Chapter Five
Holding the tray of food level I walked along with growing trepidation. Just what was this place and who was the food for?
We’d passed through several iron barred portals under heavy guard and with each edition of security my wonderment of the place only grew. I was a slave and yet there had been no guards in the kitchens located toward the outside of this complex. What then were they guarding towards the interior of this colossal structure of stone?
Finally up ahead I saw a patch of sunlight and with anxious fervor I waited to see what it would reveal. Gaining the expanse of sunlight I found myself looking past a balcony filled with seats that overlooked and oval-shaped arena filled with sand.
I’d never seen the like of it, but my mind seized on what it was from the classical literature that we’d had to read growing up. This place was a gladiatorial arena much like the ones no doubt that the Christians had been fed to the lions in ancient Roman in. The thought of that fate made my stomach go queasy.
The sunlit view of the arena was gone and the long line of women bearing trays ahead of me had begun descending stairs. It was no longer within my mind a question as to who the food was for.
Gladiators. A queasiness stronger than the fear of being fed to lions seized a hold of me. Lions could only tear at the flesh unlike the way a human animal could tear both soul and body apart.
I heard them then. Screaming and yelling with the loud sound of clanging. It was almost as if the sounds of caged lions had been duplicated over into that of the roars of men.
Exclamations of impatience rang out at the sight of the women bearing food.
“Alright shut up you mongrel dogs and stand back from the bars!” Rang out the stentorian voice of a guard who looked part mongrel himself.
I felt utterly exposed in my walk past the cells of men, who didn’t quite seem human to me in an even different way than the men of the city had. Oh they appeared to be fully human, for sure, but their eyes………
Their eyes seemed empty of anything nobler than that of a hungry half maddened beast. I could feel the weight of their stares and it was as I had feared. These men full well noticed me and their voices rang out with things I prayed my ears would go deaf to.
“Oh God!” I whispered under my breath as words of crude meaning all seemingly directed at me sailed out of the mouths of men unchecked by any sense of morality or decency. I really was a Christian being fed to a pack of lions!
The order was given to halt and the two rows of women turned to face the cell bays on either side of the central walkway. I faced the way my side of the column turned and I stood there doing my best to hold it together, but it wasn’t going well.
The bowls on my tray rattled against each other repeatedly and I could barely refrain from peeing on the spot. Everything within me urged me to run back down the way I had come into this place of hellish torment.
I wanted to leave this planet! But above all I wanted option 2!
I’d made a choice though and like it or not I was going to have to go through with it. Quivering from within I raised my eyes to the cell in front of me.
The man who stood at the back of the cell was a beast. His eyes took in my form in a way that a month of Sunday baths couldn’t wash away. Surely God wasn’t going to allow this to happen to me?
“Back from the bars you ingrates! Back!” The guards screamed out all over the cell bay.
Reluctantly the rest of the men moved back from the bars to the back wall of their cells. The order was given and the women approached the cells.
I watched and did as the others did by bending down and scooting the tray across the filthy floor through an opening in the iron bars just wide enough to fit the tray. With the tray pushed into the cell the women drew back from the cells.
Fledgling hope began within my heart that this was the extent of my exposure to the teeth of hell. That hope died in the next instance as a guard called out, “Alright you know the drill, point winners only get to have women. Now who is going to beg the loudest for the first go around with the newest bit of flesh?
Immediately about a half-dozen men I took to be the winners sang out raucously, each of them trying to outdo the others. The guards laughed among themselves and then one stepped forward to grasp me by the hair and pull me down the row of cells.
“See what you losers are missing? To the winners go the spoils and you Tigan have had the most points this month so enjoy!”
A cell door was clanged open before me and I was shoved inside. Other doors were opened and clanged shut and I heard the sounds that came from those cells as if apart from the loud cries of rage and disappointment from the men who hadn’t received any women.
Even as I heard what took place in the background and the sounds of the guards leaving the cell bay all my attention was directed to the back wall of the cell where a mass of shifting muscle in human form vibrated with the intensity to have me.
