Dear God, she had that right.
Seriously, this… place… sucked.
I stared into her eyes. Then I looked beyond her at the five women who’d been serving me and caring for me in kind ways for three days and had been so gentle with me that awful night. They were standing in a huddle just inside the flap to the tent.
They looked more than anxious.
They looked freaking scared.
Then I looked back into her eyes.
Then I whispered, “What’s your name?”
“Diandra, my queen.”
“All right, Diandra,” I said softly, making my decision, “let me get up. I’ve got some people who need to see me.”
Diandra kept hold of my eyes for a long moment before, slowly, she smiled.
Chapter Five
Getting A Few Things Straight
I sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed waiting for my king to come home.
I had spent most of the day with Diandra.
That morning, I had gotten out of bed and Diandra had called for my robe, or my lornya, as they called it. It was long, had slits up the side, was sleeveless and was made of the finest light blue silk I’d ever seen.
While I ate (creamy yogurt, sweet dried fruit and some kind of grain all mixed together, it was actually quite tasty) and drank coffee (the only good thing so far, the savages had coffee, though the milk they had to put in it tasted slightly tangy), Diandra chatted to me about Seerim, her three sons (all, she bragged openly, in training to be warriors, her first, she bragged scarily, had already made his “first kill”) and her one daughter (“He would deny it, he is proud of his warrior sons, but Sheena is Seerim’s favorite,” she said), my women (I refused to call them slaves) carted in a big, oval copper tub with one side swayed back and filled it with buckets of steaming water. Then they poured some milky substance in it, some oil, swirled it around and dropped flower petals on top.
After I was finished eating, three of them guided me to the warm, fragrant bath and Diandra went to some trunks in the corner with the dark skinned woman (Teetru was her name and Diandra confirmed that, since she once had the charge of a Maroo princess (Maroo being Teetru’s homeland), she therefore had experience with serving “royalty” and she was their boss of sorts). I tried to protest but they refused to accept as they bathed me and washed my hair in a bath that smelled vaguely of spice, vaguely of musk and not-so-vaguely of orange blossoms.
I had to admit, it was nice. It was weird, but it was nice.
Once bathed, they clothed me in an outfit Teetru and Diandra chose. A sarong woven with gold thread shot with white and turquoise blue with a hint of silver. This was attached to a wide, braided belt of thick turquoise, white and gold threads with thin gold chains plaited through. My breasts were wrapped in a turquoise bandeau bikini top. Added to this were gold bands at my biceps, a necklace that was a fall of intricate gold chains with tiny, blinking aquamarine stones and chandelier earrings of the same.
Best of all, they gave me a pair of turquoise silk underwear. Actual underwear. They fit snug in the ass and the silk had no give but I didn’t care. I wanted to do cartwheels because I… had… underwear.
And, okay, it sucked to admit but there was no way around it. The outfit was freaking great. Everything about it was amazing. The material, the colors, the jewels, they freaking rocked.
And since I had nothing (so far) but coffee to be happy about, I was not going to berate myself for being happy about my cool-as-shit clothes.
I had to hang onto something, didn’t I?
They sat me down and put eye shadow and kohl on my eyes and a gooey, tasty stuff tinted pink on my lips. They also brushed out my hair, dipping their fingers in a clay pot with more goo and gliding it through my hair, twisting it in long coils then securing it back from my face with a succession of little gold pins with aquamarine stones at the end (almost but not quite like bobby pins) that went from ear, over the top of my head, to ear.
Diandra took one look at me when I was done and smiled with happy approval, stating, “Your king showers great bounty on you. This is very good.”
I stared at her.
Bounty. Right.
Whatever.
Then out we went into the camp.
And it was, mostly, a camp. A bunch of tents with firepits out front, some had tables at the side of the tent with primitive looking cooking stuff on it, big buckets resting beside them and other tools like axes and hatchets and the like. Some had smaller tents around them which Diandra told me were where slaves slept or where food and supplies were kept and meals prepared (around my tent, we had one of both).
There were a lot of torches stuck in the ground on the pathways which I knew from the night of the parade but also from seeing it hit the side of the king’s tent were lit at night. The only official area, as it were, was the dais which I noticed now was roughly carved from a huge, wide, long, cream slab of stone, the area in front of it deep and wide, made up of the same stone. A firepit did, indeed, run the length of the back with two pits at the top, though while we wandered the camp, these were not lit mostly, I guessed, because it was sunny and, I knew, it was stinking hot. The drums, incidentally, the big ones and small ones, were still set up.
And there were people. Lots of them. All of them looked at me and many of them smiled, many of them nodded, many of them looked happy to see me. Some of them, however, looked at me with interest or intensity, not exactly happy – cautious, I figured, undecided. And a few avoided my eyes.
This, I didn’t get. I also didn’t dwell. I had enough to dwell on.
Diandra chattered on and she tucked my hand in her elbow and kept me close as we walked. She informed me this was only a camp, not a settlement, The Horde was nomadic. They came to this location for the Wife Hunt every two years and the warrior selections, three times a year. They had homes, of sorts, in some Korwahk city but they visited them infrequently during their roaming although, she explained, they did settle in them for two months over the winter.
