I tracked her through the gloom.
She was naked, the brand on her thigh was fresh. It was round - a sex slave’s mark. While every slave girl serves on her knees, a sex slave has no other task. They become unused to standing and must walk with care. You can tell a sex slave from how she walks - and squirms.
Hyperborea. Hyborea. Boria. All names the people of Earth gave this time. A strip of eternity crowning so many forgotten eras. It would be forgotten, too. It was-
A twig snapped under my boot.
The slave girl crouched and whirled around, wide eyes darting this way and that. I remained still, not a breath passing from my lungs.
Up in the trees, dawn birds began chirping. The slave looked up to the trees for a moment and then, wary, set off again. The 18-year-old slave had wavy, dirty blonde-brown hair falling down her back. Refugees and woodsmen came out here looking for fallen branches for firewood. I suspect she knew that she would not be returned for the bounty if any found her out here. The best girls never are. That’s why I was tracking her, myself.
I followed her through the jungle.
Immense cycad trees towered over me, some giants several stories tall. Their primitive leaves fanned out like the roof beams of a barbarian’s hall. I pushed aside colossal ferns dripping dew, the underbrush beneath my boots, thick with scrambling plants and knee-height mushrooms. Dew dripped onto my back and face. I tried it - it tasted clean. The ash that dulled the sky was too high up to spoil the jungle’s daily convection rain.
There were no modern plants in this area. Stray animals trespassing near the town of Dura had introduced flowering plants, but they had never taken: the soil was too poor, the native plants too resistant. The Cretaceous Period’s rise of flowering plants was further off in this land’s future than in Humanity’s past.
My boot trod on the bent stem of a dead tomato plant, thick with mildew. This was the Devonian, 300 million years in the past. Flowers and humans had no place here. Whenever we forgot this, phenomena like the Event reminded us.
How did I arrive here? How did any of us? That's quite the story…
The gloom began lifting, and the slave girl started to make good progress. Her bare feet took nimble steps over fallen tree trunks. I almost lost her a couple of times as she ducked, running, under hanging ferns.
In the 21st Century, only an athlete would go this long without stopping to rest. In the 21st Century, though, oxygen was just 21% of the atmosphere. Here in the Devonian, it was 30%: every breath came easy, and you hardly tired. Asthma didn’t exist.
The trade-off, though, was the giant insects.
Insects breathe through their skins which sets a cap on how large they can grow (too large, and you don’t have enough skin to breathe through. It’s why lungs were evolved). In the 21st Century, that wasn’t too large. In the Devonian, though, with so much more oxygen available… Let’s just say the only good thing about giant dragonflies is that they prefer to hunt alone.
She stopped and looked back every so often: her eyes were large, intelligent. The aureoles of her nipples were the lightest brown. Her groin was shaved smooth from her first day in the cages. I could see the black numbers painted on her body: on her throat, a horizontal stripe. On her belly, three stripes.
The throat number or "throat price" was how much it cost in bronze to use a brothel girl. The mark was made higher up so as not to be obscured by the slave’s collar. The "belly price" was how much she cost to buy in gold. Most tavern and brothel meat is also for sale. Before the Event, a lovely animal like this one would've sold for 9 or 10 gold. Now, however, every slaver’s cage in the Borderlands was stuffed with girls squeezed shoulder to shoulder. I had bought her for just a single gold piece. I’d sell her for three.
An hour passed - she had made good distance. Fallen branches and untapped insect mounds revealed that no woodsmen came out this far. Her back straightened, and she stood taller, tension seeming to leave her shoulders and her face. She walked on into a mass of dead leaves, her feet sinking in up to her slender ankles.
I smiled; with confidence comes mistakes.
Perhaps it was because she was not from these lands and had never before been in a tropical jungle. Like most slaves in our markets these days, she was an Armanean. Armanea had, until recently, been a temperate, rich continent of teeming cities and proud people. Now, it was nothing but a frozen, ash-strewn hellscape of bandits and starving refugees.
Refugees like her.
The little brunette went not more than ten paces when she fell, crying out as the ground gave way beneath her. She tumbled into a pit 6 feet deep, rolling onto her back in a mass of stinking mushrooms and rotting wood.
Scurrying out of the rotting mass came wood roaches: each about the size of a hand. The slave girl cried out again and jerked away as one ran over her bare leg. Termites had yet to evolve in the Devonian. Instead, their niche was filled by these creatures - their common ancestors with cockroaches. Wood roaches were rich in proteins and fats, and young ones, like these scurrying ones, digging their way back into cover, made excellent slave feed. You do not feed slave girls the same food that people eat, except, as with pets, as a treat. You fed them as you would feed any other livestock.
