The Lady Out of Time

3 - Resist

 "Get off me! I'll take your head off -"

Julia gnashed her teeth when the man ignored her furious protests and bodily ejected her from the lip of the wagon. She landed with a tumble on the grass just outside the high stone walls of an elegant villa, no doubt the residence of the so-called general she and all the other captives here were meant to serve.

Not on her life, she hissed to herself. She didn't care if this was all a vivid hallucination or a ploy on the part of God or man to make her suffer, but the day she submitted to a man would be after hell froze over and Santa came down to set up his new workshop there. Not on her goddamn life.

She got to her feet with a fierce scowl and looked around, noting the miserable condition of the dozen men and women who had been brought here with her. More than half of them she knew already from her time in the disgusting slave pen, but the others had been thrown on the wagon on the way up to the villa out here in the lush countryside. It sickened her to think of it, but these latter prisoners must have suffered even worse than she had: some of them were entirely naked, huddling into themselves and shaking with fright. There were bruises and scrapes all over their bodies to mark their tribulations, even long, angry weals that looked like half-healed whip scores.

Julia turned away. She had a strong stomach, but seeing such suffering and degradation right in front of her and yet being unable to help made her so furious that she thought she was going to be sick. And right now, she couldn't afford to show such weakness - she had to be rigid and strong, staunch in the face of this repulsive injustice. She wouldn't give in, wouldn't let them think she ever would -

A slave! Julia Williams, a citizen of the free world all her life - a slave!

The wagon driver finished exchanging gruff words with the two men in loincloths who had unloaded the slaves. With that, he snapped the reins and barked a command at the horses, and they answered with an obedient clip-clopping trot that lurched the wagon forward with a creak. Julia watched with narrowed eyes as wagon, driver, and horses all receded from view around the turn of the beaten trail and disappeared past the curve of sloping hills.

Her eyes lingered on the terrain, all verdant green grass and framed with a crystal clear creek that burbled and murmured as it wound between the hills. It was a shame that she was stuck in this nightmare world from the past - she would buy up this plot of land in a heartbeat.

She turned back around when she realized the men in loincloths were speaking, but they were talking to each other rather than at the captive group. What were they doing, she wondered, until she realized they were inspecting and then dividing the slaves into two groups. Why? What for? Her eyes flitted from prisoner to prisoner, taking in their appearances as the two groups began to grow.

Ah. Now she saw. The smaller group on the left was visibly cleaner, perhaps even more attractive. Pretty young women and handsome men despite their pitiful condition, most of them seemingly uninjured too. The group on the right, however, was filling up fast with the "discards" - the bleeding, the bruised, the weak-looking.

Julia narrowed her eyes again. If she were optimistic, she would have considered the possibility that they were being sorted in order to see who needed medical attention or sustenance more urgently, but there was no way that this depraved system would ever be so kind to slaves. If this really was the Roman Republic - or at least a fevered dream reflecting it - then it was likely that the best among the group were being singled out to become privileged house slaves while the rest were relegated to common ones.

She grit her teeth, blood boiling at the indignity of being sorted like so much cattle. She gave both men a baleful, venomous look and stood stock still even when one of them pointed her in the direction of the left group. Oh, how nice that she had made it into the superior crop, she wanted to hiss. Too bad for them - they were in for an unpleasant surprise if they thought she was going to wait on her 'master' hand and foot. She didn't care how pretty or valuable they thought she was. They could all suck on the sharp side of a long knife, and she wouldn't be giving up without a fight.

There were only two of them and a dozen of the captives, Julia wanted to shout. They could rush the men or simply make a run for the hills - what were they going to do about it? Whistle and scream for them to come back? But just as the words teetered on the tip of her tongue, several other people filed out of the archway of the villa's entrance to surround the herd like sheepdogs. And a few of them were armed with - whips?

God damn it, she seethed as the slaves shrank and huddled even closer together with her right in the middle. She couldn't believe she had ever been interested in the intricacies of the Roman Republic during her university years. Now that she was experiencing its atrocities in person, she wished she'd spent her interest on something more deserving instead.

"To the water!" one of the newcomers barked. A woman. She wasn't holding a whip, but her hands were on her hips and her head  raised at a scornful, haughty angle that revealed her authority over the armed men.

Julia eyed her up and down before turning to follow the rest of the group down to the rushing creek. The woman wasn't the lady of the house, that was for sure. A big, lavish villa like this was home to a highborn noble - the mistress of the place would be wearing a luxurious toga. This sharp-voiced, fox-faced woman was wearing only a long tunic dress that came down to her instep. While the pleated fabric had some color and a beautiful line of mahogany red running along its seams, there was no way that this was the clothing of the villa's matron nor its daughters.

So a servant, then, or rather...a fellow slave. Julia's suspicions were confirmed when she overheard her barking more orders at her men (also slaves, she now realized), and mentioned something about the upkeep of the master's house. Annia, they called her. Annia, the head slave who exercised authority over the rest.

Julia continued to bathe herself in the creek along with the rest of the slaves under her watchful eye. Well, she thought. She had no issue with bathing and cleaning up; that just so happened to benefit her and serve her needs. But Annia would have to work a little harder than that to get Julia to obey her other demands. Maybe all the other slaves would fall into line like dominoes, but she would make sure that she left a deep, lasting impression on whoever tried to force her to do the same.

With her teeth, if she had to.

* * * * *

"You need to stop this," whispered the young woman kneeling next to Julia. "Just - go. It's not even that bad, I promise."

