I made my way to the slave pen; I had a woman to breed.
The morning sky was a rich, pale blue. Feathery clouds made their way across it towards the mountains that rose behind me. Surrounding the farm were fields of rolling green; giant ferns and tall cycad trees that had ruled these lands for hundreds of millions of years.
To the east, away from the mountains, the land sloped down several miles before ending at a giant lake. It glittered in the mid-morning sun, white caps forming on its waves. I could make out the sails of small fishing boats; dark specks on the blue. Across the lake, far in the blue-gray distance, another mountain chain rose up.
I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. Here, 300 million years before the birth of Christ, the mountain air was not just clean. It was the cleanest it would ever be in the history of planet Earth. Or, as the people transported here called it, Hyperborea.
I walked the farm. It was large: several acres in size. I stooped down and dug my fingers into the dirt: it was so rich it was black. Mica glinted as I spread it over my fingers. If I spat out a grape seed here, by next week, I'd see a vine growing.
I heard the clink of iron.
To my left was a field of wheat. Golden stalks waved in the gentle wind. Bending over them was a tanned woman with black hair that fell past her shoulders. She was naked except for iron cuffs around her ankles and wrists; a collar around her throat and a chain fitted around her waist.
Her breasts were large and well-shaped, the aureoles a dark brown. There were two brands on her right thigh. One was a small, simple mark; that of the slaver who had first captured her or purchased her at a debtors' court. The other was larger and more intricate; the mark made by Fogrim: her owner.
She did not notice me at first. I watched as she pushed back her long hair and tended the grain (Fogrim did not permit his slave girls to put their hair up in buns. He liked the loose look). When she finally noticed me, her brown eyes became wide. She got down on her knees; lowered her forehead almost to the dirt, and crossed her wrists over her lap. It was a submission pose.
“Mina, where is Layla?”
“I do not know, Master. I have not seen her.”
"Carry on, Slave."
"Yes, Master," Mina slowly got to her feet.
‘Mina’ was the name my friend, Fogrim, had given her. It was a flower that grew here in the hills around Lake Eibon, in the land of the Darfur. It was a good name for a slave girl.
"You have an Armanean accent," I said. "I thought that the gods sent you."
The gods had sent you.
Humans did not belong here in the Carboniferous, 300 million years before Christ. We had been transported here by Eldritch monsters to be used as slaves and food by their own, cosmic, masters. These masters controlled the universe and saw humans as not much more than ants.
And like ants, we hoped that they would step over us, rather than stop to rip away our legs.
"No, Master," she shook her head, looking down at her feet. A slave does not normally meet a master's eyes unless commanded to - or during sex. I admired a bead of sweat as it dripped its way down a perky breast. "I am indeed from Armanea, Master."
Armanea was one of the (principally) human-settled lands of this ancient earth. Its inhabitants were mostly Caucasian. Their hair colors ranged from black through to red.
I left Mina and carried on. Besides wheat, there was also barley and rye. Rising between their fields and serving as a windbreak, were stands of fig and date trees. Just beyond those, were trellises thick with grapevines.
Scattered about the fields and trees were more of Fogrim’s slave girls. He owned twelve, and like Mina, they were kept naked at all times.
I stopped to watch a delightfully tall, slender, brunette plucking grapes. She had large, heavy breasts, and her behind was beautifully rounded.
"Slave, have you seen Layla?"
"No, Master," she bowed her head. Her features were more Semitic; she was from the region of Shem. On her flat belly was a large, curling tattoo of a snake. "Perhaps Master Fogrim took her? I did not see her chained with us in the slave pen in the morning."
In the morning. It was not uncommon for slaves to awaken and find chain sisters absent. This meant that the master, or his guests, had taken them away in the night. The more frequently a slave returned after sunrise to the pen or barracks, eyes heavy from lack of sleep, the higher her status among the other slaves.
I watched her plucking fruit for a moment.
"You will crush them to make wine?" I asked.
"Yes, Master,"
"Before you do that, you will come and find me. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Master Gerard," she said.
