The Warrior Enchained

12

If I didn’t drop the bowl of meat slices, it was only because I don’t believe in the unreal. My mind told me it was impossible for Tammad to be sitting in that tent, Kednin to his left, Len to his right, Garth to Len’s right, Hannas and Loddar and four other of his l’lendaa ranged elsewhere around the tent, and I believed that. The only problem was, I could sense the deep calm in Tammad’s mind, tinged with the same amusement touching Len and Garth, could feel the heart-thumping excitement in Findra and the other four women, the longing to run to their men’s arms. The only thing holding them back seemed to be fear, most likely stemming from the way the hizahh outnumbered the l’lendaa. If the women acknowledged their men, the hizahh might be provoked into defending their property in the most direct manner—which meant swords. Rather than start a fight, the women just stood there quivering; I just stood and stared.

“These are the bedinn who will serve us,” Kednin said to Tammad, waving a negligent hand in our direction. “Examine them as you will, honored guests, and choose for your own those who offend you the least. My tent holds naught which will not be bettered by your use.”

“It is we who are honored by our host,” Tammad said, his voice warm and brotherly, his eyes moving over the line of bedinn. “We have traveled far and in too great a haste, and have need of relaxation such as this.”

“Your needs will be well seen to in this tent,” Kednin answered, a matching warmth in his voice. “For this you have my word. Bedinn: put aside your burdens and present yourselves to your hizah’s guests.”

The bedinn among us immediately began putting down their bowls and platters and. reaching to their robes to remove them, even Findra and the others quickly moving to obey; only I stood as if frozen, still staring at Tammad and the others. Put the bowl aside, remove the robe, kneel and bow? How could I?

“Have you lost your hearing, bedin?” Kednin snapped, gazing at me searingly from behind his veil, his mind beginning to be touched by a monstrous shame. “Do you dare to disobey me before my guests?”

I nearly dropped the bowl in my rush to obey, my heart beating wildly from the shadow of murderous rage waiting to settle over Kednin’s mind. He would have killed me then and there if I’d continued to ignore him, but even so removing the robe was difficult. The eyes of Len and Garth immediately began moving over me, examining me boldly as I knelt, with distant amusement as I bowed. They enjoyed seeing me like that, helpless before them, and Tammad’s mind was hardly different. Pleasure touched him as closely as he allowed it to, pleasure most likely brought about by seeing me humbled so.

“The choice is yours,” Kednin said, and I could feel the sweeping gesture he made with his arm. “Which ones will you have?”

“They are all veiled,” Len observed, his voice easy and confident. “How is a man to know which is most beautiful when he cannot see their faces?”

“Of what use is beauty in a bedin’s face?” Kednin asked, bringing forth a silent chuckle in Tammad. “One may do no more than gaze upon a face. As for other services, you will find the veil no hindrance to their performance. Bedinn: raise yourselves so that my guests may see you more easily.”

I came up out of the bow slowly, keeping my eyes down on the white silk floor, the blaze of shame burning brighter within me than it had the first time I’d been knelt so. Those weren’t strangers sitting there so comfortably, those were men I knew—or thought I knew. The very real comfort they felt was beginning to make me have second thoughts.

“The one with the short hair and dark eyes strikes my fancy,” Hannas said in a thoughtful drawl from where he sat. “With my host’s permission?”

“Certainly,” Kednin said the warmth back in his tone. “Go to him, bedin, and see that you please him.”

After being elbowed by the woman next to her, Findra’s heart rose when her body did, and she lost no time getting to Hannas. Tammad’s other men were choosing the last four women, and Loddar happily made do with one of the other bedinn. I still hadn’t looked up, but I don’t need sight to know when four pairs of eyes rest on me.

“You find this one of interest?” Kednin asked, his voice now skeptical. “I, too, found her of interest at first, but now regard her solely as a curiosity. It has been necessary to punish her often.”

“Somehow, I find that unsurprising,” Tammad said, his voice dry but his mind unamused. He didn’t like hearing that I’d been disobedient, and I could feel my head lowering even farther. “I do, however, continue to also find interest in her. I have never been fully served by a dark-haired, green-eyed wenda.”

