The Warrior Challenged

8

It wasn’t waking up, precisely, not with remembering what had happened before you’d slept and knowing what was going on right then. I opened my eyes and was in a rather large room, with quite a few people all around. I had an odd taste in my mouth, knew I lay on something hard, and my right shoulder and arm were hurting, throbbing in protest and feeling banged and scraped. There was sunlight in the room, and refreshing air, but with all the people looking down at me I wasn’t feeling very refreshed.

“Sit up, and then stand,” one of the people looking at me said, a large woman wearing cloth breeches and shirt, leather sandals and headband, and a sword. It came to me then that all of the people looking at me were women, and I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand any of it, but I sat up and then got to my feet.

“You should have been wiser than to come here so, girl,” another voice said, also a female voice but sleeker than the first and filled with endless self-confidence. “Your pitiful trace of the power has given you too high an opinion of yourself, which has caused you to reach above your proper place. You will come to regret such impertinence.”

I looked over to where the voice was coming from, and then had to look up. At the top of a wide platform a woman lounged upon cushions and furs, an attractive woman with blond hair and blue eyes. She was dressed in golden silk breeches and shirt with matching silk foot coverings, and the silk was decorated with jewels and trimmed with fur. Behind the platform she lay on was an entire wall of windows, all of them thrown wide to the air and sunshine. I put my hand to my forehead as I looked at her, trying to remember what I’d wanted to say, and then I had a piece of it.

“Pitiful trace of power?” I got out, feeling a compulsion to speak the truth. “No, you are mistaken.”

“Mistaken, am I?” snorted the woman, sitting straight among her comforts to look her scorn down at me. “From Aesnil’s words concerning you and the comments of those who brought her I thought you the possessor of a great power indeed, yet did it take nearly as long to down you as it did to down the empty man. Even the one with the beginnings of the power succumbed more quickly, proving again that the greater the power, the greater the sensitivity-save for the greatest of all, such as myself. It is now no wonder that he has been able to make you slave to him, yet is that scarcely an excuse.”

“Excuse?” I echoed, not following anything she was saying, wishing that constant buzz in my mind would go away. The room I stood in was certainly large enough, but I still felt surrounded and hemmed in.

“For one with even a trace of the power to allow any man to enslave her is totally inexcusable,” I was told severely, anger and disgust obvious in the words and the snapping blue eyes. “Such a woman clearly relishes that enslavement, begging for it and then flaunting it as though it had great merit! Had you not accompanied these men, with your dark hair and green eyes and slave bands, we would not have known them, yet was such service to us scarcely voluntary. You will be given no reward for it, for you have earned something other than reward.”

I don’t understand, I wanted to say, unable to take my eyes off her, but her disapproval and anger had frightened me and made my lips tremble. I was going to be punished for what I’d done wrong, I knew, but I couldn’t quite remember what that was.

“We must now see if there are any here who wish these two,” the woman announced, looking somewhere behind me at whatever was there. “There are other matters, more important matters, I must attend to this day, therefore do I expect a speedy claiming.”

“I would have this one,” a voice said, also behind me, a voice filled with interest. “The Chama Aesnil has spoken of his ability to give pleasure, and I would see the thing for myself.”

I turned slowly to find out what was going on, and saw the rest of the large room I’d opened my eyes in. All of white stone it was, with pillars of the same along both side walls and beautiful paintings and things on the walls themselves between the pillars. About ten feet behind me were two men half surrounded by large, armed women, and staring at them briefly showed them to be Cinnan and Tammad. They stood with their arms behind them as if they were tied, there were bright bronze rings circling their necks, their bodies were covered with plain brown cloth hung like very short skirts, their eyes looked unfocused, and they were unarmed. A woman about my size in yellow cloth breeches and green cloth shirt stood in front of Cinnan looking up at him, her left hand resting on the hilt of the sword she wore.

“You may have him, sister, yet must you recall the need for caution,” the woman who had scolded me said, taking her turn at speaking from behind me. “You must be certain that Aesnil does not see him, for we have not as yet converted her completely to our cause. Also must he be kept well drugged, for we would not wish him or the other to escape and return with more of their sort. Our w’wendaa would not find it difficult to defeat them, yet would it then be known what we attempt.”

“The word of the Chama Farian is to be obeyed,” the woman in front of Cinnan acknowledged, immediately turning away from him to bow to the woman on the platform. “It shall be done as you command.”

