The Warrior Enchained

11

I was kept tied and gagged all the rest of that night and halfway through the next morning. I alone was left untouched the rest of the night, but not out of consideration for what I had gone through. Very few of the hizahh left the festivities early and all of those who remained, each at least once and sometimes twice, visited me where I lay on the silk and demanded some indication of subservience from me. Once I had squirmed an inch or two in their direction and had put my head to their sandaled feet and had done my best to kiss those feet through my gag, I was rewarded—with the partial attention of a hizah. Their hands touched me everywhere, over and over again, but none of them even tried to use me. The night became an endless hell filled with forced humiliation and raging need, my punishment for having dared to think I might defy hizahh. in the early hours of the morning, before they were either sent back to their tent or taken away by individual hizahh, the bedinn were ranged around me and made witness to the final humiliation of the night. Hizah Kednin himself did the honors, crouched beside me, his mind completely aware of how well I’d been prepared. He graciously granted me the relief I’d been denied so long, making sure everyone in the tent witnessed how easily his hands reached my soul, then he called a male bedin to carry me back to the female bedin tent. As soon as I was put down in a corner of the tent I withdrew deep inside my shield, disassociating the entire outer world and allowing myself to feel nothing of the emotions clawing red streaks on the inside of my mind. No one came near me, and exhausted sleep found me with no trouble at all.

I was awakened in the early afternoon of the new day when the leather was removed from my wrists and ankles and the gag from my mouth. The bedin who untied me helped me drink from a water skin before informing me that I’d been forbidden to speak under any circumstances until the hizahh decided otherwise. I was then left alone to try to remember how my arms and legs worked, a painful process no matter how careful I tried to be. My limbs went from leaden lumps to blazing, stabbing foci of agony, but it wasn’t something that could be avoided by lying still. I’d also been told to be summoned later, and if I wasn’t able to answer that summons I’d be punished. Balancing between the agony of reawakening muscles and the sort of punishment given by hizahh, I found the agony a better bargain.

I lay struggling on the brown cloth for a few minutes before the thought occurred to me that I was being stupid. I had to relax the shield protecting me from the ravage of emotions, but that let me cope with the more immediate demands of pain. Pain control, not being a shield, is difficult to explain; it’s more a deep relaxation bringing about the forced dissipation of pain signals, an emotionally linked attitude-experience coupling refusal-to-admit and actual nonexistence where pain is concerned. It requires a certain amount of calm on the part of the practitioner, a calm that isn’t always easy to attain. By ignoring everything around me—especially memories—I was able to force the calm, then established the pain control. After that, moving around was considerably less difficult.

It wasn’t long before I was up on my feet and walking back and forth swinging my arms, working the final kinks out. Almost everyone in the tent was asleep, curled up alone or in small groups, sharing proximity rather than warmth. The warmth was enough to go around twice over, leaving a light sheen of sweat on my body as I moved through it. I moved and walked softly so as not to awaken the sleepers, and wound up beside the only other waking person in the tent, the woman who had untied me. She knelt before a cooking tripod, her attention solely for what she was doing, the misery in her mind complemented by the silent tears in her eyes. She was heating a small pot of the cereal grain, but since there wasn’t the slightest trace of hunger in her I didn’t understand why—until I realized she must have been commanded to eat. After a minute she took the pot from the fire and began to eat, reluctantly and distastefully but with no hint of disobedience. As I stopped behind her, the dim light in the tent finally showed the strap marks covering the entire back of her, red, painful-looking welts that would leave scars in her mind rather than on her body. She had been punished by hizahh for some reason, possibly for the extreme slenderness of her build. Hizahh seemed to prefer well-rounded women, just the same as other men on that world.

“You would do well to do as I do before being ordered to it,” she whispered, aware of me where I stood behind her. “New bedinn are punished more often than those who are owned longer, to instill a proper obedience in them.”

She continued eating the cereal then, knowing I wasn’t able to answer or argue with her. I stared around at the dim tent heated by the merciless sun blazing down outside, my mind filled with an impotent fury that was difficult to chase away. I didn’t want to have anything to eat, let alone a bowl of that cereal, but there wasn’t any other choice. Anticipate the wishes of the hizahh, or face their punishment. I knelt beside the woman, nearly trembling with fury and fear, and heated my own bowl of cereal grain.

After eating and cleaning up from the meal, I went back to my corner and lay down again. Eating the cereal had not only been distasteful, it had been ridiculously awkward with the veil in place. I’d been tempted to remove the veil until the meal was done, but the other woman hadn’t removed hers. Then I’d remembered that it had been put on me by the hand of a hizah, and realized that it couldn’t be removed by anything less than that same agency. If the meal hadn’t already been ruined, it would have been done for with certainty by that time. I finished up quickly, then went to find escape in sleep.

