Chapter 9

Something had been gnawing at me for the last few months, and I finally had to bring it up to Atrina. I was about to become a father many times over, and I was beginning to have second thoughts about dumping my progeny out into the world as raw slaves. It just didn't seem right to me to treat my children that way. The question was, how was I going to get Atrina to come around to my way of thinking. The only way that I could figure was to make a sound economic argument.

I started out be asking, "Atrina, at what age do you sell your new slaves?"

"I usually sell through a broker when they are around 4-8 years old. Why do you ask?"

"I have had a brainstorm, but I want your input to firm up my thoughts. Please bear with me. How much do you get for one of your slaves?"

"As a general rule, my slaves are considered prime stock, so I normally get 20-30 aureii for them after I figure in my expenses."

"No wonder you have always made money with your business. Now, for a general question: how much would a competent scribe bring on the slave market?"

"I'm not sure, but they are very rare, so I would value a scribe at 15,000 aureii at the minimum."

"OK, that is the answer I expected. As I understand, a scribe would be a minimum of 35 years old when he was sold. Assume that he would live to be 50 years old. That would give you 15 years of service. Or, to put it another way, you would be paying 1,000 aureii a year for his services.

"On the other hand, suppose you could purchase an equally competent scribe for 15,000 aureii, but one that was only 20 years old. That would mean that you could expect 30 years of service at 500 aureii per year. Which one would you rather have?"

"Well, the answer is obvious, but no quality scribe could be found only 20 years old."

"Well, my Darling, let me beg to differ with you. A scribe doesn't normally start his training until after he has been purchased at an age of 15-20 years old, and it takes 15 years for him to learn all he needs to know. Why does it take so long to train a scribe? I'll answer that. An adult learns more slowly than he did as a child. As an example, how long does it take a child to learn to speak, yet how long does it take an adult to learn a new language?

"I propose that we start teaching children to read, write, and do arithmetic when they are only five or six years old. They would be competent scribes in Latin by the time they were 12, and they could be fluent in several languages by the time they were 18-20."

"Oh, don't be silly! No child could learn to read or write at such an early age. Of course, if he could, the profit would be tremendous!"

"Ah, but in my home country, all children began to learn to read and write at such an age. I started to learn to read and write my native language at that age, and I could read books and write essays by the time I was 10. I'll admit that I was ahead of most of the children my age, but I was not that much ahead of my peers.

"All children were required to attend what we called public school, and, until the politicians got in the way, the system was very successful for most of them. I propose that we do the same sort of thing with our slave children. I am certain that every one of them could be taught the way I was to read and write. They could also learn basic arithmetic at the same rate. Think how much more valuable they would be under those circumstances!"

"Are you serious? Do you really think such learning is possible? The profits would be enormous!"

"I am certain of it! All it would take is the proper quality of teachers. I could set something like that up, and we could have our first class of students in six years. I know that is a long time to wait, but we could get by with the profits from the farm until our education system started paying off in about 15 years."

"Darling Conan, I can see the value of what you propose, but can we really get by with producing nothing but scribes?"

"I doubt it, but a basic education would give the children the background they would need to learn the other skills that I could teach them. Some could be engineers, some could be farm managers, and some could keep accounts. There are many other jobs that a child could learn, depending on where his talent led."

"OK, so much for the male slaves, what could you do to increase the value of the females?"

"Look at it this way, what would you give to have a trusted female slave who could read and write for you?"

"Oh, by the gods, that would be wonderful! I never heard of a female scribe. Is that really possible?"

"It certainly is possible. Women can learn anything that a man could. All we have to do is to offer the opportunity. I can even see the advent of female bodyguards. Many things are possible if we are willing to take the chance!"

"OK, I agree with you. The good thing is that we have plenty of time to set it up. Where should we start?"

"Let's start with the reading and writing. Put out the word that we want to hire a freedman scribe. I can guess that a freedman would come a lot cheaper than a slave scribe. We have time to try that, anyway. I will interview the men and hire the one who seems the best for our use."

"OK, but now it is time for you to 'interview' our first new breeder. Have fun, Darling! I will be watching."

Suosie was from Dacia, and had a very bad history with sex. She was only familiar with rape or near-rape. Never had her feelings been taken into consideration, so I had a tough problem on my hands. I wanted her to have an orgasm, but I was almost afraid that an orgasm would scare her to death. The loss of bodily control that she would feel would surely be threatening. I was going to need psychology in my efforts with her.

"Suosie, please relax and let me show you how wonderful the sexual experience can be for a woman. I know that you have always been forced into sex, but I am going to try to make it so that you beg me to fuck you. Just let me lead you to a land of bliss. I'll even stop if you want me too, but I think that you will never want to stop once you know what is in store for you.

"I hope that you have talked to the other women in the stable. They should have told you what I can do by now, so you should know that you can trust me. Rest assured that I will be the only one to fuck you while you are a slave in this house. You have nothing to fear from any man here. If you feel that you are being pushed into sex by someone else, just scream for help. It will be there in no time."

"Oh, Master Conan, all of the women who have experienced your fucking have had nothing but glowing reports of how good it was. I have never felt anything like that, so I hope that you can do the same sort of thing for me."

"Suosie, I promise that I will never hurt you. Just relax and surrender to my requests. The first thing I need to do is to remove your clothes. Please let me do it, and I think that you will enjoy the process."

She had never had a man remove her clothes without simply jerking them off and often causing her pain in the process. She was wearing a very loose fitting wrap that was tied in two places. One was on her left shoulder and the other was at her waist.

I started out by kissing her earlobe. I felt that a kiss on her mouth would be perceived as an attack, so I was going to let that slide for now. I was holding her upper arms gently but firmly as I kissed and nibbled on her earlobes, swapping sides often enough to avoid causing Suosie any pain. She was already beginning to feel something, so I loosened the tie holding up the covering over her breasts.