I myself then finished the hard bread and also the water in the bowl.
It was toward evening when the youth, refreshed and ebullient, emerged from the shrubbery.
"You wished to detain me, didn't you?" he asked, jovially.
"I would not have insisted you remain in the camp," I said, "but it is true that I preferred that you not rejoin your fellows until after our departure."
"I do not object," he said. He turned about, to watch Ina emerge from the shrubbery. She was crawling, on all fours. "She is not to stand, until after I have left the camp," he said.
"Excellent," I said.
He snapped his fingers and indicated that Ina should approach us. She did so and then looked up at us.
"I forgot to send a whip into the shrubbery with you," I said.
"It was not necessary," he said.
"Good," I said.
Ina looked down, frightened.
"We need more such as she, only true slaves, in the delta," he said.
"She herself would look well, branded and collared, wouldn't she?" I asked.
We regarded Ina.
"Yes," he said.
She trembled.
"She is slave exciting," he said.
"Or at least as slave exciting as a woman can be who is not a slave," I said.
"Yes," he said.
"What are you thinking of?" I asked.
"Nothing," he said.
"Do you care to speak of it?" I asked.
"I was thinking of my father and my mother," he said.
"Oh?" I said.
"And how my father is held in, inhibited and frustrated, by my mother."
"Keep your head down," I said to Ina.
Immediately she lowered her head again.
The young man continued to regard the captive. "You are thinking," I said, "of how well your mother would look at your father's feet, branded and in a collar."
"I love her very much," he said, "but it is where she belongs."
"I have no doubt about it," I said.
"Perhaps I shall speak to my father," he said.
"The decision, of course, is his," I said.
"Of course," he said.
"If women were there," I said, "it would certainly be easier for their sons to become men."
"True," he said.
Mothers in Tharna, of course, are kept as slaves, indeed, they are not merely kept as slaves; they are slaves.
"I wish you well," I said.
"How did you know I was spying on you?" he asked.
"The tor shrub," I said, "does not grow higher than a man's waist."
"I was stupid," he said.
"No," I said, "you were careless."
"It was a mistake," he said.
"Yes, it was a mistake," I said.
"Such a mistake," he said, "might cost a man his life."
"It is possible," I said.
"I shall not make it again," he said.
"Good," I said.
"You are not my enemy, are you?" he asked.
"No," I said. "Nor are the others here."
"My thanks," said he, "for the repast."
"Such as it was," I said.
"Thanks, too," said he, "for the use of the blond female."
"You are more than welcome," I said.
"I wish you well," he said.
"I wish you well," I said.
He then turned, and left the camp.
Plenius came up to me. "We must leave soon," he said. "Yes," I said. I did not think that the youth would return with his fellows, to attack us, but they probably had rence craft and could move much more quickly than we in the marsh. Accordingly I would take our next trek southwest, for they would, I supposed, assume we would continue south, or, fearing their pursuit, perhaps even move east, away from the point at which we had caught the lad spying on the camp. To be sure, I did not think it would be easy to track men such as those I was now with in the delta. They had become wise to the ways of the marsh. They would be terribly dangerous, now, to follow.
Ina looked up at me.
"You may speak," I informed her.
"He is gone," she said. "I may now rise to my feet."
"Remain on all fours," I told her.
"Yes, my captor," she said.
Her mien seemed a little tense, strained.
"Did you serve our young guest well?" I asked.
"I did my best," she said. "I think he was pleased. At least his cries, and grunts, of pleasure would suggest that he was not dissatisfied."
"Good," I said. To be sure, I had heard several of these sounds emanating from the shrubbery.
"But his usages were brief, and abrupt," she said.
"He is a lad," I said.
"But I," she said, "am a woman."
"Did you respond to him?" I asked.
"I could not help myself," she said. "Apparently you have trained my body in that fashion."
"You do almost all of that yourself," I said.
"But I was given little choice," she said.
"True," I said.
"But time and again," she said, "I was not granted my full release."
"He is a lad," I said.
"In the end," she said, "he succeeded, apart from obtaining his own brief pleasures, in doing little more than arousing me."
"Captives," I said, "are next to nothing, as slaves are nothing. The captive, and the slave, may be done with as one pleases. The captive, like the slave, must accept usages of any sort to which captors, or masters, are pleased to subject them. Entitled to expect little if they are captives, and nothing if they are slaves, let them rejoice if they receive anything. Be pleased that you were not beaten."
"Yes my captor," she said.
To be sure the youth, had it not been, presumably, for his haste, or lack of experience, might have done far better for himself than he had. It is not that it is not fully appropriate for captives and slaves to be occasionally subjected to brief, casual and even frustrating usages, if only to remind them that they are captives or slaves, but that the youth, had he taken care to enforce lengthy and exquisite ecstasies on the captive would have discovered that his own pleasures would have been marvelously deepened, lengthened and multiplied. One of the great pleasures in the mastery, increasing the sense of its joy and power, is forcing the female to experience, at your will, and convenience, incredible pleasures, carrying her up and down, and through, a series of slave orgasms, making her more and more helpless, until she is irremediably yours, lost in the throes of her submission ecstasies.
"We must leave soon," I said. "They are breaking camp even now."
"But you cannot leave me in this state!" she said.
"On your belly," I said.
"Yes!" she said, delightedly, going to her belly in the sand.
I knelt over the back of her thighs.
"Captor?" she asked.
I reached beneath her belly, in the sand, and put a loop of binding fiber about her.
"Oh!" she said.
I had pulled the cord snugly up, about her waist, and knotted it behind the small of her back.
I then drew her hands up, behind her back.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"I am tying your hands behind your back," I said, fastening them there, using the two free ends of the cord as a double cord.
I then rose to my feet.
She turned to her left shoulder in the sand, looking up at me, reproachfully. "What is the meaning of this?" she asked.
"We are breaking camp," I said. "I am afraid, until morning, pretty Ina, you will just have to squirm a little."
"No!" she said.
"You may kneel," I said.
She struggled to a kneeling position.
"Sometimes slave girls," I said, "are aroused and then put in their kennels with their hands braceleted behind their backs, held there with a belly chain, or a belly cord. Much the same effect is achieved when they are chained by the neck in a slave bin, on the straw, their wrists chained to their holding collar."
She regarded me, with horror.