Why he’d waited this long to devour me was a mystery to even me. He lunged with a roar and in desperation I kicked the food tray beside me to skitter across the floor toward him. As I’d hoped he stepped on the tray and went flying off balance toward me when his leg slipped out from underneath him.
I dodged to the side as he rolled head over heels to clang up against the bars of the cell. His face wore a dazed expression and with what little depleted courage I still had I jumped forward and seizing his massive head I brought it forward and then back as hard as I could against the bars of the door.
He grunted sharply, but his arms were rising toward me so I did the action of clanging his head off the bars again and again as fast as I could manage to. I’m not sure how many times it was I did this before his massively corded arms fell down to lay limply beside him.
Breathing hard I stepped back from him. I kept going back until the cell wall would allow me to go no further.
Had I killed him?
His chest moved, which answered that question. The next question however was, should I kill him?
If I did kill him the guards would most likely kill me in revenge for the destruction of what no doubt to them was a valuable commodity, while in their eyes I was next to being worthless. What to do?
I became aware of something then. Silence.
Looking past the tresses of my hair that had fallen forward over my eyes I looked out at the surrounding holding pens. The men, even the ones with women, were all grouped at the bars watching me.
As a group they were seemingly made up of all kinds of different ethnicities and combinations thereof and I could only assume that they had been taken as slaves from other worlds than this one. Now however as a group they stared at me in unified surprise and perhaps even more surprising, anger.
If I read their looks right it almost seemed that they were affronted that I had managed to avoid my rape by besting one of their own. Swallowing I brushed at my hair with a shaking hand as I continued to struggle at a lack for what to do.
I may very well have escaped rape this time, but the next cell I was dropped off into would be a completely different story. I wouldn’t stand a chance.
Minutes of silence passed by and in that time I occupied myself with staring at the floor to then darting my gaze to the big black man laying unconscious on the floor. At the first sign of him coming to I was prepared to jug his thoughts as forcibly as I could once again.
The men as a whole still stared at me and the women less fortunate than me had pulled themselves together and now sat on the cots looking at me with worried expressions. Why were they worried about me? They’d been the ones savagely raped, not I.
A jingle of keys was my first warning that the guards were headed back into the cell bay. The other women were released from the cells of the winners that they had been given to.
The women quickly left the cell bay all the while casting worried glances back at me. In stupefaction several guards congregated in front of the cell I was in. They looked from the black giant lying comatose on the floor to me repetitively as if they couldn’t believe their eyes.
“Can I go with the others please?” I pleaded softly.
They looked among themselves and laughed before shaking their heads no. One leaned forward against the bars and pointing to the fallen man he said, “If he dies or doesn’t have his pleasure of you by morning then I’ll see to it that before the morning drill begins that you’ll be taken by the whole lot of them!” He said pointing to the crowded bay of gladiators, who began once more to issue cat calls and other perversities all directed at me. Laughing the guards walked away.
Slowly I sank to the floor as a hundred men did their best to shatter the framework of my mind.
I stared at the man on the floor opposite of me within the cell. To let him awaken and have at me was to die, as his wrath would likely be without equal. To keep clunking his head would likely impair if not kill him, which left me in the position of being raped by all these chanting demons around me as a whole in the morning.
I would never survive such a thing as that and I was pretty sure it was intended that I didn’t survive either of the two options the guards had given me. Did I have an option three?
I looked about the room of men who chanted terrible things and I lost it, “Be quiet! Have you no shame for pity’s sake!”
Some of them quieted for only a moment, but my scream had seemed to only egg on the majority of them to new heights of obsceneness. My eyes drifted over them individually as I felt hatred bloom brightly in my heart toward each and every last one of them.
My eyes fell on one cell that had no leering face at the bars and yet the cell was occupied, by one of the winners no less, as I’d seen a woman leave that cell earlier. With curiosity I peered closer and saw the dim form at the back of the cell steadily watching me from the shadows. Here at last was at least someone with enough decency to not be screaming filth at me as if he were no older than an uncouth youth.
My eyes drifted from him back to my cell and the situation that faced me. I stood up to my feet as a plan emerged. My option three.