“I, too, shall do the same,” said a third female voice, and a woman stepped forward from among those who surrounded the two men. “With my Chama’s permission, I would have the other.”

“To teach him proper behavior, Roodar?” the woman on the platform asked with a chuckle, her voice amused. “It was clear he annoyed and angered you from the moment he first appeared. ”

“Indeed he did, Chama,” the woman agreed with very little expression on her face, turning her head to look at Tammad. “Should you grant him to me, I will quickly teach him how great an error he has made. For his insolence he will squirm on his belly when he comes to greet me, and beg me with tears in his eyes to take pleasure from him.”

The woman called Farian chuckled again, enjoying the picture the w’wenda Roodar had painted, but even through the buzzing mush in my mind I was disturbed. There was something about Tammad, something I had to remember, and then I had it.

“No,” I said to Roodar, immediately drawing her eyes, wishing I didn’t feel as though I were all wrapped up in invisible cotton. “You may not have him. He is mine.”

“Yours, is he?” growled the very large woman, pacing forward to stop and stare down at me. Her cloth breeches and shirt were the same shade of yellow as all the guard w’wendaa wore, but hung from her neck on a golden chain was a round red disk that sparkled in the sunlight. I couldn’t remember seeing it before, and wondered why she hadn’t been wearing it when she’d escorted us into the palace.

“Yours, is he?” she said, still expressionless as she stared down at me. “That would be more likely the other way about, yet shall I accept the statement. As he is yours and I wish to possess him, we must face one another. Give her a sword. ”

I stared in mindless, uncomprehending shock as the woman stepped back to wait while one of the other guard w’wendaa came forward with a blade she’d just unsheathed. My hand was raised and a hilt was pressed into it, and then Roodar reached toward her own weapon.

“I shall likely do little more than wound you,” she said, unsheathing her sword as her eyes looked down at me. “Should I take your life, my Chama would surely be annoyed.”

I looked down at the sword that had been put into my hand, very aware of how awkwardly wide it was to hold. It wasn’t as heavy or as long as the sword of a l’lenda, but somehow it frightened me more than the larger weapon ever could. This was a weapon meant for a woman, and already my fingers were beginning to ache.

“I—cannot use a sword,” I got out, raising my eyes again to the expressionless Roodar. “I have never been taught to use one.”

“You are unable to use a sword, and yet you dared to challenge me?” Roodar growled with anger and insult, looking totally outraged but still giving me the impression she’d known all along. “You insult a warrior and sully the hilt of a fine weapon with your touch, and dare to attempt to lay claim to one who has taken that warrior’s interest? You are nothing, girl, far less, even, than the stone all about us, and as you cannot face me you will face, instead, an adequate punishment for presumption.”

The big woman resheathed her sword as she stepped back again, then made a gesture with one hand. Three of the guard w’wendaa came toward me immediately, two of them grinning, the third to take her sword back with a faint but very odd expression in her eyes. Once she had the sword she turned away again, but the other two didn’t. They already had the ties of my imad open before I realized what was happening, and as I tried to struggle I wondered how they’d known what Roodar wanted them to do. I couldn’t seem to think of a way, not even one, and then it came to me that my caldin had been pushed down over my hips to the floor, and I was being roughly pulled away from the puddle of it.

“One may easily see why these men have made you slave to them,” Roodar’s voice came, a mocking drawl heavy enough to draw my attention back to her. “You wear the form of a born slave, girl, and truly wear it well. Few of us here have seen such a thing before.”

The mockery in her voice and eyes brought chuckling and laughter to the other women standing around, and it finally came through to me that I’d been stripped naked in front of them! I could feel the heat of humiliation rising all through me at the impact of that realization, at the weight of all those laughing eyes on ..me, and my hands came up in an effort to shield myself even as I began backing away.

“Ah, no, slave, you may not retreat,” Roodar said at once, bringing to my arms the hands of the two women who had taken my clothing. “You stand before us in the chains of men, a slave pretending to womanhood, and for that you must be punished. For that you will be punished.”

She raised her own hands then, and suddenly I could see the whip she was holding. It seemed smaller and lighter than other whips I could remember, something made to hurt rather than maim or kill, but my mouth instantly went dry with fear and all I wanted to do was run. I tried to run, but the hands of the two women were still on my arms, keeping me from escaping from that terrible instrument of punishment.

