CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

 

 

Fear and rage were warring for dominance in Dusk’s mind as she sat on the ground in the middle of the slaver camp. The rage was currently being tempered by her determination to stay alive. She could fight these assholes, and likely take a few of them down with her, but she’d end up dead, and in Dusk’s mind, it would be a sad and pointless end to what had been an epic five-year-long fight for survival.

The fear, on the other hand, had little to soothe it. Dusk’s fear was only partially due to the physical terrors of being raped and beaten. Another part of it – a darker, more insistent part – came at a far more existential level. Would Aidan and her tribe come to save her? Was this a temporary trial that she merely had to endure? Or was this her final landing place in a world that was more cruel and callous than she could ever have imagined?

When Steve, the homesteader’s wife and daughter had been kidnapped, Aidan had steadfastly refused to rescue them. The Gully was too large, he’d said, and their own tribe too small to even contemplate such a battle. And when Dusk had asked him what he’d do if it had been his own tribe’s women, he’d refused to give a straightforward answer.

A part of her was desperately trying to convince herself that the men would be coming for them. Of course they would. The women of the tribe were no longer an ideal, a goal, a vision for the tribe’s future. They were friends, lovers, comrades; integral members of the tribe, as much as any of the men were. Of course they would come and rescue them.

But with the cold weight of captivity settling in her mind, doubts inevitably crept in. How many of the men had been killed in the raid? How many were injured and unable to fight? They could be down to as few as twenty or thirty men, and with the best intentions in the world, there was no way a force that size could take on this camp.

They would find a way, Dusk told herself firmly. Surely Faith would help them. Wouldn’t she?

Steve’s wife and daughter could still be here, she realised, as she forced herself to take a deep breath and calm down. When she got the chance, she should ask around and see if anyone knew of them. They’d been captured roughly six months ago, and they could easily have been sold to another tribe by now, but it was worth asking.

Even as her mind swirled with dark thoughts, Dusk made the effort to look around the camp. Despite The Wolf’s order that they be separated and taken to their ‘accommodation’, there was apparently some delay in getting things organised, and instead, the guards had sat her and the other women in a row in the unkempt grass. Survival was now a deeply ingrained instinct, and it was second nature to make mental notes about the layout of the camp, the location of various landmarks, the comings and goings of the guards. As she watched, two guards came out of one of the marquees, a woman being escorted between them – no doubt to be taken off and raped by one of the men. She was young – maybe in her early twenties – and frightfully thin. She had a large birthmark on her face – something that had no doubt lowered her price as a sex slave – but then Dusk gasped as she saw that the women didn’t have her left hand, just a stump at the end of her arm. Was this a punishment by the slavers for some crime or other? Or had she lost her hand in some accident or illness before the collapse? Cutting off people’s limbs came with a strong risk that the person would die, either from blood loss or infection, and there were far less crude ways of getting people to behave. Even so, the detail made Dusk’s stomach roll, at the same time as it strengthened her determination to get the hell out of here. Pay attention, girl, she scolded herself. In any plan to escape, she had to assume the worst predictable circumstances and start from there. In this case, that meant that the Tribe of the Clear River Valley were either not going to rescue them, or their rescue attempt would fail, and so Dusk would have to work out how to get her friends and herself to safety on her own. And in order to do that, she needed to know more about this tribe.

On the north side of the camp, the tents were crowded in, running almost up to the tree-line in a design that was not at all defensible. If she ever had an excuse to go into that area of the camp, the forest would provide good cover for an escape attempt.

On the south side, there was a makeshift wall built of logs, but a good solid blow from a battering ram would knock the thing over. There were no solid buildings in the main camp, everyone making do with tents and marquees of various sorts. There was an old corrugated iron shed on the south side, which was apparently used to store the horse tack and long-term food supplies, but it had only three and a half walls, and would be exceptionally easy to loot, if anyone managed to get close enough.

Around the centre of the camp there were an abundance of guards, armed with swords and machetes, and wearing various pieces of crude armour. Bits of leather, thin sheets of metal or even car tyres had been cut and shaped into arm guards and chest plates. But further out in the camp, the men seemed both less alert and less prepared to fight, not wearing any armour, and only about half of them were armed, from what Dusk could see.

