by Nathan Long
Captain Kai wasn’t in sight. None of the pirate gals were. I wondered if they ever left the ship. I could see why they wouldn’t. Doshaan was different from Ora in about every way possible, but not as far as women were concerned. They followed behind their men just like in Ora. They swept and washed. They traveled in packs for safety when they went out. In the sky, the pirate gals were equal partners. Down on the ground the rules of Waar were back in full effect.
Burly said the pirates almost never came this far south, so we pulled a good crowd just on the novelty factor. Half the square stopped to check us out. There were lookee-loos, window shoppers, serious customers, professional buyers looking for wholesale lots, rich folks killing time, and social climbers desperate to buy some class. There’s nothing that says you’ve arrived like owning someone.
They pushed me on stage with the rest of the goods. I didn’t like it. Okay, that’s an understatement. I hated it. I hated being looked at like a piece of horseflesh. I hated the pirates for being the coolest guys around and evil, slaving fucks at the same time. I hated the buyers, who talked about you right in front of your face. I hated Sai and Wen-Jhai for cursing the pirates and whining about being slaves when they had slaves of their own back home.
But the thing I hated the most was that, when they opened the bidding I felt insulted when I wasn’t picked. I started tensing my arms to show off the muscle and sucking in my gut anytime somebody gave me the once over. I was putting on a fucking show, for Christ’s sake!
Up to then I hadn’t felt any shame about being sold, but when I realized I was playing up to the damn buyers I turned so red my ears burned. Didn’t stop flexing though. I couldn’t help it. I felt horrible. Only time in my life I’ve ever called myself “whore!”
But though I didn’t sell, Sai and Wen-Jhai were snapped up right away, both after some serious bidding wars. Two heavy hitters fought over Sai; a tubby, fortyish woman in jewel-caked pajamas who was carried around in a chair by four sweating Chippendales dancers, and a frail old man in a rich carriage whose hands shook when he made his bids.
Burly worked the price up into Cadillac territory, and was trying to drive it up to Rolls-Royce. “Two thousand golden Tolnas says the lady. Do I hear two thousand five hundred? Two thousand five hundred for this handsome, well-bred house slave. A Dhanan of Ora, he has impeccable manners, a classical education, and the face and figure of a Batu votive statue.”
The old geezer flapped his hand, twice. Sai flinched. Burly smiled. “A double bid! Three thousand golden Tolnas from the Dhanan in the carriage.”
Lhan groaned. It was the most anyone had bid all day.
Sai was trembling. “Lhan, in the name of the Seven, what shall I do?”
“You must be brave, Sai. I will deliver you if I can.”
I snorted. “And who’s going to deliver you?”
“Three thousand golden Tolnas! Can no one improve on three thousand? Madame, will you not rise to the challenge? No? Anyone? Anyone to bid three thousand five hundred? No? Three thousand going once.”
Sai whimpered.
“Three thousand going twice.”
Lhan cursed.
“Sold to the noble Dhanan in the jeweled carriage.” The geezer’s eyes gleamed. He looked at Sai the way Kitten had when she first saw him—that “oh-boy-a-new-toy” look.
Sai choked out a sob. Lhan hissed through his teeth. “The filthy old profligate!”
The old guy’s bodyguards collected Sai as one of the pirates crossed to the carriage with a handful of papers.
I looked at Wen-Jhai. She’d been weeping in Shae-Vai’s arms since the pirates had pushed them on stage. Now she just cried harder. That was nothing compared to Lhan.
I was amazed. I’d never seen Lhan like this. He’s taken everything that had happened to us so far as cool as James Bond. Now he was straining at his chains like a gangbanger’s pit bull. “Unhand him, you debased bravos! Dare you give an innocent over to such evil? Such lecherous...”
Burly cuffed him on the ear with a hand the size of a catcher’s mitt. “That’ll do, noble heart.”
Lhan picked himself off the stage as Sai was dragged away, weeping. Lhan shouted after him. “Courage, Sai. Let him not—”
Burly knocked him flat again. The old guy’s bodyguards put Sai in the carriage and it pulled away.
