage as a cloistered college student.

The raid on the school had changed all of that nonsense in an instant. In a matter of seconds, she went from admiring the "noble Sicarii people" to despising them, fighting them literally tooth-and-nail for her life, for her freedom.

She had good cause for those feelings.

After the battle, they had stripped her naked, tethered her behind a horse, and marched her for a day through the prairie. When they finally camped, they had spread-eagled her between two young trees, saplings. The ropes at her wrists and ankles and the natural spring in the trees kept her body impossibly taut. She could reach the ground with her long toes--it was just a matter of pointing her feet and stretching--but the maneuver just transferred the gnawing pain to her legs. The muscles in her calves and thighs, in her arms were burning. They felt like hot coals implanted under her skin. She shook her head in frustrated anguish--there was no way to avoid or lessen the pain.

That is exactly what the savages want, she thought miserably. Their goal is her suffering; they want her to remember this day, to remember the high cost of resistance. Get used to it, she thought bitterly; the Sicarii were merciless; their captives had no rights, no protections. They treated their horses better than their prisoners.

She stared at the setting sun, remembering the attack...

At first she had been terrified, paralyzed by fear. People were running in all directions like madmen, screaming, falling over each other, tearing at their friends to escape. She watched the warriors cut throats and smash heads. She seemed disconnected from it, but her paralysis quickly faded leaving only a terrible ... rage.

She didn't remember picking up the metal bar, maneuvering behind one of the warriors, and smashing it down on him. Her first memory was standing over a bloody corpse watching the blood ooze out of a crack in the shaved head. She managed to hurt another man who tried to tackle her before his friends took her down from behind. The rest was a blur of dirt, strong arms, tight ropes, and finally painful bondage. She couldn't move, just watch the carnage. No one had ever thought they would attack a college town so far from the frontier.

She had been right to fight them. They were savages, Neanderthals. Everyone knew they had started the civil war on the ark; it was their animalistic lust, they just couldn't keep it in check. Everyone knew how they had kidnapped decent village girls, how they forced them to submit as sex-slaves, how they had rejected peace when the ark landed on Quartos.

Savages...

Now she was their prisoner.

Her naked body shook violently making the tops of the trees shake. Some of the other captives looked in her direction, frightened and angry. Strangely, they did not approve of her actions, of what she had done. She could see it in their eyes, in the tightness of their lips, and the way they turned away from her.

"Submit!" they seemed to be saying. "Don't antagonizing them. Who do you think you are? You will only make things worse for everyone."

She stared back stubbornly, confused by the reaction. Of course they should resist. What did they have to lose? Did they want to live as slaves? Had they already surrendered their lives? They were the ones who should be embarrassed by their actions. She had tried to fight the savages off; she was still fighting them.

She calmed herself. The wisdom of her argument wasn't very compelling given her naked body stretched out like a hide on a drying rack; still, she would rather die fighting them than begging to kiss their feet.

She turned away.

They were just adapting, she thought, accepting the lie. The prevailing wisdom was that a slave's life wasn't so bad if you were obedient and docile. Thousands of people had been enslaved over the years. They survived ... by submitting. It was the rebels who suffered and brought trouble on everyone. Submission was the way once you were caught.

Was that what she was, a rebel? In school she had been unusually argumentative and stubborn, but never violent. She had just refused to accept things at face value; she had enjoyed exercising her intellect, her right to an opinion, even an unpopular one.

Was she wrong?

Why not submit, she wondered? She wasn't a soldier or a militiaman. Why was she being so obstinate? She was caught now, why not beg their forgiveness and accept their punishment ... with gratitude for sparing her life?

The thought made her stomach turn. She would never submit to these animals. She was a human being, an educated free-woman ... civilized, a productive member of an advanced society, one that had mastered interstellar space travel. She wasn't a fucking dog to be led around on a man's leash.

No, she was glad she had fought back, glad she made one of them pay the ultimate price for his aggression. It felt wonderful cracking open his skull. She had never done anything like that before, never even imagined it, never knew it was in her to be so violent.

"Fuck them," she whispered, groaning as spikes of pain shot up from her bare feet. She thought about being released, about the joy she would feel just being able to lie on the ground. No torment could be worse than the pain she was feeling.

She moaned again. The horses raised their heads at the sound.

Fuck all of them, she thought. What I did was justified. What was I supposed to do, get on my knees and cross my wrists, wait for their binding rope? I was attacked, my school, my home was attacked. I had a right to defend myself.

She turned her head back to the girls lying on the ground nearby. Their clothes were in tatters, their hands tied behind their backs. The Sicarii had put them in a neck coffle for the march. Now the coffle rope was stretched on the ground between two trees. There was no way any of them could reach the knots. They were helpless ... hobbled like the mustangs wandering the nearby fields.

She could see another coffle tied to the next set of trees. There were men in this one. They had been tied more harshly than the girls. They were naked and bound together by ropes at their necks and cocks. The Sicarii used the cock rope to enforce disciple. One strong pull from the horseman holding the two lead ropes and the entire line of men would scream like little girls. She had never seen or heard anything like it; she had never imagined strong men could be so easily cowed and controlled.