But suddenly, her reconnaissance time was over. “You! Come on, on your feet.” A guard grabbed Dusk’s arm and dragged her up, shoving her towards one of the marquees. At the same time, another two guards came for Mei-Lien and Flame, leading them towards a different tent.

Inside, there were thirteen other women seated on the dirt floor, all of them filthy and dishevelled. A pole ran the length of the tent, concreted into the ground, and each of the women’s hands were chained to the pole, with just enough room to let them eat or relieve themselves in the trench that was dug into the back of the tent. In fact, one woman was doing so right now, and Dusk noted that she showed no signs of any sort of embarrassment at being interrupted by the guards bringing a new resident into the tent. She just finished her business, pulled her pants back up and shuffled awkwardly back to her seated position. Even standing up fully wasn’t possible; the chains were too short to allow it.

“Sit down,” the guard snapped, shoving Dusk to the floor as they reached an empty spot about a third of the way along the pole. Her hands were swiftly shackled, then the guards left without a word.

At first, she was rather surprised to find that she was being put by herself. Given the fight that had gone down, she’d rather expected Flame to have been the one who was isolated from her friends. There were three women’s marquees, and with five women from their tribe, there was little option but to put two in each of two tents, and one by herself.

But then she remembered the odd exchange she’d had with The Wolf, before he’d tried to dismiss her. It seemed her conclusion had been right after all; he saw her as a greater threat than the others, if he wasn’t prepared to risk her conspiring with even one of her comrades.

Now that the guards were gone, Dusk looked around, quickly getting the measure of the other women here. Most avoided looking at her, but one or two were watching her with curiosity. But before she could introduce herself or ask anything about this place, the tent flap was pulled back and three more guards strode in, carrying trays of bowls. They handed them out without a word, not even bothering to leer at Dusk as they gave her hers. Perhaps they were low-ranking men who had no reason to be excited about a new slave, she mused. Plenty of the other men had made comments about ‘fresh meat’, but she supposed that in a place like this, sexual privileges probably came with rank.

She picked up the spoon that was in the bowl – it looked like porridge, but made with too much water – and moved to taste it. But then she felt a pressure on her arm, a firm but subtle gesture as the woman beside her pushed her hand down again.

“Don’t.” It was only a shadow of a whisper, and Dusk glanced at the woman. She had her head down, staring at the bowl in her hands. By all appearances, she’d said nothing and Dusk had imagined the word.

But she heeded the warning nonetheless, toying with the slop in her bowl until the guard had finished serving the meal and left the tent again.

Then she raised an eyebrow at the woman. “I’m Savage,” the woman said. She glanced down at Dusk’s bowl. “Don’t eat it. On the first night, they always drug new women. It makes it easier for the men. And once you come to the next morning and realise that six or seven men have already had you…” Her lip quivered. “Well, it takes some of the fight out, you know?”

“I get it,” Dusk said. The cold weight of her current predicament was pressing down on her. It was all well and good to believe that Aidan was going to come and rescue her, but what would she have to endure in the hours and days before they arrived? She felt a rolling wave of terror at the thought of it. It is always worth fighting, she told herself, a mantra that had kept her going through harsh and fearsome circumstances in the past. It is always worth fighting.

“Tip it in the sewer channel,” Savage told her, so she did, feeling a faint pang of concern about the wasted food. It was possible this woman was toying with her, merely wanting her to go hungry…

“Here,” Savage said, slopping a few spoonfuls of her own gruel into Dusk’s bowl. The woman on her other side did the same, and then, at Savage’s prompting, the next one up the row on either side did as well.

“I wouldn’t usually intervene,” Savage told her, eating her gruel slowly. Dusk supposed it lasted longer that way, a trick to make the brain think it was getting more food. “They’ll have you, one way or another. But we heard you’re special.”

“Oh?”

Savage nodded sagely. “Your lot started that fight in The Wolf’s palace.” Her face lit up a little. “Been a long time since we saw spirit like that! So I just thought I’d lend a hand.”

Dusk didn’t bother hiding her surprise. “News travels fast around here.”

“We’ve learned to pay attention. Women get taken off for the men to have sex with them, or have to go and serve in the main tent. The Wolf likes to be hand-fed by his ‘Pretties’. Or they polish his shoes, or bathe him. And if you keep your head down and don’t make a fuss, they forget you’re there, and talk amongst themselves, and that way, we learn things.”