“You will well recall your folly in challenging me, slave,” Roodar said with horrible cold amusement, shaking out the coils of the whip as I trembled between the hands of the women. “This is but the first time of many.”

Roodar stepped to one side with a nod, and then I was being thrown forward and down, to the stone at the feet of Tammad. My heart pounded and raced with the fear, increasing the pain of hitting the floor, especially in my right arm and shoulder. The stone of the floor was smoother to walk on than fall against, and I whimpered as it scraped my flesh, still desperate to run. I had to get out of there, had to get away—but how could I, when I’d be leaving someone behind? I began to look up at him, to tell him to run with me—and then I felt the first of the whip.

I screamed at the pain, screamed at the burning trail left across my back, but screaming didn’t stop it from happening again. The whip cracked and my body burned, and I was forced back and forth across the floor, writhing with pain and trying vainly to escape it. It hurt so terribly that I couldn’t bear it, but then it stopped as abruptly as it had started. I had been given a certain amount of pain, a measured punishment, and it had stopped because someone else wanted it stopped. Somehow doing it that way seemed worse than beating me bloody and unconscious, and I lay face down on the roughly smooth floor, hurting all over, my face hidden in my arms, crying hysterically.

“Nicely done, Roodar,” the voice of the woman on the platform came, filled with satisfaction. “In time this slave will shudder in fear at the least thought of you, which is as it should be. Even now her thoughts are mere whimperings, faint and strengthless with pain and terror. She is truly nothing, and in time will become even less. Perhaps you had best take away your new possession now, for he struggles to throw off the drug and minds which hold him.”

“My thanks for having been granted him, Chama,” Roodar said with satisfaction of her own, no longer paying me the least attention. “I will take him to my quarters and begin with him at once. He clearly wished to interfere with my punishment of this slave, and for that he, too, will be punished. ”

I raised my head from my arms to see the man who was no longer mine, straining slowly and strengthlessly against whatever bound him, pulling weakly against the hands on his arms which effortlessly held him back. His head was moving, as though he were trying to shake it, but he couldn’t manage the shake and then Roodar was in front of him. Her gesture made the ones holding him turn him and head him toward the heavy double doors at the back of the room, and I lay naked on the floor, crying and in pain, watching him walk out of my life.

“Remove that other as well,” the woman on the platform said, her voice already sounding distracted. “I have wasted enough time with foolishness, for there is work and planning left to do. And take that slave to what awaits her.”

There was movement among the women left in the room, and rough, hard hands came to my arms. I was pulled to my feet despite the added pain of movement, and Cinnan and I were taken in opposite directions.

Moving through the corridors was a blur in my memory, but every now and then I remembered that I was naked and tried to cover myself with my hands. The women forcing me along refused to allow that, though, and then I forgot about covering myself and just whimpered with the pain I still felt. I’d been punished for something and was going to be punished again, and it might not have been so bad if I could have remembered why that was being done to me. I wasn’t bleeding, only covered with ugly red welts, but I couldn’t remember why.

We walked a long way through the corridors and the blur, but finally there was an area at the end of one corridor that seemed to open out directly from it. I was pulled to a stop just inside the area, someone was gestured over, and then big hands were at my throat, then my wrists, and lastly at my ankles. I hadn’t found it possible to follow things too well until then, but when a cold metal band was brought to my throat, I made a greater effort.

“Now you are marked as you should be,” one of the women who had brought me there said, the words accompanying a solid click. “You now wear the collar of a slave, and have only to be told what your slavery will consist of.”

I reached for the stiff, cold metal that had been closed around my throat, but my arms were taken again and I was forced farther into the area that widened out from the corridor. The area was all of white stone, unwindowed and undecorated, and on the floor to the back of it were neat lines of thin, uncomfortable-looking pallets. Closer to where we stopped was something I hadn’t noticed sooner, about a dozen men in brown hip-wraps and bronze collars, men large enough to stand tall as l’lendaa, men who knelt humbly with their heads down. Not one set of broad shoulders was stiff with resentment, and I looked down at them without understanding why.

