The thick smell of fish stew wafted from the bamboo huts, mixing with the reek of animal dung in the dirt streets. The houses were of bamboo with thatched roofs, looking exactly the same as they had for a thousand years.
Lard torches crackled before the wood barracks of the sec men and the small gaudy house. The smooth clean light of alcohol lanterns shone brightly through the glass windows of Baron Somers’s brick fortress, the predark police station now his armed bunker inside the walls of Namu ville. But it had been a long time since there had been any fighting in the poor fishing ville. Only a hundred people lived in the squalor, with less than a dozen slaves. There was nothing to attract pirates or raiders from another ville. The lord baron chilled the seagoing coldhearts at every chance, but didn’t really care if one ville attacked another. The strongest should live, the weak die. That was his law, and none openly dared to disagree.
High on a hill overlooking the dirt ville was a natural cleft in the side of the mountain. The ground was bare, the red clay resisting even the jungle. A rickety predark house was slowly collapsing under the weight of age, the windows long gone, the interior a death trap of rotting floorboards and tiny hell flowers growing in the corners and cracks.
Water flowed freely from a crack in the granite face of the hillside, splashing along a gully in the dirt, past a cold cook fire and then down into the jungle below. The area was densely ringed with pungi sticks, the sharpened bamboo rising a full yard in height, offering a stubborn defense against the big cats that prowled the jungle, mutie snakes and the much more dangerous men from the ville.
Across the cleft was a squat predark structure with one side door and an odd wall that could be lifted by two strong men. The ancient two-car garage was artfully covered with vines in layers so thick it was almost invisible amid the lush greenery of the jungle edging the clearing.
Soft sounds came from the building, a grinding, some cursing and finally a muffled roar.
“Yes, sulfur is part of black powder,” a man cried in delight, backing away from his worktable and waving at the expanding cloud of bitter smoke. “By Socrates, I’ll discover the formula yet!”
Walking over to a pool table, the felt removed to make clothing ages ago, Wof Nikon wiped a grimy arm across his forehead and threw some water on his face from the slightly cracked bowl of a birdbath, managing to sluice off most of the black residue from his body. Next the man gargled with a brew in a coconut shell that was freshwater and seawater mixed with lime juice. It helped cut the taste of the acrid smoke.
Sitting quietly in the corner was a woman of indeterminate age, her feet bare, and her full breasts nearly spilling from the tight confines of a tattered dress, a cascade of long hair masking her features. Her small hands were busy with a fish-bone needle and a short piece of thread, trying to patch a rip in a badly stained shirt.
“You!” Wof barked in command.
The young woman hastily placed aside her needlework and ran to the rock stove and began striking flint to steel to start the dinner fire. An old pot rested in the rusty grill of the stove, assorted fish bits and some fruits mixed together in water.
“Over here,” he ordered gruffly.
Leaving the stove, she fell to her knees before him, her head bowed in submission.
“Rise and strip.”
Silently the slave did as she was told, untying the knotted shoulder straps. Her thin clothing fell in a whisper to the cracked concrete floor. The girl stood with head bowed, hands folded, waiting for the next command.
Moving closer, Wof ran cruel hands over her breasts, pinching the tender nipples hard, then slapping her firm buttocks. Breathing heavily, the man opened his pants and placed her warm hands on his cock.
“Service me,” he said throatily, already hard with anticipation. “Every inch, girl. Front and back.”