The next time I was awakened it was late afternoon, and opening my eyes showed me the male bedin my mind had already detected. He stood over me in his black haddin and bronze neck-chain, impatient and disdaining, and ordered me to see to my hair quickly and take a robe. I did as ordered then followed him out of the tent, pausing only for my sandals at the tent entrance. The other women had been awake by then, but only Findra had come over to hug me briefly before I left.

The heat and glare of the setting sun seared me as I followed the broad, bare back of the male bedin across the camp, but once we reached the tent I’d been in the night before, every consideration but fear faded away. As I left my sandals at the entrance and was led inside, I knew that the greatest aid the hizahh had was a bedin’s uncertainty. I’d been sent for, but I didn’t know why I’d been sent for, and the uncertainty was turning my muscles to water and my mind to quivering mud. Was I going to be punished again? Was I simply going to be used? What if I didn’t do well enough to please them and they had me whipped? What if I forgot I wasn’t supposed to speak and they had my tongue cut out? What if they knew how angry I’d been earlier and were going to hurt me for it? I trembled terribly as I hurried across the white silk, following my guide through the hangings, afraid to continue ahead to what awaited me but more afraid to attempt running from it.

What awaited me was the hizah Kednin, all alone in a small, curtained section of the tent, his robed body relaxing among cushions, his veiled face showing no more than impassive eyes. When the male bedin stepped aside to reveal me to the hizah, I clutched my robe tighter and immediately fell to my knees, bowing with my fists pressed to my forehead and my head to the white silk. Through the calm of his thoughts, it was impossible telling whether or not the hizah was angry, and I continued to tremble even as I held the bow.

“Approach and kneel before me, bedin,” Kednin ordered, his voice lazy and sounding recently awakened. I rose to my feet and dropped the robe behind me as I’d seen a woman do the other day, then hurried to kneel in front of the hizah as I’d been commanded. The male bedin was gone, having been immediately dismissed, and I barely felt his mind trace fading with distance. I was too wrapped up in the man before me, a man who was beginning to feel satisfaction.

“I see you tremble, bedin,” he said, and his hand came to touch my hair. “You are indeed lovely when you tremble, nearly as lovely as when you writhe beneath me. Have you spoken?”

I shook my head vigorously, feeling my eyes widen as my heart thumped louder in the silence. Would he believe me?

“Excellent,” he purred, deep amusement filling his mind. “It seems you begin to learn your place. Present your wrists to me and prepare to see to my pleasure.”

Filled with relief I bent and twisted, offering him my wrists behind my back, but he didn’t accept the offering. I felt his frown of disapproval as he touched the dark bruises on my wrists from the last time I’d been tied, then his hands moved instead to my thumbs. They were quickly lashed together with his leather, the rest of the strip being wound around my hands. I was still tied, but not in a way to increase the bruises already on me. Bruises are ugly, and detract from the beauty of a bedin.

Pleasing a robed man with your wrists tied behind you and a veil over your face takes a good deal of knowledge in proper technique. I’d had no chance to learn the technique, but that fact didn’t do a thing to sway the hizah. When I couldn’t reach him he beat me with a broad strap, one that nearly made me scream with pain. Through it all I kept the screams inside, knowing it would go harder for me if I voiced my pain and fright without permission, then worked frantically harder to reach the man when he put the strap aside. Desperation usually provides added incentive, and the second time I managed to work my way under his robe and around my veil. My back hurt and my bottom as well, and the sweat of fear ran in rivers down my body, but I soon had the hizah moaning with pleasure, desire flaring from his mind as his flesh swelled and hardened. The thought came that I might escape serving his pleasure any other way by being very good at that way, but Kednin wasn’t about to allow that. His fist in my hair stopped me when he wanted me stopped, put me back to the task when he wanted me at it again, and generally played me like a musical instrument, crescendoes and rests orchestrated by him alone. When he finally threw me to my back and entered me, he began his pleasure all over again and was a long time in seeing to it. I tried to pretend to helpless submission throughout the ordeal, but apparently some men know the real from the forced. After satisfying himself to the fullest, Kednin took up his strap and beat me again, letting me know that my body was expected to learn true submission to hizahh. I was then sent back to the bedin tent, to wonder if anything more would come of the incident, I thought, but the bedin tent no longer stood where it had been. Camp was being broken and I was set to work with the other bedinn, and in a very short time we were on our way out of the oasis and further into the desert. Away from everything we knew and deeper into slavery.