I helped Lhan to his feet. “Come on, bro. Don’t take it so hard. He’ll be okay.”
I wasn’t actually sure about that. The old guy gave me the creeps. It wasn’t so much that he was obviously as queer as a three dollar bill—I switch-hit myself and I’ve got no problem with whatever two consenting adults get up to in the privacy of their own homes—but there wouldn’t be any consenting going on here. This geezer would take what he wanted, and wouldn’t bother to ask Sai for his okay.
Lhan shrugged away from me, his eye never leaving the carriage. “Leave me be.”
I let him be. I wasn’t sure why he was going off the deep end. I remembered he’d told me somebody had violated him once. Maybe that was it. Whatever his trouble was, it was my professional opinion that he needed to be hugged until he squeaked, but if he wanted me to let him be I was fine with that. Really.
Next it was Wen-Jhai’s turn. She and Shae-Vai must have looked cute together, because two playboy-types started digging deep into their bank accounts bidding on them as a set. They finally went to a brawny guy with a top knot. He looked like an ex-bodybuilder who’d gotten too friendly with the dessert tray lately. He would have been one scary motherfucker except he was wearing more make-up than Wen-Jhai and Shae-Vai put together. Actually, that made him scarier.
Wen-Jhai shrieked and struggled when they loaded her and Shae-Vai into his coach. Shae-Vai took it in stride and tried to calm her down. For once I was glad Wen-Jhai had her around.
After that the pirates pushed Lhan and me and a bunch of the tougher prisoners to the front of the stage. They’d held us out to show to the gladiator schools.
Burly went down the line, giving us each a big build up. Lhan was first. “The pick of the lot, gentlemen, an Oran Dhan of noble stock, trained from boyhood in sword, dagger, lance and bow. A fighter of style and grace with the looks and dash to bring in the ladies as well as the men.”
Lhan didn’t look exactly dashing just then. He stood with his head down, fists clenched, not paying attention to anything.
Burly grunted, annoyed, and stepped to me. “Next, a one-of-a-kind curiosity, sure to bring the crowds. Behold the savage Jae-En, barbarian giantess from beyond the Andag mountains in the frozen north. Never before has a woman such as this walked the face of Waar. Note her powerful legs, the thickness of her arms, the muscles of her torso, and, disbelieve me if you will, noble lords, she is stronger than she looks. With my own eyes I have seen her slay six men with a single sweep of her man-high Aarurrh sword. Can you afford to let an attraction such as this go to your competitors?”
Burly could have sold sundials in Seattle. I would have bought me after that pitch. He moved down the line and started the snake oil all over again with the next guy.
There were about five gladiator schools checking us out, all with names like The Shining Axe School, and The Glorious Victory School, but there was really only one that counted. The Twin Blades School appeared to be the big leagues down Doshaan way. The other schools just hung around to fight over the scraps they didn’t want.
Twin Blades took the winning bid on both me and Lhan, as well as seven other hard cases. Our buyers were a couple of thin, sad-looking guys in dark blue togas. They looked so much alike they had to be brothers; both balding, hawknosed and stringy necked. They sat in a open coach mumbling to each other, pointing from slave to slave, and sending a tough, dark purple goombah with pig-tails and a face like an all-weather tire to do their business for them.
Pig-Tails felt my arms, checked my teeth and my legs as bored as a housewife squeezing produce in a supermarket, but he gave a dirty chuckle when he honked my tits. “Deadly weapons i
ndeed.”
Even chained up I could have got him, but Burly must have read the tension in my back. He came up behind me and talked me up to Pig-Tails while pressing his knife between my shoulder blades. “She be spirited as well.”
“Aye. Well, we’ll break that.”
I played shy and wouldn’t let him look me in the eye. If I had he would have known I was going to kill him. Another one added to the list. What the hell was I turning into?
***
The brothers bought us along with our weapons and armor. We were packed in rolling wooden cages and taken on a long ride across the city. I tested the wooden crossbars, but there were plenty of guards riding beside the cages to keep me from getting any ideas.
