Field Work Ch. 02 - Ritual

The ritual varied minimally among tribes, and Dr. Perry knew more or less what to expect from it. Knowing and experiencing, though, were two very different things. She watched the preparations with the dread of a condemned prisoner, which she might as well have been, minus the execution.

They brought buckets of water from the river and set up the frame on which they'd display her, and readied the saddle that symbolized the virility of the tribe. They cut switches from olive trees, and Herodes prepared poultices over the fire, some to feed her and some with which to paint her. They hadn't been caught unprepared; the university's intelligence from the coastal tribes had revealed that this tribe had released its previous captive, pregnant, only weeks ago and had made the initial preparations to take on another.

Attalos came to check on her often and treated her much as one would treat a spooked horse: he made soft noises and stroked her back. She liked him. She belonged to the whole tribe, but they believed, or else acted like, each captive woman had given herself in particular to the first man who had touched her, and the man generally acted accordingly. If a captive fell in love with a tribesman, it was most often the man in this role that she fell in love with, and regardless of her reaction, they tended to have a special bond -- no matter how tenuous or adversarial -- that the man tried to nurture. Attalos would use Dr. Perry more than any other man, and he would be both her comforter tonight and the first one between her legs. When they moved camp, she would travel leashed to him.

He inspected her gently each time he visited, and slowly brought his attention to more intimate areas of her body, getting to know her. This too seemed like part of the ritual; it was structured, presumably to give her a chance to calm herself as his attentions grew more and more invasive. He looked into her eyes and at her teeth, under her arms, palpated her breasts and sides, examined her hands and feet and abdomen, and on the final visit he laid her back, and with one hand on the side of the yoke to keep her in place, brushed his fingers into the folds of her vulva and looked at it closely, with an almost clinical interest. He leaned down and took a whiff, to Dr. Perry's embarrassment, but seemed to find nothing unexceptional about her, and then turned his attention back to the rest of her body. She lay, awkward and tense, on his pallet while he ran his hands over her.

The smell of cooking duck wafted in from the campfire outside, and Dr. Perry's stomach growled. Attalos put his hand on her navel in acknowledgement and said something in a gentle tone, then got up and left her where she lay. She struggled to sit up again, but couldn't do it on her own, and had little choice but to wait where she was.

He returned awhile later with Bardas, and together they got her to her feet. She tried hard not to panic, and though they had to tug her ahead to get her to move, she mostly succeeded. The sun had set, and the only light came from the campfire, which the men were sitting around, eating. Fatty strips of duck were drying on stone in an indirect heat, and Dr. Perry's stomach growled again. She wouldn't eat for another hour or two at least; her first food was part of the ritual, and there was a lot to come before that.

Bardas and Attalos brought her to the frame. It was a small contraption made of two poles with forks at the top, and they looked thoughtfully both at her and the poles, and lowered them slightly. When they tied her yoke into the forked ends of the poles, she was immobilized, and stood on display, with her hobbled feet planted on the ground and unable to move independently. She wouldn't be harmed, she knew, but like a public speaking engagement, it was terrifying; one didn't have to be in danger of being ripped apart by one's audience to be afraid.

Off to the side, one of the men -- Elpides -- brought out an aulos and began to play something that seemed inappropriately jaunty until Dr. Perry reminded herself that this was a happy occasion for all involved except her. She tried to steel herself again. Think about how much dick you're going to be getting from all these hot men, she thought, and she was not surprised to find that it didn't help at all. Below her waist, her nervous system had taken her fear and run with it. She'd never been so turned on in her life. This was a complicated situation, and she wondered if real rape victims felt like this. And then she thought, I am a real rape victim. Wasn't she? If she had been able to back out, she would have stopped this, if not at her capture then certainly at the point where they were cutting her clothes off.

As her initial captors, Attalos and Bardas had starring roles in the ritual. By the firelight, they bathed her with cold river water and perfumed soap, and then oiled her body with the olive oil they bought from the women's settlements. Her skin glistened in the light. It was Herodes's turn, then, to paint her body, and he traced the ritualistic symbols on her: fertility on her pelvic mound, milk on her breasts, libido on her inner thighs and servitude on her neck. The poultice tingled. It would stain like henna. She didn't know if this was one of the tribes that would reapply it over and over, but she did know she could expect to receive a tattoo the following day; she wasn't going to get out of this unmarked.

The whole thing was mildly ridiculous because she knew exactly where it had come from: a group of young European WWI veterans who were looking for sexy and slightly abusive things to do to women. Their reasoning had been an afterthought, and that's why Attalos was preparing to switch her. It was supposed to symbolize the pain and fear of capture, but functionally was a warning that served to keep captives in line. Part of her research was intended to be running away, to study how captives who ran were treated, she had to decide at some point whether she was going to do it; the actual punishment, whatever it wound up being, would be a hundred times worse than the switching, and she had no intention of suffering real bodily harm for research. Attalos was thorough with the switch, but he didn't hit hard, and when she flinched from a particularly strong strike, he tempered the subsequent ones. When he was done, she was striped in front and presumably in back, and she felt the welts white-hot and raised and prickly on her skin.

He oiled her again, and then moved his hand down to her vulva. Standing so close to her that his chest touched her nose, he rubbed her vulva and slipped a finger inside her. You're ready for this, she told herself. This is good. This is what you wanted. Behind her, the other men watched; one or two were stroking their penises. She would service them all tonight. The thought was daunting, but she had little time to dwell. Bardas and Attalos removed her from the frame and led her by the yoke to a pallet which had been made up for the purpose, with stakes buried into the sand to hold the yoke in place. The pallet was a pile of deerskin, with more folded deerskin beneath her hips so that her pelvis was raised. Bardas removed the hobble while Attalos continued to finger her, and tied her ankles to a second pair of stakes. It gave Attalos easy access without allowing her to move.

