A Modern Day Slave Raid (continued)
The former vacationers at the proudly gay Patroclus Resort are now slaves!
After their capture, they'd been stripped naked and bound with stout ropes before being loaded onto a fast vessel anchored just offshore to begin the first leg of their trip into slavery. From there, they'd been taken back to the pirates' lair on the North African coast for assessment and processing. After a thorough medical examination which all the new slaves passed with flying colours, the next step was to brand them with the pirates' mark certifying to any potential buyers that they were indeed slaves.
The branding was a terrifying experience for the new slaves. As each slave was strapped face down onto the branding bench, he struggled with hidden reserves of inner strength he didn't know he possessed but his struggling proved futile. It took the pirates just moments to immobilise the slave face down and ass up as the red-hot branding seared itself into the tender flesh of his left buttock thus marking him for life as an owned property. Naturally, the air was rent with the slaves' loud, agonising screams as they felt the excruciating pain of the branding iron while the sickening smell of their scorched flesh assailed their nostrils.
After being branded, they were left to heal as they were conditioned like fattening cattle for their eventual sale in some hellish slave-market. They were exercised, well-fed and their bodies groomed and oiled until their captors were satisfied that they were marketable.
Now they were split into smaller groups and sent on consignment to different slave-markets throughout North Africa and the Middle-East for auction.
The attached picture shows one such group being openly displayed and inspected by interested buyers just hours before they mount the auction-block and are sold.
The beautiful artwork for this vignette is by Amalaric while the text is mine.
Excellent and very exciting description-with your usual outstanding mastery in writing, Chris- of the thrilling branding process of newly captured slaves before their delivery into the standard circuit of the very rich and flourishing “White Slave Trade” throughout North Africa, the Middle-East and the Arabic Peninsula.
ReplyDeleteLet me add that the branding with hot irons of the just captured infidel animals, not only is indispensable for assuring, beyond all possible doubts the status of these beasts as perfectly legal slaves, as you rightly underline ….. but the brand serves also as a sort of “High Quality Guarantee” and for the absence of “hidden defects” in these choice male merchandise.
These modern North-African slave-hunters and pirates are the heirs of a millenarian tradition, as long as almost twelve centuries ! ….. first from the Saracens, and then from the famous Barbary Pirates ….. a glorious tradition of uninterrupted excellence in the hunting and trading of top qualities of infidel slaves.
And they rightly intend to remain worthy of such glorious tradition.
Karel
PS Once again allow me also to say that the graphic Art of Amalaric is really beyond all praises.
I do like all models and details in this superb vignette; but in particular I like the way in which the pirates have immobilized for inspections the gorgeous young slave on the centre: spread-eagled, with his muscular arms and legs widely splayed, with the use of two simple pieces of tree-branches, the sturdy animal is in the ideal position for being thoroughly scrutinized, felt and fingered, even by the most scrupulous customer, in each and every details of his magnificent body ….. starting of course from the perfectly exposed massive dangling genitals.