Lhan was still cursing under his breath like a street loony. “Filthy slavers! To sell an Aldhanshai and her noble Dhanan like mere kraes. Have they no respect? No compassion? Poor, innocent Sai.”
Maybe I should have left him alone to be miserable, but some of the stuff Captain Kai had said was twisting around in my brain and when it bumped against the stuff Lhan was saying it made my head hurt.
“Lhan, you own slaves, right? And so does Sai?”
He was only half listening. “Yes.”
“So what’s your beef with the slavers? You’re as guilty as they are.”
His eyes flared. “I have never bought or sold the Dhans or Dhanans of any land. Nor would I.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then I fail to understand you.”
“Slavery. You’re guilty of slavery.”
He raised a confused eyebrow. “Yes, I am guilty of slavery, and of breathing, and of wearing a beard on my chin. Are these things prohibited?”
“I... well, don’t you think they oughta be? Er, slavery I mean. Not that other stuff.”
“Why?”
“Why?” I didn’t have an answer ready. I mean, like every American, I’d been told since I was born that slavery was bad. Nobody’d ever asked me to explain why before. “Well... well... men shouldn’t own other men. All men are created equal, and all that stuff. You and Sai sure as hell don’t like it much now that it’s happened to you.”
Lhan smirked. “No man likes it when his fate turns on him, and really I rage more for Sai and Wen-Jhai, who are of a more delicate nature than I. But this curious notion that all men are created equal? Perhaps ’tis true in your lands, but not here. Yes, one soul in the great sea that all return to in death has as much chance of being reborn an Aldhanan as a peasant. But once the Life Giver judges you and choses your birth, you are entitled to the privileges or shackled with the misfortunes that come with your place in life. One of the privileges of a noble birth is that, though we may be ransomed or killed, there is an unwritten law among civilized peoples that we are never enslaved.”
“And you’re okay with this?”
“’Tis as the Seven intended.”
I shook my head. “Sorry. I mean you’re the nicest guy I’ve met on this shitball planet, but at the same time you’re a whip-cracking slave driver. It just don’t add up.”
Lhan’s head jerked up. “Lady, no slave of my family’s has ever been beaten. Well, not since the time of my grandfathers. We are a modern family. We treat our slaves with firm kindness, as we would any livestock. If they are incompetent they are sold. If they provide good service, we free them after eighteen years and give them money to start a life, if that is what they wish.”
I looked around at our fellow slaves to see if they were buying any of this stuff, but they just stared out through the bars, oblivious.
Lhan wasn’t done. “You seem to think of slavery as some unbearable hardship. While ’tis true ’tis not easy, and I cannot say I am happy to have become a slave, ’tis often a better life than that of a free peasant in some destitute backwater. In fact there are educated men from impoverished lands who sell themselves as tutors or house servants on the promise of later living free in Ora.”
I tried to get my head around it. “So you’re telling me all the slaves in Ora are happy as clams and all the masters are big, friendly sugar daddies who pat their slaves on the head and hand out lollipops?”
Lhan hesitated. “Again your metaphor eludes me, mistress, but I take your meaning. No, I would not go so far as to say that all slaves are happy. Cruelty is not unknown. There are bad masters everywhere, but Ora is more enlightened than many lands. Here in Doshaan, of an instance, I hear that their royal smiths cure the steel of their swords by running them through slaves while the blade still glows from the forge.”
He shivered, horrified. “Poor Sai. Poor Sai.”
I sat for a while. I didn’t know what to think. I tried to work up a hate for Lhan as a slave-driving fuck. It didn’t work. It was like trying to hate Thomas Jefferson for owning slaves. It was part of his culture. Lhan didn’t think he was evil, and by Oran standards he wasn’t. He was good to his slaves and hated people who weren’t. What was I supposed to do? If I stopped being his friend because he owned slaves, who else was I going to pal around with? Who on this planet was any better? Everybody who could owned slaves. Even the slaves were just hoping to get free and rich so they could buy slaves of their own.
I gave up. I wouldn’t go as far as, “When in Rome.” No way was I planning on owning slaves myself, but until someone started a revolution and freed ’em all, I’d just have to lump it.