Time was against me. The man at my feet wasn’t an option and neither was the foul mouthed horde clamoring to have a go at me. That left but one thing to do. Escape!
I didn’t like the life of a slave anyway. ‘You’ll never make it Tara’ I cautioned myself.
I knew that, but it was in me to fight to survive so why not at least die in the effort of trying to be free than wait for it to come to me. I got up and approached the cell door.
The bars were set close to each other, but my arms were slim and I was able to pass my arm through them quite easily. Doing so I blindly felt at the lock on the other side of the door.
It was of a simple design and I felt reasonably sure that I could crack it. As a girl of ten all one summer I had clandestinely practiced on unlocking a wardrobe my mother always kept locked. In the end I’d gotten into big trouble, but I’d succeeded in opening the lock.
I pulled my arm back through the bars and then I busied myself looking about the pigsty of a cell I was locked in. I found only one usable splinter of wood that was hard enough and yet thin enough to work with. The problem though was that I needed two such lock pick devices.
I searched as much as I could for the missing piece, but I could find nothing usable. No matter how hard I looked it just wasn’t here!
I didn’t know if picking the lock with just one pick would work or not. I had to try.
I went back to the lock and kneeling down I stuck my arm back through and blindly began trying the intricacies of the lock. The men all around me had become largely silent now and hearing movement I glanced through the bars towards the cells on the other side.
The silent one had left the dark shadows of his cell and now stood as the others were at the bars of his door. His eyes stared into mine piercingly. He was a very intense individual to behold.
It was easy to see how he was one of the winners in this gladiatorial world of brutality and death. Intense or not though he had shown a difference of character from all those gathered around.
Something else different about him was that of all the men he was the only one who was of Cherokee origin. The women in the kitchen had said that their men had no spirit to them, well that was certainly not the case with this one.
In some ways he reminded me of the untamed stallion that had saved me from the bear. As if unbidden to my thoughts my gaze drifted to the man unconscious upon the cell floor. Behold the bear. Glancing back over to the Cherokee, behold the stallion.
Taking a deep breath I pulled the useless piece of wood free of the lock and held it up in one hand as I made direct eye contact with the silent man. I held one finger up and I watched his nostrils flare widely and again I was reminded of the stallion analogy.
His eyes seemed to have reached a peaked intensity and without a word he turned from the bars and went to his cot. He was back a moment later with something.
His hands were too big to fit through the bars and I wondered how he would throw a small piece of wood so far. He threw an object and with a metallic clang it landed nearby.
Straining I managed to pull in the small metal rod that had fallen slightly short of the cell. My outstretched fingers brought it to hand and I eagerly began to manipulate the lock with the slim piece of metal.
This was what I had needed all along. The door clicked and sprang open with a squeak. I’d done it!
There were startled comments throughout the room and as one men began trying to pick their own locks, but their hands and arms were too big to fit through the bars. Gaining my feet I stepped through and down the walkway to the tune of exclamations and shocked expressions of amazement.
Staring steadily at the steps that lead out of this hell hole I forced myself to come to a stop. I’d gotten this far, but I was in a foreign land and truly I didn’t know what I would be up against. Beyond even that how was I even going to get past the guard stations that I had passed earlier to get here to this sunken cell bay?
Taking in a shivery indrawn breath of air I turned my head to stare into the eyes of the man who had helped me and now regarded me in rapt focus of concentration. I had no chance on my own of escaping, but with him.…….
I just didn’t know. The way he looked at me now spelled trouble, but I was in for a world of it in the morning if I didn’t manage to escape. Surely being at one man’s mercy was better than being at the mercy of the horde, who were even now begging for me to free them.
Retrospectively I wondered to myself that if being at one man’s mercy was acceptable then why hadn’t I just stayed in the cell and allowed the wrongful use of myself by the animal that I’d been thrown in with?
I didn’t really have an answer other than the fact that there seemed to be a distinction of some kind that said this man was different. That indefinable quality aside all my eyes took in now was a brutal savage that stared at me with an intensity that could turn rock to molten lava if given enough time.
