Enslaved by the Desert Trader Read online

  He held out the bag again. ‘Drink,’ he commanded, ‘for we must keep moving.’

  ‘Why do you speak the Khemetian tongue?’ she asked, and gave a small jump, as if surprised by the sound of her own voice.

  ‘I am a trader. I speak many tongues.’

  ‘You are a Libu raider. A murderer.’ Her brown eyes flashed and her cheeks flushed with a fetching shade of crimson.

  ‘I am neither a raider nor a Libu—not any more.’

  ‘But you bear the Libu scar,’ she said, her eyes fixing on the purple crescent framing the side of his eye.

  ‘And you bear the callused hands of a man,’ Tahar replied coolly. ‘That does not make you one.’ He placed his water bag near her hands, in case she might accept it.

  ‘Just because you have tied me in bonds it does not make me a slave.’

  ‘Then we are both imposters.’

  ‘Hem!’ she snarled, then batted the water bag out of his hands.

  ‘Foolish woman!’ Tahar shouted, watching the bag’s precious contents spill onto the sand. ‘Now I shall have to draw water from the oasis pool and boil it. It will be many hours before we drink again.’

  He grabbed her arm in anger and an invisible spark seemed to ignite the air between them. He released her arm and she returned her remorseless gaze to the sun-baked desert.

  ‘You are a Libu monster,’ she muttered.

  ‘And you are a Khemetian to the bone,’ he said.

  ‘How am I “a Khemetian to the bone”?’

  ‘You are spoiled and superior, as if the Gods themselves sanction your decadence.’

  ‘If you think ordinary Khemetians to be decadent, then you truly are dull,’ she said, and a small tear pooled in the corner of her eye.

  Tahar stood and placed the empty water bottle in his saddlebag. Better to wait for her to beg for it—something she would do quite soon, he was sure. Thirst was a powerful motivator.

  As is hunger, he thought, stealing a glance at her small white breasts.

  No—he would not conquer her body. He would not even think of it, though he admitted that he wished to. Taking her would be like drinking wine from the amphora you meant to trade.

  He removed his headdress and draped the garment over her shining head. ‘You must shield your skin from the sun,’ he told her, laughing as her head disappeared beneath the fabric. ‘What do you call it? La?’ he mocked.

  ‘The Sun God is Ra—blessed Ra. May he punish you severely,’ she stated, but her voice was muffled by the thick fabric, making Tahar laugh.

  ‘Gods do not care about us, silly woman. I have seen enough of the world now to know that it is so.’

  ‘What can you possibly have seen to give you knowledge of the Gods?’ she mumbled from beneath the fabric.

  ‘I have seen the beds of ancient rivers that once flowed over this very oasis, and the bones of creatures unimaginable to us. I have seen paintings on rocks deep in the desert. They show people swimming like fish. Swimming! The Gods may be mighty, but they care little about us. We are temporary.’ Tahar paused. ‘We are...whispers in the grass.’

  The woman was quiet for some time, as if trying to picture all the things he had described. At length, she spoke. ‘Are you going to violate me, then? I am...’

  ‘A virgin? I could tell that just by looking at you,’ he said. It was a welcome confirmation of his belief, for it would raise her bride price significantly.

  ‘Are you going to kill me?’

  ‘Of course not.’ You are more valuable than all the salt in the Fezzan.

  The woman exhaled. Moving her bound hands with agility, she pulled the headdress off her head and gathered it around her lithe, muscular body.

  He would have to fatten her up, of course. No rich Minoan sea captain or powerful Nubian chief would trade anything of value for such a scrawny, sinuous bride. Proper Khemetian clothing and adornments would need to be procured, as well. And her eyes would need to be kohled, and her lips hennaed in the fashionable manner. Finally, her hair must be allowed to grow. Though most wellborn Khemetian women wore wigs upon their shaved heads, Tahar knew that foreign traders preferred the real thing.

  He would have to train her—just as he had done with his father’s horse: tame her and give her time to swallow her fate. He would need to be wary, for Khemetian women were accustomed to more freedoms than women of the desert tribes. Given the opportunity, a Khemetian woman would take her advantage—or so he had discovered at the Houses of Women he frequented along the caravan routes. A Khemetian woman would rub your back while unclasping your necklace. She would nibble your earlobes while pillaging your saddlebags.

