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Then I glance at Ariadne astride her mare and Taj getting on another stallion, and I find myself grinning.
Freedom is overrated, I think and pat my horse’s neck, then snatch my hand back when he turns and tries to bite me. Freedom isn’t everything. Affection, a human touch, desire, ease, spending time with people you like, people you care for…
That’s everything.
Though a slave may not think that way. Once I have committed myself to this bond, is there a way out?
And do I want one?
We walk our horses out of the gate and onto the street. A woman sweeping her porch stares at us. Another grabs a little boy playing with a wooden ball and moves him out of the way of the horses’ hooves. The day is drab but dry, clouds blanketing the sky. The town seems to melt into their gray shades, the earth fading into the sky.
We all have our hoods pulled low over our faces and let Taj lead.
He’ll pay for this, I think, glaring at the back of his head, and an image pops in my head of Taj lying on a bed, legs spread, his cock hard and leaking, his hands tied over his head.
Oh yeah. He’ll pay for this.
As we amble through the town, keeping a slow pace not to make anyone suspicious, I spend some time thinking of ways to make Taj pay, tied up and spread for me, Ariadne helping me mete out punishment.
Another reason freedom is overrated. Jacking off to imaginary people is a lot less satisfying than actual sex.
I remember taking Ariadne in the bathtub, I remember her getting fucked by Taj, perfectly recall her straddling Finnen on the bed and the noises she made as he fingerfucked her.
Oh yeah, I’m ready to be ‘civilized.’
Finnen’s voice echoes in my head and I grit my teeth. We need him back. Ariadne needs him. We need him, that grumpy bastard of a priest. Ariadne’s the glue holding us together but he’s a nail on which we turn and spin.
Part of a whole, I think. We’re parts of a whole. We’re—
“Watch out!” Ariadne shouts and I pull the reins on my bitey stallion just in time. Though of course my horse wouldn’t just crash into Ariadne’s—but he’s dancing right and left, snorting and tossing his head.
‘If you don’t control your horse,’ a voice says in my head, ‘it will control you. Always be in control, Kiaran.’
“What?” I blink, shake my head to dislodge the disembodied voice that goes on talking about the reins and the stirrups and the saddle and the position of the rider.
“Kia!”
We’ve reached the main street and a crowd of people is blocking us. Behind them, I see tall colorful hats and banners passing with the symbol of the tree reaching to the heavens, a dragon coiled in its branches.
A Temple procession.
Fuck.
“Turn back!” Taj yells at us. “Turn around. We find another way.”
So I wheel my horse about, and he resists my tugging on the reins, eyes wild and tread uneven. “Come on, horse. Move your ass.”
Maybe he doesn’t like crowds.
“I don’t like crowds, either,” I tell him, leaning over his mane as he finally does my bidding and turns around, “but we don’t always get a choice, do we?”
He whinnies and snorts and gnaws on the bit, hooves dancing on the cobblestones. I’m a bad rider, can’t control him as I should, but nothing to do about it now.
I lead our little group through the streets, hopelessly fucking lost in this town where every corner seems to wake up a memory and yet nothing tells me which way to go. I was a child, didn’t have a clear map of the town in my head when I was carried away and left to die in the wild. No amount of childhood memories will tell me where the southern gate is…
… but I close my eyes for a moment, and I know, I know which way is south. I feel the north pulling at me, I feel the south pushing.
“I felt it,” I breathe, pulling on the reins. “I felt the south.”