Somehow he knew what I was contemplating, but unlike most of the men in the room he wasn’t begging to have himself freed as they were. He hadn’t sung out about all the detestable things he’d want to do to me either.
Turning to face his cell I approached cautiously. The intensity of his eyes seemed to double and in Cherokee I asked, “If I let you out will you get me out of this city?”
His head nodded firmly. It was the first sign of communicableness he had exhibited so far.
Pressing on hopefully I added, “Then you will let me go free?”
His head didn’t move in agreement and his eyes told me quite the opposite was the case. If I let this man free I’d still be a slave. His slave.
Shaking my head in denial I walked away toward the stairs. I couldn’t believe it! I’d offered him freedom and he’d turned it down!
With my foot on the first stair I came unwillingly to the acknowledgment that he was at least honest. Honest to the point that he’d remain a slave warrior rather than lie just in order to be free. I closed my eyes.
God had asked me to be a slave here on this world. He hadn’t told me to try to escape from it.
Opening my eyes I stared bitterly up the stairs, “God you’re pushing me too far!”
There was no answer and desperately I tried to hang on to my faith by summoning up memories of how God had always provided a way. There had been the instance when I’d stayed in the water long past I had thought the need for, which had saved me from the unseen rider above. The snake I had gotten a crazy notion to capture, which hadn’t bit me when it should have right before the man had ripped it from me. Then the stallion that had slayed the bear bent on devouring me.
What had kept the stallion from drummeling me into the dirt?
Looking back at the man I wondered the same. God had said He’d keep me, but He’d asked me to be a slave. I’d made a fateful choice back on Earth and now feeling broken all over again inside I turned and walked back to the man’s cell.
I didn’t look at him as I worked at the mechanisms of the lock on his door. The lock clicked and the door sprang ajar. I got up to my feet and forced myself to look at the man now free of his cage.
He pushed the door of his cell open and held out his hand. Meekly I put my lock pick pieces into his outstretched hand. What he wanted them for I had no idea.
He tossed the pieces at a cell which had perhaps the thinnest of all the men held up within it. The man scrambled to pick up the pieces that had fallen to the floor of his cell.
His thinner arms were able to barely squeeze through the bars as mine had. In alarm I looked at the man I had released. What was he doing?
I had no time to ask the question though before an iron grip closed about my wrist and tugged me forward at great speed. He bounded up the steps like a mountain goat and stumbling already out of breath I did my best to keep pace with him for risk of being bodily drug up the stone stairs.
Reaching the upper hallway he hurried down it just as I heard further exclamations break out from the cellblock below. Something clicked then within my mind. The man was going to use the others as a diversion in order to take the heat off of our own escape attempt.
Reaching the area of sunlight that overlooked the arena he let go of my wrist and jumped up onto the windowsill and then without any hesitation he jumped off of it. With a gasp I went to the windowsill and looked over in time to see the man land on his feet roughly twenty feet below.
He stumbled forward a bit, but he didn’t fall. Glancing upward he gestured to me to do the same. He was crazy!
I heard more outcries of excitement from the cellblock and the sounds of multiple doors opening. That was enough for me to do something completely irrational.
I fell more than jumped over the windowsill. With an ‘umph!!!’ I landed onto a giving structure of support.
With startlement I opened my eyes to gaze into the eyes of the man who had caught me. He’d actually caught me!
I wasn’t a light girl for my age and yet the strength of his arms beneath me only testified to the fact that it wouldn’t have mattered even if I had weighed more. I truly felt helpless as I felt his strength about me.
He set me on my feet and then he was off running again dragging me behind him. We ran through bleachers and then along the upper railing of the arena itself.
At the far end of the arena he turned to me and lifting me up bodily swung me over the railing and without warning dropped me. I fell with a scream that was abruptly cut off as I landed with an ‘umph!!!’ onto the bloodstained sand of the arena.
Only a moment later he landed in the sand beside me. Gamely I struggled up to my feet prepared to run again.