  Still, after he had quieted her will and thickened her flanks there would be no trader able to resist the healthy young bride. She was Khemetian, after all—a goddess from the land blessed by the Gods—and she was going to make Tahar rich.

  The woman cocked her head and looked up at him, her expression drained of pride. ‘Please, let me go,’ she begged. She lifted her bound hands beseechingly. ‘I must return to my home. My mother and sister will not survive without the grain I carry...carried.’ She blinked, and a lone tear traced a path down her dusty face.

  Tahar felt his stomach twist into a knot. Her intentions seemed laudable. She apparently wished to save her family, to relieve their hunger. Careful, man. A Khemetian woman will say whatever she needs to say.

  ‘The Great River will swell in only three more cycles of the moon,’ he assured her. ‘The flood will be late, but it will come. Your family will survive. Do not fear for them.’

  ‘But how can you know when the Great River will flood? You are not a priest or a seer. You cannot know the future. You are a liar, a trader—’

  ‘That is all!’ Tahar snapped. He would not abide her disparagement of his profession, lowly though it was. It had kept him alive all these years, and in the good favour of his tribe and the merchants he served. ‘You should give thanks for your life.’

  ‘And what do you intend to do with that life?’ she asked sharply, her lip betraying a tremble. Her eyes were so large and luminous. They challenged and begged all at once.

  ‘I—’ Tahar searched his mind, trying to remember his intentions. ‘You will make an excellent bride. I intend to trade you.’

  ‘Trade me? In exchange for what?’

  ‘For a boat.’

  ‘A boat? What will you do with a boat? Carry your sheep in it?’ Boldness swelled in her bosom. ‘You are Libu—a desert-dweller. Are you not?’

  ‘Not any more. Now I am only Tahar. Tahar the Trader.’ Tahar the soon-to-be sailor, thanks to you, my lovely.

  He smiled to himself. He would find this fiery little viper a rich merchant husband, use the proceeds to get himself a boat, and they would all be the better for it.

  ‘I am taking my horse to drink at the pool,’ he announced, untethering the steed. ‘We shall depart as soon as I return.’ He walked several paces towards the pool, then mustered his most menacing voice: ‘Do not even think about trying to escape.’

  Chapter Three

  There is nothing eternal but the Gods, Kiya told herself, watching the trader disappear into the thick willow and tamarisk foliage surrounding the oasis pool. She pressed her bonds across the jagged ribs of the date palm. Everything else is temporary.

  The twine was made of unusual green fibres—not papyrus, something finer. Hemp, perhaps. It was exceptionally strong, but Kiya knew that even the strongest bonds could be broken. She had seen captive crocodiles do it with ease. If they could do it, why not Kiya?

  What she could not do was become a slave. She had seen them on the streets of Memphis. They followed their owners like dogs, their shoulders slumped, their eyes cloudy and lifeless. Nay—she would rather die and become lost in the corridors of the Underworld than ser
ve someone else in this one.

  Not that the trader cared a fig about what she thought or felt. He had not wavered, even when she had told him about her starving family, of the souls who stood to perish if she did not return.

  It had been a lie, of course. She did not have a starving family. She did not have anyone at all, in fact. But it didn’t matter: he had failed the test. He, like most of his profession, was soulless, completely without a ka. And his certainty of the coming flood was beyond arrogance. Only a seer or High Priest could ever know such a thing. Certainly not a trader.

  She rubbed the twine against the rough palm ribs and soon tiny ribbons of smoke began to weave into the air. She intensified her effort, remembering his stinging words. Foolish and decadent, he had called her. Spoiled and superior. Was that what the Libu thought of the Khemetians? Was that how they justified their raids?

  The trader had denied being a Libu, though he bore the Libu scar—a brutish, crescent-shaped gash beside his eye. And he wore the long purple robes of a Libu, though they did not suit him. His broad, deeply contoured chest stretched against the thin fabric, threatening to break the seams. And his strange, liquid blue eyes suggested unusual origins. He was quite attractive, in truth.

