I stood there on the swaying deck before the three kneeling men, one of them clutching a bloody and bleeding arm from our fight. The cutlass-like sword in my hand heavy, the length of the blade now stained with blood. I could feel the blood running down my body beneath my dress, the slash having gone through both my dress and the chemise beneath I had worn. The wound starting to bother me now with a dull ache that turned to a sharp biting pain with every motion I made. Sharon there at my side, young, blonde, and beautiful, the long slim dagger she had just used so effectively bloodstained there in her hand. Her beautiful azure eyes as blue as the patches of sky above us now filled with concern as she saw the wet red blood staining my black silken dress below my bosom, the entire side of the dress now almost dripping with my life-blood as I bled from my wound!
Overhead three seagulls screamed around the mastheads, the brightly stripped red and white sails flapping noisily in the strong breeze that was driving us nearer and nearer to the black jagged rocks of the coast. I would have to get the ship under sail and soon or we would all be doomed, I thought to myself, regarding the three kneeling before us. Feeling a sense of helplessness because I would have to depend upon "enemies" to sail the Ronda, men who I would not be able to trust! Men who might just bide their time until I was forced to sleep, and then make their "move" against me. True, I might have Sharon take turns with me watching them, but I knew all too well that with a ship like this that there were things that they could do to it that neither she or I would know anything about until it was too late! I might be a true "master" of the sword, but sailing ships were something I knew rather little about, especially ones of a design like this. We were, as Janet used to say to me back in the 20th Century, "between a rock and a hard place" with very damm little that either one of us could do about it right then!
"We'll take care of it," I told Sharon, clasping her to me, gasping a bit with the pain of the movement, my right arm with its bloodstained sword around her slim girlish waist. Pleased and proud of what she had become, now truly "my daughter" instead of having been Marcia's, Jack's first wife. A now drunken shell of a once radiantly beautiful woman whom I had lately always hated to allow Sharon to even visit anymore for fear of what might happen when she drove after drinking heavily like she did! The two citations Marcia had gotten for drunk driving having had little effect upon her continuing drinking and driving! Jack's alimony payments had been heavy, Marcia's lawyer having been convincing to the trial judge that the divorce was all Jack's fault as well it could well have been judging from my own personal experiences with him as you have seen earlier here in my story.
I first met Jack Duval after his divorce from his first wife, the beautiful tall aristocratic blonde Marcia. The divorce having been a nasty affair that had driven him to seek my professional help with his "nervous problems". We had soon fallen in love, Jack being handsome and having a "style" about himself that I found quite attractive. He said that he loved me and found me attractive too. I said "yes" to his marriage proposal. I suppose he needed a "wife" for Sharon's sake here, and I was just stupid enough to jump at the chance, Jack being a far better "catch" I believed then than any man I had been able to attract on my own. It wasn't one of my "best" decisions, and ranks along with my attempt to fly through a violent thunderstorm to see a "flying saucer" for being really dumb and stupid acts on my part!
Our marriage was a stormy one almost from the start, Jack being a man with a "roving eye" for anything that was young and blonde, although his tastes were pretty catholic and I tried to ignore as best I could the way that he chased after women like a dog after bitches in heat. Marcia was also a mean and vicious bitch that missed no chance to exploit the situation and tried to make my life as miserable as she could by trying to turn Sharon against me. It would have made a wonderful soap opera or novel no doubt. Especially after Jack started making comparisons between me and his ex-wife, who was just slut enough to "bed" him one time after getting him drunk and then tell me all about it over the phone! Saying that I wasn't "woman" enough for a man like him or he wouldn't have "turned" to her for "something" that "he couldn't get back at home"! The implications being obvious!
Giving swift orders, I had the ship put under sail away from the black jagged rocks that had threatened to destroy it. Another few minutes and it would have been a wreck upon them, so close had it been, the sound of the breakers echoing in my ears as we pulled away. Then as the sailors hastened to do my bidding, the wounded man taking the wheel, I wondered what to do next after ordering the bodies scattered about on the deck to be gathered up and placed out of the way for their later disposal. My question as to where we were and what year it was having made the first officer give me an odd strange look before answering that we were off the coast of "Trelandar" and that this was, as everyone knew, the year "518". Then adding to my immediate question, "After The War", his look leaving no doubt that he thought he was sailing beneath a mad woman who had undoubted lost all her "wits" and was now a well proven dangerously insane manic to boot!
"Somehow we must have traveled into the Earth's future," I told Sharon as I watched the first officer and other sailor resetting the sails. Sharon nodding while doing her best to stem the flow of blood from my wound with part of my skirt that she had cut from the hem of it to use as a bandage. My chemise was torn where the sword had cut it, but otherwise still usable as I was naked beneath it save for the pantyhose that I had worn. I had not worn a bra, as my breasts are too small to "need" one.
"If it is the case," I added, "Then we must accept the fact that we must have flown into some sort of warp in the space-time continuum that separates our time from this one". I was rather puzzled by the first mate's reference to a "War", since at the time we had flown through the time warp into this era, there had been a considerable improvement in relations between the USA and the USSR and no reason to believe that things weren't going to "continue" as they were. Obviously however, such a War had occurred, for otherwise how could one account for a ship like the Ronda, and men and a culture like this? A social order that seemed to have been taken right out of some adventure fantasy novel like John Norman's "GOR" series. Nothing made any sense. What was "Trelandar" and this "Empire" to which this ship belonged, if such was the case? There had been mention too of a woman called "Darlanis", who apparently was the "Empress" now! And references to an "Empire of California" which puzzled me too!