She told me tents were called chams. She told me shahsha was thank you. She told me poyah was hello.
“What does me ahnoo mean?” I asked after the words the king had spoken to the cruel warrior and she looked at me, her brows up.
“Me ahnoo?” she asked back.
“The king said, ‘Kah Dahksahna me ahnoo,’ to that warrior he threw off the dais during the wedding rite. What does that mean?”
She patted my hand in the crook of her elbow, looked forward and smiled. “It means, my dear, ‘my queen does not like’.”
“What?” I asked.
She looked back at me. “He told Dortak that you do not like… in other words, you did not like what he was doing to his bride. And, I will add, not many of us did. Definitely not the peasants, merchants, slaves or wives and, I’m certain, many of the warriors.” She bobbed her head at me. “You made that clear, even though you do not speak their tongue, it was plain for all to see you didn’t like what he was doing. He was challenging you by continuing to do it even though you told him not to. It is, in truth, not a woman’s place to command a warrior, even if that woman is queen.” She looked forward and I got the sense she was avoiding my eyes when she went on. “Sometimes,” she paused, “I will admit, the wedding rite can get lewd, the warriors get wound-up, if a battle is mightily fought to claim a bride, they need to expend some energy and sometimes do so in…” she paused again then finished cautiously, “unsavory ways.”
Fabulous.
Diandra carried on after looking at me again. “But you are not just any queen. You are King Lahn’s Lahnahsahna. But more, you are the Dax’s golden warrior queen. You made a command. It went unheeded. The king acted to make Dortak adhere to your command.” Her fingers squeezed mine. “It was a bold statement. This is not done. In saying simply that you do not like, but in punishing Dortak before all, he was telling his people you rule at his side.” She grinned at me. “It was very sweet and very uncharacteristic??
? of a warrior, of a king but especially of Dax Lahn. He, my dear, is not normally sweet. Seerim was even shocked.” She looked away and muttered, “A sight to see. A good one.”
I looked forward too and these words moved through me. I wasn’t certain I believed he was sweet, that would take a lot of convincing. But she had told me he’d bragged about me to his people and he had acted on my wishes to stop that girl from continuing to be defiled publicly.
Not to mention, he made it clear I ruled at his side.
I supposed that was nice.
“That warrior’s name is Dortak?” I asked because I needed a change of subject, pronto.
She nodded, didn’t look at me but her face lost its friendliness. I still saw it, even in profile.
“Dortak. A bad seed. As was his father before him and, as Seerim’s father tells me, his father before him. He covets the throne of horns. They all did. He will challenge the Dax.”
My body started at this pronouncement. “But King Lahn tossed him bodily down a flight of steps,” I reminded her.
She looked back at me. “I said he was a bad seed, Dahksahna Circe,” she leaned in and grinned, “but I did not say he was a clever bad seed.”
I knew what she was saying.
“The king will defeat him,” I whispered and she looked forward again murmuring, “Without doubt.”
“This Dortak tried to claim me, the Dax severed his chain and –” I stopped talking when she abruptly halted us and her eyes snapped to my face.
“He severed his chain?” she whispered.
“Uh… yeah,” I confirmed.
“Oh my,” she breathed.
“What?” I asked.
“Oh my,” she breathed again and her eyes had a faraway look in them.
I shook her arm and hissed, “What, Diandra?” and her eyes focused on me.
“Warriors battle for their brides, as you know, my dear, and there are very few rules with anything to do with any fight, indeed anything to do with The Horde or the Korwahk nation, but the warriors of The Horde do honor their brothers. Although it is not unheard of for things to get out of hand and one warrior kill another for his bride, or, perhaps, deliver a wound that will eventually kill or one that festers and brings the warrior low. But this is very infrequent. Because of this, there are other whispers around the Daxshee, not just those about you. These other whispers are about Dortak and the Hunt. It is known that Dortak took the life of a warrior for the bride he was claiming. I just did not know it was you. Was it you?”
I nodded and whispered, “It was me.”
Her eyes went soft as she realized what I witnessed then she carried on. “This has not been taken positively as the warrior he brought low was well-liked and Dortak is not. Although the kill was not witnessed, because of his reputation many believe that it was not due to both warriors descending into bloodlust as the battle raged on but that he did not give the fallen warrior the opportunity to surrender before he delivered his killing blow.”
I didn’t know if this was true or not. I hadn’t been paying that much attention mainly because I was freaked right the fuck out.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know enough about this stuff to know if he gave that guy an opportunity to give up or not. And, I have to say, I honestly wasn’t taking much in, I had other things on my mind,” I told her.
She gave me an understanding smile and said softly, “Of course not, my dear.” Then she took in a deep breath and went on, “That said, although there are few rules, like I mentioned, there is also honor and you do not sever a chain. Never. It is a slap in the face. An insult. It says you hold no respect for the other warrior. If a warrior has attached their chain to you the other warrior battles until that warrior is beaten, surrenders or has fallen and only then can they detach their chain and hook their own to their chosen bride. To sever the chain is to say you feel the battle will be won before it is even started. It’s actually worse than a slap in the face. It is akin to spitting in it.” She looked away and started us walking again. “Another bold statement,” she kept talking quietly, “King Lahn is forcing a challenge, I see. He grows impatient with Dortak. He wants him defeated.”