"I want to watch you. And you will oil yourself before you begin."
The slave blushed.
"Yes, Master," I noticed the hints of a suppressed smile.
I continued on my way, thinking of the slave oiled and on my lap, feeding me grapes while I held her on a leash.
But where was Layla?
Structures dotted the farm; beehive shapes made from mud, most with just a single opening and a hole in the roof, for light. They were painted bright white; two, petite, East Asian girls were scrubbing one down with fiber husks and a pail of water. One of the dark-haired beauty's kept peering at the sun, squinting and trying to shield her eyes.
They were Shang: a people of Chinese origin from the 70th Century AD. They lived underground to avoid the climate ravaged surface we had created 5000 years before, in the 21st Century. Their tunnels and chambers had been built by semi-sentient boring machines that sought out underground water and rich mineral seams. In those dark places, they released edible, oxygen-releasing, bacteria. The unified power behind the Shang civilization collapsed (like so many other nations in the climate Dark Ages), but their people lived on in countless, warring tribes: entire generations passing without any memory of the sun.
I came to a fenced-in area. The fence was quite tall and made from fallen branches. Thick, creeping vines had wound their way between them. Inside the pen was a wattle and daub hut. It had holes along its ceiling, but no windows. It had a single opening guarded by a heavy, wooden door.
I opened the fence and stepped inside the slave pen.
To one side was a wooden trough filled with water. A pair of crow-sized dragonflies perched on its edge, staring at me with compound eyes while they drank with quick mouth movements. The oxygen content was much higher in the Carboniferous: and that meant giant insects. Dragonflies weren’t a danger, except the really big ones or if they were traveling in a pack.
Across from the water trough was a wooden box about a foot high and 3 feet on its side. It was filled with dark earth and crushed up leaf litter. Some dirt shifted: something beneath it had moved. Beside this compost box, was a salt lick.
A heavy padlock held the door to the mud hut, shut. I unlocked it and stepped inside.
It was dark inside; hardly any light came in except through the doorway. The ceiling’s ventilation holes had been built at an angle, passing air but not light. There was no furniture inside: just wooden posts that had been rammed into the ground. Each was fitted with a heavy, iron, chain.
The clink of chains came from the far end.
Three, young women quickly assumed submission kneels, chained by their collars to wooden posts.
"Good morning ladies," I used English to say "ladies"; Hyperborean Low Common did not have a corresponding word (they used a "he" pronoun for both free men and women and an "it" pronoun for slave girls). "Today is my turn with you."
The girls rose on their knees and threw their hair aside, baring their collars for me. I took hold of one by the throat; her skin was smooth, dry, cool. I removed the chain and let it clattered to the ground.
"Thank you, Master," said the girl. She spoke the words with difficulty; she was still quite new to this world. I had been with Fogrim when he bought her. The seller had told us that she and her chain sisters had dropped from the sky in a landing beast, just three weeks before. These beasts were the eldritch transports that snatched healthy young women from across time (and the odd man).
"Wait outside," I commanded.
She crawled out of the hut on her hands and knees. I watched her lovely behind sway as she moved.
I unchained the other two, shooed them out, and stepped outside. They lined up for me outside the entrance, kneeling thighs apart, hands on the ground. This made them lean forward, their backs at a 45° slope, like dogs. I agreed with Fogrim: they looked more pleasing this way.
Two had mixed Eurasian features; Caucasian skin and eyes, but East Asian features and dark hair. These were Ansaru: an empire from the jungle continent that Australia would one day become. Their war galleys had knitted together an empire from the Pacific Islands to the Straits of Sumatra. Their mineral wealth, dark age technology salvage, and slave farms had driven a golden age.
The third girl was small made, slender, fit. She had hazel eyes and chestnut brown hair set against pale skin. She suppressed a smile when she saw me, put her head down to my foot, and licked it.
"Thank you, Master," her accent had hard, clipped sounds. She was an early European from hunter-gatherer tribes of Neolithic Siberia.
