Blood for the Masses
Page 10
What the glow ahead was coming from was the windows in several wood buildings in a small town that reminded me of something from the old west. All the buildings were one story high. Most were made of wood. A few were made of stone. Nobody was on the street when we arrived.
We walked down the center of the muddy street. At first all we saw were what appeared to be closed down store fronts or shops of some sort. Guess they closed up around here when night fell. Signs were over the doors of the shops. The signs were written in symbols that I could have sworn I’d never seen before.
The thing was, now I knew what the symbols meant.
Some of the signs advertised clothing or shoes or weapons or dried food. Just stuff like that. One sign read, “Slaves Boarding Area.” Two sturdy steel cages with steel chains bolted to the floor sat outside the doors to this storefront to advertise as an example.
Johnny stared at the cages as we walked past. “We need to get those girls and get our asses out of here,” he said.
“Kind of make you appreciate the good old U.S. of A. don’t it,” I told him.
“Yeah,” he said. “I ain’t never gonna bitch about my income taxes again after this.”
We went on until we came to a harbor area where a boat like we’d seen from the cave’s mouth was docked along with several other small ocean vessels. That was to the west. Across an open area was a row of shops. A few of those advertising food, drink, and lodging were open.
We headed to the nearest one.
CHAPTER 17
McNuggets and the Welcome Wagon
What told us that these food, drink, and lodging places were open were the torches burning outside the doors.
As we went to the nearest of these local hotel-bar & grills I told Johnny, “It doesn’t look like they got any electricity around here.” I pointed at the torches.
“Yeah,” he answered. “Have you noticed they haven’t got any glass either?”
Now that he mentioned it, I did look for windows and where there wasn't light coming out, there were wood shutters. The windows that did have light coming from them didn’t have any glass and the shutters had been left open.
After pushing open the door to the tavern we were assailed by the smell of the body odor of the customers that was so strong it made your eyes water. The rain must have diluted the aromas in the street but in here there’d been no down pour to wash away the stink. Everyone in the tavern looked to be filthy; dirty faces, dirty clothes, dirty skin, and hair that looked like it had never known a comb. Men and women, young and old alike, this was a dirty-assed bunch of about twenty people in a dirty-assed place.
Some of these people were dressed in roughly cut animal skins. Others were dressed in tied-at-the-waist rough cloth robe things like what we had on. All of the men had swords or axes with them. I was betting these people don’t do their shopping at J.C. Penny or Target.
Quite a few of them, eating, drinking and farting, gave us the evil eye as we came in. Well, fuck you all, I thought. We ain’t here to have a party and we’re sure as hell not kissing cousins either.
The place was dimly lit by a fireplace at one end of the room and candles on each of the tables.
We went to what passed for a bar, a long wood table, and waved to get the attention of the guy who seemed to be the bar tender. He came over to us. His smell got to us before he did. He was a big greasy fat guy with a big gut and hog jowls.
“What can I get for you gents?” He asked us.
“We need information,” Johnny said. “Some men came through this town with some slaves in chains. Two of the slaves were Oriental women, one was a black woman. Where did they go?”
“The slaves don’t come in here,” the Barman said. “We’ve no place to quarter them. To the north a few paces is the only place you can keep slaves tonight. Don’t think you’ll find them there though. All market boats left already.”
“Let’s go,” Johnny said to me and we turned to go back out the door.
“You don’t have to hurry away,” The Barman shouted after us. “I got good food and drink and I’ll make the price right.”
On the way to the door I glanced at what one of the guys at the tables was eating. On what looked like a flat piece of thick bread something like thick stew was steaming. He picked at it with his grubby fingers. A few bugs, cockroaches I think, ran over to the food and helped themselves to a few bites of his dinner. The guy kept on eating, not even noticing them.
“Reminds me of McDonalds,” I told Johnny as we left the place.
Johnny pointed back at the guy who I’d been watching eat. The guy calmly picked up one of the roaches, popped it into his mouth, chewed and swallowed.
“There goes a McNugget,” he said. We went back out in the rain.
* * *
Splashing through the mud puddles on the way to the next lighted building, I asked Johnny, “Just where did you get to ask about the women as though they were slaves? Last time I checked, I’d never seen a slave in my life, except maybe in Roots or some other damn movie.”
Johnny answered, “I have no damn idea. It just popped in my head, like maybe slavery is normal here.”
“It probably is,” I told him. “Hell, did you notice the crowd at that last place. I was half expecting Conan to come out of the crapper scratching his balls with one hand and picking his teeth with the other.”
“This place is like a fucking Barbarian Disney Land,” Johnny said. “We need to get the women and figure out how to get back where we belong.”
From between two buildings just in front of where we were headed six heavily armed men came out and blocked our path.
We stopped and looked behind us. At least six men were behind us too.
“The welcome wagon’s here,” I told Johnny.
“Yeah, all we need now is Mr. Rogers,” he answered.
They formed a circle around us. All of them had their swords and axes out. We pulled our swords. The two of us stood back to back waiting for them to make a move.
I was hoping like hell I was as good with a sword as it had felt like I’d be when I’d been making my practice swings.