The nighttime desert is a cold place, but exertion usually warms one up fast enough. I stumbled along barefoot through the uneven mounds of sand, my bound wrists tied with a length of leather attached to the back of a large, wagon-like vehicle being pulled by four seetarr, my robe held closed with a sash, my wrists protected from the leather by strips of cloth. My sandals had been packed away before the caravan left the oasis, presumably to keep them from being lost. Retrieving a sandal is difficult when you’re tied to a moving wagon by the wrists.

The caravan consisted of at least a dozen wagons, twice that number of pack seetarr, saddle seetarr carrying hizahh, herds of animals being driven by male bedin, and female bedinn being drawn along by the wagons. I’d experienced a stab of jealousy when I’d seen that the male bedinn would not be tied the way we females were, but after a long time of walking with nothing to do but think, the truth of the matter finally came to me. Of course the male slaves were left unbound; where in that vast desert would they go even if they managed to escape? And even if they survived the desert, they would just fall slave again to the next tribe they met. They were shamed and unmanned, put permanently in bronze neck-chains and allowed nothing to wear beyond their black haddin. What would they do with their lives even if they escaped? If they’d been the sort to prefer death to slavery, they would have had it long since. We women were not all that much more valuable, and our being tied didn’t mean the hizahh were afraid we would escape. It’s easy to lose yourself in the desert at night, most especially if you can’t keep up with the march. The leather leads made sure we would keep up, without needing to waste anyone’s time watching us.

Not being used to walking in sand, I soon discovered that going uphill on the dunes was a time for falling down, at least for me. I finally found the trick of holding on to the leather lead for support, but not before I’d gone down too many times to count. After one of those times when I struggled to my feet, sweating beneath my robe and veil, out of breath with the effort, I looked up to see a crack of light showing in the midst of white silk covering the wagon I was following. Nothing but a dark shadow showed beneath that crack of light, but I knew I was being inspected by one of the women or children of the hizahh. The wagons were for them alone, and all female bedinn had been knelt with their heads to the ground while the wagons had been loaded. We weren’t allowed anywhere near their precious women, but I didn’t know why. The curiosity of the young female above me —a mate or daughter—was as strong as mine and just as circumspect, and the sliver of light disappeared sooner than I expected it to. It was clear there would be trouble for both of us if we were discovered.

After some hours the march halted, and we women were freed of our tethers to serve cold meat and sacks of wine to the hizahh. They had looked frighteningly large and fierce mounted on their seetarr, riding beside and behind and before us, their robes and veils billowing as they rode, and their fierceness wasn’t much diminished once they’d dismounted. Even during the rest of a meal break their minds were alert and watchful, their eyes moving everywhere, their attitudes distant. Any bedin who put herself in the wrong position in relation to their vigilance was struck aside, quickly and harshly, not allowed a single instant in which to put the men at a disadvantage. Little wonder we all crept about, trying to serve and still be out of the way, all at the same time. The desert was a place of danger, and only the fully alert would be able to survive there. The hizahh we served intended staying alive, even if a few bedinn were lost in the process.

After the hizahh had eaten, we were given a literal five minutes to do the same. I stuffed my mouth with the dry, tasteless cheese the way I saw the other bedinn doing, and managed to get one sip of water before being dragged back to my wagon by one of the male bedinn who reattached me to the tether. The woman who was tied to my left was not the one who had been there earlier, and her mind wasn’t as well disciplined as the other’s. She stood shivering in the sand with her head down, her fists clenched near the leather, her mind a turmoil of fear and hate and shame and despair. She was waiting for something to happen, dreading it terribly but knowing it would come. I didn’t know why the resumption of the march would bother her so, and then a hizah rode by to order us to our knees. I knelt more slowly than she did, finally realizing that the journey wasn’t yet to resume, then kept myself from looking up only by extreme effort of will.

I’d suddenly felt the presence of many minds above me, all of them female minds, all of them paying close attention to me and the woman beside me. No hint of light shone down to show that the silk had been parted at many points, but I knew those minds were watching openly, no longer afraid of being detected. They were being permitted to watch whatever would happen, and the woman beside me, although unaware of the eyes on her, grew wilder and more fearful inside.

