I was reading a story I wrote a few years ago and my eye got snagged on the legionnaires that were in it.
The Légion étrangère has a long and colorful - and often tragic history - since there have been more than a few instances where those hard men fought down to the very last one.
In that story, it was 1963. But it gave me an idea for something set in 1924, so away I went.
I'm putting up a few chapters tonight, knowing that it'll take a few days for them to be up and I've got a trip out of town coming up to where I won't have access. By the time I get back, I'll put up the rest.
In the meantime, meet young A'ishah and her friend with the dour countenance. 0_o
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Late afternoon, Algeria, 1925.
She watched from hiding, hoping that the lot of them wouldn't take as long as they usually did to wash their hair and bathe a little. They always took too long anyway in her opinion. The only ones who ought to be here on any given day were the servants and their daughters, there to do the drudgery of some light washing, but instead, they sat and combed out the long hair of the better ones while talking about nothing as though it was important news.
But it was warm in the sunshine here, even though it was wintertime and if there was no breeze, it could feel hotter than Hell sometimes, so a few of the whores came along for a splash in the ocean - since the guards had to be here anyway.
But those women lived rather easier lives and they were more prone to feel a little carefree as they splashed and laughed. Almost every one of them had some friends among the workers and it went both ways. The other women in the area never went there if the whores were there, not wanting to be mistaken for one of them, though it wasn't hard to tell. Those women were always covered while the brothel girls - especially the servants - quite often weren't.
To her, hiding among the rougher rocks where no one in their right mind would ever go with their soft and easily-cut feet, this whole parade just went on too long while she had to wait for them to get tired of it and ask to be taken back to the brothel.
It was probably good for business, she thought - a slow-moving parade of barely clothed beauties walking and chattering with their friends among the servants - who wore even less, since they had nothing to hide.
It was another thing that she just couldn't understand - the concept of beauty among these ones. To her, many of the workers were better looking than the harlots.
But then, she sighed to herself, who was she to know?
At least all of them belonged here, unlike her.
She wasn't one of them, the bathers on the pebbly strand in Algeria, not far from the Kasbah in Algiers.
She wasn't Arabic at all; not Algerian, Tunisian, or Moroccan. Not Egyptian, Mauritanian, Libyan, Tuareg or Berber.
She sighed, knowing that she'd give a lot only to be able to catch sight of someone just a little like her other than her siblings.
She wasn't human.
Where she'd been born, there had been a great upheaval, one of several cave-ins over the grottoes where she'd lived as a child. The ceiling came down, killing so many, burying hundreds alive in the blink of an eye.
Other than her siblings, she never saw any of her family again, not that it was more than a bother to her, though she and her siblings did miss their father. She'd been twelve then and her mother had already begun to cast jealous eyes her way, going from loving to where all of her kind ended up with respect to their own daughters - murderous if their offspring couldn't take the hints by the time that they were about eighteen, if not sooner.
Everyone knew that some orc fathers would prefer much younger females even if ...
She'd been topside on the other side of the ridge with her younger brother and her little sisters when it had happened, human miners digging too deeply because their bosses were after every scrap of what they mined for.
It had taken them several months to find others who were homeless due to similar circumstances. They'd fallen in with a pack and just followed as hidden stragglers, learning to fend for themselves even better than they'd been taught, since then they could put all of the lessons to use. They'd been noticed in time anyway, but by then it hadn't mattered much, because by then, she could easily defend the rest and they were all beginning to come into their own as well.
She'd been eighteen by that time and her particular combination of genes gave her some of her mother's beauty - for what they were - as well as a lot of her father's speed, agility, strength and power.
She wasn't quite his height, stopping at six feet by the time that she'd stopped growing, but though she was six inches shorter than her father had been, she was six feet of shapely, feminine, bone-crushing force - if she didn't have one of her blades handy to simplify things.
All of her charms were in a slightly oversized package as far as most human girls go, but she had all of the attractions. Hers were just ... more solid, that was all. She had ridges of hard muscle where the most statuesque human girl might only have hints of that on her and she weighed well over two hundred pounds.
Though to be fair, you'd have to wonder where she hid all of that - until you saw her rip out a tree - roots and all - to throw it out of her way.
Around here, where she'd been with her brother and sisters ever since they'd lost sight of the last of the others three years ago and sailed over, she was like a giantess that nobody knew about.
