Alice Sinclair Gorean style BDSM fiction

"I pray no grievous act or trespass has been committed by myself or those under me, against the likes and friends of Gerard Lightning Shield."

I was standing in the middle of a giant yurt.

It was so large it seemed more like some sort of barbaric circus tent. It was Zidonese, of the type one might find in that region’s tundra or along its frozen shorelines. It was held up by tent poles as wide as ship masts. Its canopy was made from stitched, layered hides of woolly rhinoceros and giant elk. Outside, it had begun to snow again. Inside, it was warm.

"The longshoremen are a good crew, good people. We've broken none of your burgher laws - inside the town. But outside, there must be order, yes? One cannot wait for a town guard’s club to avenge an insult, be it slight or grievous! For a man to stand with a straight back out here, he needs a hard fist, Gerard. What else can an Armanean man hope for anymore if it is not to at least stand with his back straight again? Would you begrudge us that?"

The floor was thick with carpets. They were patterned with geometric designs; some so dense they created optical illusions. The carpets were made from Shemite wool and Hataduri jute. The fabrics were dyed in red, blue, and bright yellow. Tassels hung off the ends of the Shemite pieces. The Hataduri ones were hemmed with wooden beads.

Men sat on the carpets at low tables of polished, dark wood. A grey-haired man in thick breeches sat crosslegged at one, polishing a stone blade. His bare chest was covered in knife scars. He looked at me, unsmiling, and kept on polishing. At another table sat a giant of a man with a long, dark beard tied in knots. He set aside a long pipe and took a sip of chilled, fermented milk beer - kumis - from a glazed, clay bowl. He sipped it through a straw; I heard it rasping. I smiled at him. The giant gave no reaction.

"May I send for kumis and roasted eel? It is a cold night outside, Lightning Shield. Perhaps a couple of warm girls to rub your feet?"

In the yurt were slave girls of every Hyperborean nation I knew. All they wore were tight-fitting bronze collars and coin belts. A part-Zidonese girl with long legs walked to a group of seated men. Her skin tone was warm, and her hair a darkest brown - caucasian-like traits inserted in her genetics two or three generations ago. She carried a wooden tray with bowls of steaming fish soup. Her wrists were chained to the tray by iron cuffs. She knelt before the men, head down, and held out the tray.

Off to the side, dancing were two slave girls. One was a small-made Shemite girl. Her eyes had been shadowed with kohl. Her belly and back were tattooed with a spiral, black design. Thin, copper chains hung from her studded nipples. The chains bounced and flashed as she moved and sprang from foot to foot.

Alongside her danced a Hataduri. A silver chain ran from the girl’s nose ring to her ear. Dragonfly wings had been tattooed across her shoulder blades. On her ankles, she wore silver cuffs, imprinted with the same wing design. Her movements were slower, timed at exactly half the pace of her Shemite partner. She swayed like a snake moving through water.

Both girls stared at me as they danced. They had been oiled: the Shemite's breasts gleamed as she pushed them out at me and gave them a shake. The Hataduri turned to show off her well-shaped buttocks - they had taken the oil, well. Something flashed between her legs, and there was a chime. She looked over her shoulder, saw my expression, and smiled. Her legs parted: thin, metal rods hung from piercings in the outer folds of her labia. They tinkled again, like wind chimes.

A dark-skinned Darfuri girl came and knelt at my feet, head down. A fringe of gold rings hung across her forehead, tied in place with her own hair. She carried an amphora of kumis that was chained to her throat. The kumis reeked - fermented breast milk. It was like the fermented mare’s milk that Central Asian steppe peoples drank in our time, and that is why I have translated it using the same word. She held up a goblet to me. I shook my head - it was an acquired taste.

"The kumis not to your fancy? Surely then we can do better for our honored guest!"

What stood out most of all was not the curated mix of slave meat or the unfriendly eyes of dangerous men. It was all the wealth in the yurt. It was piled about like in a dragon’s lair.

Jars of coins lay stacked against each other. Many had fallen over; the square, round, and punched coinage of a hundred nations spilled from them.

There were heaps of jewelry, but not the garish, extravagant kind men decorated their slaves with. These were rings earned by pilgrims from cruel and exacting priests. Golden guild medallions by which a member could enter any ‘civilized’ city and be given a room for the night by a peer. Wedding coronets to be kept till death but surrendered in life. The silver charms worn by children against the uncounted diseases that took so many of them.