"Good Slave," I reached down and stroked her long, straight hair. I owned a Siberian slave girl myself; a lovely, blonde pet I had named Haley. The ancient Siberians are a pain to break, but once taught their place, they are exceedingly submissive and eager to please.
"Did any of you see your master come for Layla, in the night?"
They shook their heads.
Where had that damn slave got to? I had expected to be chaining her wrists and ankles in the breeding hut, by now.
"Feed," I pointed to the wooden box and drew a whip.
They crawled to the box on their hands and knees. I watched as one pushed her hair back, rose on her knees, and ran her tongue up and down the salt lick. She stuck her tongue all the way out, moving her head like she was licking a penis. The other two girls joined her, shoulder to shoulder. One girl's tongue kept rubbing against the other’s. Neither seemed bothered: when taken two or three at a time to a master's bed, slave girls become used to such things.
"Eat," I stepped up to them, the whip at my side.
They looked up at me nervously, then crouched around the box.
The Siberian went first. She shoved her hand into the dirt, feeling around. There was a scrambling in the leaf litter, and dirt was thrown out of the box. She yanked her hand out, fingers wrapped tight around a black, squirming, worm. It flailed about like a small snake, it's body gleaming.
Like a bird with a caterpillar, she dashed its head against the side of the box, again and again till it was still. Then she brushed away the dirt, folded the worm over, and bit into it. Some of the innards spilled out, spraying her neck and chin. She wiped it away with the back of her wrist and licked it clean.
I watched the slave girls eat. They were quite lucky; slaves are normally fed a mash of root tubers served raw, or soft-boiled, mixed in with crushed insects - chitin and all. The chitin has no nutritional value but is there simply because it is unpleasant. It teaches slaves their status, but on such a diet, a girl can easily become malnourished if her master does not pay close attention. Yet, slave girls are cheap and plentiful on Hyperborea. City men, especially, who only have room for two or three girls, would rather sell their slave and buy a new one rather than worry about their proper care.
Worms were a much better diet. They were high in protein and fats. Good for girls set to an active life, working on a farm.
When they were finished, each girl checked the other, turning their heads this way and that and presenting their necks. One Ansaru leaned forward and licked some worm blood from under the Siberian's chin. The Siberian returned the favor, licking under the Ansaru’s ear.
All three turned to face me.
"You will crawl," I drew three, short, chains from a pile outside the hut.
Each girl presented her throat. One by one, I leashed them.
"Come," I gave a tug on their chains.
“Yes, Master,” they chorused, as they began crawling after me and out of the slave pen.
Imagine yourself in my position, leading three slim, young, beautiful women, naked as cheerleaders about to skinny dip, but with iron slave collars, their chains in your hand. Imagine not horror, anger, and surprise at their condition, but complete acceptance of the utterly normal.
That is Hyperborea: land of barbarians, gods, and beauty.
***
Nearby the slave pen was a small, open, shed. It was just a thatched roof held up on wooden poles. Beneath it was a crude wooden bench the height of my knee. The bench had been covered with mats of woven grass.
Suspended over the bench, was a metal bar. It had three, spaced, chaining rings. On a stool beside the bench was a clay pot.
“Get on,” I gestured to the bench.
They climbed onto it and turned to face me, kneeling. They sat up with their backs straight, buttocks pressed against their heels. The iron bar pressed against the backs of their collars. Each slave was positioned by one of the chaining rings.
I grabbed the hazel-eyed Siberian by her collar. She looked up at me, smiling shyly. I threaded her leash through a chaining ring; wrapped the chain around her throat three times; and fixed it in place. In the same way, I chained the other two.
I took a step back to enjoy the view.
Three, naked, slave girls knelt secured before me on the bench, hands on their thighs, knees parted. All were in their early twenties. Their bodies were completely hairless from the chin down. Each girl had large, well-developed breasts. They were perky and firm, calling out to me.
I picked up the clay pot and stood before the Siberian girl.
"What's your name?" I stroked her cheek. "I have forgotten."
"I am Skala, Master," she replied in a quiet voice.
