After fitting Katryn’s harness, Radnor had clipped a lead rope to her new collar, and asked Rolf to untie here ankles. He then gave several gentle tugs on the lead signaling her to stand as had been done with the other girls. After nearly a minute of defiantly starring into his eyes, Katryn slowly got to her feet and allowed Randor to lead her out of the shed to the rail where her friends were tied and waiting. On the way out of the shed, he wanted to see if the little strawberry would continue showing her rebellious side given the opportunity. Randor was no novice, however, when it came to handling wild girls, so kept a whip handy just in case as he led Katryn along, holding her lead close to her collar. Being lead in this manner she was, of course, too close to him to be able to kick, effectively. Should Katryn attempt to raise a foot, Randor knew that could easily pull down toward the raised leg, and, force the girl to choose between lowering her foot or losing her balance and falling. In either case he would not get kicked. Especially when handling wild girls like Katryn, Randor remained always cognizant of how much bigger and stronger humans, even female humans were than elves.
Katryn was still breathing fast and trembling with frustration over how easily Radnor had so recently mastered her. Twice on the way to the yard, Katryn stopped in her tracks, and stared at Radnor. Twice, Radnor also stopped and waited, with patience, looking back at her over his shoulder until the girl would finally respond to his gentle tug on her lead rope. Both times Katryn stopped, her delays were minutes in length, but with each delay her breathing slowed, and she appeared to become more relaxed. Randor sensed her need to regain some pride, and allowed her these small rebellions.
At he approached the hitching rail with Katryn, Randor saw that Latkin was already there, and getting the other three girls ready for the final short leg of their journey to Randor’s training compound. Latkin had all three girls kneeling and waiting, each tied to the next by their lead ropes and the rings on their new collars. They were also in the same order as when he first saw them upon his arrival at Bothar’s shed, Madi then Lyra and Cynda at the rear. When Randor arrived with Katryn he signaled her to kneel at the front of the line by pulling downward on her lead rope. Katryn hesitated defiantly, only to jump with surprise when she received a single stroke of Randor’s whip which wrapped around the tender backs of her legs at the knee. Katryn knelt quickly, and Randor tied the end of Madi’s lead rope to the back ring of Katryn’s collar. She had learned that while Radnor could be tested, it was he who set the limits.
While Randor had been attaching Katryn to the other girls, Latkin had gone for their mounts, and returned leading Vixin and Berin. He held both girls’ reins as Radnor tied Katryn’s lead to Vixin’s saddle ring. Latkin then handed Berin’s reins to Randor while he took the extra lead rope that he had looped over his shoulder and attached the clip end to the ring at the back of Cynda’s neck. Taking the loose end, Latkin walked back to Randor, retrieved Berin’s reins and gave her his signal to lower her back for mounting. Berin was only of average height for a woman, while Latkin was abnormally tall for an elf, so he had not trained her to kneel, rather to bend her knees and drop to a half crouch. Placing his left foot into the stirrup, Latkin swung onto Berin’s back and tied his end of the rope to the horn of her saddle before signaling her to rise with a gentle pull on her reins. Randor mounted Vixin. And they started out of Bothar’s gate leading the string of girls now secured both fore and aft.
Randor and Latkin had done this many times before so no signal was required for them both to give their mounts a light touch of spurs as soon as they cleared Bothar’s gate. Vixin and Berin almost simultaneously broke into a light trot which the girls had not expected and had to stumble a bit to match. Radnor knew that girls like these looked their best when trotting as it showed off their coordination and the firmness of their young bodies.
Randor also knew that professional buyers, to impress their customers, claimed that they could predict how smooth a ride a girl would provide after training by watching her movements when she was still wild. Randor had watched these girls move for the past three weeks, and knew that three of them had just the characteristics that the buyers claimed to be important. As far as the fourth, well the little strawberry was another matter, entirely. He also had been informed by Bothar that several buyers were visiting the village, so they trotted the girls along briskly, especially past the taverns where the buyers could usually be found.
As Katryn, Madi, Lyra and Cynda were trotting along, strung between Vixin and Berin, they all began testing the mobility of their hands, arms and shoulders that their new harnesses allowed them. They learned quickly that they would have little use of their hands, but that their arms and shoulders were held in comfortable positions, and were allowed a fair degree of fore and aft movement. They were free to swing their arms back and forth alternating with their legs as they walked or ran. Such counter movement is essential in bipedal creatures to be able to maintain their balance when in motion. Although the girls didn’t yet realize its importance, the elves were quite aware that the additional weight of a saddle and rider made a girl’s ability to balance her movements well most essential.
