The Warrior Enchained

9

The next space of time was sporadically blurred, punctuated with bars of black and hazed with nightmare. I was briefly aware of being carried somewhere over someone’s shoulder, then of trying to cry out when my wrists were tied painfully behind me, then of being held face down across someone’s saddle. The saddle was moving hard and frantically, as if an animal sped beneath it, but the movement had no meaning, only the extreme discomfort. The thought of protest crossed my mind, but then movement, thought and consciousness were gone again.

The next noticeable thing was motionlessness, but not an empty one. Water poured on me in an endless stream, soaking my hair and body, running into my ears and eyes. Only my mouth was protected from it by the gag; even my back and arms were wet from the ground I lay on. I didn’t know why I lay bound and gagged on the ground in the pouring rain, and I didn’t know how I had gotten there; all I knew was how stiff and achy my body felt. I was tired and I hurt and I didn’t feel well and I was very thirsty. There was water all around me, but I couldn’t get any of it into my mouth. I tossed my head in the stream of mud I lay in, burning for the water, and then there were hands at the gag and it was pulled away, the cloth as well as the wadding in my mouth. My eyes closed as the water poured into my mouth instead, taking away the taste of the gag and the dryness it had left. I coughed once or twice, nearly choking, then finally stopped drinking, but the water continued to pour over my face and body.

My thoughts were incomplete and disjointed, and I don’t know how long it took before the idea came that I ought to try to get out of the rain. My wrists were still tied tightly behind my back, but I ought to be able to get to my feet even so. I moved my head and tried to move my feet—and only then discovered that my feet were also tied, but not to each other. My right ankle was tied to the ankle of the woman lying on my right, my left ankle to the woman on my left, our ankle bands pushed high to allow the leather access to our ankles. I tried to pull against the leather, to see how tight it was, but movement was impossible. The women beside me were barely conscious, cooperative movement entirely beyond them. I didn’t have all that much control over myself yet, but they were even worse off than I was.

Thought became distant again then, as though the residue of some powerful drug were reasserting itself, and when the blurriness abruptly gave way to clarity again, something had been added. A large form loomed over the woman to my left, crouched above her, doing something to her. My left leg had been forced to bend when her right had been raised, and her semi-conscious moans of pain suddenly told me what was being done to her. Fear flashed through me and turned my bowels weak, but that didn’t stop the figures that appeared silently out of the dark and rain from coming closer. One of them crouched over the woman on my right, but I had no time to notice what was done to her. Another one was right above me, throwing my sodden caldin back to my waist, reaching out with two hands to rip my imad open, grasping my thighs to pull me closer. The fear was a living thing, eating at me from the inside, forcing mewling sounds out of my throat and then a cry of pain when I was entered. A vague sense of satisfaction touched the man who had me, and his hands came to my breasts to squeeze hard as his hips pounded against me. Again a cry of pain was forced out of me and again I felt his pleasure, and the realization of what was happening made my blood run cold. The savages could feel very little through the drug they numbed themselves with, needing pain and fear even to feel pleasure from sex. They would hurt us all to find their release, and there was nothing we could do about it.

The ordeal went on for a ghastly long time, the only respite coming from drug-induced blank periods. I never knew how many of them there were, but there had to be more than twice the number of women. When it was finally over and we were left to lie alone in the mud and rain, the pain in my body was more than enough to make me cry. Others cried along with me, sending their misery and pain and shame to me with their sobs, but the reception of their emotions was as blurred as my thinking. Among everything that had happened, that was the only blessing.

At daybreak we were roused from exhausted sleep when our ankles were untied, and then the cloth wadding and wetted strips were brought again. It was a matter of minutes before the drug had me again, blotting out the sight of orange men moving beneath darkly threatening skies. Flashes of pelting rain came a few times along with knowledge of being held face down in front of a rider, and then the darkness was the darkness of night again, and the drug-soaked rags had again been removed. We went through the same hell a second time, and the second time hurt more than the first. I felt myself moaning even when there were no hands squeezing pain into my flesh, even when there was nothing battering against my body, even while I choked and coughed in the rain. Each movement was pain without the drug, pain and intense fear, and then the rain was gone and the sun grew very bright, and the heat increased even beyond what it had been before the rain. This went on for a very long timeless period, and then I awoke to find myself being carried away from the orange men, the gag gone, my clothes hanging in filthy strips, my wrists still bound behind me. The man who carried me wore long robes, the sun was still very bright, and I could barely remember how to breathe. I tried to move, to say something, but the return of the darkness made the entire effort futile.