Stacked in bundles were strips of scented wood from lands far off, forgotten, and now lost. There were jars filled with dried, medicinal herbs, much trusted and untested. Iron-banded chests held narcotic powders bound in packets made of dry leaves.

Alongside these piles, like a pirate’s plunder, lay slave girls.

As the treasure, they had come from all over the world. Unlike it, they did seem to have been here long. They lay on their bellies, ankles and wrists crossed behind them and bound with rope. Many still wore the clothing they had been captured in, though now they were torn rags. None of the girls were branded.

A man got down beside a brunette of mixed heritage. Her skin was light brown, her eyes green. She turned and looked at him, glaring, as he grabbed the remains of her undershirt. She cried out as he tore it off her back and gagged her with it, instead. The man looked up for a moment and caught my eye. He smiled: slavers always smile. It is delightful to work with women the way we do.

A bald Armanean with a forked beard and a studded leather vest stood talking to a Hataduri man in green robes. Kneeling before them was a Zidonese girl, around her neck a string threaded with black, volcanic beads. She looked back and forth between the two men, her large eyes widening at their words.

The Hataduri man reached into a pouch showed the Fork-Beard several coins.

The Fork-Beard frowned, then made a counteroffer.

The Hataduri man nodded.

The Zidonese girl cried out as the Fork-Beard ripped the bead necklace from her throat and put it in his pocket. Then, he took the Hataduri man’s coins and shoved the slave girl forward with his boot.

The Hataduri man grabbed her by her shoulder and yanked her to his crotch. She wrinkled up her face and turned away as he pulled out his penis.

There was a loud, sharp smack as he slapped her. Then, he grabbed her by her long, jet-black hair and shoved his penis into her mouth.

She spat it out.

He slapped her again, harder, and again inserted his penis.

This time she began bobbing her head back and forth, glaring up at him.

He smiled and stroked her hair.

"Ah! Is it our meat that catches your interest, Burgher? Would you like a girl? Please, pick anyone you like. They were all seized this day!"

The man who had been addressing me all this time was tall and middle-aged. His skin was as creased as a dry corpse in a desert. The hair and beard had gone to salt-and-pepper. Dark eyes fixed me; they glinted in the firelight. It felt like the gaze of a predator. He smiled; it was an honest, easy smile. The kind a man sure of his power might make. The kind who, with no deceit or apology, offers a town burgher a girl, kidnapped against the town’s laws.

His seat was on a raised platform of heavy wood. He held a girl’s leash in his hand; she was fair-skinned with long, red hair that fell down her back. There was a simple "X" brand of white scar tissue on her thigh. Her finger and toenails were painted blue. She crouched at his feet, her head bobbing as she licked and kissed his feet with energy. She seemed quite oblivious to the rest of the world. I noticed the swelling of her belly; she was two or three months along.

“Ah, methinks you now come to purpose, Burgher.”

“I do.”

I held up a gold coin. The man peered at it and lost his smile. Around us, the conversations of men became quieter still, and they looked at me. For a moment, the only sound was that of the red-haired girl’s lips against his foot.

"Tell me about the gold, Kovan."

Kovan the Longshoreman, leader of “The Longshoremen,” the largest, Armanean refugee gang, frowned. He took a moment as if choosing his next words with some care.

"Who told you about the gold?" He asked at last.

"That doesn’t matter," I replied," putting it back in my pocket. "Your people are just spending it carelessly. That’s how we knew about this. I'm not here to shut you down, Kovan. I just want to know where you got it from."

"I am a businessman," he shrugged.

"No, you're a pirate."

He smiled, taking it as a compliment. An entire social class of merchant prince-pirates had raided up and down his dead, home continent’s shores. Perhaps he had been one.

"Wealth passes through my hands like water, Burgher. There are more markets in Dura than could ever be contained by its walls. Here in the Slumlands, there is nothing you can’t have for a bit of gold - or rice. Your taxed port is your town’s heart, Burgher. But, the city of Dura has more than one.”

The city of Dura. My fellow burghers ignored the reality of Dura’s explosive growth. They hid behind their walls and sent out heavy patrols, content to keep order the way a conqueror would.

Here was one of the real burghers of Dura.

