Slave Girl: Chapter 27 (Patreon)

Buoyed by our incredible night together we walk through half the day as if we had Mercury’s winged sandals on our feet.  The miles glide by swiftly despite the increasingly hilly terrain.  Not much is said but many smiles and laughs and blushing looks are exchanged.  The Appian road, as one of the most vital arteries of the peninsula, still had a flow of travel going both ways but since we had passed Cumae the numbers had gone down significantly.  Farms, towns and villages were getting further apart, fields of grain made way for olive groves and vineyards, and more often than not we found ourselves passing through thick untamed forest.  The shade of the trees and the easy foraging was welcome but the steep climbs and descents were taxing and only getting more so as the day stretched on.

As our distance from the major city centers increased so too did the risk of banditry or worse.  Other travelers began asking of news regarding threats along the road and sharing what they knew from the other direction.  We learn that there were rumors of a Strix sighting a few weeks ago right not far from the main road along a section Rosa and I would be traveling right through in the coming days.  Rosa’s sunny disposition immediately dimmed at that news.  In fact, she was downright spooked by it.  While she was getting used to her new life she was still easily frightened by things out here in the wider world.  She tried to keep a brave face but her fear was palpable.  She walked closer to me, startled at innocuous things, and wanted more and more to hold my hand, which I was only too happy to do.  I assured her that we would take the time to find good secure, or at least hidden, campsite that evening as Strix were known to be mostly active at night.  The chance of a dangerous encounter was still slim but they were growing, along the way I shift my dagger so that it would be easy to get to if needed.  Rosa noticed me do it which only put her more on edge.

That night we find the partial remains of an abandoned brick cottage to bed down in.  There was already a group of travelers, a young family of five, camped out inside the roofless structure but they were more than happy to share the space with us.  The group of us got on fine until Rosa’s heritage was brought up in conversation and then things cooled significantly.  That was fine by me though, it was getting on toward bedtime at that point anyway.  The building had two rooms.  They had already claimed the larger so we settled into the other.  It was cozy but more than big enough for our purposes.  With no door separating the two rooms any ideas of more sexy playtime were out of the question.  Though even if we had privacy my slave was not in a playful mood.  As the sky had gotten darker Rosa’s anxieties gotten worse.  Rosa couldn’t be my Lady, tonight she was the one who needed a steadying hand.

“Hey.”  I say softly.  “We’ll be okay.”

“I know.”  She says, though her voice warbled with doubt.  There is a noise outside and her head snaps to look up at the open roof, her eyes wide and nervous.  After a moment she lets out her held breath.  In what dim illumination that made it into this room from the family’s fire I could see Rosa’s eyes were wild with terror.  She was barely holding herself together.

“Why don’t you play a song?  It will make you feel better.”

Her head bows lower, her hands are clasped together, in a small voice she says.  “Do I have to Master?  Please don’t make me.”

“Of course you don’t have to.”

Through the door comes the laughter of children as their father told the Aesop classic of the Lion and the Mouse complete with silly voices.

“How can they laugh like that?”  Rosa whispers, her big terrified eyes continuing to scan the clear starry sky above.  “We’re all alone out here.  If the Strix…or something else…”  She shudders.  “It’s not safe here.  They should be quiet.  They should put out their fire.  How can they laugh?  Make them be quiet Quin.”

“Rosa.”

“They are going to bring the monsters here.”  The panic in her voice rises.  “The monsters will come!  Make them be quiet.  Make them put out their fire.  Please Master.”

“Rosa.”

A hooting owl sends my slave scrambling into the corner of the room.  Huddled in a ball she covers her head with her arms and starts to rock back and forth.  “I don’t want to be here anymore.”  I hear her say very quietly, not to me but herself.  “I want to go home.  I don’t want to be here.”

I look at poor Rosa.  She’d been scared early on but never like this.  She had been adapting so admirably to our rural living despite being a lifelong city girl.  But that mention earlier in the day of a monster sighting had changed everything.  She had never been able to settle after that.

Taking our blanket I shift closer to her.  Reaching out I take her by the shoulders and guide her to me.  “Come here.”

She doesn’t resist.  Crawling up onto my lap she curls up and clings to me tightly.  “I’m scared Master.”

“I know.”  I say gently as I pull the blanket around us.

“It’s going to find us Master.”  She lets out soft sob.  “I don’t want to die.”

I wrap my arms around her and hold her.  I kiss her horned head.  “Nobody is going to die tonight.”

“But…”

“Shhh.”  I stroke her long soft hair.  “I won’t let anybody or anything hurt you Rosa.”

I feel her relax a little.  “I miss the city.”  She confesses.  “I miss the walls and the soldiers and the people.  I miss the safety.”

“Hmm.  I feel just the opposite.  Out here it’s easier to tell the monsters from the people.”  I say.  “You’ve seen the other travelers and the farmers along the way.  It’s not as dangerous out here as you think.  We get on fine in the country.  We just have to keep calm and look out for each other.”