We stood there, none of us making a move. Then the Barman reappeared. He came to the side of us, where the two of us could turn our heads and look at him. Stepping between two of the others we saw he held a long bow and had several arrows in a quiver slung over his back.
“Good gents,” he said to us in his good natured salesman’s tone. “I’m afraid I lied to you before. I do know where your lady friends are and I can take you to them. Of course, you’ll have to drop those swords and just trust me.”
“Not likely,” Johnny told the Barman. “It’ll be a cold day in hell when we trust you.”
“Really?” The Barman answered. “A shame, I’ll have to wound you then. I didn’t want to. I do hate selling damaged goods.”
That was when I charged him. Slashing with the short sword and stabbing at the guys in front and around us, I ran full tilt at the Barman.
The Barman backed off and Johnny charged at the same time I did. The line of armed men closed up where the Barman was, he ducked behind them, it also moved backward away from us. We forced the line back and coming from us was all offense. We didn’t even know if we knew defense. So how the hell could we plan what we were doing? We just attacked.
But the men against us didn’t just let us cut them apart either. They fended off our attack pretty damn good, blocking our slashes with whatever weapon they had in their hands.
Somehow I got separated from Johnny. Then someone jumped on my back. He clamped his arms around me pinning my arms to my sides. Somebody else jumped on him and we all fell forward with me on bottom.
“Get the fuck off me!” I yelled. But a few more just piled on top.
I could hear Johnny cussing and yelling too. There was no way I was going to be able to help him. I was too damn busy with what I was into.
Some guys face was shoved in front of me and against my face
. I clamped my teeth onto his nose and bit down hard. It crunched and blood squirted into my mouth. He screamed. Fuck those vampire movies, human blood mixed with snot tasted horrible. I spit a piece of nose and some blood out.
He let go and rolled off me.
I made it to my hands and knees and raised my head up to see what the hell I could do to get loose. Someone jumped forward, a rock clutched in his hand. He smashed me in the skull with it.
Everything went black.
CHAPTER 18
Rolling on Down the Road
I woke up with my head throbbing. A large tender lump was above my left ear. I moved my hands to feel the lump and chains clinked together. That’s when I opened my eyes. We were in the two cages we’d seen outside the closed shop where they advertised the boarding of slaves. The cage was only about four feet by five feet by four feet. Not enough room to stand up in or really stretch out.
Johnny was sitting up in his cage. He looked at me as I tried the chains. He had a matching set on him too.
“The way that guy smacked you on the dome with that rock, I thought you might be dead,” he said.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Well, after you decided to go to sleep on the job, all those guys piled on me,” Johnny said. “I could have kicked all their asses and ran off, but I figured you needed me so I let them lock me up so I could take care of your ass.”
“I appreciate that,” I told Johnny.
“Seriously though,” Johnny said. “We are in some deep shit this time. I listened to them after they threw me in here and we will end up where Sushi was taken. These guys were talking about the slave markets in Rome.”
“Rome?” I said. “This sure as hell isn’t Europe. At least not any Europe I can think of.”
“If you’ll shut the fuck up I’ll tell you more,” Johnny said. “Look, they were discussing how much the Emperor Caligula loves to see strange types of warriors in the Coliseum.
“I don’t know when Caligula was alive, but I sure as hell know he wasn’t born in the same century we were. So I’m betting we ain’t even in the twentieth century.
“They’re gonna try to sell me for quite a bit of money since not many blacks are in the Roman Empire. Your buddy Caesar Lanista told them we were coming. That’s why they were waiting for us.”
I said, “Fuck! We walked right into it.”
“No way could we’ve known what was ahead,” he said. “One thing I did find out that’s good is that Sushi and Sherry St. Clair probably will be well cared for at least until they get sold in Rome.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“The current fashion in Rome is for the Senators to keep Oriental mistresses. It’s like a status symbol for them to have these little chicks to service their dicks.”
“You seem pretty calm about all this,” I said to Johnny.
He kind of chuckled. “Only because I know Sushi,” Johnny said. “She don’t do a damn thing she don’t want to do. Some soft rich boy takes his dick out and points it at her, she’s gonna rip it off and feed it to him.”
It was still dark and still raining. In these cages it was breezy but we were reasonably dry.
I tried my chains some more.
“They’re not gonna come loose,” Johnny told me. “I’ve already been through all that.”
“Probably nothing else to do but try and catch some sleep,” I said.
“You’re probably right,” he said. “These next couple days I’m guessing aren’t going to be the easiest ones we’ll live.”
I made myself as comfortable as I could in the cramped cage. Wearing chains is not my preferred bed clothes.
I closed my eyes.
* * *
I woke with my cage being jostled. Two poles had been stuck through the bars and my cage was picked up and hoisted onto a large ox pulled wagon by six of the guys we’d fought the night before. The guy whose nose I’d bit a chunk out of wasn’t there. He’d be nursing that hurt for a long time.
Johnny’s cage was loaded next to mine. Two other slaves in cages were loaded onto the wagon. Their skin was white, though you could hardly tell it through the dirt on them. Both were men.
