Ivory's feelings were increasingly clouded by her anxiety about the imminent arrival of the Reindeer Herders and, above all, their chief. She gazed towards the horizon across the plain from the log on which she sat. Could she see the Reindeer Herders approach over the horizon or was it just another herd of horses?
It was later in the day that the long-awaited visitors arrived. The first sign was a small group of reindeer emerging from between the distant hills herded by almost as many people as there were animals. From the distance they seemed no different from the Mammoth Hunters. They were clad in fur and carried staffs and, over their shoulders, leather sacks filled with provisions. They were a miscellaneous group that included women and children and domesticated wolves yapping and barking beside their masters.
Ivory had encountered Reindeer Herders before during the long winter treks when all the tribes of the mammoth steppes followed the game to the snow-free pastures of the south. They were people of Ivory's tribe who spoke the same language, but so differently that it sometimes sounded as alien as the languages of the southern tribes. Unlike most people from her tribe, the Reindeer Herders would never settled in a village. Instead, they followed the reindeer herds that normally roamed the northern grasslands where there were fewer predators, but where it was also much colder. It was rumoured that their range took them to the ocean glaciers where there were large white bears and very few mammoths.
When the Reindeer Herders processed into the village they were greeted by ululations and whoops from the women and presented with small gifts of nuts and berries by the children, who then ran excitedly about with their new friends while their parents headed towards the Chief's tepee where Chief Cave Lion was standing in attendance. Leading them was a tall, heavily bearded man in the thickest furs that Ivory had every seen and who carried a staff taller than himself on the crest of which was the skull of a cave bear adorned with eagle feathers.
This must be the chief of the Reindeer Herders, Ivory reflected. She was pleased to see that he was a young man compared to Chief Cave Lion, but still somewhat older than she was. From what little she could see through the fur he wore and the beard that covered his face, he was a handsome man. This gave her the hope that the ordeal she would soon endure might not be so terrible after all.
As the shaman's apprentice, Ivory was soon occupied in rather more pressing matters for the rest of the day. Intoxicants were prepared which included strong alcoholic drinks fermented from honey. There were leaves and mushrooms of potent mind-bending qualities to be chewed and swallowed. Some Reindeer Herders had ailments for which they hoped the shaman could provide relief. There were fortunes to be told, incantations to be chanted and pungent potions to be imbibed. Although Ivory's role was only as Glade's assistant, she took great pride in her duties. This was most especially so since they were received so gratefully.
The visitors were animated in excitement and enthusiasm. They had walked for many days and rested with their herd only at night. Only a few of the reindeer accompanied them to the village. The majority were still in the care of a handful of Reindeer Herders, including the chief's brother and uncle. It wouldn't have been practical for several hundred reindeer to descend on the village. Nor would it have been wise to leave them untended with so many predators about. Reindeer made welcome prey for the many lions, hyenas and wolves that roamed in the game-rich mammoth steppes.
As the shadows lengthened and evening approached, the villagers brought out the meals they'd prepared during the last few days. The carcasses of elk, great antlered deer, aurochs and even a mammoth calf were roasted on spits over blazing fires. All the while, the village musicians played an incessant rhythm of music that encouraged the younger Reindeer Herders and villagers to dance. If Ivory didn't have so many duties to observe, she would gladly have joined the dancers in their light deer furs in sheer abandon to the insistent rhythm.
When the Reindeer Herders and villagers gathered around the blistering flames of the ceremonial fires and before the feasting began, both chiefs addressed the eager assembly. The two chiefs' speeches vied with one another for humour and wisdom. They were sprinkled with homilies to the great spirits, praise to both the hosts and guests, and a series of funny and sometimes obscene anecdotes that invited appreciative laughter. As was the tradition, only men were allowed to give speeches although Ivory knew that the shaman could very easily have given a much more entertaining speech. However, Glade's time to perform came after the most prominent people had spoken and the Reindeer Herder women had sung a few songs about reindeers and hunting. As Ivory knew she would be, the shaman was totally mesmerising.