"Skala, has Fogrim let another man milk you, before?"
"No, Master," she shook her head.
I placed the pot under her left nipple. I began stroking the breast, gently kneading it with my fingers and thumb.
“Oh!”
I had made a half-twist motion. Skala tensed, her eyes wide.
I did it again, more gently.
“Better?”
“Yes, Master.”
Milk formed at her tit and dripped, down her breast, and into the pot.
“Let’s see,” I wiped her breast and licked my finger. It was creamy and quite sweet: high in sugar and fat.
She looked up at me, her blue eyes wide.
“You are excellent today.”
“Thank you, Master!”
I started from the back of the breast, slowly moving forward. The trick was to gather and push the milk down to the nipple. I had never milked a slave girl before coming to visit Fogrim on his farm, but after two days, I was getting the hang of it.
I finished milking the first breast, then went to the second. When I had finished the second, I went back to the first, and then the second again.
Skala stared up at me the whole time, her hazel eyes were mesmerizing. I wiped milk off her breast with a finger and held it in front of her. She opened her mouth and licked my finger clean - like it was the salt lick.
A slave’s training, especially if at a slavers camp, is hyper-sexualized. She will give and received pleasure many times a day, by many men. Yet after this intense period, she is sold and finds herself owned by one man – who most likely already owns several other slave girls. After a couple of intense weeks chained at the throat to his bed, she finds herself relegated to the slave quarters with the other girls. Each night, she waits for her master to come for her, but he does not. He falls back on his favorites. In a small harem of ten girls or less, he may use her once a week, at most. In larger harems, it maybe once a month.
For such slaves visiting guests are a boon. They are new men, as eager to try the slaves out, as they are to be tried out. It is why in Low Common the word for ‘slave girl’ and ‘slut’ are the same. In larger harems, a guest may be gifted a girl altogether, especially if he has brought a slave girl to gift, himself.
Reluctantly, I pulled my finger away from the lovely Skala. I milked the other two girls, unchained them, and sent them off with the pot.
“Master?” Skala asked, watching the other two leave. I had not unchained her.
I walked around the shed, studying her. Skala was tall; about 5’11”. Her figure was slender and fit. The bright sun of the Eibon region had given her pale skin a glowing tan. Brown hair fell in a mane of thick, gentle curls down her back. She had the cheekbones – and the breasts – of an underwear model. Around her belly button was a large, red and black tattoo of the Eye of Yog – a symbol of the Yoggite religion.
Where was Layla? Skala was here. Layla could wait.
“Master?” she asked again, fidgeting on the bench. “If Master is done with me, may I attend my other tasks?”
I gripped her throat. I felt her swallow as I stroked her chin with my thumb.
“Such a lovely beast,” I bent down, my head close to hers. “No, I’m not done with you.”
I unchained her and pulled her off the bench. She crouched at my feet, my hand in her hair, and lowered her head almost to the ground.
“Hands behind your back, Slave.”
Immediately, she crossed her wrists behind her back. There were iron clips on her cuffs; I bent down and clipped one to the other. She tugged at her wrists – she could not pull them apart.
“Ah!”
I yanked her to her knees. Still holding her hair, I undid my pants with my other hand and pulled it out. She stared at my penis, just inches from her face.
She took it into her mouth.
It was warm, soft, snug. Her lips closed in a soft ring. She began bobbing her head back and forth.
The two Shang girls tried to walk past, heads down.
"You two," I snapped my fingers. "Come here."
They stopped and came to the milking shed. I indicated, and they knelt on either side of Skala, their ivory shoulders and hips, pressed against hers.
I pulled Skala's head to me, my penis touching the back of her throat. She did not gag: the reflex had been trained out. I pinched her nostrils shut and held her against me. She winced, and her face turned red. When I finally let go, she jerked her head back, gasping for air. Sticky saliva hung from my shaft to her lips.
"Again," I shoved her head forward again. This time I held her longer till she began to squirm. On release, she cried out as she breathed, chest heaving for air.
“Oh!”