“As you wish,” Kednin said casually. He had missed the way Tammad had stressed the word “fully” but I hadn’t. “And the others beside you? Which bedinn will they have?”

A silence intervened at that point, during which I could feel an exchange going on between Tammad and Len and Garth. Len and Garth asked with their silence, their minds no more than politely requesting a casual favor they would enjoy having, Tammad’s mind understanding what they were asking and considering it. His hesitation was only seconds in duration, then he spoke again to Kednin.

“My two brothers will share the service of this—bedin,” he said, his voice showing nothing of the hesitation he had felt. “As you say she is disobedient, the punishment of such additional service will be most fitting.”

“As is all punishment for disobedient bedinn.” Kednin chuckled as I raised my eyes quickly in outrage and dismay. My gaze was immediately captured by Tammad’s light blue stare, the expression therein telling me the punishment came from himself alone. No matter what anyone else did to me, it was his punishment I was to expect if I deviated from his concept of the proper. He had once warned me about insolence and the need for obedience, and he wasn’t in the habit of repeating warnings.

Kednin ordered us all to begin serving the food we’d brought, then sat back with his eyes unwaveringly on me. I got to my feet and retrieved the bowl I’d put aside, then went to kneel again in front of the hizah. It gave me some small pleasure to ignore the other three in his favor as I was supposed to, but the pleasure was very small and didn’t last long. Kednin took a strip of the grilled meat, tore a piece off, then stuffed the piece in my mouth. I chewed it as long as I dared before swallowing, trying not to show the near ecstasy I felt as the rare juices filled my mouth and trickled down my throat. I hadn’t been permitted anything but that thick cereal grain to eat, not unless I was tasting something for a hizah. I’d tried to find one who was amused at the idea of feeding a bedin, but amusement in those men was much too close to interest. To encourage their amusement and discourage their interest turned out to be impossible, and I’d found I had to give up eating meat if I wanted to avoid rape.

Right after that it was necessary to kneel in front of Tammad, holding the bowl out for his selection, and I found myself moving slowly as I did so. I remembered another scene very much like that one, set instead in the barbarian’s tent, and he must have seen the memory in my eyes.

“I find it odd that this wenda holds no interest for you,” he said to Kednin as he helped himself to a strip of meat from the bowl. “It seems odd indeed that the loveliest bedin in the tent should affect you so.”

“Perhaps.” Kednin shrugged while I tried to keep from cringing at Tammad’s continued stare. “It is difficult to say what will attract a man’s attention, most especially in a female. Have you forgotten the balance of the service required of you, bedin?”

I glanced at him quickly, but didn’t need the glance to feel the impatience in his mind. He wanted me to move on to Len, but that move was harder than the one to Tammad. I hesitated another instant, found no way to reach his mind and change it, then absolutely had to change position. When I knelt in front of Len and extended the bowl, I found two serious blue eyes staring at me.

“Such a lovely bedin should not find herself ignored,” he murmured, taking a strip of meat. “Perhaps she feels herself undesirable and therefore appears undesirable to men. Come, bedin. This will show that I find you of interest. Are you not pleased?”

“This” was a torn piece of his meat strip, larger than the one Kednin had given me, but not so large that it was likely to spoil me. Len stuffed it in my mouth the way the hizah had done, giving me no choice about accepting it. He let me feel the grim pleasure he experienced while I chewed, knowing full well how great the humiliation was for me. His sending was crisp and clear, unlike the accidental sendings of the untalented, but the strong anger he felt wasn’t quite as covered as he wanted it to be. He knew I’d been tampering with minds again, and he was furious over the fact. I felt my own anger rising at the injustice of the outlook, not caring whether or not he felt it. He wasn’t the one who had been in constant jeopardy of being raped; how dare he judge?

. When I finished with Len I moved on to Garth, who naturally hadn’t said a word. Len had been leaning over toward him from time to time, most likely translating, but the situation wasn’t one where Garth could afford to comment. As I knelt before him I wondered why he was even there; not speaking the language put him at a considerable disadvantage. I held the bowl of meat strips out to him, but he didn’t accept the offer immediately. His gray eyes stared at me intently, almost accusingly, and at last he shook his head in disgust.

