The City of Mercenaries
Morning.
I pushed the soft blanket aside and sat up on the mat. The blonde sleeping beside me must have felt me stir; she rose at once and dropped to her knees.
"Master. You're awake."
Her face and the cleft of her breasts glistened, smeared thick with sticky spend. I must have come four or five times last night. Part of it was that the divorce proceedings had kept me from women altogether—get caught in a bar and it only works against you in an alimony suit—so I had held out. Then the fire finally caught, and I emptied myself to my heart's content.
By all rights I ought to have been exhausted. In the world of Gaia, though, fatigue burned off at an absurd speed. Maybe the air was clean and the oxygen thick. Maybe it was mana, the energy of this other world. Either way, tiring less was nothing to complain about.
I left the inside of the tent to Blondie and stepped out in high spirits. Outside, the IS slaves were already putting the others to work on breakfast.
Those bastards. Playing captain already. Still, if they handled the annoying chores for me, that suited me fine, so I let them be. I washed my face with Blondie attending me, then sat at the camping table once the dishes were set.
IS No. 2 spoke.
"I've prepared breakfast with the ingredients you mentioned yesterday."
Breakfast was curry: freshly cooked rice in the bowl, with a packet of instant curry poured over it. I had only roughly taught them how to cook rice, and they had managed it well enough on their own. Then again, they knew that if they botched the job, I would sell them.
The ones dragged into this other world had accepted that the place was closer to the Middle Ages, and from that moment they had done everything they could to stay in my good graces. Get sold off by mistake, and there was no telling what kind of master you would meet.
"You slaves eat too."
"Thank you."
I had them gather inside the tent and eat, while I took my own meal in comfort at the table. A crescent oasis sat at the center of the camp, and around it wagons from every quarter and tents of every color stood in rows. I finished eating at my leisure, watching the scene.
Once I had them clear the meal, I called over the big slave of another race. Tight black curls. Copper skin. A thick neck corded with heavy muscle. He had the look of one of those Maui people said to live in the South Pacific. The cloth wrapped around his flank was stained black—yesterday's violent movement had probably split the sutures again. I had already given him painkillers, but the cold sweat said it still hurt badly. Even so, he stood ramrod straight before me, waiting on my word.
"You seemed used to battle."
"I am only a defeated warrior."
"Right. You're a slave now. No need to ask about your past, or your name."
The slave hesitated a moment, then answered evenly. Lose a war and you become a slave. That was common sense everywhere in this world. When this one had been on the winning side, he had surely taken the defeated as slaves himself.
"I live only to serve you, Master."
"But without a name, it's a nuisance keeping you around. I'll give you one."
His expression changed. You don't name a slave you mean to sell off. At the least, he was reassured that he would not be gotten rid of easily. He had been dragged here in chains, but he knew this master was better than most. Almost no one fed a slave his fill, bedded him somewhere warm, gave him water to wash, and put medicine in him.
"Your name is Maximus."
The slave went down on one knee.
"Maximus. I will lay down my life to serve you, Master."
Early that morning, Caravan Master Modric came to pay his respects.
"Forgive the late greeting. Thank you for your help yesterday. If it hadn't been for you, Baron, we'd have taken a heavy loss."
He asked whether I needed anything. Nothing for the moment, I told him; if something came up later, I would say so. Modric nodded and took his leave.
This was a world where you could not run a credit check over the internet or through any digital record. Everything was decided by reputation, and because of that, merchants made it a principle to keep their promises to the letter. Yesterday I had stepped out on nothing more than an itch to spray a rifle around, but I had picked up a card I could play later. No harm in that.
The oasis was no place to linger. The caravan made ready to depart, and once breakfast was done on our side we struck the tents as well. And so the journey toward the royal capital of Drail began again.
The necklace served as guide.
"Pass the valley ahead, and you'll be in Drail, the royal capital of the Drail Kingdom."
"What kind of place is it?"
"The grassland kingdom of Drail is also called the kingdom of mercenaries."
"Kingdom of mercenaries?"
"Because the founding king, Drail the First, started out as a mercenary."
A hundred years ago, Gaston Drail, captain of the Red Dragon Mercenary Company—then called the strongest mercenary band in the world—had led his men in revolt against the Zahed Empire, which held the southern reaches. The state born of that revolt was the Drail Kingdom.
Set on land that was nothing but harsh desert and grassland, the kingdom's chief incomes were the herding of nomads who moved with the steppe, and the mercenary trade. A country of sparse grass and sand offered little worth taking even if you conquered it, and from the king down through the royals and the nobles, the entire leadership was steeped to the bone in war. Other nations had neither reason nor nerve to attack. For that, it was counted the kingdom safest from invasion—and, at the same time, a country where the peace inside its own borders was anything but safe.