“Bless the name of the Chama Farian, slaves,” the woman to my right told them, her voice rough and sure with command. “She sends to her serving slaves a gift this day, one who is far lower than they. This slave has allowed herself to be made to serve men, and has dared to show pride for so low a doing. In consequence has the Chama named her slave to slaves, and may be used in any manner you each and all of you see fit. As she finds such pleasure in serving men, you may see that her every waking moment is filled with pleasure. ”

I was pushed forward, then, to land on the hard stone floor on hands and knees, and behind me I could hear the sound of receding footsteps. My skin had gotten bruised and scraped from my falling that way, adding to the pain I already felt, bringing fresh tears to my eyes. I cradled my hands against me for a moment, wishing the hurt would stop, and then it came to me that I was being stared at where I knelt. I raised my head to look around, and found pairs and pairs of lightblue eyes staring down at me in wonder and confusion. The men I’d been left with were still on their knees, but their two straight lines had become a circle, completely surrounding me.

“By the Power and the Strength,” someone to the right of me said, his voice low and filled with awe. “Do you truly think we have been given a slave of our own?”

“Are you not able to see her there before you?” answered a second one to my left. “She has been put in the collar of a slave, and has been gifted to us. What are we to do with her?”

“Anything we wish,” answered a third, kneeling before me, reaching a big hand out to shyly touch a lock of my hair. “She is our slave just as we are slaves to the Chama, and she must serve us just as we must serve.”

“Yes, just as we must serve,” said a fourth, kneeling to the right of the third, his voice uneven and his body trembling faintly. His eyes hadn’t left my face, but suddenly I felt very naked in front of them all. I brought my arms up to cover myself, for some reason afraid of the very handsome man who stared at me and trembled, and the one holding my hair turned his head to that fourth man.

“Do you truly mean to do with her what you were made to do with that mistress?” he asked, seemingly upset by the trembling of the man next to him. “I had thought you were able to quiet the evil twisting within you, to keep it from rising up and haunting your sleep?”

“I have tried, but I cannot,” the fourth man whispered in torture, his hands having turned to fists on his thighs, his face forlorn. “Three full times did the mistress put me to her service, and I have not since been able to send it from my mind. You who have never done the same have no knowledge of how it is, of how your body demands a thing the mistresses have forbidden you. Now the thing is no longer forbidden, and I shall have what has so long been denied me. ”

“No, you may not do this,” I managed to say, half wondering what he intended, half knowing and fearing it. “I am the belonging of another, and you may not do this.”

“How wide-eyed and trembling you have grown, pretty slave,” he said, beginning to move forward toward me even as I tried backing away. “You have been given to us to do with as we will, therefore is there no other to deny us. You are the gift of the Chama, and a gift I must have.”

“No!” I choked out as his hand closed on my arm, other hands holding me until he had caught me. He rose to his feet then and leaned down to pull me to mine, and then he had lifted me in his arms to carry me somewhere. My body hurt where he held me but I still tried to struggle, beating at him desperately with my fists. What he was going to do was wrong, wrong on a level he would never even understand, but if he had asked me to explain that wrong I would not have been able to call up the words.

“Do not struggle so, or the whipping you were given will grow even more painful,” he advised with what seemed like real concern, going to one knee to put me down on one of the thin, neatly lined-up pallets. “You are a truly lovely wenda, lovelier than any other I have ever seen, and I know you will give me great pleasure. Do not fear what I will do to you, for the only pain it brings is an exquisite one.”

He smiled down at me then, a warm, encouraging smile, and something inside me said, Good lord, that must be what he was told! A beautiful slave, a man in everything but his mind, and he’d been frightened when he’d first been called upon to serve in a different way. It must have been like raping a child, taking him and using him and then sending him back where he came from to struggle with the new feelings brought to life within him, feelings he didn’t know what to do about. His big hands came to my arms to stroke them gently, his wide blue gaze consuming me, and I began to shiver again even before the mist thickened back to mush in my mind.

“No, pretty wenda, do not fear me,” he urged, lying down next to me to take me in his arms. “I will not add to the hurt already given you, but will instead bring you very great pleasure. You will like such a thing, will you not? Only allow me to do as I must, and you, too, will be pleased.”

I cried and tried to fight against his strength, not understanding what was happening, struggling to squirm loose, but he held me very tight and forced his lips down onto mine. Even in my confusion I knew the kiss was more desperation than passion, more groping inexperience than calculated heating. It wasn’t a man who held me but a child with screaming needs he didn’t understand, a child who rode in a man’s body. I was naked in his arms and afraid of what he would do to me, and then he pushed me flat so that he could begin doing it. It hurt to struggle but I kept on doing it, even after it was too late, even with all those eyes that watched and wondered and began to think themselves about what it would be like.