“But, if that’s true, why didn’t he kill him when he challenged him for me?” I asked.
“Because, my dear,” she patted my hand again and kept walking, “that would bear no witnesses. He will wait for Dortak’s challenge so he can humiliate him before all. He wants that shame to be the last thing he feels before the Dax takes his head.”
Oh God.
Takes his head?
Oh God!
At that, I decided I was done talking.
Diandra didn’t and chattered away as we walked through the encampment then she walked me back to my tent. Then she spoke to my women who hurried off to do whatever it was that they did. Not long after, bunches of large, square pillows, some with fringe all around, some with tassels at the four ends, some with no adornment, all silk, satin or brocade and all in rich colors, were arranged on some thick hides on the dusty stone around our tent and we reclined in the cool (ish) shade of the tent as the women brought us flat bread, strong cheese, dried, spiced meat, almonds and crisp, fresh, deliciously cold (if it can be believed) fruit juice.
I couldn’t say I was comfortable being waited on while lounging and five women rushed to answer my every unspoken whim. What I could say was that that particular conversation with the Dax was for some future time, if I was still around at that time (which, God, I hoped I was not) and if I ever decided I intended to try to speak to the brute.
A lot of people passed our tent as Diandra babbled at me and I part listened but mostly I tried to figure out what to do next. After awhile, it occurred to me that it was unlikely that many people passed the Dax’s tent on a normal day and it was much more likely that they’d come to check me out.
This made me feel weird, on show and I didn’t like it but then again, I didn’t like a lot of things so I kept my peace, kept my lounge and listened to Diandra talk.
In late afternoon, promising to come back the next day and take me to the marketplace bringing her daughter Sheena with her, Diandra left me.
And when she did I realized I’d forgotten to ask after Narinda and the evil (and apparently stupid) Dortak’s unlucky bride.
And after she left, I lay on the pillows noting that my women were busy bustling around doing whatever they were doing. But whatever they were doing, they were doing it no longer looking anxious but happy, smiling at each other while working and chattering.
I watched them and smiled whenever they caught my eye. They smiled back.
They seemed like nice ladies.
Shit, if I didn’t wake up home soon, I was probably going to have to get to know them and figure out what to do about them. But one thing I knew, whatever this world was or my place in it, I was not going to own slaves.
Then I sighed, fiddled with the tassel of a pillow, tried to sort my head out and smiled at anyone who passed by who smiled at me. I also nodded to anyone who caught my eye. And I took the lovely, pink flower from a little girl who dashed up and handed it to me, murmuring, “Shahsha, honey,” as I took it. She giggled and rushed back to her beaming mother.
It was after a dinner of roasted, spiced meat, more flat bread and potatoes cooked in onions that I took at the table in the tent when I decided what I was going to do.
And it was after my women – Jacanda (petite, chubby and seemingly outgoing), Packa (also petite, not chubby and somewhat shy), Gaal (tall, thin and quiet but not in a shy way, a careful, watchful one that made me slightly uneasy) and Beetus (tall, skinny, the youngest I was guessing, mostly because she looked it but was also extremely giggly in a way I almost, almost found infectious) – washed my face, slathered it with heavenly smelling stuff they gouged out of clay bowl, stuff that made my skin feel divine, took off my jewels and clothes and ran their fingers through my hair to pull out the gunked up twists. Then they helped me don an actual nightgown made of pale pin
k satin (no joke, a nightgown, it, like the robe, had slits up the side, thin straps, the skirt to the ankle, it fit snug at the boobs and hips but it, like the outfit I wore that day, was awesome). They tried to take my turquoise undies but I flatly refused and after a brief verbal tussle that made no sense to any of us, they gave in, murmured words that I took as goodnight and left me alone.
So I climbed in the bed, sat cross-legged in the middle of it, pulled the silk sheet up to my lap and waited for my warrior king to come home so I could carry forth my plan to get a few very important things straight.
And I waited.
Night had fallen and I was usually asleep by the time he returned so after I waited for awhile I figured I was in for a long one.
So I looked around the tent, having been in it for days, I was seeing it for the first time.
The bed was smack in the middle on a painted blue wooden platform that was probably one foot tall. There was a mattress, I knew, what it was made of, I didn’t know but it was thick, tall and soft. It was covered in heavy hides that were also soft, warm and comfy (the day was hot, the sun shone brightly, but when it dropped, it got cold). This was covered in a heavy, light blue silk sheet (which didn’t do much to ward off the cold, I had discovered, so it was lucky we slept on the fluffy hides). The pillows didn’t have cases, they were square or rectangular and, like the big cushions the girls had set outside for Diandra and me, they were silk, satin and brocade, no tassels or fringe and not in rich colors but in pastels.