8
I was awakened by the touch of hands on my body, but not awakened so far that I could do anything other than react. My mind told me I was a woman —and a man wanted me, and my body quickly readied itself to receive him. The man wasn’t long in coming to me, and he took such deep possession of my body that I moaned and clutched at his back, ecstasy shooting through me and turning me weak. I moaned again and floated to the heights with him, lost in the clouds and soaring high until he brought us both back to solid ground. It took a minute or two before my thoughts sorted themselves out, and then a series of shocks brought me fully awake.
The man who had just taken me was Loddar, not Tammad as I had somehow believed. I pushed my hair back from my face and half sat up, mortified at the way Loddar was chuckling. He had glanced at and nodded to the third figure in the camtah, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. Tammad must have come in either before or during my use, and the calm approval in his mind was more than I could stand. He had just seen me being used by another man and the thought didn’t bother him! He was pleased and happy and even his voice showed it.
“I now have no need to ask how the darkness passed for you, Loddar.” He chuckled, solid and calm in his crouch. “Is there need to extend her punishment yet further?”
“Unfortunately no, denday.” Loddar laughed, moving around to replace his haddin and swordbelt. “It would be pleasant to have it otherwise, but she does not merit further punishment.”
“I have brought her imad and caldin,” the barbarian said, tossing a light bundle onto the camtah floor. “They were somehow overlooked when you took her from my camtah.”
“Indeed,” Loddar answered, grinning. “Now that she has proven satisfactory, she may have them. Had she not proven satisfactory, I would have returned her as I took her, though running before me and the switch I carried. Her ownership was pleasant, denday, temporary though it was.”
“I am pleased to have it so, Loddar,” Tammad said, and his mind told me he was pleased. “There is now only one further thing required of her, and I have come to see it done properly. Loddar awaits an apology, wenda, such as those given to Garth and Lenham. See that your attempt pleases him nearly as much as your use.”
I raised my eyes in the dimness to look at him, searching for even the slightest hint that he intended easing up on me, but there was nothing, not even a shadow. I had never before been blamed that totally for something I’d done, most especially not into the day following the incident. I didn’t know how long he would go on with it, and the thought was unsettling. Wasn’t the fact that I felt badly about it enough? I could see he wasn’t going to try to fool me about his feelings any longer, but did he have to make the reversal so complete?
I lowered my eyes again and slowly got to my knees, shuffling forward until I knelt in front of Loddar. The l’lenda bad his haddin and swordbelt on, and he stood with arms folded across his chest as he looked down at me. I stared at his shadowy feet in silence for a moment, struggling with the humiliation of needing to apologize, then plunged ahead to get it over with.
“Loddar, I ask your forgiveness for what was done to you,” I said, fighting to fill my voice with regret. “I have shamed myself with my actions more completely than those actions have shamed others. It is my hope that my—my—use recompensed you in some small way for the discomfort you were made to feel”
I kept my eyes on his feet as I ended it, wondering about the calculation I could feel in his thoughts. He hadn’t missed the way I’d stumbled over the most humiliating part of the speech, and he didn’t let it pass without comment.
“The thought comes to me, wenda, that your concern with shame is touched little by the concept of honor, a concept which once seemed understood by you,” he said, a musing quality in his voice. “Have you merely strayed from the path, or are you no more than another wenda after all?”
I looked up at him quickly, seeing the sober way he stared down at me, feeling my cheeks redden from his criticism. There had once been a time when I’d thought about more than my own comfort and considerations, and Loddar remembered that time, comparing the present with it in an unfavorable light. His comment did make me feel ashamed, but there was nothing I wanted to say in answer to it. I looked down again, lowering my head, feeling my spirits lower to match. He wasn’t the first to say he was disappointed in me, and he would hardly be the last.
“Are there to be no further words from you?” Loddar asked, his voice mild. “Perhaps at this time such is best. The future often finds words for us that we would not have used had we spoken earlier. Should you wish her now, denday, you may take her. I have no further use for her.”
“Very well, Loddar,” Tammad said, rising out of his crouch. “Dress yourself and bring your furs, wenda. There are things to be folded before my pack seetar may be loaded. Do not dawdle, for we must soon be on our way.”
I looked up at him sharply, but he had already turned and started through the camtah opening, Loddar moving along behind him. Once they were both gone I took my clothes from where Tammad had dropped them and got dressed, then separated my furs from Loddar’s. Folding them took only a minute, and I was just about to leave the camtah when I hesitated, thought for a minute, then turned back and folded Loddar’s furs as well. I didn’t really understand why I did it, but somehow it seemed appropriate.
Outside it was just beginning to get light, the warmth of the day to come still cooled by the last of the night breezes. I took my furs and walked over to the pile of things beside Tammad’s pack seetar, knelt in front of the pile and began folding. Len and Garth were standing a short distance away, but I was able to ignore them until they came to stand right beside me.
“It’s going to be another beautiful day,” Len observed, taking an extra deep breath of the fresh morning air. “A beautiful day after a beautiful night.”
“A beautiful day, yes,” Garth agreed with a chuckle. “The night, however, was more incredible than beautiful. Beautiful is too mild a word.”
“I know what you mean.” Len laughed, and I heard a sound as though be had clapped Garth on the shoulder. “It’s amazing what a new outlook will do for a man—not to mention what it does to a woman. I don’t know if you could tell about yours, but mine started out feeling superior and impatient, for all the world like a woman of Central.”
“As if it were an ordeal she had decided to suffer through just to get finished with,” Garth agreed. “I couldn’t read her emotions, but her feelings were plain enough in the way she acted. It didn’t take long to change her tune, though.”
“Only because you probably refused to accept it, just the way I did,” Len said. “You couldn’t even speak her language, but you still managed to make yourself understood. Women need to be put in their place fast and kept there—isn’t that right, Terry?”
They both began chuckling at that, their mood mellow after a night of tension release, but their comments didn’t bother me one way or the other. I just kept folding and stacking the things in front of me, approaching the bottom of the pile with satisfying rapidity.