Orange Papers
The Border
Claudia’s heart was pounding and her pulse racing as she took another step forward in the queue, she would be the last of the four friends to make the attempt to cross the border. She watched discretely as ahead of her Nadine talked to the heavily armed border guard. In her hand the female soldier held the visa that would either grant entry to Elstrand or, if suspicions were aroused, doom Nadine. The colour of the visa changed every month and this month the paper the visa was printed on was orange.
The guard read the visa then spoke to Nadine, obviously asking why she wanted to enter the realm of the Witch-Queen. From where she stood Claudia couldn’t hear what was being asked but she was close enough to notice the guard grip the top left corner of the visa between thumb and index finger of her right hand hold it for a moment.
Claudia held her breath as the guard stood silently holding the visa, then she breathed out as the visa was handed back to Nadine and the young woman walked forward. Passing two guards sitting on campstools by a fire they’d built, Nadine walked steadily and calmly through the right-hand gate and vanished from sight. That meant two of them, Nadine and Rachel, had made it through and next it would be Georgina’s turn before Claudia faced the guards and the examination of her papers.
What they were attempting had begun as a thought experiment between friends. All of them had lost family during the invasion of Grent but they themselves had been lucky enough to be students at the university in the Duchy of Hillmartin when the war restarted. All of them had tried to leave but the western borders of the Duchy had been sealed tight, the Duke and Duchess ruled a relatively small land, and the last thing they wanted was to provoke an attack from the Witch-Queens forces. No refugees were allowed in and no one was allowed out.
The Grentian ambassador had begged the Duke and Duchess to allow refugees to cross the border but to no avail, they were more worried about the potential destiny of their own people than the fate of refugees from a doomed country. But there were those who were sympathetic, who helped smuggle people into Hillmartin, guards who turned a blind eye, merchants who hid refugees in their wagons, wealthy families who paid off the right people on the border.
There had been a massive feeling of relief when the armies of the Witch-Queen had stopped at the border of Hillmartin and not simply rolled over it as they had done with Grent. The night the war ended the four friends met, crying on each other’s shoulder as they talked about their families trapped within what was now Elstrand. The meetings became a regular event, but it was Rachel who first came up with the great idea.
“There must be a way to get in and find out what happened,” she said one evening as they sat in Claudia’s university rooms.
“Get in where?” asked Nadine naively.
“Elstrand,” said Rachel.
There had been a shocked silence then Claudia had spoken, “You can’t be serious Rachel, we’ve all heard the rumours, the tales the refugees brought with them.”
Rachel had shaken her head, “I don’t believe them, they can’t be true,” she said defiantly as the others looked at each other.
All of them had lost someone when Grent was conquered but of the four Rachel had undoubtedly suffered the worst. Her widowed mother and two sisters, her aunt and three female cousins had all been in Beston when it fell, none of them had been seen or heard from since.
“Alright, let’s think about it, what would it take to get into Elstrand and be able to travel around” said Claudia hoping that by realising the problems she could make Rachel understand it was impossible. By the time they went their separate ways she thought she’d been successful but the next time the four met she realised she hadn’t been successful at all.
“Rachel and I have been talking to Professor Jenson,” said Georgina the next time the four friends met.
“What about?” asked Nadine.
“Getting into Elstrand,” replied Rachel.
“But I thought we decided it couldn’t be done, at least not by us,” said Claudia.
“I know, and we thought the same but then the Professor overheard us talking about Elstrand and he came and spoke to us,” said Rachel.
“The Professor explained that he’d been opposed to the Duchy’s stance during the war and that he’d had close female friends who taught at the College of Beston, but he hasn’t heard from any of them since the takeover of the city. He’d been thinking like we have, how do you get into Elstrand and he came up with a plan,” said Georgina.
“That’s right, a way to get into Elstrand,” said an enthusiastic Georgina, “But of course for him to try it would mean suicide, however for four women to try it would be feasible. The Professor has contacts in the Bel-Heston and Lindest embassies who would be willing to help us get into Elstrand by arranging for visas that would allow us to cross the border,” said Rachel.
And so, to Claudia’s dismay, the great plan had been formed and as good as his word, and after a few difficulties, Professor Jensen had acquired four of the orange paper visas. In addition, he had sourced apparently genuine identity papers that proved that Claudia and Rachel were citizens of Bel-Heston and Georgina and Nadine were from Lindest. Each had their own story to tell when questioned and each of the stories were true, that is they were true if you were the original owners of the identity papers each woman carried.
