Chapter 4
Sawyer yawned. He was lying on his back, rocking with the movements of the vehicle beneath him. Things had changed. The dawn sky was being swallowed by a ragged roof far overhead. Chewed off and twisted girders and something like concrete was up there. He squinted, rubbing the muck from his eyes. Rusty metal above and darkness, because all he saw was its shadowed underside.
By rolling over and propping his chained-together hands on the blanket and the metal roof, he levered himself into sitting position. To either side, the strange eight-legged jaggs were clopping down a slope. The convoy had driven through most of the night, and he was busting to pee. He was better off than those trapped inside.
The vehicle slowed and rolled to a stop on a flat area that was at least two stories below ground level. The ceiling was high. Blue lights shone from various corners of what seemed a large, decrepit room. Or was it some underground parking area?
“Get down off there, you!” A Scav beckoned.
“You need to undo that!” He leaned over the side and pointed to where the chain attached. A nod was all the reply he received, though the man came forward.
There were at least fifty Scavs here. Maybe more he couldn’t see. Most seemed busy at tasks – unlocking vehicles, climbing from driving cabins, directing people. Some were hugging each other – the newly arrived were greeting friends, smacking them on the back, kissing them, talking.
The lack of an undercurrent of fear was palpable. After months of it, the lack was invigorating, obvious, unbelievable almost. The four slaves in his vehicle disembarked and were directed toward a man who would remove their neck ports.
The Scavs didn’t suck out and sell blood?
The grounders had fed him food every day designed to make his body manufacture good-quality blood.
His chain was detached, and the man held up a hand to help him get down. Sawyer grabbed it then managed to vault off the truck and land on his feet in a puff of dust.
“Perfect ten dismount,” he murmured.
“What?” The Scav frowned.
“Nothing important.” He smiled at the man, who only shrugged and nodded toward the doc removing the neck tubes.
“Don’t stray. You won’t get far if you do. This place has a perimeter of guards up there.” He gestured up the slope of the road the vehicles had been driven down.
“I won’t.”
As he walked, Sawyer fingered the collar. Even if he wanted to run, he’d pay a part of his soul to get this whole thing off. The tube was a great start.
The predisposition to and plain old acceptance of slavery in this world, the violence, the way he’d been stomped into being the lowest of the low, this blood-sucking collar – at times, those had almost broken him. He hadn’t thought it possible.
He’d made a new agenda while traveling through the night, and he’d fallen asleep before he’d restated a most important aim. He had to find his sister Fern, dead or alive – he’d bury her if he must, but he’d find her.
Bury her. That thought made every morsel of him crunch down. Despair and anger waited – a terrible mix. If it came to merely finding her body, he wasn’t sure who on this Aerthe he wouldn’t kill. His last friend had died in the Scav attack – though he’d been more an ally.
“You’re next.” The doc, or physician, as they called them, threw aside the tube he’d extracted from a woman with long red hair. A meager trickle of blood ran down her neck from the swab she held between collar and skin.
The collection of tubes looked like spaghetti made for a giant vampire.
“Jesus,” Sawyer muttered. “Those are longer than I thought they were.”
He turned and sat on the chair the doc indicated, staring ahead as something was unscrewed from the collar using a tool he’d glimpsed. “You sterilize that, man?”
“Steri-what?”
“Use something to kill the germs, the bugs.”
“No bugs here.”
And that was so reassuring.
A long dragging sensation began somewhere indistinct, somewhere inside his chest. Pains and nausea rose. Before they could become truly awful, the doc laid cooling, massaging fingers on Sawyer’s neck and quietly said, “Done. You’re done. Just have to...”
Blood dripped on his shoulder.
Small movements were hinted at beside his ear, squeaky noises happened, the collar shifted. His muscles relaxed. The man had magic fingers. Another tube was thrown on the pile and a swab pressed to his neck.
“The rest of the neck-to-skin rivets can come out another day. Once you see who owns you.”
Sawyer stood, making the chair squeak, making the grit roll under his bare feet. “No one is going to own me.”
“Ahhh.” The doc had a thick growth of gray hair gathered by a cloth wrap into a tail that swished about near hip level. “I heard of you. Sunset then. That’s when we have a meeting. I’ll be listening when you try to tell Zarr to free you.”
The twist of his lips communicated a dry amusement.