Several of them were staring at her nakedness, their penises straight up like flag poles.

And fuck all of you as well, she thought angrily.

Many of the Sandborn men had surrendered without a fight, she remembered. Many of them and many women had dropped to their knees and shamefully begged to be spared. Even when the Sicarii had lifted and tied the men's cocks to a coffle rope, they had not resisted.

How could a man let his cock be bound, she wondered? It was the symbol of his manhood. She would have fought them with everything she had; at least she would have tried to fight them. Anyone who didn't fight deserved to be on their knees sucking Sicarii cock. It was an unwritten code, anyone who...

A young warrior was walking in her direction. He held a whip in his hand.

It was time!

Her heart began to pound as if it was trying to break free of her chest. Her body was suddenly wet with sweat. The whip's leather strands moved as he walked. They seemed alive. Strangely, her eyes moved up to its beautifully carved handle. It was a clenched fist and forearm--the symbol of Sicarii strength ... and virility.

She glanced in panic at the other Sandborn girls--they were pulling against the rope, trying to back away as from the man as possible. Their fear infected her and she pulled desperately on her ropes. She wanted to face him bravely, but the prospect of the leather striking her tight skin was too much to bear.

"I am Jedrik," the man said.

He wasn't much older than she, but his eyes spoke of a lifetime of hard-won experience. She glanced in panic at the other captives, somehow hoping they could help her.

"They are sheep," he said quietly. "They deserve their slavery."

She glanced up at him her eyes wide. That was exactly what she had just been thinking.

"Our women would have fought back as you did. Our men would have killed themselves before allowing themselves to be taken. We Sicarii don't have the temperament to survive as slaves."

She looked at him more closely. He was handsome, she thought, for a savage...

"The man you killed was well-liked, a valuable warrior. His friends want me to kill you, slowly, to stake you to the ground and let the insects and rodents feast on your flesh."

She stared at him too terrified to speak. The Sicarii had dozens of hideous ways to kill their enemies. He held the ultimate power over her. It felt strangely appropriate.

He stared at her watching her eyes closely.

"I said no," he whispered. "You are too beautiful and therefore too valuable a slave to waste on fire ants and rats. I promised them you would suffer though. It's a good compromise, no?"

Incredibly, a wave of relief and gratitude passed through her body. She wanted to live. Until this very moment she had not realized how much.

"Also, I would not want to kill another warrior in such a dishonorable way," he added, softly.

"Tell me are you sorry you killed our friend?"

She looked at him but stayed silent, afraid her voice would betray her feelings. For some reason, she did not want to lie to this savage. She didn't feel anything for the man she had killed, only pride at having fought back.

"No...," he said smoothly, answering for her. "I guessed not. Don't feel bad. Death is something all warriors live with. It defines us. Did you know three of my men were killed in the raid on Sandborn--one by your hand, one with a crossbow, and one run through from behind by a sword? Three dead and five wounded ... all for a dozen slaves. It's not much of a return unfortunately. Raiding the Mushmen settlements has not been very profitable of late."

("Mushmen" was the derogatory name the Sicarii used to refer to the ark's colonists. It came from the endless mushrooms the villagers cultivated in the ark.)

"Two dozen of Sandborn's men are also dead," she whispered angrily, wondering where her rage was coming from.

He shrugged.

"Like I said, death is everywhere for us. Some of your Mushmen friends died protecting what was theirs. Some of my men died wresting it from them. It is the way things are here on Quartos. Slaves are the legitimate prize of such combat."

She stared at him. He was handsome, muscled, his skin bronzed by a lifetime outdoors under the sun. This dark complexion was ironic considering the generations of cave life. She looked up into his eyes. There was concern there ... and no guile. He didn't need guile. If he wasn't a sadistic barbarian, she might have found it interesting to get to know more about him ... for academic purposes.

Would he be merciful if she asked, she wondered, if she begged. There was nothing wrong in asking the victor for mercy. She had fought well. He had said it himself. There was no dishonor in avoiding pain. She didn't want to be whipped.

She looked down trying to find the words.

He reached out and touched her bare breast. Her body jerked back, held tight by the ropes. She screamed in protest then glanced at the other girls, ashamed. His hand moved down to her nipple, testing its hardness, its sensitivity.

"Please," she moaned. "Don't shame me in front of ... them."

He looked up surprised then moved his hand to her Venus mound and slipped his finger between her cunt lips.

"Don't worry, slaves are not allowed shame. Don't you have slaves in Sandborn?

"What's your name?" he asked, continuing to move his finger in and out.

She could feel wetness and hear a sucking noise as he rubbed her. Her cunt seemed to be swelling in his hand. She opened her mouth. An overwhelming rush of feeling coursed through her. Her eyelids fluttered and her eyes rolled back. No one had ever touched her like this before. Another wave of incredibly strong sensation passed through her body.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"L ...Le ... Leah," she murmured, shuddering.

The orgasm was quick and short; the shaking started at her feet and traveled to the top of her head. She even lost consciousness for a moment. The Sicarii men sitting around the fire pointed and laughed. The slaves lying on the grass nearby stared; they were openly critical of her shivering response. She wanted to scream at them.