Out of the wood mass, a giant roach burst forward.
The mother roach was 3 feet long. Its segmented shell had a dull, black-brown gleam to it. It rose on its hind legs in a threat gesture, less than a yard from the slave girl, still lying stunned on her back. The mother flexed its mandibles, each long as a finger.
It pounced; the girl screamed.
My spear struck the mother roach right in its center of mass. It was smacked aside, impaled, writhing back and forth as yellow ichor pooled beneath it. The slave girl turned to stare at me, her expression one of utter and disbelieving surprise.
I climbed down into the pit.
I pressed my boot against the wood roach’s head and crushed it. The armored plates cracked like a crab shell under a vice. I picked up my spear; the notched blade tore the creature almost in two as I ripped it free.
"You-you saved me!" She managed. Her accent had the light, singsong tones of an Armanean city-dweller. "Thank you for-"
She squealed as I landed on her, one hand clamping around her throat and forcing her head back against the woodpile. I sat atop her belly, my knees pressing down over her shoulders, pinning her.
She grunted as she struggled, legs kicking, slender arms trying to break free. Her throat was smooth and soft under my hand. Her body was warm. I imagined her on my bed, chained at the ankle, her body scented and oiled as she rubbed against me like a cat.
"No!" She squeezed through gritted teeth. "Please, no!"
I observed her while she struggled. She did not rage or insult me; there were no curses invoking her god.
"Please, let me go!" She begged, a tear forming in her eye. "Do not turn me in, I beg you, great master!"
After five long minutes, she became exhausted and gave up struggling. I was impressed at her fitness, energy (I was more than double her weight), and most of all, her determination. No wonder she had tried to run away! That had taken no small amount of courage, as well. Few slave girls dare running away; recapture is frequent, and the punishment is severe. The Hyperborean slave girl thinks it is better to be protected by a man's sword than be its target. She is often right.
"You are correct," I said at last. "I am your master."
She gave me a puzzled frown.
"Yes," I brushed bits of leaf litter from her hair, "the dark man who haggled for you and your cage mates is one of my men. I saw you; you were on your hands and knees with your head down, peering through your hair. Don't think we don't notice the girls in a cage.” I stroked her cheek and smiled, leaning my head down to hers.
She turned her head and looked away, her body tensing. I could feel the pulse in her neck racing under my hand.
"How did you find the opening in the wall, Slave? Who told you?"
"No one, Master! I found it on my own."
"On your third day on the grounds? Where are you going, Slave? Who told you to come this way?"
"No one, Master! I just ran to escape from the grounds and the town-"
"How do you know which way town is?"
She said nothing.
"A tall, dark-haired slave told you about the hole in the wall. She gave you the piece of wire you used to pick the lock on your kennel. She showed you how to come this way," I began drawing lines in the dirt with my spear tip. She looked across to see what I was doing. Her large, perky breasts froze mid-rise as she held her breath.
"Recognize this map? Why don't you finish it for me? I know you’ve memorized it." I got off her. "Go on, Slave. Finish the map for your master."
Her eyes went to the ichor-dripping spear blade. Then, the slave got on her hands and knees and crawled to the markings. I admired how clear and supple her skin was and her large, splendid behind. Yes, I had noticed her in the cage that day in Slavers’ Town though I had not been able to take the time to appreciate her. What a lovely beast! She would make me a lot of gold.
She drew in the last landmark on the map with a finger: an inverted ‘V’ for a hill.
"Did you think you would make it all the way to the Slave’s One Escape?" I asked, tucking the spear over my back. "In a jungle, you don't know? Hundreds and hundreds of miles from where you were born? Alone, and with no supplies whatsoever?"
The slave girl looked down. Her thighs were apart, but not in a trained, submission kneel. She didn't know how to kneel yet: a common problem after the Event. Before, even a girl captured by first-time bandits would be taught how to kneel. How to crawl to best display the swish of her buttocks. The proper way to press her cheek to the ground when licking a master's feet. Now, such training wasn’t worth the added cost.
I remember talking to a river pirate about it just two months after the Event. Down in his hold were swearing, struggling, farmers’ daughters lying hogtied and naked. Alongside them, their bodies marked in red and black geometric tattoos were slender, dark-haired, marsh tribe girls. They were fresh from the night’s trapping. How could he justify the cost of breaking them when a mass, human migration was bringing unnumbered beauties from all corners of the planet?