Claudia was carrying genuine diplomatic documents for the Bel-Heston consulate in Beston, Rachel was pretending to be a travelling scribe looking for work. Georgina was posing as a merchant’s assistant on her way to collect a debt and Nadine was posing as a clerk to an attorney carrying legal paperwork that needed signing.
Getting though the border gate on the Hillmartin side had been simplicity itself but after that there had been the half a mile of what was effectively a no-man’s land, a buffer zone between the expanded land of Elstrand and its nervous neighbours. The problem was, no one was certain if Elstrand actually cared about the treaties that had established the buffer zone. Rumour had it that Elstrand considered the buffer zone to be part of their territory, that their lands only ended where other countries borders began.
Stories had begun to be whispered about people who lived close to the border disappearing, especially attractive women, and of Elstrand armed forces being seen inside their neighbour’s lands. The rulers of Hillmartin rejected these stories, saying they were nothing but rumour and conjecture and banning the spreading of such tales, still the rumours persisted.
The four friends had crossed into the contested buffer zone separately, choosing this particular place to enter Elstrand because it was supposed to the quietest and least used of the border gates from Hlillmartin to Elstrand. A mountain pass that had once seen people cross freely between Grent and Hillmartin, but was now blocked by a sturdily built and well defended wooden wall some thirty feet high with two gates through it, one for those on foot and a larger one for carriages, wagons, carts and riders.
The four friends had seen each other as they, along with a hundred others as well as an equally long line of carts and wagons, had waited in the queue to gain entrance. Travellers were allowed through the gate as a daily block of one-hundred, you applied and were given a day and time, miss that slot and you were refused entry. As they had agreed to on the night before they left their student digs, none of them had acknowledged each other in any way.
The queue shuffled forward, and Claudia noticed something for the first time, something that nearly made her turn around and run. Kneeling in the grass next to the road were three women, all were differently dressed, one in a simple grey dress, another in what looked like a green velvet jacket and skirt the final one in the white habit of a nun, but they all had certain things in common.
All three had their arms bound behind their backs with leather cuffs around their wrists and strongly buckled leather straps around their elbows. All three had the cuffs around their wrists fastened by a single link to tightly buckled cuffs around their ankles. There was one more thing, over the head of each of the bound and kneeling women was a loosely fitting brown leather bag. Buckled securely round their necks, the bag covered the heads and faces of the three women masking their identity.
Claudia realised she had been staring at the three captives for a while when she felt a tap on the shoulder, “The queues moving,” said the woman behind her, Claudia walked forward.
As she stopped again Claudia turned to the woman behind her, “Excuse me but have you entered Elstrand before?”
The woman nodded, “Many times, why do you ask?”
“I was wondering about those women and the nun, why have they had that done to them?” she asked.
The woman shrugged, “If you’re a foreigner in Elstrand you don’t always need much of a reason to end up like that, could be their papers were wrong in some way. It could be they were wanted for a crime it could even be because the guards like their looks, who can say. Just be careful with yourself and forget about those three, there’s nothing you can do for them or anyone else the guards pick out,” said the woman.
Claudia looked at the three kneeling figures then she noticed that not that far ahead of her Georgina was at the front of the queue, she watched as Georgina passed her visa documents and her identification papers to one of the three guards who stood around the gate. Suddenly Claudia felt a flush of fear go through her as she looked at her friend, a feeling of impending disaster.
The female guard was silent as she read then, as Claudia had seen her do before, she took hold of the top left corner of Georgina’s visa and held it. For several seconds there was silence as the guard held the corner of the visa, longer it seemed than the last time Claudia had watched it occur. It happened quickly, and when she thought back later, Claudia knew that despite the deep guilt she felt she couldn’t have done anything to prevent it.
The female guard looked at Georgina and smiled then she opened her fingers and let the orange sheet of paper fall to the ground, she said a single word, “Fake.”
Georgina opened her mouth to protest but the three guards were abruptly around her, Georgina tried to object, tried to run but it was too late. Claudia didn’t see where they came from, but the three guards were suddenly holding leather cuffs, straps and a black rubber ball with bands and a buckle attached to it.