“You do that. Got a shirt anywhere I can use?”
He looked around, not really looking for shirts, looking for her.
“I’m Largo. Physician Largo.” He studied Sawyer, up and down, as if figuring out whether he needed special treatment. “I don’t have a shirt. Ask around though. You seem a steady sort of person. The panicked ones we chain up for a while. Since you’re not given to anyone yet, you can walk about. Look around. Just don’t forget to be there when we start to gather. Being absent will get you into trouble. Trying to escape, or doing anything worse, will get you hurt, badly.”
He nodded. “Thanks, Largo. Food?”
“You look like you need feeding. The grounders locking you up makes muscles melt away. It’ll come back.” The physician pointed deeper under the building, with one bloody finger.
No use arguing further about ownership. He’d find out where he could piss and see about food.
The doc had nailed it – his muscles were in an abysmal state, despite all the sit-ups, chin-ups, star jumps...he probably looked exactly like a man who’d been caged for months and had blood drained out weekly.
Couldn’t see Aribelle, but he knew she was here. Was an odd thing, but he could feel her, a light buzz, a disturbance where she walked, as if he’d tuned into her frequency. If other men could do this, they didn’t show any signs. She’d become an itch he couldn’t scratch or fuck or other things. He let his mind go somewhere it hadn’t been for a long, long time.
Like sitting back in his armchair, curtains drawn, beer in hand, to watch an old movie he’d dug from a dusty box in the basement. Once upon a time, it’d been Lara...Kate. Even Eve for a while. Whippings, flogging, the belt, plain old hurting women to make them squeal and scream and come...watching them writhe after he plucked off the clover clamps from their nipples. Willing girls, not slaves.
His darker proclivities had been kept in check on Earth.
Here. Aerthe. If he were free, the limits were looking infinite. No one gave a flying fuck, unless they were your subject. This world dragged you down to the violence level of a hungry Neanderthal on steroids.
He walked a few steps, still looking through the crowd.
Moth to flame, that was him, and he was more partial to being the flame not the moth. Her castration threat was null and void, past tense. She would’ve had that order carried out, if the Scavs hadn’t arrived. Would’ve tried to. He smiled grimly.
Revenge fucking was a thing, wasn’t it?
If she returned to Uncle, their worlds would go in two different directions.
Despite the no owner and free-to-walk concept, after breakfast, he was grabbed by people in charge of everything from watering, feeding, and grooming the jaggs, to stacking supplies, to cleaning up after the meals. The Scavs had communal down to a fine art and without the need for committees. He still wasn’t sure of their command structure, except that Zarr was at the top of the pile.
Out of everything they asked him to do, grooming a jagg was the weirdest.
This beast’s coat was a buttery orange with paler, lightning-shaped stripes over much of its body. The hair felt like the fuzzy new growth on a newborn puppy. So soft – it made him want to run his hand over the creature forever.
He shut his eyes just to absorb the feeling. If he ever got depressed, he’d come back and pat one of these. He imagined lying on the ocean with little waves rippling over his legs, his mind full of nothing, in a pure sea of serenity.
Sawyer cleared his throat and surfaced from his daydream. He stepped back to admire the results of his grooming. “Good boy...girl. Whatever you are.” With a brush, he’d removed a lot of twigs and dirt from its coat.
Some sort of horn blew, echoing through the open area. Guards stationed high on the ramp-like road turned their heads. A few headed down toward him. This must be a signal for the meeting. Sunset was close – judging by the bruised pink sky and the pale light washing through the saw-toothed entrance gash.
“Bye.” He saluted the creature.
Light sluicing from behind the jagg drew a soft halo around the fine hairs of its antlered head. It eyed him, slowly chewing whatever it’d fetched from the feed bucket with a rolling motion of its teeth. Pointy teeth some of those were – the front ones. Horses were clearly unrelated.
What herbivore had pointy teeth? Though even the frickin’ birds here had teeth. If they were birds. Flying with wings might not be enough to call them that.
He had the vague notion the jagg was assessing him. More likely it was engrossed in the taste of that food and would forget him in seconds. He turned. People were going deeper into the ancient building.
A wide opening, bare of doors, was swallowing them. If there’d once been doors, they must’ve been lost long ago. As he reached the doorway, he heard the subtle rumble of many voices.