Two weeks earlier in a different life, Katryn would have been horribly humiliated by just the idea of being seen naked by anyone or anything, even elves. Growing up in her village, any form of nakedness was considered terribly improper, or so they had been taught by their nannies and the elders from an early age. These were the same elders who, on her twentieth birthday, had ordered Katryn to stand before them and to remove all of her clothing and display herself before their assembled council. That day burned in disgust in Katryn’s memory. That night was even worse when she was taken to the quarters of one of the lower ranked elders, again told to undress, then and made to perform acts that she had never before even imagined. As a result, nakedness had long brought feelings of revulsion to Katryn.
Following their capture, when the four girls had first been stripped by the elves, their sheer humiliation had been physically oppressive, and they could focus on little else. The elves knew from years of experience that the stripping of new captives made them much easier to handle and control, so always employed the tactic with wild girls. Like those of her friends, Katryn’s body blushed all over instantly when her clothes had been cut away. It had taken all of the girls several days to begin to accept the sight of each other’s exposed bodies without their intense negative feelings returning.
It had taken almost a week on the trail before Katryn’s really became aware that she, Madi, Lyra and Cynda were not the only naked girls in the elves’ raiding party. Except for the saddles on their backs, none of the girls that the elves rode were clothed in any way, and none seemed the least bothered by the fact. Even though there were four strangers in their midst, none of the elves’ mounts nor the two pack girls had shown the least concern.
During the second week, Katryn could not help noticing the magnificent naked hindquarters of the mounted woman directly in front of her, to whose saddle she was chained, It was, after all, the sight that filled her eyes for almost twelve hours a day,. “Unless you’re front girl, the view really doesn’t change much,” Katryn finally thought with somewhat whimsical resignation.
The next day Katryn suddenly realized that this woman, “Vixin” as she would later learn, had no concern whatever that her own body was completely exposed. Katryn noticed that Vixin’s saddle tended to cause her to bend forward somewhat at the waist fully exposing even her most private parts, especially to those behind her. Upon further observation, Katryn realized that, not only was Vixin totally unashamed of her naked body, it was a matter of intense personal pride for her. Katryn recalled the evenings in camp, and how after they had been cleaned up, fed and hobbled, the elves’ mounts had all been permitted to roam about somewhat freely. During these times she also recalled that Vixin had always displayed a sense of quiet elegant confidence. Katryn also remembered that the slender blond that the young elf rode appeared so in love with her beautiful young body that she practically pranced in her hobbles showing herself off. As the long tiring trip neared its end, Katryn began viewing all female nakedness, including her own, with somewhat less concern.
Katryn concern over her nakedness did return somewhat as they left Bothar’s and she realized that the village was filled with creatures that were fully clothed while she was not. She realized, quickly enough though, that none of the other girls she saw in the village wore anything more than saddles or, in a few cases harnesses, by which they were hitched to draw wheeled conveyances of different types. Katryn was beginning to relax when Randor stopped at the corner of a large building before moving out into the village’s wide main street.
Although Katryn and the other girls were hardly winded now from their trotting, what they saw next literally made them all gasp for breath. Going past them in one direction on the opposite side of the wide street was a small buggy, and immediately afterward a heavily loaded wagon passed close by them going the opposite way. However, the vehicles were not the cause of such surprise for the four girls, but the fact that they were drawn, not by girls, but by very powerful young human males.
The buggy, drawn by a single male was being driven smartly by an attractive and apparently well dressed female elf, holding his reins in one hand, and a long buggy whip in the other, both of which she was using. She was apparently controlling the male’s gait and posture with a combination of bit pressure and carefully applied flicks from her whip, as he fairly pranced in a high stepping trot with his neck arched and his head held high but his face looking downward. He appeared to Katryn and the others like a male version of the beautiful platinum blond girl that had been ridden by the young elf in the raiding party. This male also had light blond hair and deeply tanned skin.
The male was tacked out in a silver trimmed dark brown bridle and matching harness consisting of a wide belt around his waist that was heavily padded and contoured over his hips, fastening in the back with several buckled straps. Additional straps crossed his back and chest going over his powerful shoulders where they widened and were also heavily padded. His wrists were connected to his collar and his upper arms cuffed and linked by chain just like Katryn, and the others, only his cuffs and collar were of a rich dark brown leather trimmed in silver and matched his bridle and harness.