“Knowing you, I’ll bet I know what you’re thinking,” he murmured very low, so low no one else could possibly have heard him. “You’re a damned fool, Terry, and Len’s the one who’s right.”

He reached into the bowl for a meat strip then, his mind smoldering with an anger I didn’t understand. There was no trace of his usual air of superiority; instead, he seemed to have achieved the sort of calm assurance most people don’t even know is possible. I didn’t agree with his conclusions about Len’s position—on any subject I could think of—and he seemed to know that. Once he had his meat strip he moved his hand in a curt gesture, dismissing me from his presence as though I were a slave. I could feel my lips tighten as I rose to my feet, but that was as far as I could let my anger show. Even that, with the veil in place, became a gesture for myself alone.

After that I was required to start the rounds again, but custom and courtesy no longer demanded that the men take only a single meat strip. Once they all had all the meat they wanted, I was sent for the bowls of dark bread and fried vegetables and mixed sweets some of the other women had brought. The men had their hands full with the meat, so I had to feed them whichever of the other items they wanted while they leaned back and took their ease. Kednin waved me away when I approached him, showing he was uninterested in being served further, but his guests weren’t that easy to please. Garth insisted on more than one serving of everything, Len made me eat his leftovers, and Tammad—Tammad nodded wordlessly when I offered something, took the proffered offering without moving his eyes from mine, chewed, swallowed, then waited for the next, all the time projecting a faint air of being displeased somehow. For some reason my hand quickly began trembling as I raised the food to his lips, and wouldn’t stop even when I told myself I was being stupid. I didn’t care in the least whether or not he was pleased, so why was I reacting that way?

When the food was all gone the men shared a large wineskin, brought to them by the bedin they’d chosen to serve them. Once rd handed the thing to Kednin I was supposed to be through for a while, but Garth gestured me to him while Kednin looked in his direction, giving me no chance to pretend I didn’t see the gesture. Garth couldn’t have called to me, of course, and I would have taken advantage of that fact if I could have. He seemed to sense my impatient anger when I knelt before him, but instead of being amused he was annoyed. I hadn’t expected that reaction in him, any more than I expected the way his fist came to my hair to force my head down to the silken floor. I almost gasped at his nerve in bowing me like that, but Kednin was watching too closely.

“It is unusual having guests in our tents,” the hizah said to Tammad after pulling at the wineskin and passing it on. “Do you merely travel through the sand to some far destination, or have you come to us with purpose?”

“The truth occupies two places,” Tammad answered after a drinking pause of his own. “We come to the sands of the Hamarda in search of that which was stolen from us, yet we also come to bring word to our brothers of the desert. We who dwell in cooler lands have found it necessary to begin a life-game with those off-wonders of whom you are already aware. The off-worlders encourage us to make demands upon them, thinking to bind us and separate us with the granting of those demands. We, however, will use our demands to weaken our enemy and strengthen ourselves, to their eventual sorrow. We invite our brothers the Hamarda to join us, both to stand with us against the enemy and to grow in strength as we do. It is my intention to speak more fully of the matter at the next Gathering of the tribes of the Hamarda.”

Kednin was silent for a moment, his mind whirling in frenzied thought, and then he said, “You offer to share the new strength which will be yours? Surely you know that should you keep it for yourselves alone, you would soon come to rule our world. Why, then, would you wish to share it?”

“It is not possible to rule a world which has fallen to strangers,” Tammad answered, his voice harsh from the bleak sight his inner eye looked upon. “Should we be foolish enough to keep the gifts of the off-worlders to ourselves alone, we would soon find ourselves a small island of strength in a world of weakness. Once the balance of our world is taken, how much longer are we ourselves likely to stand? In order to survive a battle a man must have his brothers at his back, else his sword, no matter how sharp, will be rendered useless.”

