Chapter 5

"What was your mistress' name?" Ivory asked the following day, while she and Glade prepared elixirs and drugs from what they'd foraged in the woods.

"Demure," said Glade. "Or Lady Demure, as she was known then. At first, I didn't know that was what the name meant. It sounded like nothing more than a short yelp. It took me quite a while to learn the language of the Knights of the Savannah. The names they gave themselves expressed the qualities that they believed were desirable. The men were given names like Boldness, Honour and Bravery. Lady Demure's husband, the village chief, was known as Lord Valour."

"What do the words 'Lady' and 'Lord' mean?"

"This was another thing about the Knights of the Savannah. They had a rigidly hierarchical society. Everyone, except slaves, was given a title. Because Valour was chief of the village his title was 'Lord'. As Demure was his wife, she was called 'Lady'. The highest title of all was 'King'. This was reserved for the leader of the whole tribe who governed the villages of all the Knights. They had other titles like 'Sir', 'Baron', 'Queen', 'Prince', and so on. Initially, they meant as little to me as they do to you. Even the lowest person had a title like 'Huntsman', 'Knapper' and 'Weaver'. This was a society where your title determined your share of the spoils whether it was freshly slaughtered meat or freshly captured slaves."

"So you were now a slave?" asked Ivory. "And your mistress was this Lady Demure?"

"That's right," said Glade. The furs that covered her were parted at the front to display her bosom and crotch. Her skin was still flushed from her sexual exertion with the chief the night before. "It was how the Knights' society was organised. All the real work was done by slaves. Like me, they'd all been captured by the Knights on slave-hunting expeditions. These expeditions were not only vital to the Knights' economy, but they provided a way for the men to gain status."

"And were you to have sex with this Lord Valour just as I had to with the Chief?" asked Ivory with a faint tone of bitterness.

"Yes, I did," said Glade. "It was the price I had to pay to stay alive. It's somewhat similar to what I do now with Chief Cave Lion to earn my right to stay in your village and share in its bounty."

"But why me? Why was I expected to fuck the chief?" Ivory wondered.

Glade smiled with a slight air of sadness. She laid down the stone tools she'd been working with and strode the two paces across the hut to Ivory. She then let the furs fall apart on either side of her thighs so that her whole body was displayed. She wrapped her arms around Ivory who now, since she'd succumbed to the shaman's influence, wore only a single fur and one which also parted with little effort.

Glade kissed Ivory tenderly on the lips and tweaked a nipple between her forefinger and thumb. "You are a gift to me from the chief and he can do whatever he wishes with his gifts."

"I thought I was your lover and yours only," sniffed Ivory sadly. "I thought we were like husband and wife, only without the blessing of the spirits. I didn't think I was just a property of the Chief."

Glade kissed Ivory tenderly on each nipple and placed a comforting hand on her bare thigh. "You are still young and innocent," she said slowly and evenly. "I had as little choice of accepting you as my apprentice as you had of refusing the role. I've always wanted to make love to you as I've often observed you in the village and much admired your beauty. Whether you would ever love me in return was another matter, though I have enough faith in my skills of seduction never to doubt it much. But however much you love me is immaterial. The Chief commands and he must be obeyed."

"It's you I love," sniffed Ivory. "Not Chief Cave Lion. I want to make love to you, not to him. And I want only you to make love to me."

Glade smiled. "You confuse love and sex, jealousy and desire, theory and practise. I love you, but I also enjoy having sex with the Chief. I share my bed, body and hut with you, but we also have to share our bodies and my bed with the Chief. There is no choice. It is the way of the world. To those that have, more is given. To those that have not, more is taken away. You have only my kindness and the Chief's generosity. Without either you would be nothing."

Ivory didn't appreciate having her life and her choices described in such stark terms. "Am I to make love to the Chief again?" she asked. "Will he fuck me again like he did last night?"

"Yes, he will. And next time he will expect more from you."

"And will you also be there?"

"I hope so," said Glade with a smile. "Chief Cave Lion is almost the only man I ever fuck these days and he isn't at all bad."

Glade was also young and innocent on the first day of her life of servitude. She had only the vaguest idea of what was expected of her. She understood that she was now a slave, like everyone else in the village not from the ruling tribe, but the only duties she'd observed the slaves perform was during the long march to the village. She had no concept of what other obligations there might be. Moreover, the loss of liberty was still an abstract idea to her. She still believed that when the time came, she could walk away from these brutal black warriors and return again to the comforting shade of the forests.

She awoke after her deep slumbers to see the other two slaves engaged in tasks whose purpose was still obscure to her. One was mashing up grasses and herbs into a powder with a round stone, while the other was weaving the stems of long grasses into the shape of a bowl.

"Hello," she said, perhaps thinking that all her misery was now over and that these slaves secretly understood her language. "Can I leave now?"

The tall brown slave put down the weaving and walked over to Glade and spoke to her in the harsh language of the Knights. The words meant nothing, but the tone was gentle and soothing. Glade later learnt that the woman was named Quagga in her own tongue, but like all slaves she had no name or title in the captors' language. She was known simply as one of Lady Demure's slaves. She pointed at the fire and indicated that it needed tending. This was a duty that Glade, like people everywhere in the world, was familiar with, but she'd never done so before in an enclosed space.