They came crammed one atop the other in cargo holds, half-starved and eager to kiss any man's feet for a fistful of rotting rice. Their ships filled the docks and anchored along the river. New docks were built, and they filled those too. It has been that way, every day, for a year.
I heard her stomach grumbling: I only feed my slaves once a day, when they are in training. Food, even just the chance of food, is a powerful tool of control. Getting a beautiful woman to bring you a whip between her teeth when you snap your fingers is all about control. When you own slaves, you get a sense of these tools.
"You are hungry."
"No, Master."
"You are hungry," I took a step towards her.
"I am hungry, Master," she said, bowing her head lower. She remained like that while I stood over her. She glanced up at the whip I wore at my belt: it had three flails and was made with wide, soft leather strips. They would sting a girl greatly, but not damage. It was a pleasure whip, but I found it just as good for general training.
"Then, you must eat,” I said.
I got down on one knee and grabbed her by her hair. She winced and arched her spine as I yanked her head back. Her hair was soft and thick, like that of a long-haired girl you would use to dry yourself with after a bath.
"I am your Master," I said, my face so close she felt my breath on her cheek, "and I am going to feed you, Slave."
I led her by her hair, making her crawl on her hands and knees towards the dead wood roach.
"Eat," I shoved her head down and let go.
She gave me a quick, hard look, sat back on her heels, and reached one hand between the torn belly segments of the wood roach. She pulled out a white, pulpy mass; thick strings of white viscera stretched from it to back inside the cavity.
Without so much as an upturned nose, the slave girl put it in her mouth and began to chew. White ichor gleamed on her lips, chin, and fingers. She wiped her face clean with the back of her hand and sucked her fingers dry.
Then, she rose on her knees and leaned forward, holding the roach corpse with one hand while she dug the other back inside the cavity.
I smiled to myself: I should not have been surprised. For long weeks before I’d bought her, the slave had eaten fare like this, or worse. I watched as she dug about and found the rich, fatty spheres that were the egg sacs. She all but closed her eyes at the taste. Yes, this one was different. This one was a survivor. Perhaps she had been smarter than I had thought in her escape attempt.
I felt a sudden rush of pride that I owned her.
“Oh!” she gasped as I took hold of her wrists and pulled them behind her back. I crossed them and bound them with a rope from my pack. She looked back at me over her shoulder as I pulled out another one.
“Throat,” I commanded.
She tossed her long hair back and bared her neck, looking up.
“At least you know that,” I said. I tied the rope around her throat, feeling the softness of her skin. One, two, three times around the neck, then looping and making a knot. I gave her four feet of leash.
“Up,” I stood, the leash in my fist.
The slave got to her feet. Head down; she glanced at me, nervous.
“You have come so far,” I said, looking ahead into the distance. “You almost made it to Slave’s One Escape. Come, let’s take you there.”
“Master?”
I tugged on her leash and led my girl onwards.
***
My name is Gerard Stone. Two years ago, a creature called a Landing Beast brought me from the 21st Century, where I belonged to prehistoric Hyperborea, where I did not. I soon learned what it was like to live or die by the sword of the very next man to cross my path. To survive, I had to learn and adapt. I had to give up old values and discover new ones.
First came the hammer. I worked for a kind blacksmith who let me sleep under his workbench. He taught me how to make chains, blades, and slave collars - this world runs on these things.
Then came the sword. My skill was middling, but I had the enthusiasm any immigrant brings - and the fact that I had made my blade from steel. In a land that knew only bronze and iron, I could win any sword fight - in principle.
I didn’t realize it then, but my sword didn’t just guard me against violent men: it enabled me to become one. Herein was the path to the greatest success in this world. I killed evil men and enslaved beautiful girls, and I can now admit - most of all to myself - that I have enjoyed every moment of it. Yes, I know that makes me seem a monster to you. But here, mothers point me out to their infant sons and urge them to become like me.
For their sakes, I hope they do.
Last came status. After my adventures, all I had wanted was a quiet life back in Dura, running a few slave brothels by the river. This is my story of what happened in those days. I was no longer a free-roaming bladesman but someone with responsibility. Someone others depended on.
How did I end up that way? Ha! How do any of us? But in the end, we all do.
It all started to go wrong after what I discovered that day at Slave’s One Escape.