Well, there was one person.
Like the others who came and liked to laugh and frolic at the shore sometimes A'ishah lived at the brothel. They were all bound to it, though to different degrees and in different ways.
The moneymakers were the whores, the dancing girls, and the musicians and they were treated fairly well there. Below them were the servants - the serving girls who took a turn at the many jobs which always needed doing. But their lives were also better than tolerable most of the time at the brothel.
A'ishah lived there too, but her existence wasn't all that charmed. She looked pretty, though she had barely anything for a chest, but that wasn't the thing - the reason why all of the others her age looked down on her or made fun.
One good look at the roughness of the skin on her hands as well as the callouses would tell you everything.
A'ishah was bound to the brothel in a different way. She was a slave who lived there with her mother - also a slave. And in her place, it wasn't all lighthearted songs and laughter, not for A'ishah and the others like her.
She performed her tasks as though she was transparent, because that was what she wished that she was. She knew the floor plan like the back of her hand and if she was unlucky enough to be making her way down one of the corridors upstairs where the clients were entertained, she'd always try to duck into a doorway which she knew had another exit if there were men coming the other way. If there wasn't one of those doors nearby, then she had to continue on and put up with the gropes and the lewd comments with a smile on as though she enjoyed them or even liked the men as well.
It was better than trying to duck into a room with no other way out, because the owners would beat her afterward, annoyed that they hadn't known in time to charge for her - if someone actually wanted to fuck her.
They might not have known why the men had wanted her, but then the place did cater to some ... men from other places and there was no telling what they might find attractive in a girl. That particular brothel was the one - the one where the legionnaires all went whenever they were in town and on leave. The doors were open to them in the hopes that the place might come under a little of their protection if it was ever needed, and until it was, the place had more than enough muscle around to keep them safe as they drank and sang their unintelligible songs and whored.
But that didn't mean that they were loved.
To most people - Algerian people, that is - they were loathed since they were the Foreign Legion which at that time was the military face of the French government which oppressed them all, other than the French settlers.
While A'ishah wasn't one of the performers or the pampered women who were the main draw, her services could be bought on occasion. The beauties who commanded a high price for their services all looked down on her and a lot of the other servants made fun of her and her life wasn't pleasant. They all laughed at her, but she did have one man who loved her to a degree.
He didn't mind that she was a slave-girl there. Her skin was so dark, but he understood why. The place had a large enclosed courtyard with a fountain as well as a garden in it and it was one of her jobs to keep it swept and clean. Since she'd become what she was, A'ishah had worn any sort of clothing only rarely. What for? She didn't have much to her name and unless it was a cold day, there was no point to wearing out what little that she had. It wasn't like they bought her anything very often, since she wasn't one of the ones whose occupation paid for anything. And if you're the one who has to stand in the sun and sweep for up to a day at a time, why dirty anything with the dust of it, other than your skin?
Her hair had been so long once, but lately, she just kept it short in a long boyish cut since it didn't hang on her neck then. Her hair tended to grow in long ringlets, but she found it more practical to keep it short. One look would tell you that she was a girl, but with her little breasts, she looked a lot younger and her appearance came in a little handy at times, since some of the others tended not to tease her as much.
A'ishah was a little shapely and she was pretty, but to that one man - a Spaniard who was a sergeant in the Legion - she was the most lovely woman on Earth. He came for her whenever he could and he paid for her time - time which she'd have given him for nothing because she cared for him, but the place did have an owner, after all.
The change in her life came about by accident one night, but A'ishah was the only one who knew a thing about the large cloaked girl who hid herself so well that no one knew of her.
Not wanting to hear any of the taunts and jests of the others, A'ishah came alone to the shore by a different path with her washing and she waited until they were gone before she stepped out and began scrubbing her clothing and some of her mother's as well.
But it could be a hazardous way to do it if you were the only girl out there on the strand on the other side of the small spit of rocky shore without a man in sight to protect you.
A'ishah didn't need a man for that once they'd met. Her large friend could cause all sorts of mishaps to befall any man or men who entertained thoughts of using her. Boulders would come from nowhere seemingly to flatten a fool who came within a hundred feet and a handful of pebbles thrown by a powerful but unseen arm could do about as much damage as a silent shotgun blast.