The meeting.
Time to do his thing. Not easy being confident in the face of so many strangers who wanted to see him a slave, not after months of being demeaned, confined, collared, cuffed, and treated like a bull headed for slaughter.
Sawyer halted. When heads turned, he decided to stay a few more seconds. Impressions counted. He’d lost muscle, but he was taller than most men here, broader of shoulder too. He was no longer a cardboard, two-dimensional, slave-level person.
Hero not a zero.
Framed in the door, with the shine in his long and desperately black hair, courtesy of the portal ride from Earth to Aerthe, to these guys he’d look extraordinary...right? They’d ceased to talk and most turned to look.
Large room, with some sort of non-functioning, fancy, glass-and-metal lights hanging down on poles. Blue light spread from torches with bulbs. Yellow flickering light came from other sconces the Scavs must’ve installed on poles. Rust streaked the stone-like walls. If he sprinted, he’d take maybe twenty seconds to touch the far wall. Square pillars supported the ceiling, here and there. Sounds echoed.
Zarr sat on a makeshift throne that had angular outlines and varied textures and light reflection qualities. Not made from swords nor car parts... From this distance, with the patches of gloom, he couldn’t tell what objects the throne was made from. Lego? Cans of beer? The exhumed skulls of his conquered and lamented enemies?
“Come in! We are waiting for you. They tell me your name is Saw-yer.” Out of all the Scavs, he was the only one who seemed to have trouble saying it. “I believe you told falsehoods about my orders. What should I do to you?”
He muttered under his breath. “Call me Conan and hand me a big sword and a harem of naked virgins.” Then louder, he said, “Let me prove myself, as we discussed!”
He went forward, walking along the little thoroughfare kept empty and flanked by the crowd of Scavs. The chains linking his feet and wrists jangled lightly, reminding him of his reasons for being bold. Many of these people seemed to have decided this was a picnic affair and had brought food and drink. They sat on wooden chairs and mounds of cushions, on rugs, on what might have once been frames for sofas now stuffed with new padding.
Fair hair was common and the lights reflected off a sea of blond, though there were also the darker-haired ones – some of those were people he took to be grounder slaves serving food. Others were ornaments by the side of their owners – collared, cuffed, leashed, or chained. Most were women. Most were scantily or provocatively dressed.
He’d fallen into a Roman orgy, hopefully. He hadn’t seen these slaves before, outside. Pleasure slaves, he assumed. The grounders had kept him and other slaves so they could extract blood and sell it to Mekkers. No blood would be sucked from these women, though they might get to do some sucking of their own.
His step slowed as a man caressed the round breast of a girl, slipping his hand beneath her skirt and probing there until she writhed and turned to kiss him.
Now this was what would make keeping a slave worthwhile.
His cock chose that moment to remind him of its existence. Been so long since he’d had a woman.
Coincidentally, his not-so-favorite woman, Aribelle, stood beside Zarr but a step below, since the throne was elevated.
Her thighs had the curvaceous flow of a woman’s shape – in where it should go in, out where it should be plump and grab-able. Beautiful, with an ass he could stare at forever. Someone should’ve told her those pants were too body hugging to be demure. Her top was sleeveless with a mass of embroidery swirling about on the lower third, like Renoir on cloth. Prettier than the other shirt. There’d been blood on it and brains, he supposed.
Which might be why her white hair looked a tangled wet mess.
Even that looked sexy. He had it bad for this woman who hated him, this woman he detested most times she opened her mouth.
Zarr gestured, beckoning him closer, into the space a few yards before the throne.
It wasn’t until Sawyer was in that circle that he saw the throne clearly. It was indeed a mish mash of many things. Iron wheels and old weapons comprised the back – you wouldn’t want to lean on that. The lower frame was timber, and there was an abundance of cushions, with one armrest being a cylinder of gold cage-work that might’ve been an ex-waste paper basket. The other armrest was a carved snake monster with eyes and rounded teeth.
Interesting and weird.
“So!” Zarr smacked his hands onto his big thighs, making Ari jump. “Though we have other important things to discuss, you two amuse me. You want me to give you her. She wants me to let her be ransomed, and I think she’d like your head on a stick. She tells me the Mekkers sold you because you made trouble – fighting, assaulting a man of the law. I don’t know how much is true, but it sounds bad, Saw. I’m calling you Saw. It’s easier. My tongue was once mauled by an upset jagg.”