I faltered. Between us, who was more powerful?

"You know exactly where this gold came from," I replied, setting aside my doubt and soldiering on. "And I'm not going to leave till you tell me everything I need to now."

The fork-beard and the giant exchanged glances with Kovan. Several men turned at the tables to face me, their knees tense, ready to rise. All were Armanean.

Kovan dismissed them with the smallest shake of his head.

"There was a man, an outsider," he began, reaching down to stroke the redhead's hair. She looked up at him, beaming. "Not of Dura or its refugee camps or any of the nearby villages. Sandor the Fisherman he was called. Do you know that name?"

I told him that I did not.

"No one knew him. No one at all - at least that’s what they would say. Yet, this friendless man brought a barge every three months, laden with fish.”

“So?”

“So by evening, he would leave, his hold crammed with slaves. Crammed," he clasped his hands together and squeezed them. "You understand? Kneeling girls on the deck packed so tight they could not move. You cannot swap fish for that much meat, even in Heyar,” he named the poorest of the refugee camps at the furthest edge of the Slumlands. Heyar was fed by stinking springs and its people harvested their scum. “He bought his girls with gold - and only gold." He reached into a coin purse and pulled out a gold coin exactly like the one I had. The lines of the minting were clean. It looked as if it had come from a modern-day mint.

“Sandor had a small warehouse at the port. One night, my men broke into it. Guess how much gold we found, Burgher."

I frowned.

“Do guess,” he smiled, urging me to indulge him as if he were doing card tricks in the street.

"A bag or two?"

"Five banded chests!" he took the redhead by her hair and made her rise up on her knees, facing me. Her nipples were fitted with gold rings and more hung in a line from her labia. The labia rings were hung with gold coins.

"Enough to use on every slave whore in Dura!”

“And you just walked in and took it? That much gold, unguarded? Come on, man.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t guarded. Sandor was there. My men say they saw him climb dripping out of the water, as if he had been watching them all along. He attacked: he was no weakling merchant. He killed five. His blades were the edges of teeth and the points of his nails. Does that make for a better tale?" there was a note of anger in his tone.

"I’m sorry for the loss of your men. Please continue."

"Aye. We found something else in that warehouse. Something we cannot understand," he turned to the fork-beard and said something in an Armanean dialect I did not understand. The fork-beard replied in kind, nodded, and left the yurt.

"What's that?"

"His charts. Except, they were like no charts I have ever seen, Burgher. And I have seen a great many."

The fork-beard returned with a wooden tube. He looked to Kovan; his expression seemed one of a man with great misgivings. Kovan nodded to him and motioned towards me. The fork-beard did not move. Kovan repeated his motion and waited.

The fork-beard walked up and gave me the tube, a glare thrown in for free.

It was heavier than I expected; I almost dropped it as I received it. It had been made from wooden slats coated in black lacquer. The slats had been threaded together with thin strips of pale leather; human. One becomes used to seeing - and dealing with - human leather on Hyperborea. I had not seen human leather this old though outside of the collection of the mysterious Runa scholar, Megaros, back at Aymund.

Something seemed to move just beneath a layer of lacquer.

I looked closer, but there was nothing.

As I looked away from the corners of my eyes, the movement resumed. Again I checked - nothing.

I removed the lid of the tube. Inside was a thin piece of papyrus. I pulled out; its edges flaked and fluttered to the ground. I handed the fork-bearded man back the tube and opened the scroll.

It was a navigator’s chart. It showed the unmistakable twists and branching of the Black River. However, they were drawn with more detail than a Borderlands cartographer is used to adding. There was also more attention to rocks and turbulent offshoots than any man dared risk his vessel to learn. Sandbanks were detailed with particular care but drawn as if they were submerged landmasses.

There were also markings I did not understand, appearing at the bases of cliffs, along submerged rock formations - and by riverside settlements.

"Caves," said Kovan, perhaps reading my expression. "The dots are underwater caves."

"How can you know that?" my eyes did not leave the scroll.

"How could any man?"

There was a script I didn’t recognize. In some places, it seemed to go left to right. The letters became smaller and angrier as they squeezed themselves to fit on the same line as if going to the next was not allowed. Other sections went from top to bottom. In places, it ran to the bottom of the papyrus and was cut off, as if the papyrus had been cut from another, larger document.