I slapped her. She stared up at me, face red, eyes surprised.
I slapped her again.
“Again!”
I did no breath play with her this time. She rocked her head back and forth, stopping to run her lips up and down the shaft and to lick my balls. She took them both into her mouth, fondled them with her tongue, and spat them out.
“No, I tugged on her leash. Do that again.”
She took my balls into her mouth again. She did not spit them out again until I told her to.
"You two," I regarded the Shang slaves, "begin."
Both girls leaned forward, their lips parted. One took my penis, dripping with saliva mixed with semen, into her mouth. She began rocking her head back and forth. The other licked at my shaft and nuzzled my pubic hair.
I let the three continue like that, alternating positions. My penis was in Skala's mouth when I was ready; I pulled her off and yanked her head back to stare at the roof. I came all over her neck and under her chin. Semen began dripping down, pooling behind her collarbones and running down her breasts.
Well-trained, the Shang slaves began licking my seed off Skala's throat. They kissed her tenderly, and then each other. I released Skala's hair, and she giggled as she kissed the other two. One spat semen-saliva into Skala's mouth. Skala mixed it with her tongue and spat it back, over the girl's face.
Some dripped to the girl’s breast, streaking past her nipple. The other Shang girl lowered her head and began sucking on the wet girl's breast.
I heard clapping from behind me.
"That was well done," said Fogrim, grinning, hands on his hips.
Fogrim was a tall, large, Darfuri man - his skin as dark as his sub-Saharan ancestors. Darfur, like all the human lands of Hyperborea, was a land of mixed races. However, here in the highlands and in small villages, people were mainly dark-skinned.
Standing behind him was a tall, slender, Amazon. She had long golden hair that fell to the small of her back. Her eyes were a light blue, set in an oval face. She looked like a Victoria's Secret runway model, but her build was more athletic, graceful. The breasts were large and perky with brown aureoles. Each nipple had been pierced with gold rings; a most delicate gold chain hung between them. Saddled on the Amazon's back, was a large, wicker basket. A cloth strap from it ran across her forehead. Her wrists were cuffed behind her back. She wore an iron collar, a leash chain hanging from it, gripped in Fogrim's hand.
The slave girl smiled at me, her face lighting up like the sun.
"Master!" She exclaimed.
I held up my finger to my slave.
"Men are talking, Haley," I said to my slave.
She looked down.
"Did you enjoy the show, Fogrim?"
"I did," he replied. Hyperboreans have no hangups about sex and are quite happy to rut in public. Their slaves from modern Earth often aren’t, but that hardly matters. "The girls did very well. You, however, have much to learn."
"Where is Layla?" I asked.
"I do not know. I thought that you had taken her last night, to breed her, as planned."
"No. All this," I pointed at the girls licking each other clean, "was meant for her."
Layla had been stolen by a Landing Beast from Great Bharaji; a 23rd Century, AI-run, Giga city under the desertified Indian Subcontinent. 10 billion lived in its underslums, alone. Fogrim had captured her on the same slave hunt where I had seized Haley. Layla was an exceptional beauty; petite, slim, and deeply sexually submissive. Fogrim had asked me to impregnate her.
Fogrim frowned.
"I last visited the slave pen at midnight," he said. "To collect your woman Haley for my bed. Layla was chained to her post then, sleeping curled like a cat."
"I woke up at two or three in the morning," I replied, "I saw strange, moving lights, coming from that hill," I pointed in the distance. The hill looked much further away in the daylight; banks of mist still clustered beneath its peak. It seemed oddly denuded of tree cover. "I took a walk to get a better look. That’s when I noticed the fence to the slave pen was open. I shut and locked it, but didn't look inside the hut."
Fogrim nodded, his frown disappearing.
"She must have run away."
"What?"
Haley’s eyes became wide, and she looked at me.
"She must have run away," said Fogrim as if remarking on the weather. I looked down at his slave girls; they had finished cleaning each other (and me) and were kneeling patiently. It was as if they had not even heard him say that a chain sister had escaped.