Georgina tried to speak but as she opened her mouth the large black ball was pushed between her lips and behind her teeth then the guard reached around Georgina’s head and, as she stood in shocked immobility, buckled it tightly at the back of her red-haired head. At the same time the other two guards pulled Georgina’s arms behind her back, Georgina roused herself from her torpor and tried to struggle as muffled sounds came from behind the ball-gag that filled her mouth, but it did no good.
Georgina’s captors not only outnumbered her they were experienced in their task and much stronger than the twenty-two year-old student. A wide brown leather strap was looped around Georgina’s elbows and pulled tight forcing them together then Georgina’s wrists were cuffed together with brown leather cuffs. Struggling frantically, Georgina was pushed to her knees as the guards quickly placed cuffs around her ankles and clipped them to the cuffs around her wrists with a single link.
Georgina looked wildly around. Looking for any assistance she could but none was forthcoming as the women in the queue looked away. For a moment Georgina’s eyes met Claudia’s, a look of terror on Georgina’s face as she looked beseechingly at her friend. Their eyes remained locked then Georgina’s face disappeared as one of the brown leather bags was pulled down over her face and head and buckled securely and snugly around Georgina’s neck. As two of the guards lifted up the bound and gagged Georgina by her armpits the first guard bent down and picked up the sheet of orange paper and Georgina’s identity papers.
“Stupid bitch, paying good money for a fake and she couldn’t even tell the difference,” said the guard with a shake of her head then she tore up the fake visa and Georgina’s identity documents and threw them onto the fire. As the papers burnt the two guards placed Georgina on her knees next to the three other captives and then walked back to the fire and sat down on campstools.
“Next,” said the border guard as if nothing had happened and the next women in the queue stepped forward. Claudia was in a state of total shock as she fought back tears and the feeling she wanted to vomit, desperate not to attract attention to herself.
How could Georgina’s visa possibly have been fake, Professor Jensen had been the one to acquire all the visas and there had been nothing wrong with Nadine and Rachel’s visa, then she remembered. Professor Jensen was having trouble getting the final visa, Georgina’s visa, it was only on the day before they were due to leave for the border that he’d delivered it. Now it was obvious to Claudia that the visa he’d got was a fake and Georgina had paid the price, the queue moved onward, and Claudia stumbled forward with it.
Now there were only three women between her and the border guard, a voice called out from behind her, “Fuck me Clarice, what are you doing in this shithole corner of the realm?”
The guard looked up from the documents she was checking and smiled, “Kendra, someone told me you were dead,” she said as a woman in grey rode up to her on a large black horse.
The woman called Kendra laughed as she climbed from her horse and embraced the guard, “No fucking chance of that,” she said with a deep laugh.
“Ladies, this is Kendra Berkenstein,” said the guard to her fellows,
“Remember her face because you might just wake up in the middle of the night with her trying to prise the gold out of your teeth,” she said with a laugh.
“I resent that Clarice, you know very well that I only take gold teeth from those who no longer need them, so tell me who did you upset to end up here?”
Kendra Berkenstein was tall with short cut brunette hair, dressed in grey leather pants, grey gloves, a grey leather jerkin and flat-soled grey boots, her clothes were dusty from travel but obviously well-fitting and comfortable. It was clear to Claudia that the woman was well known to the guard as someone with a roguish reputation and it was also apparent that the two were friends.
“No one, reports were coming through that smugglers and those who wanted to sneak into Elstrand were using this as their entry of choice, so the Colonel sent me and these ladies up here to stiffen things up a bit. As you can see, we’re having some success,” said the guard as she pointed at Georgina and the other three captives.
“What about you?”
“I’ve been on a pussy hunt, got a contract with the Black Sisters in the convent over at Stenver for ten new sluts, pretty ones of course. But they must have heard I was coming because pickings are pretty poor,” replied Kendra as she jerked a thumb past her horse.
Standing behind Kendra’s horse were two extremely attractive blond-haired women. Both the women were dressed in expensive black riding habits and skirts, white silk blouses with cravats at the neck, black riding boots and black gloves. Both were also gagged with brown leather gags that covered their mouths from nose to chin and their hands were bound tightly in front of them at the wrists by brown leather cuffs. Long chains were attached to the bindings around their wrists at one end and to a ring on the saddle of Kendra Berkenstein’s horse at the other. Tears were running down their dust stained faces as they looked dejectedly at the ground.
Claudia noticed that although one of the women was older than the other what showed of their faces, hair and physiques were similar, what Kendra Berkenstein said next confirmed what Claudia had suspected.