We waited an achingly long time before it was our turn. I felt the minds of male bedinn approaching before I heard their sandaled steps in the sand, and then there was a fist in my hair, forcing me backward down toward the sand and over my feet. My tethered wrists stayed high in the air, well out of the way, and I heard my companion’s suddenly labored breathing as the same was done to her. I could see the bedin bending over me, the dark hiding his features, his mind bored with a job he had undoubtedly already done many times over, his free hand moving to something out of my bent-over-backwards line of sight. The woman beside me gasped, muffling a sob, and then there was a hand at my robe, pushing it aside over my thighs and reaching under. My own gasp sounded as fingers entered me, not to tease or pleasure but to insert something that immediately caused a mild burning sensation. I struggled against the leather at my wrists and the fist in my hair, not knowing what was happening but mistrusting anything that was done to me among those people. The bedin held me still without effort, his fingers twisting whatever he had put into me, the object persisting in its mild burning sensation. I suddenly felt a terrible flash of need that forced a moan out of me, a need made worse by the same reaction coming from the other woman being done so. I writhed against the hand between my thighs, trying to drive it away, trying to pull it in closer, trying to do anything that would stop that overwhelming sensation, but nothing changed. Uninterested fingers twisted the object around and around, almost as though time was being counted out, oblivious to and uncaring about what the action did to me.

Another ten minutes passing like hours went by before the male bedinn were done. The object was slowly withdrawn from me, leaving behind the mild burning and urgent need, and then the two were gone as suddenly as they’d come. I remained kneeling in the sand, my legs coated with it, my neck aching from my head having been held back, my hands twisting in the leather lead in a vain attempt to reach myself. I could feel tears running down my cheeks, tears that were partly humiliation from the satisfaction and amusement in the minds above me. Those minds were withdrawing now, the silk being as silently replaced as it had been removed, and I still didn’t know what it all meant.

“They had no right,” a soft voice sobbed from my left, part of the misery pouring out of my sister bedin’s mind. “The child need not have been considered theirs! It could have been mine, to carry and bear and tend till it grew! What right have they to take it from me so, when it was they who put it within me to begin with? It is my right to have a child, my right, my right!”

She began screaming wildly then, shattering the deep silence of night all around with pain and insanity too long held inside. I tried to reach her mind to calm it, but the shattered sanity pouring out drove me back and away, my mind clanging with shock from even so brief an encounter. I gasped and cringed back against the tether, shaking from having touched so alien a thing as madness, and then the hizahh were all about us, two of them dismounting to go to the girl. One of them held her while the other stuffed something in her mouth, silencing her screams, and then her tether was released from the wagon and she was dragged kicking to one of the seetarr. Another minute saw her thrown across the saddle and the hizah mounted as well, and then the two of them were gone, riding across the dunes and far out of sight. The mental screaming continued for a long time before it stopped, but my shuddering continued even longer.

Not much later the march began again. I moved woodenly in the wake of the wagon, my mind numb to everything but the continuing—and slowly increasing—burning inside me. I now knew what the—treatment—had been for, and also knew why the hizahh’s females had been permitted to watch. The object put inside me was a birth control device, something to make sure no hizah put a child on me. The women of the tribe, the lawful, legitimate bearers of children to their men, were permitted to see this being done to assure them that their places were not being usurped. The biggest joke of all was that I didn’t need their treatment, but they didn’t know that. And then I wondered if it would make any difference to them. I would probably still be done the same as any other bedin, no matter what the truth was. The only bedin given special attention was one who had failed to please her hizahh; the rest just faded into the background in their minds, anonymous in their veils and headbands. Individuality was not a trait prized in bedinn.

It was still dark when the caravan stopped and camp was made. All bedinn were untied to do the small unpacking and the preparing of a hot meal, and being thrust into their midst was literally staggering. Every one of them, the women from Tammad’s city included, was burning up in her need, the single object in mind being reaching the men as soon as possible. The only fear they felt was the fear of being left untouched, and that fear made them frantic in their haste. They would do anything demanded of them in order to be satisfied, and that thought alone made me sicker than I had been. They’d been primed like animals for the coming festivities, animals trapped and bought and trained to perform as their owners wished. I stood to one side while I thickened my shield against their emotions, then slowly joined them and began doing my share. I may not have been much on that world, but one thing I wouldn’t be was a trained animal.

Dawn wasn’t very far away by the time the hizahh were ready for their meal. I noticed a definite warming in the air as I helped the others carry the food to the large tent with white silk hangings. Each of the men was offered what had been prepared and brought, and then the men made their selections—but not only among the food. By some prearranged system the men took turns gesturing women to them, and when all the selecting was done the women were made to eat first. We weren’t allowed to eat much, only enough to prove that the food was untampered with, and then the hizahh took it. I was aware of some of the bedinn moaning softly and pleading with their hizahh for attention, but no matter how I felt I couldn’t bring myself to do the same. The hizah I knelt before watched me closely while he ate, his mind suspicious and somehow unsatisfied. When he finished his meal and gestured that I present my wrists, I had the definite feeling that the coming session would not please him. I couldn’t possibly have been more right.