"So, why are you so relaxed? Let's catch the little bitch and punish her!”
Fogrim shook his head.
"It is common here, Gerard of House Stone. Until coming here, Layla has spent every night of her slavery with my cock in her mouth or between her thighs. She has knelt at my feet every day, fed me by hand, and felt my cane strike across the back of her legs.
“But now, here at the farm, she sleeps in the barracks as just one girl of many. She has had to compete for me - and fail. Yesterday, when she was tending the fire, she would have heard us speaking of her breeding."
She had. I remembered how she dropped the ashes back into the fire, lips parted, staring at me. It is not every day that a slave hears that she is to be bred. Still less, by a man who is not her owner.
So?" I waved the slaves at my feet away, "why are we still standing here? She can't have got far. Let's take the horses."
That is not needed," Fogrim motioned to Haley, and the blonde knelt. "She has not truly run away. She just desires attention. You do not give a slave attention because she demands it. You punish her instead, by ignoring her." Fogrim turned and looked out across the farm, towards hills. "She must be hungry and thirsty by now. And spying on us, no doubt. She will be back in the evening, or tomorrow morning. She will act like nothing happened, and so should we."
"I don't get it. There hardly seems any point in owning a slave girl, putting her in irons and branding her, if she is going to turn around and play stupid mind games like a 20-year-old."
"Layla is a 20-year-old. She is a slave, but she is also a young, sensitive, and passionate woman. Slave livestock is easier to manage when you remember this."
"What happened to not being soft?"
"It isn't soft to treat her like an angry child. However, it is weak to pander to her. This is just one of the many ways a slave engages with her Master, even if she has no awareness of her actions."
I understood his position, but I felt cheated. Before, fucking Layla was just a chore I had been happy to help with.
Now, I wanted to fuck her. To teach the slave her place. To put the fear of a whip in her. Little runaway bitch! Where were you?
"Walk with me, Friend."
We made our way along, Haley following behind, leash chain clinking.
"This one is spectacular," said Fogrim looking back at her.
Haley smiled and blushed, looking down at the ground.
"Gerard, I can see why you jumped into a raging river to save her. You honor me by sharing her."
"As you do Friend, by sharing your harem with me."
I regarded Haley. The morning sun danced in her hair. There was a spring in her step; she took in her surroundings with a sparkle in her eyes.
"This visit has been good for them. Good air, good weather, physical work."
"You should start a farm," said Fogrim. "There is plenty of good land here in Darfur."
"Sorry," I shook my head. "That's not my plan. And I’d definitely need more than two females if it was."
"You are welcome to keep them here, as you travel."
"Thanks, I was hoping that would be okay with you."
"Very much so,” he leered at Haley. “But if you are gone for long, I will breed them. Certainly this one I would breed," he tugged on Haley's chain.
She regarded me with large, blue eyes, her expression one of uncertainty.
"That's fine," I said. "I trust your judgment. You handle livestock well, and if you think Haley should be bred, you should breed her."
“And you’d make no claim on the child?”
“None.”
“Excellent. She will bear beautiful, strong children; the free women of Ebugal will pay well to raise them as their own.”
The adoption of children born of slaves was common practice. Infant mortality on Hyperborea was high: free women often bought their husband pretty slaves to keep caged in a ‘breedery' right next to their bedchamber. Breeding slaves allowed the family to play the numbers game; with one child in three or four surviving to adulthood. Likewise, the wife was protected from the risks of childbirth. She could still opt to take the risk but was under no pressure to produce heirs. This was born by the slaves.
We came upon a large, white-walled compound. It had no windows, but two doors that both locked from the outside. From over the compound wall, I could hear a woman slowly counting out from one to 10, in Low Common. Suddenly, there was the squealing and laughing of small children, followed by the pounding of small feet running.
"Come back here!" I heard a woman yell in English.
"Amber does well with Megana’s children," said Fogrim.
"It does not sound like she does."
"They like her. They humor her; I think they find her amusing because she is so foreign."