Julia scowled down at Aela, who was currently scrubbing down one of the ornate columns that bordered the villa's grand atrium. She was just a kid. Well - fine. With this...appallingly young body that had replaced Julia's adult one, they were supposed to be peers. But that didn't mean she had to respect and imitate Aela's naive, sheep-like subservience to both the system and that horrid cow Annia.

"Cleaning cesspools isn't 'that bad?'" Julia mocked. "Are you crazy? I'm not cleaning up piss and s**t for free. City employees get paid through the nose to do that, and I'm supposed to do it just because someone thinks they own me? Get out of here."

Her words seemed to confuse Aela, which was understandable since the denizens of the Roman Republic were still about two thousand years from being introduced to the concept of heavily compensated sanitation services. But that wasn't Julia's problem. She was not f*****g cleaning up cesspools.

"Julia, please. You can't keep fighting Annia. It's been three days, you have to accept -"

"No," she snapped. "She's the one who needs to accept it. I don't care how many times she slaps me, I still remember my self-defense even if I have the body of a starved chicken now."

Aela forged on, ignoring what she must have thought was nothing but strange babbling. "Annia is the daughter of the general's favorite slave - she has all the power here. There's nothing you can do."

"Oh? Then where's her father? Shouldn't he be the one with all the 'power?'"

The girl shook her head. "He's gone with the general. They're never apart, but when he's absent, that's when Annia rules the house. The only reason she hasn't torn you apart yet is because she's been so busy admiring the silks that came in, but once she's had her fill of them, she'll come for you and teach you a lesson."

"Hm. She's free to try."

"And you're not making any friends for yourself by always refusing to work! The rest of us are doing what we can, and you're -"

"And it's my fault that everyone else is so eager to lick the boots of people who tread all over you?" Julia snapped. "Don't kid yourself. Resent me if you want, but I'm not letting her walk all over me just because her daddy has it good with the big bad general."

The girl sighed and began to scrub the column even harder. "You can't win," she said. "Even if you weren't so stubborn, she would hate you as it is. It's always like that - she hates the younger women, all of them, whether they've been with the house for years or have just arrived. And the prettier they are, the more she hates them, so you're as good as dead to her."

Julia paused. Despite her determination to stay as cool and acidic as possible, she felt her guard slip for just a moment.

"I'm - are you calling me pretty?" she asked.

Aela looked up with an impatient frown. "You know you are. Don't be silly. Anyway, please, I'll even join you and help clean the cesspools as soon as I'm done here, it won't be but half an hour that you'll have to work alone -"

"Forget it. But you know what? I'll go and stand there instead just so that Annia gets the message even more clearly. I'll see you later after I don't clean the cesspools, Aela."

Julia ignored the girl's protests, knowing that she wouldn't have the guts to chase after her and try to change her mind anyway. A slave, she thought. How degrading, how inhumane. This system that convinced humans they were somehow innately inferior to others just because someone told them so - she clenched her fists and dug her nails into her palms.

Fine. Maybe she was trapped here in this horrible place and time, but she wouldn't live her life like a common animal. She would fight back, and she would even die for the sake of her human dignity. If Annia was going to stand in the way of that, then let her. Whip her to death, stone her, she didn't care. She had built her life around throwing off the reins of abuse; she wouldn't let something like involuntary time travel change that now.

And sure enough, the time came to prove her resolve: not long after Julia sat herself down some distance away from the cesspools at the very back of the villa, she saw a familiar figure approach from around the side of the house.

Annia. Blond-haired, slit-eyed, fox-faced Annia. Her face was a mottled red, and her fists were clenched at her side as she approached. She wasn't shouting today, Julia noticed with narrowed eyes, which meant she was more in the mood to throw hands rather than insults.

Fine, she thought. If the woman wanted to play that way, then she was happy to oblige. Yes, she was weak in this young body of a starved seventeen year old, and Annia was a full-grown, strapping woman at least ten, fifteen years older than she was, but Julia didn't care. She feared losing court cases more than she feared losing teeth, and black eyes were nothing to her after having taken six months of therapeutic boxing (which she now wished that she'd been far better at).

"Here we go," she muttered, and then - Annia was upon her.

The woman tried everything. Hair pulling, face scratching, kicking and punching, and she had at least thirty to forty pounds on Julia as she forced her to the ground and rained her fists upon her head. She wished she were in her real, adult body so that she could properly crush the hag's nose and shatter her septum without breaking a sweat, but it didn't matter: so long as she was here, she would fight back to the end with all her strength, strange new body or not.

She felt a trickle of blood leak from one of her nostrils and drip over her lip with a salty copper taste, but she didn't stop. Blow for blow, she struck back for every punch she received, even if her own hits felt more glancing than anything else. It didn't matter, so long as she made sure that this thundering b***h understood that she would never, ever, ever give up -

"Enough, Annia."

The savage fight had been happening in utter silence,  except for the sound of knuckles and open palms striking flesh - so much so that the deep, harsh, masculine voice that suddenly rang out startled both of them so badly that they immediately stopped mid-swing.

Julia's eyes zeroed in on the man approaching them with sure, long strides, but she glanced back up at Annia when she heard a choked gasp. And then it was over, just like that: the woman pushed herself up to her feet in a mad, inelegant scramble, mouth open in a foolish gape and her eyes wide with fear.

The man's gaze flickered up and down Annia's disheveled form, and then he nodded in the direction of the house.

"Leave. Now."