The hizah who had chosen me was not Kednin, but he reacted the same as the other man had. After he’d satisfied himself he beat me with the same broad strap they all seemed to use, taking no real pleasure in the beating aside from a feeling of seeing to something that had to be done. He hadn’t been dissatisfied with me, or I would have felt a whip instead of a strap; my failure had been one of being just under very satisfying. I’d made the man force me into responding—which was something he enjoyed—but my eventual response hadn’t been abandoned enough to suit him. He beat me to teach me his preferences in the matter, then sent me back to the bedin tent to clean up after the meal. Once the necessary was done, I lay my aching body on the cloth of the tent floor, ignored the extreme heat of the day, and quickly fell asleep.

I was awakened from a bad dream around midday, but not for anything simple like serving or eating. Every female bedin in the tent was ordered into a robe and sandals by a male bedin, then led out into the hot sun and through the camp. On the outskirts of the camp, near the tethered seetarr, a large wooden frame had been set into the sand. The frame was Y-shaped with notches cut into the arms of the Y, and whatever it signified was a source of great fear to the veiled women around me. As soon as we arrived we were ordered to our knees by the only hizah present, who looked down at us with a frown of displeasure in his blue eyes.

“One of you has been found to be in need of a lesson for failure,” the man announced, looking directly at each of us in turn, which brought some of those kneeling about me to come close to fainting. “Those who are not given the lesson this day must pay close heed to its teachings, to more easily avoid such a lesson themselves in future. Hizahh are not long patient with failure.”

He gestured behind us then, but not to have his victim chosen from among us; the victim had already been chosen. Two male bedinn came forward with a naked woman held between them, a veiled woman with short blond hair and brown eyes. The woman struggled as if trying to break those impossible grips, but no sounds came forth around the gag which was visible only where her veil didn’t hide it. Findra was angry and outraged rather than deeply afraid, but that was only because she didn’t understand what was going on. The blond ex-tripper didn’t speak the language those around her spoke, and the lack had turned out to be her downfall.

The hizah waited until Findra had been tied by the wrists to the notched arms of the Y frame, her toes at least six inches from the sand, then he stepped closer to her and spoke so that only she might hear. His totally incomprehensible words made no impression on her, but he didn’t realize that. He turned away from her and walked back toward the tents with one of the male bedinn following him, and quickly disappeared. The remaining male bedin had been taking his time uncoiling a long, dark-brown whip, but he didn’t drag the thing out beyond the time it took the hizah to reach his tent. As soon as the veiled man was gone, the large, bronze-chained bedin, clad only in a black haddin, brought his arm back and then forward, laying the whip across Findra’s back with a crack that was close to sensation for those of us watching.

If the sound alone was pain to us, the actual feel of the lash was beyond pain to Findra. Her eyes widened as her throat tried to scream, her head snapped back with the shock of it, and her body twisted six inches above the sand, straining in silence to shriek out the terror and exquisite agony of the stroke. Kneeling in the sand I was forced to feel everything she felt, every spasm of every nerve ending, every degree of disbelief and horror suddenly bursting from her mind. I staggered under the load, feeling close to passing out, and then my shield snapped shut, protecting me from insanity and an overload of too-heightened emotions. I trembled and put a shaky hand to my head as the lash fell on Findra a second time, but it took the sight of a broad red line on her white, writhing body to make me realize what I was doing. I was protecting myself at Findra’s expense, happily leaving her there under the lash as long as my own sensibilities were safe and snug. She’d known I was the only one who could translate for her, but she hadn’t pressed me to speak when I’d been commanded to silence. She’d accepted her own peril to keep from putting me in a similar one, and I’d abandoned her to a sadistic “lesson” she couldn’t possibly have avoided alone.

The decision wasn’t carefully thought out, but that didn’t make it any less definite. I braced myself and opened the shield again, but didn’t let Findra’s silent hysteria distract me. It was the male bedin I wanted to reach, and when I did I found what I’d hoped to find. The man was as bored and uncaring as all of them were, finding no pleasure in whipping the girl before him other than the vague satisfaction of doing a job that needed doing. The third stroke reached Findra even as I entered the man’s mind, choosing among his emotions for the ones I needed most. The boredom was perfect, as was the discomfort he felt in the heat of the sun, and the contempt he felt for all women fitted in with the rest like a sword in a warrior’s hand. I was trying to work quickly and powerfully, but the strength of my projections surprised even me.

By the time the fourth stroke fell, the man was feeling nothing but what I wanted him to feel. His boredom over the job he was doing was nearly making him yawn, his strength was draining out in sweat from the heat of the sun, and one contemptuous look at the semi-conscious girl hanging in front of him showed that the lesson had been thoroughly taught. He recoiled the whip as he basked in the pleasure of having done such a good job, then turned to the rest of us and gestured at us to be on our way. As I got to my feet I deepened the stupor Findra had fallen into, and walked away from a completely unconscious victim.