The Barman from last night was arguing with some other guy over what seemed like pricing. Finally he yelled, “Take him back off then.” He indicated Johnny’s cage. “I’ll sell him to someone who knows the value of a Nubian.”
When the men went to drag Johnny’s cage off, the guy changed his mind and paid the Barman what he wanted.
Then with a crack of the whip we were off down the road, a long slow journey. The sun beat down on us. We moved on, not really knowing where we were going. Not sure how to get back to our own world.
The road was dusty and hot. We were part of a caravan that was hauling all kinds of things in wagons pulled behind horses, donkeys, and oxen. The ox that pulled our wagon must have been fed a steady diet of beans. He kept ripping off loud farts as he pulled us down the road. I can’t think of anything that smells worse than ox farts. When he cut loose it made you see stars. We were seeing a lot of stars behind that ox.
At least with that going on I couldn’t smell the other two slaves on the wagon with Johnny and me. I tried talking to them, but they weren’t the talking type. All I got out of them was that the taller one, who was around six foot two and had blond hair and blue eyes, was a Norseman. When his clan raided the coast a few months earlier he’d been wounded in the fighting and left behind.
The people they raided nursed him back to health so they could sell him to this slaver. His name was Torstan.
The other guy was a red headed Scotsman who was proud of the fact that the Romans had never conquered his clan. He said that he was exiled from his clan for fucking the Chieftain’s daughter. “Aye, I put the meat to her real good I did,” he told us. “Put it to her so good, she pined for me night and day. No other man could ever interest her after what I put her through. Which done got her Daddy mighty upset with me. Seeing she was betrothed to the son of the Chieftain of the clan to the east of us. Daddy said I had to go. I was wandering the hills when slavers caught me.”
Sounded like a story to me. His name was McRae.
* * *
It was sometime during the middle of the day when some guy with a basket full of vegetables walked along beside our wagon and threw each of us a few potatoes and a few carrots and some other vegetables for us to eat. Hell, I wanted about a dozen Big Macs or at least a Bucket of Chicken. But I ate the vegetables.
When the guy went to walk away back up the line of wagons I yelled at him, “Hey, how about some French dressing and maybe something to wash this down with.”
He ignored me and kept on walking.
I yelled to him. “Hey fuck-head! Let me out of this fuckin’ cage and I’ll rip your fucking head off and shit down your throat!”
As soon as he was out of earshot Johnny said to me, “You know man, I would advise you to keep that smart-ass mouth of yours closed when you’re talking to these guards. We need to try to get those women back to where they belong. You getting yourself killed over bullshit ain’t gonna help anyone at all.”
“Yeah, well I’m not too goddamned used to being in chains and being caged up. I ain’t built for this shit.”
“You think I am?” He answered. “But we got to keep our heads. These boys ain’t playin’. Remember, you ain’t worth as much as me. You cause some problems they’ll kill your ass right off.”
“Shit, you act like you know a hell of a lot more about this slave shit than I do.” I said.
“If you’re saying that because I’m black, then you’re barking up the wrong tree, dog.” Johnny said. “Look around you man. Me being black didn’t get me in chains no faster than it did you. Give the Romans some credit. They ain’t prejudiced. They don’t give a shit. They’ll slap anyone in chains. These mother fuckers are equal opportunity assholes.”
“All right Bro,” I told Johnny. “I’ll try to keep it cool.”
“Right,” I told him and reached into his cage and we clasp hands.
* * *
We watched the scenery slowly roll by through the bars of our cages. The hours stretched long into days. Days stretched into weeks. The same routine, we never got out of our cages. We were fed once a day. After the third day I was eating everything they threw to me and was begging for more. Hunger will make you very agreeable.
They didn’t even let us out of the cages to piss or shit. It must have been too much of a risk for them to let us take a squat in the bushes at roadside. Pissing through the bars wasn’t too much of a problem, but shitting through the bars was something else entirely. You had to hang from the bars at the top of the cage and aim your ass as close to between the bars as you could get it. Then you had to really bear down to make your shit fly free of your asshole in one shot. Otherwise you’d be wearing that shit on your feet all day until it dried and you could scrape it off.
I don’t know why I even bothered with trying to keep the shit off my feet. The way it always smelled with that damn ox throwing farts back on us, we smelled like shit anyway.
To the north of us, at a distance lost in mist and clouds, a mountain range stretched up to the sky. We only caught sight of it when we came to open cleared out areas. I got the impression we were traveling through farmland divided up with large stretches of forest and swamps and lakes and barren scrubland.
The agriculture itself was very primitive. None of the fields were large at all. When we did see people working fields they were plowing using oxen or horses. Mostly the farms we saw were like orchards with apple trees and fields of grapes.
We didn’t meet many on the road heading in the opposite direction. When we did and tried to talk to them through the bars of our cages they’d act like they didn’t hear a damn thing we’d say to them. We were at the lowest end of the social scale in the Roman Empire. Even talking to us was considered bad manners. Well, fuck them. I’d had people look down their noses at me before. That was nothing new.