Chapter 8

Author’s note: [ and ] delineate mind-to-mind dialog.

We were on the road a few days later when we came upon the site of a slaughter of nine travelers. At least, we were able to find nine bodies in or near the site. Of course, some bodies might have been dragged away by large scavengers, there was no way we could tell, but it was not very important now.

The point here was that there were six very young children among the body remnants, and the bodies of three men. But there were no bodies of women. Based on the histories of such events, the men and children were all murdered, but the women were taken away to be slaves. If the women were young enough, their fate was probably that of sex slaves. At this late date, there was no way to be sure.

All of us were thoroughly disgusted, no, sickened would be a better word. Janos, the former slave, was the most affected because he had observed the fate of slaves taken in this manner. He said that they rarely lasted long because of the great psychological shock done to them by the attack and the subsequent events.

He and Hippolyte both lamented that this was too often the fate of women and older children who had to travel. They both lamented that they could not think of a way to put a stop to such atrocities. That got me to thinking.

That night, as we were lying in bed, I spoke Hippolyte, [I have been giving a lot of thought to what we saw today, and I may have a way to stop at least a part of it. Are you interested?]

[I certainly am interested in any of your ideas, Jane. You have an amazing habit of being right every time you have mentioned one of your ideas, so I would very much like to hear what you have to say.]

[Okay, suppose you had a group of say 10 trained men fully armed and wearing the plastic armor. How many brigands do you think they could overcome?]

[I think that they could easily handle 20-30 brigands because they are usually not trained fighters. I think that I see where you are headed with this.]

[Yes, I am sure that you can. I propose that we find 10 men that you can train and I can equip with the plastic armor. You would lead these men against any gang of brigands that we can find. From the looks of things, we would not have much trouble keeping busy clearing the roads of Hellene of these foul creatures. Do you think that we could do that, and would you be interested in being the captain of such a band of killers?]

[That is a wonderful idea, Jane, worthy of Priapus, the guardian of travelers. Did he inspire this thought, or did you come up with it yourself?]

[I do not know for sure about that, but I do have a great desire to do something about the whole mess if I can.]

[Very well, Jane, I would be willing to undertake this great task, and I am sure that Janos would be eager to join us, but I wonder how we would pay for it.]

[Based on some quick calculations, I think that we have enough gold to pay for the enterprise, and we should come up with more gold from slavers that we can find and kill.]

[Okay, that sounds reasonable. The next question is where would the men come from? Employing that many soldiers would be expensive and would probably drain our gold supply fairly quickly.]

[Here is where Janos could help us. I propose that we buy slaves and free them if they would join in our fight. Suppose that they agree to stay with us for three years, and we would agree to clothe and feed them during that time. They would be freed the way Janos was, and that would be their pay for the three years. When their time was up, we would release them with a bonus of a certain amount of money to be determined later. However, they would have to turn in their plastic armor before they departed. I want to keep that private for now. What do you think?]

[It sounds to me like a good plan. Let us talk to Janos about it tomorrow. He may have some suggestions to offer. In the meantime, I need to sleep.]

Well, the next morning, there was no problem with Janos becoming an enthusiastic partner in my scheme. We had two strongboxes, so our first job was to sort the money into two batches. The first batch was what we thought we would want or need for day-to-day expenses for ourselves and the other batch was dedicated to the new enterprise. Of course, the second batch was the larger of the two.

Hippolyte went through that one and said, “It looks to me like we have more than enough gold and silver here to buy the ten slaves that we want to start with. Let us do that first. Janos, you will help me to pick out the men we want. We are looking for men who are tough and strong and who are willing to fight for their freedom. Let us head for a large town, but not a city, to make our first purchases. We do not have to take all 10 from the first batch.”

We traveled for several hours before we found a town large enough to have the kind of slaves we were looking for. Janos had begun to show considerable authority in his manner, so Hippolyte sent him to talk to the slave master. She followed along in case he needed some backup.

“Slave master, I am in the market for some special slaves, and I want to see what you have to offer.”

“Certainly, Sir. What are you looking for?”

“I am looking for your troublemakers and malcontents, but they have to be strong and tough. I want to turn them into fighters, and I will be taking your hard stock off your hands. Keep that in mind when you set the price.”

The slave master’s face lit up at the prospect of getting rid of some of his hard stock that he had trouble moving because of their attitude. “Yes, Sir, if you will come this way, I have some excellent prospects for you to look at.”

Janos said, “Hippolyte, please join us, as I will want your opinion, too.” This was an excellent way to get the attention of the slave master. He could not understand why the opinion of a woman was wanted. Janos then said to him, “This is Hippolyte, the erstwhile queen of the Amazons, and she knows a good fighter when she sees one.”

The slave master blanched at that. He had been planning to try to foster off some of his worst stock on Janos, but the presence of a famous Amazon was enough to shake up that scheme. Oh, well, he still hoped to make a sale, so he didn’t bail out on us.

We walked over to the slave pen and the slave master called to his chief guard to explain who he wanted offered for sale. That man picked out five large and very scruffy looking men that were marched up to us. They stripped, and Janos looked closely at the men. One was rejected immediately because he was obviously mostly fat, but the other four looked like reasonable prospects to me.

Hippolyte tested the strength of each man by utilizing the Greek version of “Indian wrestling” with him. None of the four men could win against her, but three of the prospects did well enough to be worth following up on. She said, “I want all three of you men to run in place until I tell you to stop. This is going to take a long time, but I do not want you to pace yourself. I am testing your stamina. Okay, begin.”

All three men followed orders, but one did not seem to be putting out enough effort to satisfy Hippolyte. She said to him, “Either put more effort into your run or drop out. I can tell when you are not fully exerting yourself.” The man followed orders, so she backed off a little.

[Why did you let that slacker continue? I heard you call for maximum exertion.]

[He may have been testing me, and I like that in a subordinate, as long as he does not go too far. It means he wants to know just how competent and serious I am with my orders. I think that I have made my point with him, and he will now put out the maximum effort I asked for. However, I will keep my eye on him.]