Findra wasn’t returned to the bedin tent for hours, but as soon as the male slave put her down and left, I was immediately by her side. Her back had been cut open by the strokes of the lash, but the beating hadn’t been as bad as it could have been. Her wrists were badly bruised from having held her weight so long, and the front of her body showed that she’d been driven into the body of the Y frame by the force of the whip blows, but nothing was broken or irreversibly damaged. As I knelt above her, feeling the way her mind fought against being overwhelmed with pain, another woman joined us and brought what was badly needed: a salve for the wounds and welts the beating had left. I waited until the woman had begun spreading the salve, then adjusted my efforts to hers, easing the pain far more than the salve alone could do. Findra drew in a deep breath and shuddered, then let her eyes close as exhaustion took her, as swiftly and nearly as deeply as unconsciousness had earlier. Her breathing slowed to the pace of sleep, and I was able to sit back and look around.

The woman who had spread the salve had finished her job and was going back to the place where she’d been sleeping, intent on resuming her temporary escape. The other women around her were pretending nothing had happened, but only to keep themselves from picturing their own bodies savagely beaten. I became aware of several minds concentrated on me, and turned my head to see the women of Tammad’s city, their minds concerned but also in some manner confident. Their eyes touched Findra, then found my face, and smiles suddenly gleamed in those eyes before their owners lay down to try to sleep again. They knew I’d done—something—to help the girl, and they seemed to be almost as relieved as they would be to be delivered out of that horrible place. I lay down next to Findra and tried to sleep on my own, bitter with the knowledge that I wouldn’t be able to help all of them all the time. My ability was considerably stronger than it had been, but it still had its limits—which were all too confining. I needed something more, something totally overwhelming, but I wasn’t likely to find it. The only thing I could do was cope with what I had—and pray that none of the hizahh found out about it.

That night, after eating and play time, we moved on again. The people around us were a tribe of the Hamarda, nocturnal desert nomads who moved from oasis to oasis for no reason I was able to fathom. Daytime was a time of sleep—and punishment—and nighttime was a time of traveling—and sometimes battle. The third night out our hizahh were suddenly attacked by a large band of men who wore the same sort of veils and robes that they did. Swords sung from their sheaths to answer the attack, but the greatest amount of anxiety during the battle came from the minds inside the silk-covered wagons. The women of the hizahh would always fear during such battles, for should their men be bested they would then become bedinn, to be used and abused by the men of the new tribe. Conversely, the bedinn tied behind the wagons felt very little fear; what difference did it make to a slave which man held the whip over her? That third night the men of our tribe won easily, led to victory by none other than hizah Kednin, the man who had taken such interest in me at first. I wouldn’t have minded seeing him cut down from his seetar, but he was much too good with a sword and much too able a leader. They met the attackers, took the lives from some and routed the rest, but didn’t pursue them into the desert. They weren’t about to leave their caravan unguarded, not even to finish the good work they’d started. We continued on until it was time to camp, then double guardposts were set about our perimeter in case the brigands came back. I would have known nothing about the guardposts if I hadn’t been one of the ones sent to serve the men out there. The only positive part about the whole thing was the fact that the men were too keyed up to notice whether or not we were any good.

The first night after the whipping Findra was tied to a narrow platform on the side of one of the wagons, but after that she was put on a tether again. She took the first opportunity she could find to hug me in thanks for what I had done to help her, and she seemed to have a very good idea about what that help had entailed. We made no attempt to discuss the matter between us, but for her part discussion seemed entirely unnecessary. Her gratitude was a strong, real thing, undiminished by the passage of time.

The days and nights passed slowly and unpleasantly, but they gave me ample time to practice my abilities against the mighty hizahh. When a man looked at me, he usually found himself totally uninterested, for no reason he could clearly understand. He didn’t feel displeased or dissatisfied in the slightest, but he did feel uninterested. I was able to extend the attitude to Findra and the rest of the women who had been taken with us, but not too often and not if there was the slightest chance the ploy would become obvious. The last thing I wanted was to have the hizahh find out there was something different about me—and what that difference was. When I did have to let myself be used, the man involved always felt full satisfaction—even if he didn’t get it. The one time I was chosen to spend the daylight sleeping hours with a hizah, the man experienced such total exhaustion that he spent the time doing nothing other than sleeping. When he awoke I made sure to beg him for his attention, but it was too late in the day for even a token showing. He ignored the tears glistening in my eyes, stretched to show how good he felt, then sent me back to the bedin tent with a fond smack on the bottom and an amused laugh. If I needed more than he had time to give me, it was just too bad for me.