“It is as you say,” Kednin muttered, his thoughts disturbed. “No man may stand alone against the hordes of his enemies. Are the off-worlders not likely to deny their gifts to some of us, thinking to create a rift between those who receive them and those who are denied?”

“They are sure to do so,” Tammad said, his tone having gone grim. “The demands you make will not be presented as yours; instead they will be added to ours as though they were ours. The demands put forward in your own name will be contrived demands, ones which will cost you nothing when they are refused. You will, of course, be highly insulted at the refusal, sending your anger toward my people rather than toward the off-wonders. It will then seem to the off-worlders that we are bound more tightly to them, having incurred the scorn and hatred of our brothers. When the truth is learned by them, it will be far too late to save them.”

“I believe I see the target of your arrow,” Kednin said, and then he chuckled. “The hunt itself will be worthy of the effort, even should the quarry not be taken. I am eager to speak further of the matter, yet such things are best discussed far from the distraction of bedinn. As you are my guests I insist that you first pleasure yourselves; serious words may be spoken later. Bedin: present yourself to the guest you bow to.”

I heard Kednin’s words through my confusion, and for a minute they didn’t make any sense. I was too busy wondering what Tammad was up to this time to remember what my position there was—until I felt the instantly gathering fury in the hizah’s mind. I quickly put my wrists behind me, offering them for binding—and only then realized who I was offering myself to. Garth was the one who sat above me, a man who probably knew less of the customs of the tribe than he did of the language, a man who would undoubtedly shame himself by failing to act as the Hamarda expected. I can’t say I was disappointed at the thought—not after the way he’d been treating me—but I wasn’t given much of a chance to gloat. No more than a lazy minute passed before I felt leather at my wrists, looped and tied tight by the large hands holding it before I had a chance to resist. I didn’t want to be tied by Garth, but it was over with and I was pulled to the silk beside him before I could struggle more than slightly.

“You seem disappointed, Terry,” he murmured as softly as he had earlier. “Were you hoping I wouldn’t know what to do with a slave? It’s a shame to dash your hopes, but Tammad briefed us thoroughly before we entered camp. Are you ready to serve me?”

He looked down at me where I lay on my right side between him and Len, his gray eyes showing nothing of hesitation, his mind showing nothing of uncertainty. All around us the evening festivities were well under way, but I wasn’t about to be a part of them. Furiously I reached toward his mind with every intention of hitting with fear or disgust or grief or anything that would dent that thick calm he’d developed—but was instead hit so hard myself by a bolt of anger that my mind felt numbed. I moaned as my head rang from the attack, and then Len’s lips were at my ear.

“That’s just a taste of what you’ll get if you ever try that again,” he whispered, no trace of that vast anger in his voice. “In order to launch an attack you have to open your mind wide, which renders you immediately vulnerable. The next time I’ll hit you with fear.”

After saying his piece he drew away again, putting his anger back under control, but that didn’t mean there was no anger left. Garth’s eyes and mind were filled with it, showing he knew what had happened even if he hadn’t heard Len. I twisted against the leather on my wrists, trying to loosen it, fear beginning to fill me even without Len’s efforts. These were men of my own civilization; why weren’t they acting like it? “I think you’re just about ready to act the proper slave,” Garth murmured, putting a big hand on my shoulder to rub gently. “That Hamarda is mostly involved—with talking to Tammad, but he isn’t ignoring you. Let me hear you ask nicely to be of service to me.”

“Garth, please don’t go through with this,” I whispered, finding it impossible not to squirm under the gentle rubbing of his hand. “You’re not a barbarian and you won’t be able to forget your . . . .”

“Silence,” he interrupted, his voice cold with anger even in the lowered tones be was using, his eyes as angry and cold as his voice. “You were given an order and I expect to see it obeyed. After that shot you took at me a minute ago, any sympathy you had coming is wiped off the books. Now, let me hear that request or I’ll force it out of you.”

