“We need to rebrand his girls.”
Mean, and Meaner sat at a table at the end of the corridor. Along its sides were closed cell doors. From one came the gurgling of an infant followed by a young woman’s cooing. Oily-yellow light flickered from torches set in wall brackets.
Behind them was the banded iron door to the breedery. Both the harem guards wore a key to it around their necks.
On the table was a clay bowl of rice beer. A reed straw protruded out of it for drinking in the Sumerian style. Only one straw, yet, Sumerian beer drinking was social. The second straw had been broken into small pieces with the thoroughness that only boredom brings - or its cousin, madness.
Mean and Meaner sat across from each other. In the hands were stained, grimy, woodcut playing cards. Brass coins were piled at the center of the table.
“What?” Said Mean. Her eyes did not leave her cards.
“I’m saying we should take his unbranded and faded-brand girls and mark them with hot iron,” said Meaner. She was already looking well past the cards, through the heavy door, and down at her would-be victims.
“Do you remember what happened,” Mean pulled out a card from her hand, “the last time you had a bloody idea? Or are you too stupid to learn from mistakes?” She put down a card. When she saw Meaner’s reaction to it, she smiled.
“His mark has faded completely on his little Shang and that Bharaji bitch. The one who thinks she’s a queen” said Meaner. “Two of the Ansaru girls, as well. It’s been weeks since I’ve been able to make out the mark on their thighs! He will want his meat marked.”
“So ask him if it’s alright.”
“I can’t get a hold of him!” Meaner threw down her cards and crossed her arms. “Arsehole Juskar won’t give him my messages.”
“You can’t blame everything Arsehole Juskar. Why not wait till Gerard comes down here?” Asked Mean. “He’ll be here any day now. He can’t keep his cock out of these cunts.”
“No,” Meaner discarded a card face-down. “I’m going to show that I don’t need to sit around and wait for an order to do the right thing.”
“You have learned nothing! You-”
“Do you want to be here forever?” Meaner leaned forward and jabbed her finger at Mean. “Attending these fucking stable animals? There’s a war coming with the Hataduri, and I’m down here, guarding someone else’s slaves instead of capturing my own! If he’s going to get angry because I took care of his meat for him, then fuck him, I’m leaving.”
“Don’t do that,” Mean’s tone changed and became soothing. “You’re just bored - and looking for blood. You get like this when you’ve not killed for a while. Wait it out. You’re right. War is coming. We’ll not have to sit here. He knows our value. You just need to be patient - and show a little discipline.”
“Fine!” Meaner jumped to her feet. She threw her cards down, and they clattered across the table. “I’ll do it on my own then!”
“Don’t, you fool!”
Meaner took the key from around her neck, unlocked the door to the breedery, and went down the stairs.
Mean, speechless, watched Meaner go. Then, she started picking up the cards.
“No discipline, by Yog,” she muttered to herself. “Just needs to kill something.”
***
Layla started at the sound of footprints. For a few moments, she was unfocused. Was she still in her dream? It had been a good dream. Master had been chasing her through the open, windswept highlands of Darfur! Then, it came back to her. The cool bars of the cage up against her back, beneath her buttocks and feet. Pressing against her arms. She could smell the sweat and scent of the other girls. The trails of sweat as she looked down at her breasts. The air was so humid she felt as if she was swimming in it.
Then came focus.
Footsteps! Was it Master?
She got on her hands and knees, bending her head and peering through the bars.
Zana, Master’s favorite Shang, had been moved to the cage across from her. She, too, stirred, pressing her face between the bars to see who was coming.
Through the entrance came Meaner.
In one hand, she carried a ring of cage keys. In the other, she held a cane.
“Alright,” Meaner began and followed with a belch. “You cunts with fading brands; today, I’m setting that right!”
She put her keys to the cage of an Ansaru girl, one with green eyes and night-black hair. Meaner unlocked it and swung the cage door open.
The Ansaru climbed out and knelt before her, thighs apart, wrists crossed behind her head.
Meaner put her boot against the girl’s chest and pushed.
The Ansaru cried out as she was flung back. Her head banged against the stone floor. She lay on her back and groaned.
The girls in the other cages stared. This was not how Master treated them. This was not even how the guards treated them.
Except, clearly, it was.