Breathing hard I looked to him only to see him regarding me with an appreciative gleam to his eyes. He nodded slightly and took off for a door in the arena wall.
I ran after him through the stained sand of the arena grateful for not having to be drug along behind him as before. One thing was very clear and that was that I would never stand a chance in trying to out run this man. Back where I had grown up I could out run any boy for miles around, but this man made me look slow.
He was already at the door and knocking roughly. The door opened after a moment and with a gasp I watched the Cherokee pull the surprised guard out of the doorway and snap the man’s neck as easily as that of a chicken.
The guard fell lifelessly to the sand as my man dodged into the darkness beyond. I heard the sounds of continued mayhem take place then.
Cautiously I peered through the doorway. More dead bodies lay on the ground of a dimly lit room that appeared to be a stable. I stepped past fallen bloody corpses until I came into view of the Cherokee leading two fine looking horses free of a stall.
He had the blood of a half-dozen men sprayed across him and yet his hands on the skittish horses was gentleness itself to behold. The horses stood still as if in a trance and he threw a saddle on the one and a lead halter on the other.
I hoped the saddled one was for me. I’d never really gotten the opportunity to ride much and riding bareback I felt was a bit beyond my limited abilities.
The Cherokee mounted up and sat down into the saddle. That answered that question.
I stepped forward toward the other horse and was about to attempt to climb aboard when there was a sharp tug at my hair. Painfully still under the man’s pulling grip on my hair I turned and stepped closer to his mount. Why didn’t the man ever talk to say what he wanted?
I gasped, as I was abruptly hauled upward to land astraddle of the horse behind the Cherokee. He shook the lead rope of the other horse impatiently and I took it from him. Then without being ready for it he urged the horse below us forward and my one hand had to grip sharply at the man’s shoulder to keep from falling over the horse backward.
Where on Earth was he going to ride to? Instead of riding out into the arena he was riding into the inner workings of the structure. With a squeal of fright I ducked my head down at the last moment to avoid it being taken off by a low-lying doorway beam.
A series of steep stairways were directly before us. He wasn’t serious!
Oh but he was though. Ducking my head to press my face into the shifting muscles of his back I slid my one arm as far across his rigid stomach as I could in order to hold on as my other arm was pulled out behind me by the horse following us.
The horse we rode bucked up the stairs and just when I thought I couldn’t hold on any longer we were free of the stairs and racing down a long hallway. Screams rang out and I watched the slave women that I had served with dodge off to the sides of the horse’s passage.
The man not only had bypassed all the security checkpoints between the kitchens and the cells, but we also had horses! Never would I have managed this on my own. There was one more guard outpost though. What was he going to do?
I tapped his shoulder and glancing to me I explained as much. I wasn’t sure he heard me, but he gave a terse nod before looking forward again.
He abruptly swung the horse beneath us left and we crashed through a narrow doorway, which he almost managed to take my head off with again. It was the kitchen I’d worked in earlier and with a cry of alarm I felt him urge the horse straight for the window overlooking the city below us.
“No!!!” I screamed, but it was too late.
Glass shattered and I ducked my head down as I felt the horse lunge through space and then begin to fall. The landing was beyond rough and my hold on the man was shaken free.
I felt myself tugged free of the horse altogether as the rope knotted in my one hand came to an abrupt halt. I hit the ground and all my air left me.
In desperation to breathe I got to my knees trying to suck in air, but none came. I was dying!
A hand slammed into my back with enough force to set every bone in my body loose. I pitched forward onto my face in the dust, but I could breathe.
Coughing and hacking on dust I felt myself jerked to my feet again by the man’s cruel grip on my hair. It hurt and I’d had enough of his manhandling!
I half turned and sent one fist as hard as I could throw it into the man’s chest. It felt like my hand broke with the impact to what seemed like a solid stone wall. An answering fist came out from nowhere and hit me up alongside of the head.
I would’ve fallen if it weren’t for the grip on my hair. However, I no longer cared about the pain of my hair being pulled. I was beyond that.
Colors were fading as everything became dark. I was bodily lifted and sat on something and then the world started to move very fast.