"And so the supply of slaves is bound to be plentiful."
It was common enough for mercenaries to come home from a contract abroad dragging slaves as spoils. That made Drail the ideal place to acquire them cheap, and most slave traders bought low in Drail and sold in other countries for the margin.
"Figures. Hngh—!"
My lower half ached. I had come while my mind was elsewhere.
Gripping the wheel, I eased the Humvee along. Every slave who had been riding in the vehicle was either loaded into the cargo trailer hitched behind or made to walk. Only Blondie sat in the passenger seat, and I had her bury her face in my lap and suck the cock I had drawn out through the open zipper. Since last night, I had grown bold. Getting head from the woman beside me while I drove—a dream I had wanted to try at least once. Not bad.
After Blondie swallowed what I had shot, she wiped me clean with a damp towel, careful and thorough. She had a decent chest, and her face was not bad, but for some reason the elf I had seen in the market that day kept coming back to me. Once I sold this lot off and the money piled up, maybe I would buy myself a sex slave too.
The royal capital, Drail. True to a kingdom of mercenaries, the city was ringed by a stout outer wall and wore the look of a fortress.
The first place I sought out was the city's merchant guild. I went to the guild and secured a spot in the slave market. With Caravan Master Modric's help, the pitch I was shown this time was a better one than the last. Once I had the spot, I put the slaves to work preparing for the sale. I named Maximus captain, and set IS No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3 under him to drive the rest.
With the work delegated, I met Caravan Master Modric and walked the market with him. Slave traders from many countries had already laid out their wares and were selling.
"Fresh slaves, just up from the south. Still in their teens. Sturdy stock you can work a good fifty years—come and see!"
"When it comes to sex slaves, everyone knows the catfolk are the finest, don't you? Take home one coquettish little catfolk, all affection and coy charm!"
"Buying slaves. Sound of limb. Even a slave missing an arm or an eye, I'll pay top price!"
"Slaves wanted—male slaves, any age!"
Looking around, the words slipped out of me before I knew it.
"Strange."
The caravan master asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Ah—no. It's just, from what I'd heard, Drail's mercenary trade is so developed that the supply of slaves runs high. Coming all this way, though, it looks to me like there are more people buying than selling."
Modric looked faintly surprised.
"Well now, Baron. Your eye is anything but ordinary. To notice a thing like that."
"Did it look that way to you too?"
"I was just thinking the same. As a rule, more folk stop here to buy cheap than to sell. You pick up the slaves who came in as prisoners of war for next to nothing, then sell them in another country and keep the margin."
"That's what I heard."
"But looking at it today, the buyers seem to outnumber the sellers. Makes me think it would be wise to stay clear of this place for a while."
"Stay clear?"
"If they need slaves in bulk—and male slaves at that—what reason could there be?"
"Well. To put them to work, or…"
"Ordinarily, yes. But this is Drail. You won't find a great plantation anywhere on this land. There's only one thing you'd use male slaves in bulk for here. War."
"Ah."
"Things being what they are, I mean to unload every male slave I've got while I'm here."
Modric's caravan had originally planned to buy cheap male slaves here and sell them in a kingdom across the sea. If the caravan master was right, the Drail Kingdom was preparing for war—and male slaves were turning a profit. Even a rough look around told me their price was higher than in any city I had stopped at so far. The foundation of trade is to buy where it is cheap and sell where it is dear. If I could get my hands on men alone, I might make a killing.
With that, I returned to the stall we were readying for sale. The slaves were hard at it, hanging the sign and dressing the display. Building, with their own hands, the stage on which they themselves would be sold. Ironic—but all of it, I thought, was thanks to that item, the Submission Collar. Magic really does make life easier.
From among the working slaves I called IS No. 3. Of the IS men, No. 3 was well along in years, and unlike No. 1 and No. 2 he had ranked as an officer inside the organization. I drew him quietly to the back.
"You. That thing you mentioned before. You said it was around here, didn't you?"
He nodded hard.
"Yes, Master. On Earth there's a training camp near here. I did my recruit training there myself, and I expect it's still in operation."
A camp for raising IS operatives. And the place happened to be nearby. I really did seem cut out for the slave trade.
"All right. If this job goes well, I won't sell you off somewhere else."
"Th-thank you. Master. Thank you."
Leaving the man kneeling and bowing, I started sketching the plan.