Only Ivory was privy to the fact that the saga Glade sang over the accompaniment of a piped reed and a slow rhythmic drumbeat was wholly improvised apart from the chorus. Glade's tale was of a brave hunter who went forth in pursuit of a great mammoth and on the way encountered some heroic Reindeer Herders who accompanied him from thenceforth. On his quest, the hunters dispatched rhinoceros, feasted on a deer with antlers so large that from the distance it looked like a tree, fought off bears and cave lions, and eventually battled for nearly a day with a mammoth twice the size of even the largest bull mammoth that anyone had ever seen. The climax of the saga was that the hunter returned triumphantly home with the mammoth's tusks slung over his shoulder.
The feasting began when Glade finished her tale. This was interspersed all the while with dance and song from the two clans' rich oral traditions. Ivory shared handfuls of venison with women more accustomed to the tough meat of reindeer.
For the first time in her life, Ivory believed that she was sincerely valued. The Reindeer Herders venerated her as the shaman's apprentice and believed her to be blessed with the spirits of the trees, the wolf and the moon. Whatever veneration they showed towards the apprentice was expressed many times more towards the shaman. The Reindeer Herders didn't recognise Glade as a foreign woman. They believed that her strange skin colour was a blessing from the spirits.
The various smoked herbs and mead Ivory imbibed had its desired effect and soon she was living in an eternal present where her concerns and fears were wholly forgotten. So, when Glade tapped her on the shoulder and led her off to the Chief's tepee Ivory felt no trepidation at all. She relished being stripped of her clothes and having Glade's hands massage the musk of small animals onto her skin. She dressed in scanty clothes that failed to completely cover her breasts and continued to jiggle to the rhythm of the drums that echoed throughout the village, muffled as they were by the thick hides cladding the chief's tent. And while she waited for the Reindeer Herder chief to arrive, Ivory felt excitement rather than foreboding at the prospect of a strange cock penetrating her.
The shaman and her apprentice didn't have to wait long until the Reindeer Herder chief appeared, dressed in only loose deer hide and with his penis already erect and ready. Chief Cave Lion stood to one side, happy for once not to be partaking of Ivory's flesh. Perhaps the Reindeer Herders had made a similar offer of a woman or two of their tribe so he would have no need for more mundane carnal pleasure.
The Reindeer Herder chief was indeed a handsome man. He had two fingers missing from one hand and slash of scars across his chest that might have been inflicted by a leopard or lion. Otherwise he was a man in full possession of his manhood, most especially so between his legs. He had both Ivory and Glade at his disposal and fucked them with abandon for rather longer than Chief Cave Lion had ever managed. There was little that could be seen of the Reindeer Herder chief's face in the thick beard that rose well over his cheeks. Only his snow-scarred nose and bright eyes could be seen peeking through. His hair was long and knotted with bone and ivory. His chest was hairier than even Chief Cave Lion's. And his thrusts into her came with an urgency and passion that told of vigour and youth. It was far more expert than the lovemaking Ivory had enjoyed with her own chief, but it lacked the subtlety and technique of which Glade was a mistress.
And very soon it was into the Reindeer Herder chief's arms, with Glade beside her, that Ivory finally collapsed. She now knew what she'd missed in the sex she'd so far enjoyed and she also knew that she now had a hunger for more, much more, of the same.
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Glade's last lovemaking in the Knights' village with the less selfish lover that her mistress had become was an oddly fretful affair. Although she knew well from listening to Lady Demure's words that her mistress was unlikely ever to do anything unless there was a way in which she thought she could benefit from it, the lovemaking was of a kind that made her want more. And this was so even though she was sure that, like Mimosa, she would abandon her mistress as readily as Lady Demure proposed to abandon her village. She wondered whether Lady Demure's more reciprocal lovemaking might be her way of tempting Glade to join her. Her mistress knew full well exactly what the young girl's greatest weakness happened to be. And that, of course, was her desire for carnal pleasure.
When Glade spoke to Mimosa the following morning her fellow slave's disdain for her mistress was no less vehement than before.
"The cunt might think she can buy my loyalty with her pledge of equality and respect in the savannah beyond this village," she said, "but it is she who should bow down to me. My people will arise and slaughter each and every one of these arse-fucking cocksuckers. If she expects mercy after the shitty way she's treated me in the many years I've twiddled her clitoris and cleaned her arse with my tongue, well, she must be as much a fucking fool as her shithead of a husband."