The heavily loaded wagon was being drawn by a team of four males abreast with two male elves sitting on the wagon seat, one holding four sets of reins in his two hands, and the other cracking a long snake like whip over the heads of the team. All four males in the team resembled larger, and even more muscular, male versions of Lana and Beth, or so it appeared to the girls. Looking both up and down the street, the girls saw at least four additional young males all tied to hitching rails in front of buildings, waiting. All were harnessed and hitched to vehicles of various types, but one was saddled.
The reason for the obvious shock to Katryn and her friends was that none of the girls could even remember seeing young adult males of their own species. Life in virtually all human villages on this world was lived according to a very strict set of rules as administered by the Elder’s Council, under the absolute authority of a small Council of Lords.
At the age of five, children were separated from their mothers and sent to be raised by old nannies in literally separate communities, boys in one and girls in another. They lived that way until the age of twenty, when the girls were each presented to the elders. Although they had many speculations while growing up, none of the four girls actually knew what had happened to the boys. The only males that Katryn and the others had ever seen had been Elders of whom there were many in a complex structure of varying ranks.
At twenty four, Katryn had lived in the compound of the elders for four years with one more ahead of her. She and other girls of her age literally did all of the work to maintain the facilities and the lifestyle of the Elders. They cooked, cleaned, and worked in the many small shops making most of the products that the community required. They worked in the walled agricultural enclosures tending the crops and also the many fenced fields and pens where the community’s animals were raised. On this world there were only a few such species of animals that the humans had succeeded in domesticating. There were several species of birds, similar to chickens, guinea fowl and peacocks that were raised for food and eggs. There were sheep like creatures raised for their wool as well as their meat, and pig like animals that provided both meat and hides for the vast variety of applications for leather.
In addition to their hard work, all girls were required to serve the Elder’s pleasures when ever they so desired which was often. However, the girls received no pleasure on their part from these activities. Prior to being presented to the Elders, and monthly thereafter, all girls living in the compound were given a drug that literally switched off their reproductive systems. Elders wanted neither pregnancy nor periods to interfere with their uses of the girls for pleasure. The administration of this drug was halted when the girls turned twenty five and were transferred to the breeders’ compound where, within a short time all of their reproductive functions returned. Unfortunately for the girls during their years with the Elders, the drug that switched off their capacity to reproduce, also switched off their desire for sex which though, was of little concern to the Elders as sex for them centered on domination, not cooperation.
Beginning sometime near the end of the second week of her captivity, Katryn started noticing a mild stirring in her body that she had not felt for four years. She had wondered if it had to do with her acceptance of her own nakedness or the fact that other naked bodies were virtually never out of her sight. She remembered wondering then if Madi, Lyra and Cynda were feeling the same stirrings.
Now, there was absolutely no question in Katryn’s mind that there was something about seeing the naked males that caused what was going on inside her body. She turned to look at the other three to see if they might be having a similar response, and got her answer. None of the girls could take their eyes off of the male humans in their view. Turning back to the front, Katryn could not fail to notice Vixin’s similar focus combined with her nervous shifting of her weight from one foot to the other while they waited for the street to clear. Looking more closely, Katryn could not fail to see the moistness that was beginning to show on the split mound between Vixin’s legs and the unmistakable scent beginning to emanate from it. As Katryn was wondering over what she was seeing, smelling and feeling, Randor’s spurs to Vixin’s flanks again set them all into motion.
Turning on to the wide street, Katryn marveled at all she saw. Although all the buildings were of a somewhat smaller scale than those in her village, all were of far more sophisticated design and construction. Also, unlike her village, there was bustling activity going on almost everywhere. Most of the elves she saw seemed to be very purposefully going about some business or other which was very unlike anything that she ever seen at home. Beside the males that had so shocked Katryn and the others, they saw numerous girls being ridden or hitched to wheeled vehicles all moving somewhere, and most with some seeming sense of purpose if not urgency. What the girls were witnessing was evidence of the commerce that drove the elves’ society and economy.
After several blocks of stareing in literal amazement, the girls were turned right onto a somewhat narrower street. After a few blocks, the buildings became fewer and more widely spaced. Shortly after crossing a bridge over a small stream, they stopped at the gate of a large fenced compound. Without dismounting, Randor reached for the latch, unlocked it, and backing Vixen with light repeated pulls on her bit, swung the gate open. Once the gate swung clear, he touched the big roan very lightly on the flanks with his spurs while pulling very slightly on her reins. Vixin understood and obeyed by walking slowly into the open courtyard just beyond the gate. The line moved slowly enough to allow Latkin, from his seat on Berin’s back, to grab the gate and swing it closed behind them. They all heard the gate latch with a resounding click. The party had finally arrived at Randor’s training facility.