Early on the fifth night, we reached another oasis. This one was true, deep sand on only three sides, with the fourth consisting of gravelly, pebbly ground flatting out into the distance. The bathing pool was larger than that at the first oasis, and I couldn’t wait to get to it. Water in the desert was too precious to waste on bathing or clothes washing, but there’s a limit to what airing out can do for clothing and bodies. I was tired of smelling bad and wearing robes that smelled bad, and wasn’t about to let anything keep me from that water.

Getting to the lake took considerably longer than I wanted it to. After the tents were up and we had unpacked everything, it was time to celebrate arriving at the oasis. The other women and I hadn’t been in the camp during the last first-day oasis stop, so we were taken by surprise at the way things went. The first hint I had about something being different about the stop was the misery in the minds of the more experienced bedinn in the tent. Despite the fact that we were all in real discomfort from the “treatment” given us by the male bedinn during the march, none of the bedinn were showing frantic haste to get their work done and themselves over to the men. I’d tried doing something to stop those middle-of-the-night treatments, but even after suffering through five nights of it I hadn’t been able to get a grip on the problem. There were no emotions short of fear and loathing that would keep those men away from me, and neither of those emotions would have done anything other than get my throat cut.

As I stood wondering why the women were acting so despondent, three of the male bedinn entered our tent and began gathering us up. We were all taken to the center of the tent and thrown to our bellies, then one by one our wrists and ankles were tied. Once we were all trussed up to the men’s satisfaction, leather ropes were put around our throats and then tied to the legs of one single tripod cooking-stand put up in the middle of the circle our bodies made. The tripod was light and easily knocked down, and was a simple device for finding out if any of us moved from the spot we were put in. It didn’t take much imagination to guess what would happen to us if the tripod was down when it came time to untie us, so every one of us made very sure not to move even as much as the tightly tied leather on us allowed. Lying still was hard right then, but moving would have been harder later.

I had almost dozed off when I was brought back awake by the sound of chanting. The sound was composed only of male voices, but beside the mind traces of the men was the clear indication of many women, not to mention children. The chanting continued for a short while, then suddenly began to change from automatic word-speaking to more and more emotional shoutings. Some of the female minds began echoing the mental output of the men, their numbers growing until nearly all of them were a part of the waxing frenzy. The shouting increased to a higher and higher pitch, taking both shouters and listeners along with it, and then it abruptly broke off into dozens of individual groups wrapped up in the wildness of the moment.

It wasn’t difficult telling that an orgy was in progress, and one of the older bedinn whispered to us newcomers that first-day celebration was for hizahh and their women alone, bedinn being forbidden to do even so much as watch. After securing us, the male bedinn were themselves chained in a tent by the hizahh, to make sure the ceremony was undisturbed and unobserved. During the ceremony, both males and females stripped off their robes, entered the water, and began washing each other as the men chanted. The washing naturally led to other things, and the other things became the ceremonial orgy, the celebration of finding life-giving water in the midst of dead, ever-changing sand. The bedin who knew this had once been a tribe-member herself, as had a number of the other bedinn. Before the ceremony was over, this became very obvious from the way their bodies squirmed in place and their minds cried. The one realization that kept me from being swept away by their mass reaction and sharing it myself was the fact that while slaves were forbidden to watch the ceremony, children weren’t. I could feel their shallow, alien young minds watching avidly and felt myself cringing. To do such a thing in front of children!

Hours went by before the last of the celebrants left the bathing pool and it became possible for the male bedinn to be released who would in turn release us. I’d spent most of the time hiding under my shield to keep from rolling all over the cloth of the tent floor, but shielding alone had turned out not to be enough. I could and did close my eyes, but I couldn’t find a way to turn my hearing off. Between the sounds of the orgy outside and the moans of deprived women inside, I had more than a little trouble forcing my thoughts to the subject of escape. I couldn’t continue in the role of bedin and hope to be left with my sanity, so escape had been the one subject I’d thought most about. Escape into the deep desert would be no more than a gesture of suicide, and I’d been stopped cold until we’d reached the present oasis. Far in the distance, beyond the pebbled flats, a mountain range could just be seen. The sight didn’t seem to bring any thoughts of freedom to the other women, but to me it was a direction to travel in, an objective to reach, a jumping-off point on the long road home. I knew if I reached those mountains I’d have my freedom back, but thinking about escape was well-nigh impossible while my body screamed out its needs and demands. I could make others feel full satisfaction, but I couldn’t do the same for myself without leaving my body. The best eye surgeon in the Amalgamation might be able to operate on himself with a complex set of mirrors, but in my case the necessary mirrors didn’t exist. I could curse the hizahh for decreeing that I be “treated” with the other bedinn, but I couldn’t do anything to stop the suffering.