“Mother and daughter out for a ride when I bumped into them,” she said with a laugh.
“And I suppose they just happened to be on the wrong side of the border when you met up with them and not in Hillmartin at all!” said the guard called Clarice.
“Exactly,” said Kendra with a broad smile, “No idea how they could possibly have got so lost but there they were definitely in Elstrand when I spotted them and of course, as you well know, the Second Act of the Doctrine applies.”
Bernice shook her head, “Kendra, one day someone is going to catch you out and when they do you’ll probably end up dressed in a brown leather smock serving me drinks in a tavern as someone’s domestic slave. After all you’re far too fucking ugly to be a sex-slave.”
Kendra laughed, “Perhaps, but I doubt it,” then her voice turned serious, “Any lookers amongst that lot?” she asked as looked at Georgina and the other three kneeling captives.
“The redheads pretty enough, the one in the velvet is forty but I’d still be happy to have her in my bed and as for the nun my good and close friend Anna over their had a really good feel when we were binding her and she assures me that under all that religious shit she has a very, very good pair of tits. Mind you the face isn’t bad either, as for the other, she’s destined for a general-purpose sale.”
“A nun, I thought we just turned them away and told them to fuck off back to their own false gods?”
“Normally we do, it causes fewer problems with the government in Hillmartin, but this one wouldn’t take no for an answer, insisted she had to come into Elstrand and that her visa meant she could. Something about a ridiculous pilgrimage, well now she gets to stay for good.”
“Listen,” said Kendra, “How about we do each other a favour, let me take the nun, the forty-year-old and the redhead off your hands. It’ll mean less paperwork for you to do and it’ll mean I’m half way to fulfilling my contract. I’ll make it worth your while when I get paid?”
Clarice looked at Kendra for several moments as she considered the offer, “Alright, but I want ten percent of whatever you get and proof that it’s ten percent as well.”
“Deal,” said Kendra and held out her hand, the two women shook.
“Anna, Jen, give me a hand will you,” said Clarice.
Ten minutes later Kendra Berkenstein mounted her horse, “It was a pleasure doing business with you, I’ll be back to see you when I get my fee,” she said.
“Be sure that you do,” said the guard called Clarice.
At a walk Kendra rode slowly off, behind her horse, their wrists cuffed together in front of them and connected by long chains to Kendra’s saddle, her five captives followed. The brown leather bags had been removed from the heads of Georgina, the nun and the woman in green velvet but not the gags that filled their mouths.
As she was pulled through the gate and into Elstrand by the chain locked to the cuffs around her wrists, Georgina turned and looked over her shoulder. For a brief moment her tear-filled eyes met those of Claudia’s then the chain became taut and she was forced to follow or be dragged. As Claudia watched Georgina disappear from sight she felt her knees go weak with shock but she managed to remain standing, she still wanted to vomit but managed not to.
As the guard called out next and the queue moved forward the woman behind Claudia spoke, “It makes me shudder just thinking about it,” she said quietly.
Claudia looked over her shoulder, “What does?” she asked, her face ashen with shock.
“That woman, Kendra Berkenstein, said her contract was with the Black Sisters over at Stenver, she’s going to sell those poor women to the Sisters of Torment. By this time tomorrow they’ll all be in black leather and be sex-slaves, but what’s worse is that they’ll also all be pain-sluts. May the Five Who Are One protect them.”
“What’s a pain-slut?” asked Claudia naively.
For several seconds the older woman looked at her, “A pain-slut is a sex-slave, or sometimes an ordinary woman, who receives so much sexual pleasure from intense pain that they are able to orgasm from being in the kind of agony that would cause you or I to feint,” she said quietly and sadly.
Claudia gaped at the women as she fought back the tears that tried to well up in her eyes as she listened then once again the guard called out next. Suddenly Claudia realised she was the next in line and had a decision to make, should she try to flee back towards Hillmartin or attempt to cross in Elstrand? Claudia knew that either choice could potentially end in disaster.
Slowly she turned and faced the guard who was obviously beginning to wonder why she hadn’t moved yet. For a second more she prevaricated, fear filling her mind, then as steadily as she could, she walked forward.
“Visa and identification,” demanded the guard.
For Claudia the next five minutes were a blur of misery and fear as she was questioned, and her papers examine but then, on unsteady legs, she was walking forward through the gate and into Elstrand.
Behind her the guard called out next.