“Saw is fine.” He inclined his head.
So those pointy jagg teeth had uses.
“You like to fight? I’m going to let you fight. Pick your weapon.” He reached over the side of his metal and junk throne and brought out a sword in a sheath.
A sword.
“This or your muscles. You wrestle or this. We can’t have you killing my men, so the sword is blunt, mostly.”
A sword. He didn’t know swords, didn’t do swords, hadn’t really meant to fight one on one for the job or her. She tried hard to discredit him. Bitch, though a sexy bitch. This fight could get him hurt.
Zarr hadn’t said she was part of the deal. Annoying her was evil, and she deserved it.
“Is she part of the deal? Do I win her?”
Wide-eyed, she stared. The familiar buzz built in the air. The men here should guard their testicles.
“Is she, Zarr?”
“Hmmm.” He stroked the fuzz on his chin. “You want to fight for her and for a job training my men?”
Ari began, “You can’t, sir –”
Zarr chopped his hand down.
“I mean –” This time he glowered, and she stopped talking.
“Well, I hadn’t meant to do a fight like this. I need time to train and get my fitness back.”
“I’m not giving you time. If you’re so great at fighting, you can show us this.”
And there was his small problem, rearing its head.
He wished he had a lucky charm or better, a fairy godmother...a fairy godmother with a direct line to whatever gods existed here and a winning lottery ticket. He was going to need every bit of advantage he could dredge up.
“Then I pick...wrestling.”
“Since you boast of being so good, I thought it fair that two men go against you. Roka! Dayne!”
Two. Fuck.
The men sauntered from the crowd. Roka was almost as tall as he was, and Dayne looked wily and wiry.
He was barely breathing his first free air, an asthmatic could beat him with one crippled hand, and they expected him to wrestle.
Forget the lottery ticket; he wanted an assault rifle.
Zarr knew this wasn’t fair. So. Be. It.
A Scav arrived and freed him from the wrist and ankle manacles. There were sores beneath the metal. He aimed to keep those off forever. Never again. He stripped off his pants and newly found shirt, twisted them in his hands then tossed them aside casually. They’d think he liked wrestling in underwear. A discomforting buzz swept in then was gone, making his balls ache.
A glance showed Ari standing with her face set, as if she feared showing emotion. Seeing him half naked upset her and had set off that strange power? Seconds ago, he’d happily have pinned her down and spread her legs. Now, mostly switched off.
Annoyance surfaced. He hated being controlled.
How was she ever getting a bed partner with that happening every time a man looked at her or touched her?
He strode to her, shoved his hand into the hair at the back of her head and shook her. Then he said, softly but with menace. “Stop using my balls as your toys. Leave it be.”
“I’m not... Don’t mean to.” Her mouth fell open.
Opportunity there and he reached back into his memory of her being sexy and leaned in to kiss her full on the mouth for at least...ten seconds. Then he let her go. That she wobbled and almost fell, that her chest heaved, and that for all of a second she’d seemed to close her eyes and enjoy the kiss, it satisfied him. He could affect her too, and he was dead sure he’d felt a deep quiver of arousal down low where he needed it.
The crowd noise had climbed as people laughed and shouted derisive words. He gave them the finger. Didn’t matter about different worlds and gestures, his meaning penetrated, and they laughed louder.
“We don’t call that fighting,” Zarr drawled.
“Me neither.”
He saluted the man and strolled back to where he’d been, did a jog on the spot then a few stretches. The Scavs looked bewildered at his little display.
“What are you doing?” Zarr had sprawled to the side, chin in hand, with his legs spread long to the front.
“Warming up. It’s a human thing. To get all limber, flexible.” He jogged again, with a fast up-and-down leg motion then he rolled his neck, did some shadow boxing. He was making plans. His brain was telling him he couldn’t win this. His bones wouldn’t let him give in. He’d grind these two down.
They weren’t to hurt each other. Wait, those weren’t Zarr’s words. He’d said that he, Sawyer, was not to hurt his men. This could be a one-sided massacre. Maybe it was meant to be. He was the evening fun.
Damn. His stomach cramped. None of that. Focus.
“No more warming. Fight!”
Time to remember how to kill.