Meaner got down on one knee and grabbed the Ansaru girl by her thigh. She forced the slave onto her side and stared at the girl’s thigh, running her hand over it.
“Yes, you need a fresh brand!” She stood.
The Ansaru girl lay on her back, propping herself up on her elbows. She looked up at Meaner, uncertain.
“On your knees!” Meaner gave her a kick.
“Yes, Mistress!” The Ansaru got back on her knees and crossed her wrist behind her head again. She looked down.
Meaner looked away, scanning the cages for more meat.
“You,” she regarded Zana in her floor-level cage.
Zana looked down.
Meaner bent and unlocked the cage and swung its door open. “Out.”
Zana crawled out on her hands and knees. Before she could kneel, Meaner reached down and grabbed her by her hair. Zana cried out; the sound cut through the air like a knife. She winced as Meaner pulled her up by her hair, forcing her to stand. She pulled the Shang slave to stand on her tiptoes.
Meaner studied the slave’s thigh.
“Kneel,” she let go of Zana’s hair.
The slave knelt, blinking away the pain.
Meaner’s eyes next fell on Layla.
Layla looked right back at her.
Meaner smiled.
She unlocked Layla’s cage and pulled its door open. She peered in at the Bharaji. Layla could smell alcohol on Meaner’s breath.
“Come out, little bird,” Meaner grinned. “It’s time to be rebranded.”
“My Master will brand me,” said Layla.
Saying those words was the bravest thing she’d ever done. And, as it would turn out, the bravest thing she ever would.
Meaner’s eyes became wide, and her nostrils flared.
“You little bitch, I’ll teach you for that!”
She reached in with both hands and grabbed Layla by her throat and her arm. Layla tugged and clenched the cage bars, but Meaner was much too strong for her. She cried out as the guard yanked her out of the cage and threw her to the ground.
Layla fell hard on her side and rolled, stopping against the cages on the other side of the aisle.
“Ah!”
She folded as Mean kicked her in the belly. Mean kicked her again, in the chest. Layla felt a burning pain in her ribs. She brought up her hands to protect her just as Meaner kicked at her face.
“Up, you cunt! Crawl!”
Layla got to her hands and knees.
“Queen of all the Bharaji, is that who you are? Arrogant little bitch! Let’s see what you have to say after you’ve had a taste of hot iron, yes!” She pointed with the cane to an exit to one of the breedery’s side rooms. It was one Layla had not been through before.
“Crawl, Slaves!”
The Ansaru, Zana, and Layla crawled through the exit. Meaner followed after them, whacking her cane against the palm of her hand.
***
The slaves knelt in a row, thighs apart, back straight, wrists crossed behind their heads. They were chaining rings on the wall behind them. However, Meaner was too drunk - or excited - to chain them by their collars.
The floor was sandy, dry. It was a small, cramped chamber with a low ceiling. If Master was here, thought Layla, he would have to bend his head to not knock against the ceiling.
Across the chamber was a door that had been half-boarded up with planks. Beyond it was complete darkness. Had Layla been able to read Shemite cuneiform, she would have understood the script painted over it and warned that none should pass through it.
In the center of the room, mounted on two trestle stands, was a branding log. Besides the branding log was a brazier full of glowing, red coals. Inserted into it were three iron tongs with black leather wrapped around their grips.
There are so many kinds of branding logs, but every slave girl knows when she sees one. The smooth board. The 4 to 5-foot length. The straps and shackles hanging from it. Once Layla had been scrubbing the floor of his branding room when Master Fogrim had come in with the long-legged, well-tanned brunette over his shoulder. It was a slum girl he captured in Ebugal. Layla had scrambled into the shadows to watch as he’d thrown the girl down over the branding log. How the captive twisted her head back to plead with him, tears in her eyes. The slap across her face, his hand forcing her head down. The thick leather strap he pulled over her neck and pulled tight. The wrist, ankle, and belly strap. He’d let her whimper and plead with him as he’d fired the coals and put in an “X”-marked tong. As it had heated up, he’d used her from behind; the branding log works well for this.
Then, he’d marked her. Her skin had sizzled like meat on a fire. The flash and hiss of steam. The smell of burnt flesh. Master Fogrim then put the brand back while the girl had screamed and screamed, tugging at her straps. Then, he had gripped her thigh and peered at his handiwork. It was not, he had said to himself, his best work, but it would do. Then, he’d used the girl again.