I wondered for a moment if Amber was the only person from 21st century Earth that people on this farm found amusing.
"Why are the doors locked from the outside?" I pointed to one.
"Because there are naked slave girls out here," said Fogrim. "Children must not see such things. In the evening, when the slaves are in their pen or wait for us chained in our huts, I like to take Megana’s children out, to run around and play.”
Megana was another farmer. Two of his infant children, aged 1 and 2, were here under Fogrim care.
It was not unusual that Fogrim was raising another man's children on his farm. This was one of many solutions that slave-holding culture had produced to the problem of childbearing and raising.
If a man has a wife, she takes the children born of his slaves and keeps them in a nursery with her. There are rarely complications caused by the slave mothers. This is because the wife is a free woman, and there is nothing in the world that hates a slave girl more than a free woman. Hyperboreans are fully comfortable committing the psychopathic violence one expects of Viking raiders or Assyrian armies. And like them, they turn right around and are loving parents and good friends to their own.
Unmarried men pursue a different option; the older slave girl. It is rare for a slave girl to live past her 35th year, and almost all are dead by their 40th. This is because unless they have a special skill or knowledge, such as the ability to read and write in High Common or another scholarly language, they are past their prime and no longer valuable. Even a man who has kept a slave girl at his side for 20 years, will turn around and put her down, as a farmer does a cow, ready to be slaughtered. After culling, her value is only in leather, meat, and bone.
However, some slaves will be spared and become matrons in a master's nursery. These older women raise his children and fulfill the life long roles of mothers for them. They remained in the nursery, rarely leaving. They have no further sexual engagements with their master or other men. Within the nursery, they live and dress as a free woman would. The bond between a child and their slave matron is often stronger than that between the child and their father – and rightly so.
A third method, practiced by men who cannot afford a dedicated slave to be a matron, is to share parenting responsibilities. After a child is born of a slave girl, it is quickly separated and sent to a neighboring farm for three years. In this time, slave girls raising the child are rotated, and the birth father visits as he can with the surrogate father filling in the time between. After three years, the children return to their father's farm: their birth mother having moved on or been sold by then. This arrangement made for a curious understanding of parenthood; children often saw both men as father figures (who in turn often saw all involved children, as their own). Young, female slaves are often treated better by the children on their maturity if the slaves remind them of those who mothered them.
"Gotcha!" I heard in English. It was followed by a loud squeal and laughter.
"Would you breed her, too?" I asked.
"Your Amber is a delightful creature, and I enjoy her little cries when I squeeze her nipples. But she is a good teacher and kind to children. It is better that she be in the nursery, then pining after what is inside its walls."
"Do you have any of your children, at Megana’s farm?"
"I do. I am actually planning to go to Ebugal, to trade. On the way back, I am planning to stop at Megana’s farm and see my boy, Ahrten. He is two. I was wondering if you would like to join me."
"Sure! I would love to come see your son. It will also be nice to see the village."
We stepped around a large stand of olive trees, and the rolling hills popped back into view. In the middle of them was the one I had seen the strange lights coming from.
"What's over there?" I pointed. "Another farm? The land doesn't look great there."
A darkness seemed to come over Fogrims face. He stopped and turned to face the hills.
"Those are ancient ruins; there was a gateway there that led to the old city of Aymund."
"What's that?"
"All this," he stretched out his arms and turned, taking in the world from horizon to horizon. "This was all once part of Aymund’s Empire. They were a wicked people who served the Mi-Go: a race of alien wizards to the south, in the land of Yarth-Tanophk.
“Then tribes came from across the lake," he pointed. "Those were my ancestors. They raided Aymund’s farms and took their women back in chains. Then they came again and took those farms, and worked them with slaves born of their captives. Finally, after war after war, Aymund faded away, and only we were left to remember it. Now," he looked across the lake, shielding his eyes from the sun, "new raiders come from across the water. And it is the farms of my people that they raid. So the world has turned since fish first crawled on to land."
I did not think he was trying to sound poetic. Fish took to the land just 75 million years before the Carboniferous. There was no knowing how long the gods had been warring here, directly and through proxy slave races, such as time-robbed humans.