By the time the male bedinn came around to untie us, I was well past miserable and deeply into sullen. It had to have been close to midday outside, and the stink of sweating, yearning females all around was enough to make anyone ill. I couldn’t wait to get to that pool water to bathe, but that wasn’t the first item on the agenda as far as the male bedinn were concerned. They’d brought heaps of dirty laundry belonging to the hizahh, and washing that laundry was the first task given us. At that point I stupidly lost my temper and refused to do a thing until I’d had a bath, and that was when I learned the circumstances under which male bedinn had authority over female bedinn. The male bedinn never gave orders themselves; all they did was carry out and oversee the orders given by hizahh. In that instance, however, they were concerned with something that had to be done for the hizahh, and therefore had the right to punish without waiting for orders to do so.

I hadn’t yet reached that level of understanding when I was suddenly taken by the hair and dragged outside into the sun and sand, one bedin leading me, two others following. I was shocked and furious and apprehensive and indignant all at the same time, a mixture that usually proves impossible to work through. I paid for not staying calm and levelheaded by having those three bedinn take turns strapping me, stuffing a gag in my mouth, while my body was held taut across the horizontal trunk of a wide, broad-leafed shade tree, my wrists held by one of the bedinn who wasn’t at that time wielding the strap. I would have willingly done my share of the laundry long before they were finished, but I never got the chance to say so. Once it was all over I was tied to the trunk, well in the shade to keep my brains from boiling out of my skull, and was allowed to watch the other women do laundry and bathe at the same time. I hurt all over, and I felt abysmally stupid, but worst of all I had to do without a bath. That made me cry more than the beating had, and made me not even want to bother with pain control.

There was little more than an hour left to sundown when the male bedinn came back, but they weren’t alone. The hizah Kednin strolled along with them, his white veil set beneath his eyes, his white robes full and flowing, his mind hard and definitely displeased. As soon as I was released from the tree trunk I knelt in the sand and bowed, very much aware of the feelings passing through the man’s mind as he looked at my naked body. I’d been able to see the mountain range more clearly in the daylight, but the man I bowed to had the power to make my escape impossible—or useless. I felt a shiver touch me in the waning heat, and the hum of interest in the man’s mind increased.

“This one may do after all,” he murmured to the male bedinn standing around him, his eyes an almost physical weight on my back. “Bathe her thoroughly, then bring her with the others.”

He turned then and strode off without waiting for an answer, and wasn’t wrong in believing he didn’t need one. The answer the bedinn made was immediately obeying his command, the best answer they could have given. I was dragged to the pool and into it, then bathed quickly and very thoroughly by the one who entered the water with me. Having your face washed with a veil over it is a fascinating experience, but not nearly as fascinating as getting a thorough bath from a man who doesn’t care what he does to you. I screamed and struggled while the two watching bedinn laughed in amusement, then was carried back to the bedin tent over the shoulder of the one who had bathed me. If I’d had my sandals or if a hizah hadn’t commanded that I be satisfactorily clean, I would at least have been allowed to walk.

Dark had fallen and my body and hair were completely dry by the time the food was ready to be carried to the hizah tent. There were considerably more dishes prepared than usual, but that only confirmed the suspicion I’d had that something unusual was going on. Dressed in a clean robe and wearing sandals, I moved carefully through the sand with” the other bedinn, carrying a large wooden bowl of grilled meat strips, thinking again about the possibilities of escape. I wasn’t sure how long the tribe would be staying at the oasis, so I couldn’t afford to wait too long. Leaving at night would be best, but the Hamarda hizahh tended to be awake and about during the night hours. Leaving during the day meant risking running into finale bedinn who were always up and about, and also meant dying of thirst sooner if water couldn’t be found quickly enough. Leaving alone would attract the least amount of attention, but would it be right to desert the women I’d been captured with? And whoever I took whenever I left, how much water and food would be necessary to keep us alive until we reached the mountains? And last but certainly not least, what was the likelihood of being pursued? As I followed the now-familiar route through the white silk hangings of the hizah tent, I tried to decide how important bedinn were to these men. Would they let one disappear without caring where she went? If so, would the same be true of six? If they did pursue us, how long would they keep at it before they gave up? Worrying about whether they ever would give up kept me from noticing how slowly the women ahead of me were moving, and saved the surprise for when I stepped through the last of the hangings and looked up. Sitting there beside Kednin, an honored guest, without a worry in the world, was Tammad.