"What language is this?" I asked.

"I had hoped you would know, Burgher. No scribe we’ve shown this to can recognize it. Neither can they find pattern or rhythm to suggest cipher."

I peered at the markings: had they been made with a stylus? A quill?

A claw.

I followed the lines of the chart with my finger, exploring coastlines that resumed beyond mangrove swamps no man had ever crossed.

One region stood out. Several routes to it had been marked with care. One seemed to run through a subterranean channel. Another was so straight and clear of purpose it could only be a canal. A third made its way through ragged, outstretched chains of islands and sandbars. An impossible journey without a chart as good as the one I now held.

All three routes led to a large river bay guarded by hills. A shape like a spiral that a child might draw on seeing one for the first time, was marked near the center of the bay. Beside it was more of the unknown script.

"I have never seen anything like this," I shook my head. "There's something here,” I put my finger on the spiral. “Something important to whoever made this chart. If it is a great distance away."

"A most excellent sailor could reach it - and return - in three months."

I looked up from the map.

"Are you certain?"

There was laughter from some of the men.

"I know the sea, Burgher."

"The Black is a River."

"You say that because you do not know the Black."

He had me there.

“I believe Caral the Fish Merchant is involved,” said Kovan. “He is in the Council’s Second Circle now, yes?”

“First Circle,” I replied. “And yes, I think he is very much involved.”

“Caral is sea-blooded,” he said it like he was handing down a sentence.

“You’d have to cut him open to know… But yes, I think he is, too.”

He frowned as if expecting a different response from me.

“So, will you move against him?”

“Why would I?” I looked up from the chart.

His frown changed to a look of surprise.

“He is an abomination! One who buys slave girls and sends them to a fate we know not!”

Abomination. It was a much darker word in Low Hyperborean. Closer to a curse word, the kind you would feel bad if you thought in your head. One you wouldn’t say in front of people - especially friends - because of what they would think of you.  

“A fate we know not but can guess with all certainty. I would not see strange creatures mating with slaves, Kovan. But Caral, whatever else he is, is a person. Let him die for his actions, not his blood. Also - you have solved the problem. His agent is dead, his gold stolen. If Caral - or his masters - send another ship, tell me. Together, we will send it to the bottom of the Black. Beyond that - I say let him be.”

He looked even more surprised.

“I do not understand. He is an abomination!”

“I do not care.”

“He is in the First Circle. He buys other burghers with gold. He will fill the ranks of Dura’s Guard with his fish kind.”

“I do not care about that, either. What? Did you expect otherwise? I’m not a Priest King, Kovan. Not a champion of the people rising out of the streets. I’m a burgher. Show me one who cares for anything beyond his own interest. Show me just one.”

He said nothing, even as his face said so much.

I took the tube back from the fork-beard and replaced the strange chart. I did not give it back to him. He raised an eyebrow and held out his hand for it.

I ignored him.

"You are abducting girls from the other camps,” I began. “You know what the penalty is, Kovan."

"Men like us do not pay penalties."

"Don't we now?"

"The day’s take is yours," he gestured to the rows of girls lying on their bellies, wrists, and ankles bound. "And on any other day, you should visit, Burgher."

"Ha. Is that the usual price?”

"It is a reasonable offer."

"I have what I want," I tucked the map tube into my belt.

Kovan’s eyes grew wide.

"That is not for sale, Gerard Lightning Shield."

"It seems it’s more than just penalties men like us do not pay for." I smiled and turned to leave.

A murmur broke out among the men. The dancing girl stopped, staring at me. At last, the redheaded girl at Kovan’s feet lifted her head up, her eyes wide.

The giant stepped in front of me. The sound of his cracking knuckles seemed to ring out. He frowned at me, his lip curling in contempt.

“What’s your name, big guy?”

The giant seemed taken aback.

“Bural.”

"Move, Bural. I don’t want to kill you."

Bural did not move. He looked past me, I suppose at Kovan. The giant’s expression turned to outrage, but then he stepped aside. The sound of his teeth grinding was like slave bones being crushed to make lime.

“Let us hope,” Kovan called out after me, “You do not find your interests imperiled tomorrow because of actions declined today.”

“Thinking like that gets you stuck in Afghanistan.”

“Where?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m sure they’ll get right one day.”

I left the yurt and stepped out into the snow.