“The Mi-Go,” I asked, “Do they come North, into Darfur?”
The Mi-Go were a race of winged, crustacean-like fungi that had colonized our world in the early era of the War of the Gods. They had a base on Pluto, which they called Yuggoth, which they would retain even into the 21st century.
“They hunt us no more. They are content inside their cities, making strange monsters of flesh that escape, or are freed, to wander northwards into our lands. But that is all; their terrors have not been abroad in these lands since the time of my grandfather’s grandfather.” he shook his head as if trying to rid himself of a nasty thought. "I do not know what lights you saw," he resumed walking, tugging on Haley's leash, "but it was devilry, that much is certain. It is best we keep away from things long dead, lest they realize that they are only just asleep."
I said nothing, but could not bring myself to agree with him.
"I was hoping to leave for Ebugal soon," said Fogrim. "I must go now and load up the slaves. Can you meet me by the haystacks by noon?"
"Of course," I nodded. "And it looks like you’ve already prepared Haley for the march."
"I have if you would permit me to take her."
"Of course, I'm going to bring Amber as well. It will be nice for them to see a Darfuri village," I left and walked back to the nursery.
***
"Hello?"
The nursery was a large, square-shaped compound of white walls. Inside it was an open shed that someone with sensibilities of a different century had tried to turn into a classroom. There was a large shed that served as a communal bedroom and adjoining it was an eating area of low tables and small, wooden stools. To one side was a sandpit, brightly colored toys of simple wooden shapes and animal feathers had been tossed about in it. Clambering up a climbing frame that would have been fine in the 20th century, but considered too dangerous in the 21st, were two, grinning, charming, little boys. They eyed me with suspicion, losing their smiles. Standing in front of them, wrapped in a cotton robe, was a petite, brunette. She had long, chestnut brown hair that fell just below her shoulders. She looked back and saw me with dark, intelligent eyes. She smiled at me and came running over.
"Master!"
"Careful how you behave in front of children," I said in English and held up my finger.
She stopped before me, head bowed, standing.
"Good morning, Master," she said in Low Common.
"Are there any other slaves here to watch the children?"
She nodded, indicating the children's sleeping area.
"Ilya is cleaning their beds."
"Good. You're coming with me now."
"Yes, Master."
She looked back at the children and waved. Then, she followed me out of the nursery.
Once we were outside, she immediately pulled off her robe and placed it on a bench by the door. Underneath she was, of course, quite naked. Her 22-year-old body was well tanned, I admired the gentle toning and trim, flat belly that slavery had given her. Her breasts were perky and firm and pierced with golden rings. A shining, thin, golden chain hung between them, swinging as she moved. Gold shined between her thighs as well: I had pierced her clitoris and placed three rings there. Polished clear crystal and crocodile teeth had been strung around one ankle. Around her throat was a black, iron, slave collar.
She got down on her hands, elbows, and knees, threw her hair to the side, and began licking my feet. It was how I had trained her to greet me.
"Look up," I said, looking down at her.
She obeyed.
I collected saliva together, ready to spit. She immediately opened her mouth wide and tilted her head up towards me.
I spat. It landed right on her tongue. She closed her mouth and swallowed, then smiled at me.
I degraded Amber more than I did Haley. Haley was a Siberian tribeswoman from the Neolithic; deprivation and submission were all that she had known. Amber, however, had been a 21st Century graduate student in English, at Ohio State. She had been thoroughly broken in the slave camp Fogrim and I had worked, but two weeks does not erase twenty plus years of modern culture.
"Get up, Slave," I snapped my fingers.
She jumped to her feet.
"Hands behind your back, Slave."
"Yes, Master," she quickly crossed her wrists behind her back.
With a pair of cuffs from my belt, I secured them. Then I affixed the leash chain to her throat.
"Come," I tugged on the chain.
"Where are we going, Master?" She asked. She spoke with a mild, Midwestern accent.
I did not reply to the livestock.