Under the veil I was biting my lip, indecision tearing at me. If I refused to do as Garth said, Kednin would surely notice, and that would mean more trouble than I cared to face. On the other hand, how could I bring myself to say such a thing to Garth R’hem Solohr, a man I’d known under vastly different circumstances? It was terribly wrong, somehow, and I couldn’t see myself

“All right, don’t say you didn’t ask for it,” Garth said, the impatience in his mind unwilling to wait any longer. In the midst of the laughter and low-key conversation going on around us, his hand slid down from my shoulder, caressed my breast, then continued on its way to my thigh. My breath drew in in a mortified gasp, but in another minute I didn’t have the breath for a gasp. His touch on me was like a flash of lightning, reawakening and intensifying all the frustrations I’d suffered through that day. I writhed and moaned in low, mindless need, but the humiliation was still blazingly there.

“If you think I’ll be feeling guilty about this later, you’re crazy,” Garth murmured, stretching out on one elbow on the silk beside me to kiss my throat below the veil. “Your skin is softer than Dacrian velvet, woman, and I fully intend experiencing all of it. Speak the way you were ordered to speak, or I’ll have you screaming instead.”

I moaned again as I looked up into the gray of his eyes, knowing the truth of the words he spoke; if he didn’t stop touching me like that I would be screaming soon. I shuddered, miserable to think he was able to do that to me, then let the words come tumbling out when the pressure of his fingers increased.

“No, don’t!” I begged, choking in the effort to keep my voice down. “I’ll say it if you’ll just take your hand away. . Oh! Garth . . . All right, all right, I’ll obey you! Hizah, I beg to be allowed the honor of serving you! I beg it! Please, no more!”

“There are tears in your eyes, slave,” he observed for some reason not hearing the words he’d demanded. “Is being made to know the needs of your body so painful then? Or is it the man who touches you that’s the painful part? I will readily admit I am not yet l’lenda, but neither am I darayse. And no, wenda, I will not grant you the honor you beg so reluctantly. I want nothing of willing service from you—merely the service itself.”

He took me in his arms then, ignoring my whispered pleas, and not much later he took even more. I think I was in shock then, especially when I responded to him with very little effort on his part. I didn’t know what had happened to Garth, and once he had let me go I was even less sure about what had happened to me. I lay on the silk where he had left me, my body relaxed rather than ravaged, my emotions serene rather than scandalized. I bad never before felt that way after being with a man of my worlds, and it was almost frightening.

“That pleasure in your mind feels out of place,” Len said softly from my left. “Has it really been that long since you found pleasure in anything?”

I turned my head to him quickly, my mind immediately cringing and begging, and he winced as though I’d slapped him.

“Don’t do that,” he muttered, shaking his head hard to rid himself of the feelings he’d picked up from me. “Despite your very obvious opinions to the contrary, there are women in this Amalgamation who have been used by me without losing their lunches. If you exert superhuman control, you might even be able to number yourself among them.”

His blue eyes looked down at me soberly, showing nothing of the faint hurt he’d felt at my reaction. But they also showed nothing of the calm determination he was filled with. I suddenly felt terribly confused and unsure, but those emotions did nothing to alter my reluctance. I pulled futilely at the leather on my wrists, and thought that maybe if I spoke to Len

“No, don’t say anything,” Len interrupted, not the words but the thought. “I don’t care to allow you the right to speak to me. The only thing you ever talk about is why everything should be done your way. It’s about time you learned you can’t back up that attitude—at least not on this world. And it’s time you learned not to push people around.”

His hand came to stroke my arm then, but his mind also came to mine to let me know the pleasure he felt at the contact. I’d had no idea what it would be like to be used by a male empath, but I soon found out. He fed me every emotion he felt, sharply, intensely, making me feel it despite my struggles. I’d always been stronger than Len and I still was, but I could no more force him out of my mind than away from my body. In order to strike at him I had to open my mind wide, and as soon as I did he was immediately inside, flooding me with emotions that turned me weak and helpless. I whimpered at the touch of his hands to my body as his mind invaded mine, writhed and moaned as he demanded I do, wept and begged in a way that pleased him. He let me suffer a very long time before he took me, but when he did the feeling was indescribably satisfying, almost as good as the best times with Tammad. The fact that Len was forcing me to feel that way diminished some of the pleasure, but after he had left me I came to understand that he could have used the darker emotions to obtain his satisfaction if he’d wanted to. Both he and Garth had given me pleasure instead of fear, satisfaction instead of pain. On that world they could have done anything to me that they pleased, but it had pleased them to do nothing more than share some pleasure. I closed my eyes against the tears flowing out, feeling terribly ashamed, and not only for the way I’d treated them. The shame ran deeper than that, but the reason for it was lost in a welter of confusion.