The three women knelt together around the fire. The other two women occasionally passed comments to one another in the Knights' language, which was the only tongue they shared. Glade's breasts and knees were burning in the heat of the fire. She desperately wanted to escape the confines of the hut and return to the fresh air outside, but she sensed that she this wouldn't be allowed.

Glade recognised that the other two slaves were both very beautiful. This was clearly an important element in the mistress' choice of slave. The brown woman was the more amiable and spoke more than her companion. Her rendition of the Knights' language had a curiously rhythmic sibilant quality. The black woman, although shorter than everyone else, especially the mistress, was no less beautiful. Her limbs and thighs possessed a thickness which suggested that her tribe tended towards a healthy plumpness. She spoke more haltingly and occasionally interspersed her speech with strange clicking noises and a kind of nasal growl. Like Quagga, she had no name amongst the black warriors, but she was known as Mimosa in her own language.

Glade remained silent for most of the day. She was given the task of cracking nuts. She was naturally expert at this duty, having spent all her life practising this in the forest, but she never before had access to such well-chosen round stones with which to do the job. She was again washed and shaved. This was something of a daily ritual. The two women performed the same on each other while Glade watched with fascination. There was so little stubble to begin with, but soon everyone was as smooth on the pate and crotch as they were anywhere else. Even the hair on the legs and arms were removed. In Glade's case this was with the painful application of heated beeswax as well as the sharp edge of flint blades.

It was nearly dark when their mistress returned to the hut. The two slaves bowed down to her, nearly pressing their noses on the ground, and Glade did the same, recognising that this was what was expected of her. She remained prostrate for a long time, sniffing the rhinoceros hide under her nose. Finally, she was pulled upright by one of the other slaves who must have realised that Glade had no idea of the required length of time for such obeisance.

"Did you have to make love to your mistress?" wondered Ivory who was now of the opinion that this was the expected behaviour of anyone in a submissive role.

"Indeed I did," said Glade. "This was after our mistress was first fed, washed and shaved however. This was a ritual that took rather longer to perform on her than it took on any of the rest of us. She said nothing at all while she was there and the two slaves said nothing to her. It was only when she indicated that she was ready for bed that I discovered that my body was as much her possession as my domestic services."

"Did you enjoy it?"

"I've always enjoyed making love," said Glade. "It's rare for it not to be a pleasurable experience. Only when it's forced on me has there been anything about it that I didn't enjoy. I deserve well my reputation for promiscuity and lasciviousness. It never crossed my mind that there wouldn't be sex, as it was such an expected part of my own tribe's customs and, in retrospect, I think it may well have surprised both Lady Demure and her two slaves that I took to the duty with such enthusiasm and diligence. Although I was ignorant of the expected etiquette associated with slaves making love to their mistresses, this ignorance didn't trouble Lady Demure at all. I even then noticed that the other two slaves were rather less passionate in their love-making than I was."

Ivory considered what Glade had said. "Are you implying that the three of you and this black mistress all made love at the same time?"

"Well, yes," said Glade. "Amongst the forest people this wasn't the usual custom, of course. So many elbows and knees to get in the way, you know. But our mistress simply lay down on the bed and the three of us licked and nibbled over her whole body, though from the sharp way I was pulled off by Quagga, it was clear that this intimacy didn't extend to kissing our mistress on the mouth, however much we could lick and kiss her lower lips. It was a peculiar lovemaking, although in the many moons to come it seemed as normal to me then as any other."

"Peculiar? You mean: four women making love with each other at the same time?"

"Well, that might seem strange enough for you people who have such little understanding of the love that women often feel towards each other. And I suppose four is a larger than normal number of partners to be making love with each other at one time. I've enjoyed sexual intimacy together with as many women since, but never so one-sided. It wasn't that I was making love to Quagga and Mimosa at the same time as that there was only one person who was having love made to and three people who were giving her that love. And although I orgasmed, as I usually do, it was Lady Demure's orgasms that mattered. I later discovered that I was the first slave she'd ever seen who'd actually had an orgasm and this was one of the reasons why I became her favourite lover. I later found out that Quagga and Mimosa were quite horrified to see my undignified spasms of ecstasy and uncomfortable that I tried to make love as much with them as with our mistress."

"Didn't these two slaves enjoy making love to women?" wondered Ivory, who was beginning to think that the most natural thing in the world was for one woman to have sex with another.

"In a sense, yes," said Glade. "Or they'd got to enjoy it. But their tribes, just like yours, didn't really believe that same sex relations could be not only acceptable but even the expected norm. And this was the case amongst the Knights of the Savannah. Although I'd enjoyed making love to women before, like you do now, I still considered it to be a second choice. As no other kind was on offer, it was the sex I was happy to take pleasure in. The other two slaves took to their Sapphic duties only reluctantly. I don't think Lady Demure expected or cared whether it was something they genuinely enjoyed."

"Did you ever make love to the other two slaves when your mistress wasn't there?"

"Yes I did, but not for many moons. When Lady Demure was elsewhere, I was told, quite forcibly as I didn't understand the words, not to express my affection towards either of them in an intimate way. It was only acceptable when we were making love to our mistress."