When he finished, he had poured some drops of a green, cooling paste over the mark and left the room. He always kept his girls strapped to the log till the next morning. It made sure they did not damage or infect their brands.
Layla had crept to the girl afterwards and told her she would be fine. She had stroked the girl’s calves and the backs of her thighs and thought, why had Master brought this oversized, clumsy-looking piece of collar trash - even as Layla had marveled at the girl’s muscle tone and long limbs.
Then, with eyes closed, she had licked Master Fogrim’s semen out from between the indignant girl’s labia. She still remembered how it felt: the smell of burnt skin in her nose. The metallic, salty taste of the girl’s cunt. Master’s seed running down her tongue.
This, though, was no such wonderland. There was no master here in this chamber, at least none whose feet she craved to lick. This was a dark, horrible place. This was where this animal of a guard would rebrand her.
“Right,” Meaner stood at the branding log and beckoned to Zana. “Let’s begin with you. Move, Slave!”
Zana’s eyes became wide, but she got down on her hands and knees and crawled to the branding log. She looked back over her shoulder for an instant at Layla.
Slave girls speak volumes to each other with their eyes. Masters allowed it; it was well worth the cost in runaways to see a Hyperborean girl’s beautiful eyes as she looks up at you and calls you ‘Master.’
Meaner grabbed the Shang, lifted her up, and threw her over the branding log. Zana grunted as the belly strap was pulled over her back and pulled tight as possible. The slave’s chin sat flush against the branding log. She winced as the throat strap went over her neck, choking as it was pulled tight. Next, Meaner shackled the slave’s ankles and wrists. Last of all, she strapped the slave’s thigh against the log using two leather bands. Then, Meaner stood back, looking over her handiwork. At last, Layla thought, the guard seemed to be reconsidering. Perhaps she was sobering?
Then, Meaner pulled out a glowing red tong, aimed it over Zana’s thigh, and pressed it into her flesh.
Zana screamed. The sound cut Layla’s eardrums like a knife, and she winced. It is a different kind of scream a girl makes when she’s branded. A primal animal sound like the one she makes when a slaver first grabs her, or she makes last, as she is culled. There was the same smell of burned flesh, the hiss of steam. But it was wrong this time. As Zana kept screaming, Meaner did not pull away the iron. She held it there for five long seconds.
Then, she pulled away the iron and tossed it across the room. It skidded, sparking. On Zana’s thigh was the blackened, burn mark of the worst brand Layla had ever seen. Even for a Shang, Layla found she could feel pity.
Zana moaned and wept as Meaner unfastened her from the branding log. The slave fell off it and lay on her side, shaking.
Meaner did not give her a second glance.
She turned to Layla, smiled that monster smile again, and beckoned.
Layla felt a wave come over her. There was no more fear. No more anger. Just clarity, calm, and purpose.
“No,” she said. Only Master may brand me.”
Whatever had been holding Meaner in check snapped. Her face turned red, and she erupted.
“You little, whoring, bitch!” She snapped through gritted teeth. She took a step forward and stopped. There was the smile again. “No, let’s not brand you then,” she drew her knife. The iron blade glittered. “Let’s just cut the mark into your thigh! You Bharaji heal here from everything, don’t you? So I can cut you nice and deep!”
She lurched towards Layla.
Layla grabbed two handfuls of sand and threw them right in the guard’s eyes.
Meaner stopped, spitting sand and clawing at her face.
Layla was up in an instant. She ran past Meaner, past the branding log, and to the half-boarded up exit at the other end of the chamber.
With the flexible grace a girl only learns when oiled, jeweled, and forced to dance for drunken men at knifepoint, Layla slipped between the boards headfirst. She landed on her hands and quickly kicked herself through to the other side.
Ahead of her was pitch blackness.
Meaner slammed against the boards, her arm shoving through the opening after Layla. Meaner tried to squeeze through but could not. She snarled and kicked at one of the boards. It shook but held. She kicked again.
“I’m going to kill you, you bitch! I’m going to gut you, hang out your skin to make leather, and make your bitch sisters grind your bones into meal and eat it!”
Layla turned back to the darkness. Wherever it went was better than where she’d come from. Her heart pounding in her ears, she felt her way along the wall and made her way through the pitch blackness.
She had run away.