“I believe the bedin’s use is now yours,” Kednin’s voice came, undoubtedly speaking to Tammad. “On your knees, bedin, and present yourself in a proper manner to my guest.”

I opened my eyes again at the command, and after a few minutes of struggle managed to kneel in front of Tammad. The barbarian had watched my struggle silently, his mind held by its usual, rigid calm, his broad face impassive. I finally raised my eyes to his, slowly and reluctantly, then immediately looked down at the silk again. That same sense of faint dissatisfaction was touching him, coupled with a sudden surge of hurt that made me cry inside. He was disappointed in me, and whether it was still or again made no real difference. I needed so desperately to be held in his arms, but who would want to hold a disappointment?

“A female is ever more beautiful for having been used,” Kednin said, his voice husky. “See how her body trembles even as she displays herself for your inspection. You may now speak, bedin, and see that your words please us.”

I raised my eyes again to look at Tammad, and it was just as though he alone sat in the tent. That same look was still in his eyes, and I had to do something to get rid of it.

“I beg you, hizah, allow me the honor of serving you fully,” I whispered, trembling even more. “A lowly bedin begs the favor of her hizah.”

I waited for those mighty arms to come and draw me close to him, but a flash of disgust came from his mind instead, short in duration but so strong it nearly knocked me over. I knelt frozen in shock, unable to understand what was happening even when Tammad turned his head to Kednin.

“I thank my host, but this bedin no longer interests me,” he said, his voice lazy but impassive. “Should it not inconvenience you, I would much prefer finding a quiet place where we may continue discussing the strangers.”

“As you wish,” Kednin agreed with a shrug as he rose to his feet. “If you will follow me, I will show you to such a place.”

Tammad rose, beckoning Len and Garth up with him, and the three of them followed Kednin through one of the silk hangings. I knelt where I’d been left on the silken floor, my head down, feeling so ashamed I was ready to curl up and die. Not only didn’t he want me, he felt disgusted by me, so disgusted he couldn’t bring himself to touch me. Maybe it was because I’d been used by so many men, and had not only been used but had been made to enjoy it. Maybe he didn’t know how terrible it was to be owned by those Hamarda, maybe he thought I enjoyed all of it. Under those circumstances I could understand why he no longer even pretended to want me; I just couldn’t live with the thought. All I’d ever wanted was to have his love and please him in everything, but now that was even more impossible than it had been. I bent lower over my knees, too defeated even to moan, and wished I were dead.

A minute later a fist was in my hair, drawing me to my feet and then stumblingly out through the hangings. I didn’t know what that strange hizah wanted of me, but couldn’t scrape together enough concern to care even when he took me out of the tent into the dark, silent night. I was pulled across the sand, shivering from the coolness of the night, until the bulk of a male bedin suddenly appeared in front of us. The hizah stopped, threw me to the sand at the bedin’s feet, then looked down at me coldly.

“It is the wish of the hizah Kednin that this miserable bedin be whipped,” be said, shocking me even further with the words. “She has failed to please the hizah’s guests, and will therefore forfeit her life. You are to whip her now, but only in punishment. The hizah wishes to be present at her death, but will not be free for some time.”

The bedin grunted his acknowledgment of the orders, dragged me from the sand by one arm, then started away toward the Y frame. The hizah was already retracing his steps toward the tent we had come from, his mind grimly pleased that his chore had been seen to. I struggled along beside the bedin, my arm blazing with pain from his grip, almost ready to scream out my fear of what awaited me. I wanted to scream—I needed desperately to scream—but there was no one on that world who wanted to hear me.