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.