Maybe you think I compromised my morals or something. Maybe you wouldn’t have hung out with slavers. I ain’t saying you’re wrong. Maybe I was taking the easy way out. Just don’t give me shit for it ’til you’ve had your vacation on Waar.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
GLADIATORS!
We got a bath as soon as we got to the school, and my new bosses, Sketh and Skir, got a surprise. My purple washed off. It was the first wash I’d had since we’d put on the stinky priest robes, and weeks of sweat and dirt must have loosened the dye. I went in a grimy purple gray, and came out pink with red hair again. I thought the jig might be up, but the brothers, when Pig-Tails called them in to have a look-see, were happier than pigs in shit. They’d already planned on billing me as the Savage Barbarian Giantess. Now they could call me the Savage Demon Giantess. I’d doubled my freak appeal with one bath. As far as they were concerned they’d pulled a fast one on the pirates.
They gave us simple beige tunics to wear—the local version of prison blues, and once we put them on, Pig-Tails, whose name was Hesh, by the way, herded me, Lhan and the other new recruits out to bake on a hot, sandy practice area while our new owners figured out where to put us. Just like boot camp. Hurry up and wait.
I cased the joint.
The school was a square, high-walled compound, with grass-roofed bunkhouses built around the central training ground. There was a cookhouse on one side with a mess tent next to it. The trough where we’d had our splash and scrape was behind it. The trainers lived in a stone building where the weapons and armor were stored.
Over the walls of the compound I could see the arena, just across the street. It was a gray stone hexagon about the size of a minor league baseball stadium. It made me shiver. It felt like some huge animal staring down at me, waiting to eat me up.
Hesh got Lhan and the rest of the new guys squared away pretty quick, but I was a special case. The school had never had a chick gladiator before, so of course they didn’t have a woman’s bunkhouse. Personally I wouldn’t have had a problem bunking with the men. I’d spent years sleeping rough with bikers, and some of them had no manners at all. If these guys bothered me they’d draw back a stump. But the brothers—the same guys who trained people to kill each other for entertainment—had some morals, and they wouldn’t think of it. They put me in what I ended up calling the Ho House.
This was another one-story shack with a grass roof, wedged between the cookhouse and the guard’s quarters, and it was filled with sluts.
Gladiators who won their fights got a fuck bonus, the “Reward,” they called it. The brothers kept a smal
l stable of whores to cook, clean, and service the men.
Pig-Tails led me to the shack. “You will sleep with the comfort women.”
I almost laughed out loud. I had to stop myself from saying, “You bet I will.”
He was putting a cat in the pigeon coop. I’ve known a few streetwalkers in my time, and when they’re off the clock they’re usually pretty sick of men. At this point, so was I. After all the frustration I’d been through I was finally going to get some.
Or so I thought. Sometimes things don’t work out like you plan ’em.
***
Me and the girls got off on the wrong foot right from the start. Hesh barged into the room, dragging me by the wrist. All the cots were taken. He didn’t care. He found me one by dumping some poor girl out of hers and throwing her stuff across the room. He shoved me at the empty cot. “You sleep here.”
“Aw man, you didn’t have to do that. I don’t need a bed. I’m used to—”
He slapped me. “You do not speak. I speak. Gladiators need good sleep. If I find you on the floor, you’ll regret it.”
I nearly clocked him right there, but he was already heading for the door. He looked back. “Rest. Tomorrow you begin training.”
Then he left.
It got real quiet. I turned to the women. Even though I’d just had a bath, the way they looked at me, I felt like I needed to wash again.
I stepped forward. “Listen, I’m sorry. That was totally...”
They shrunk back like I was a leper. I moved toward the girl Hesh had dumped on the floor. “You alright? You need a hand or—-”
She crabbed backward, screaming.
I stepped forward again. “Wait. Stop. I ain’t gonna hurt you.”
She crammed herself against the wall, shrieking like I was peeling her skin off.
A woman at the back barked something, and the rest stepped in to defend the chick on the ground. One of them had a knife made from a sharpened wooden bed slat.
I raised my hands in surrender. “Goddamn it, stop! Listen to me!”