"Oh," Sharon answered, "disbelief" evident in her very look, no doubt not knowing what else to say just then. Still vivid in my memory the green flicking blob of light and the agony that had accompanied it. With another smile taking the silken compress from her hand and pressing it up tightly against my still bleeding slash across the ribs. Another three or four inches different and it would have gone right through my heart!
"Such a thing is in theory quite possible if enough energy could be released in one spot," I explained, adding, "And we see here aboard this vessel the evidence that Man committed the ultimate `folly' after all." It being readily apparent to me that there had been after all the Third World War that doomsayers had predicted. The Ronda and her crew ample proof that nothing but the most barbaric civilization remained, and that similar to the Dark Ages after the fall of Rome! The only puzzlement that disc we had both seen, and the giant ant-like creatures that flew on it. I had no answers for that. COULD IT BE THAT MAN HAD FOUGHT WITH THEM? HAD THERE BEEN AN INTERPLANETARY OR INTERSTELLAR WAR?
"Yes, It All Fits Together Now!" I muttered to myself, suddenly everything being utterly clear to me. The disc, its recovery of my plane, the Ronda, the barbaric culture from which it came, everything suddenly fitted together like the pieces of some jigsaw puzzle! Sharon looking up at me, a puzzled expression on her face as she finished wrapping another strip cut from my dress around me to hold the packing in place against my cut flesh. The bleeding already now starting to stop as clotting took place.
"Here, you use some of this," the sailor at the wheel said to me, holding out a small bottle of some sort of clear liquid, his own wound amazingly now only a long slash across the skin that seemed to bother him very little. He was younger than the others, and seemed to bear me less resentment. The material, I quickly discovered when Sharon then applied it to me, being both antiseptic and anesthetic, as well as possessing amazing healing qualities! The sailor telling me that the compound was a medicine provided by the "LORR" as part of their technology. "One of the few good things the damm `ANTS' have ever given us!" he had muttered, going back to his station there at the wheel under the watchful eye of the first mate, who I didn't trust out of my sight. His words only further confirmation of the fantastic theory I had developed as an explanation for everything we had experienced in this incredible and fantastic era. It being now perfectly clear who had won "THE WAR"! THE LORR!! THE "ANTS"!!!
"What kind of cargo does this ship carry?" I asked the first mate, having little doubt now from the chains on deck and the smells that left no doubts as to the cargo chained below. My face stern as his eyes met mine. The sword was heavy in my hand as I regarded him. I did not trust him, and I think he knew it. Sharon at my side, the dagger she had used so effectively at her hip thrust through her belt. My own dress was now nothing but torn rags that only half covered my bloody chemise beneath it.
"Slaves, Mistress," he answered. "Seventy three prime female slaves along with the Princess of Dularn now chained in the captain's cabin." His dark eyes glancing again to the sword there in my deadly hand, thinking what thoughts I knew not as I started a bit at his words. A PRINCESS! Obviously this ship carried "valuable" cargo indeed! She, I thought to myself, might very well have the answers to my questions! It was obvious too that she must be an "enemy" of this "Empire", which gave me hope that somehow, somewhere, Sharon and I might find safety with her.
"Bring the Princess to me, NOW!" I snapped, putting just as power and authority into my voice as I could. Telling the other sailor to bring the slaves up on deck, which he hesitated to do, apparently being somewhat afraid of them without having his fellow sailors as a "backup" should they rise up against him!
"I told you to GET THEM!", I snarled, half-lifting my sword, the man hurrying off to do my bidding, the shifty-eyed first mate quickly doing the same, Sharon following him at my order to see that he did what I sent him to do and absolutely NOTHING MORE! I didn't trust the man, and he was the only one who actually knew how to navigate the Ronda!
"She speaks English!" Sharon called delightedly out to me, walking beside a big beautiful blonde haired woman, as naked as the day she was born except for a strip of bluish cloth around her hips and lovely golden disks fitted over her nipples like the "pasties" once worn by 20th Century "strip-tease" dancers. The first mate now slinking away like a whipped cur, the woman having a sword belt strapped around her hips! Those iron-grey eyes of hers burning into mine as I stood there in the sunlight, my own bloodstained blade yet in my hand. This was obviously the "Princess of Dularn", wherever that was here in this fantastic world! She was tall, perhaps 5'8" or 5'9", and quite well muscled, a true fighting woman! The fact that she had already armed herself spoke much of her! Obviously in this strange era women "fought"!
"I am Janis Jord, Princess of Dularn," she smiled, drawing her blade and lifting it in salute. On the inside of her left wrist a small brand, a stylistic sword that reminded me somewhat of the Christian cross. A mark that I would later bear upon my own left wrist, the mark of a WARRIORESS! "I salute you as one Warrioress to another". Her swift eyes having not missed the bodies now gathered there by starboard the rail for later burial at sea. I returned her smile and raised my own blade in reply, a feeling of relief going over me at the thought that we now had at least one "friend" in this strange new time!
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