Bardas withdrew, and Attalos went to work. This moment was about getting Dr. Perry to orgasm, and he knew what he was doing. He bent down and tongued her clitoris, which got a buck from her hips, and now he held her hips down while he licked and sucked. She squirmed, fighting. He sat up and worked his way, kissing and licking, to her breasts, one of which he sucked gently while he played with the nipple on the other. His hand disappeared then, and he entered her in a smooth motion that made her gasp.

She wanted him to get away, and she wanted him to go deeper. He thrust deeply and slowly. The aulos kept playing. He withdrew and inserted his fingers again, and sucked her nipple while he played, and then, with his other hand, pinched the other nipple so viciously and abruptly that she cried out and tried to kick him away.

He had been trying things out on her, she realized, and he didn't choose pain again. From a bag nearby he found a smooth, curved rib bone, and spread the lips of her labia with his fingers. The bone slid in effortlessly. Dr. Perry watched it disappear. Attalos probed and watched her carefully for her reaction. After some experimentation, he touched something deep inside her, and her eyes went wide.

It was a mistake, to show him that. Dr. Perry writhed and struggled, jerking against the ropes and the yoke, and got only rope burns and scrapes for her efforts, and now Attalos bore down on the source of her agony with the bone. "No," she sputtered, "No no no," not because it hurt but because she just needed a moment, it was too much, it was too out of her control. He was merciless. Like a trapped animal she bucked and kicked against her bonds, and inside her the feeling was so intense she didn't know how she could stand any more of it. "No no no no no no no." She heard her voice go high as she pleaded.

It seemed to take hours, but it took only moments. She kicked again, but this time aimlessly, because she was in the throes of an orgasm so wild that she shouted, one long hoarse wordless scream whose volume scared her. Attalos made encouraging noises while she spasmed and bucked, and behind him the other men shouted and applauded.

Dr. Perry flushed red and hot, horrified and still turned on. That had been... it had... she didn't know what it had been. She was not sure how she could endure it eight more times. Attalos sat her up and rubbed one of the other poultices in her mouth -- a birth control, which didn't matter because she'd been sterilized already, and a lactation aid, which would see her producing milk in days. Her vulva throbbed.

Then he took some of the drying duck and fed her. Not much: a few strips, enough to symbolize that he was her giver of life as well as punishment, and enough to hold her over the next several hours while the rest of the men took their turn. He and Bardas took her to the latrine pit and made her squat, and then gave her a drink before they staked her down again. One by one, the other men took their turns.

It was less painful than she thought it was going to be, and far more boring -- it seemed that her further pleasure was not required. Dr. Perry was a one-and-done kind of woman in the bedroom, and preferred to go on to other activities post-coitus, but, well -- anything for a good ethnography. Clearly. The men weren't in a rush, either to take their turns or to finish with them, and every hour or so, Attalos would pull her to her feet and walk her around. Her back hurt, and her hips hurt from having her legs staked out in the position they were in. She was relieved when the fifth man took her from behind, because it meant she could spend ten or fifteen minutes on her knees instead of on her back.

They were slowly rubbing her raw. So was the yoke, which chafed at the back of her neck despite its smoothness. She was going to have blisters. It didn't hurt as much as her vagina did; by the time the last man took his turn between her legs, she was fighting again because it burned with every stroke. He seemed to understand, and patted her on the leg when he was done, as though it couldn't be helped.

Dr. Perry thought they would let her up, then, and go on to the final part of the ritual, but they did not. Herodes appeared, and knelt between her legs, and she had only to imagine how it would feel, being raped again, before she was writhing in desperation to get away. She wondered if she was bleeding. He took out a little bowl, though, and began to insert a thick paste into her vagina. At first it felt no better than anyone else's fingers had, but after a moment it seemed to have a cooling effect that convinced her to lie still and allow him to minister to her. He spread it around her vulva as well, and wiped his fingers on her hip.

He and Attalos helped her to her feet.

She had been soundly used, and stumbled a little, though she wasn't sure why. The men had done most of the work, but Dr. Perry was exhausted. She wanted only to sleep, but they led her to the saddle. It was not the kind of saddle that one would use to ride a horse, but a boulder that had been carefully tapped and chipped to form a seat she could straddle. Sticking up from the dip in the seat was a phallic segment of rock, bigger and wider and longer than she thought she could take. It had not seemed like such a big deal earlier in the evening. Someone had carefully oiled it with rendered duck fat, and though it was knobby, it looked unlikely to chafe her inside.

She had no energy to fight, and she knew that if she did, they would put her down on top of it anyway. Attalos lifted her to the seat and set her behind the phallus, and untied one hand while Herodes made sure she didn't try to run away. Her legs dangled. She wondered if they expected her to know what to do. Attalos lifted her again, and held her weight while she slowly adjusted herself over the phallus.

It hurt going in. Dr. Perry hissed and withdrew, and Attalos allowed her to reposition herself and go more slowly. He and Herodes made encouraging noises as she sank onto the device, and then, finally, after a long minute of descent, she was able to rest her weight fully on the rock.

They tied her ankles to stakes on the ground, and Attalos refastened her wrist to the yoke. This meant, for them, that she was the property of the tribe; if she became pregnant, the whole band was the father. They would not place her here very often, but she could expect to mount the saddle, or an equivalent one elsewhere when they traveled, a number of times before she was released.

The cooling poultice did its work, and Attalos hand-fed her more duck jerky. By the time she was lifted from the saddle, dawn had begun to color the eastern sky, and the men had to carry more than lead her to Attalos's pallet in the crude little shelter.