“But it doesn’t do you any fucking good, though, does it,” another woman hissed from further down the row. “You listen, and spy, and conspire, but you’re still here, chained to a fucking pole like the rest of us. Stupid bitch.”

Dusk steadfastly ignored the naysayer, eager to take what information she could get. Any idle detail could potentially be of help. “So, tell me what you’ve learned,” she invited Savage, stirring the porridge idly. Bloody hell, it looked foul. “What of The Wolf? Any weaknesses in his defences? Is there any time the women are unchained? Has anyone tried to kill him at any point?”

“What?” Savage looked aghast at the question. “How the hell would we manage to do that?”

“You said some of the women bathe him. That means they must be getting close enough to do some serious damage, if they chose to.”

 

 

Chained to a pole, with Mikey on one side and Julia on the other – both of them also in chains – Willow reached deep inside herself to maintain the pretence of calm. She’d long ago learned to put aside her own fear and pain to help her children through these trials, and though it took a lot of effort, she was grateful that she had them. If she had just been fighting for her own sake, she might have given up long ago. Now, though, she brought to mind the image of a female brown bear. On some nature documentary, years before, there had been a standoff between a mother bear with two cubs, and a male who wanted to kill them. The mother had been lean and hungry after a long, cold winter, but that she-bear hadn’t hesitated. The male had weighed at least half as much as her again, but she’d snarled, clawed and bellowed until he’d finally got the message and gone off to find easier prey.

She was the bear, Willow reminded herself. She would care for her cubs and see them safely out of this hellhole. She would fight, and she would win.

“I don’t like it!”

Willow opened her eyes at the plaintive cry, seeing Julia almost in tears as she pouted into the bowl of bland slop they’d been given for dinner. Mikey was finishing his bowl, eating with gusto from sheer hunger. But Julia was not so easily appeased.

“Okay,” Willow said, trying to sound calm and confident. “Well, remember when we played those pretend games, about a year ago? We didn’t have any food, but we all imagined we were eating a big, big plate of chicken, with lots of potatoes, and thinking how full we felt, and that we just couldn’t eat any more?” Julia nodded. “So, we’re going to do the same thing now,” Willow told her. “You remember what peaches taste like?” They’d had more than their fill of them over summer, sweet and impossibly juicy, just minutes off the tree, and she chose the taste as it was likely to be a vivid memory that Julia wouldn’t have any trouble bringing to mind. Julia screwed up her face a little and thought hard, then nodded. “Very good. Now we’re going to pretend the porridge tastes like peaches. Fresh, sweet, juicy peaches…” Willow had to stop, her throat tight, tears pricking her eyes as she remembered eating that fruit. They’d sat by the river, talking, laughing, juice dribbling down their chins. Whisper had pointed out a goanna, climbing a tree on the far side of the river, much to the children’s amazement. Hawk had tried to teach Mikey to do a forward roll, and they’d all ended up in hysterics. They had been days filled with happiness and joy that somehow Willow had started to take for granted.

“You’d be better off smothering the pair of them,” a harsh voice said, the woman two places down the row sneering at her.

Willow had realised very quickly that there was no particular sense of solidarity here among the women. She’d expected them to work together, to help and support each other. Instead, they seemed only to squabble and snarl at each other. Willow ignored this particular comment, generously reminding herself that the woman was speaking out of fear and pain.

“That girl’s going to be ripe fodder for the men as soon as she’s ten years old. The boy, when he’s a bit younger. You want them to grow up knowing that’s their future?”

“Bite your tongue, you mangy bitch,” Mist called from further down the row. She and Willow, while being in the same tent, had been placed far enough apart to make plotting together an idle dream. If they were going to hatch any sort of plan, every other woman in the tent was going to know about it, and Willow didn’t currently trust any of them enough to take that risk. “You might have given up on life and see yourself as nothing more than a cock-house for the slavers, but some of us still believe we’re worth something.”

The woman laughed, a cold, hollow sound. “You might have caused a stir when you arrived,” she said, and Willow wasn’t surprised to know that word of the fight had already spread. “But you won’t last more than a week before they break you.”

Mist smiled at her, the hungry, daring look a cat might give a mouse before it pounced. “Then it’s a damn good thing we’re not going to be here that long.”