She sighs and snuggles in, just the top of her head peeked out from beneath the blanket.  “What if it finds us?”

“I’ll fight it if need be.  You’ll run and hide and…”

“NO!”  She clings harder, her fingers digging into my sides.  “No!  We’ll run and hide…together.  Or we fight it together.  I’ll fight with you.”

“Rosa…”

“I won’t!  I won’t run and hide without you!”  She whimpers.  “Not again!  Never again!”  The next thing I knew she had broken down into tears.  I hold her to me as she weeps in my arms.  “We stay together!”

“Is everything okay in here?”  The young mother of the family pokes a head around the door frame.

“We’re fine.”  I tell her.  She nods and pulls back to give us our space.

Much like Rosa had done with me just the night before I hold her and soothe her.  I wasn’t practiced at this sort of thing but I do my best to let her know that she wasn’t alone and that I was here for her.  It wasn’t long before she settled enough to talk again.

“This isn’t helping anything.”  Rosa peeps guiltily, wiping tears from her cheeks.  “I need to be brave.”

“It’s better to get it out than hold it in.”

“Says Mr. Stoic man.”

I smile and kiss her head again.  “I wasn’t so stoic last night.”

“Mmm.”  She hums.  “I wish we were there now.  Or any place with a good roof and sturdy doors.  I feel so…vulnerable out here.”

“Rosa, I don’t mean to pry but…you said again.”  My voice is low and calm, again I take her treatment of me the night before as a guide.  “You said you wouldn’t run without me.  You said never again.”

“It’s…”  She pauses.  “…just something that happened a long time ago.  It’s not important.”

“It is important.  I would like to hear about it.”

“That life is gone.”

“Yet you carry it with you.”  I whisper softly.  “Please Lady.  Let me help you carry the burden.  I’m your boy, aren’t I?”

“Quin…I…”  She starts as if she were about to deflect again.

“Please my Lady.  Let me in.”

After a long moment she takes a deep breath and tells the tale.  “I was nine years old, my little sister only six.  We were a part of my father’s party heading West from Heliopolis to look into an obelisk that had been uncovered in the desert.  It was Danae and I’s first time out of the city, the first time Papa let us come along on one of his expeditions.  We were so excited.”

“His?  Your father was a man?”

She pats my chest.  “Yes Quin.  My Amazon half comes from my mother.  Amazons can bear children too.  We can both sire and bear children.  I warned you about believing those story books.”  This was a huge revelation to me.  I’d always been told Amazon’s raided so as to kidnap women to mate with.  She continues.  “My demon blood comes from Papa.  He was a wizard.  A powerful one too.  Something about his demon side made magic easier for him.  Mama was his bodyguard.”  Her use of ‘was’ told me half of the tragic story already.  “They fell in love.  Their relationship was shunned but…wizards live by their own rules.  Power affords them that freedom.”  She falls silent for a time.  “It was dark that night, so very dark beyond the campfire.  We had camped in a wooded oasis.  Danae and I were playing at the edge of the light as the adults drank and told stories.  There was no warning…only the screams of the dying men and the rattling hiss of the hydra that had sprung upon us.  It all happened so fast.  Papa got Danae and I under an unseeing spell…it was the last thing he would ever do.  If we hadn’t have been there…”  She trembles and shrinks against me.  “…he could have used that time to protect himself.”

“He protected his daughters.  It is what any father would do.”

“In her rage Mama attacked it, cleaving one of the great serpent heads clean off of the body.  It’s true what they say…two heads grew where the one had been.  It pulled her pieces to Quin.  We saw it.  It tore Mama to pieces!”  Rosa breaks down sobbing once more, hard wracking sobs, her tears wetting my chest through my tunic.  My heart bleeds of her.  Again I hold her and stroke her and let her feel my arms around her.

“Mum…the woman is crying.”  One of the children next door whispers too loudly.  “Why is she crying?”

“Shh child.  Leave them be.”  The mother says.  “Go to sleep now.”

Hearing this Rosa sniffles and endeavors to collect herself.  “Gods, I’m scaring the kids.”

“They’re fine.”  I say.

“No.  They don’t need to hear me like this.  I don’t want to worry them.”  I go to object but Rosa reaches up to touch my lips with the tips of two fingers.  “Just hold me Quin.”  She kisses my cheek.  “Hold me and don’t let go until the morning light.”

“Yes my Lady.”

“Kiss me.”  I kiss her cheek as usual.  “Good boy.”  Then after a short pause.  “Thank you Master.”

We lay down together with the blanket over us.  She has me spoon her, my much larger body nearly encompassing her slight frame.  She is still shaken but having let out some of her fears through story and tears, and with my strong arm around her and my big body pressed tight in behind her, she is able to settle down and find some rest.

Chapter 28