  For a fiend.

  Her hands burst apart. She quickly untied her feet and leapt into a run. The soft sand gave beneath her, revealing her footprints, but soon she spied a patch of hardpan. She headed towards it, not stopping until her footprints were no longer visible upon the naked ground. Then she stopped. She had an idea. Carefully, she began to walk backwards in the very same footprints she had made.

  This he would not expect. He would follow her footprints east, towards the Great River. Meanwhile, she would be in hiding back at the oasis, where he would eventually return, defeated and exhausted, and quickly fall asleep. He would not even hear the gentle hoofbeats of his strange beast as she rode it off into the night.

  By the Gods, she wished it were night already, and not so impossibly hot. The Sun God bored into her skull, melting her thoughts and sapping all that was left of her strength. As her head began to swim a memory flooded in... ‘Stay awake, Mother,’ young Kiya whispered, crouching by her mother’s side in the shadowy chamber. ‘We must try to escape.’

  Evil men had breached the walls of the harem and invaded the concubines’ chambers. The panicked women and children had been running barefoot past the doorway of her mother’s chamber, seeking their escape beyond the harem walls.

  ‘Come with me, little one,’ a voice had urged.

  It had been one of the escaping concubines. She had stopped in her mother’s doorway and held her hand out to Kiya.

  ‘Come now, we have little time.’ The woman had glanced at the empty vials that littered the floor beneath the bedframe. ‘You must leave your mother here. Already she has begun her journey.’

  ‘My daughter will sssstay with me!’ Kiya’s mother had slurred, rousing herself from her stupor. ‘Leave us to our fate!’ Her eyes had rolled back in her head. ‘Beware the three serpents, my daughter,’ she’d told Kiya, gripping her small arm. ‘Each will try to take your life.’

  ‘She is not in her right mind, dear,’ the woman in the doorway had said. ‘Come quickly!’

  ‘The third will succeed,’ her mother had continued. ‘Unless you become like—’

  Her mother’s grip had been too strong—Kiya hadn’t been able to pull away. ‘Mama, please. We must flee. The bad men are coming!’

  ‘All men are bad, Kiya. Remember, they only wish to possess you, to enslave you.’

  By the time Kiya’s mother had finally released Kiya’s arm the woman in the doorway had gone.

  ‘Conceal yourself under the bed,’ Kiya’s mother had instructed. She’d reached for the largest of the vials, uncorked the bottle, and drunk down its cloudy contents. ‘Do not fear, my beautiful little daughter. They will not find you. And they will not take me alive.’

  Kiya had felt hot tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘Please do not go, Mama! Do not leave me alone.’

  But Kiya’s mother had lain her head upon her wooden headrest for the last time and slipped soundlessly into her world of dreams.

  ‘Beware the three serpents,’ whispered her mother’s voice again now.

  Startled, Kiya looked all around her. There was not a single soul in sight.

  ‘Each will try to take your life,’ the voice resounded.

  Kiya looked up at the sky, half expecting to see her mother’s face staring down at her. There was nothing. She looked to the ground, as if at any moment a serpent might materialise upon her foot.

  ‘The third will succeed, unless you become like...’

  Like what?

  Kiya slapped herself on the cheek. The skin on her head had begun to boil and her mouth was dry, as if full of fibres. She knew that if she did not get out of the sun soon she would quickly lose her will to do it. Abandoning her plan, she broke into a run, heading as fast as she could back to the oasis, where the trader was nowhere to be seen. Heedless of anything but her own smouldering skin and desperate thirst, she dived into the oasis pool and let the cool water caress her. She drank her fill, then disappeared into the depths.

  When she finally emerged for a breath she heard men’s voices, nearing the pool. They were speaking in a deep, guttural tongue that she recognised immediately. Libu.

  Her heart hammered as she cowered into a shady stand of flute reeds growing in the water on the far bank. She found the longest of the reeds and snapped it in half, then sank down against the bank, breathing slowly through the natural straw.

  In moments a group of men arrived at the pool’s edge. Their blurred figures were difficult to see through the water, but Kiya noticed their purple headdresses and the long copper blades that hung from their belts. The men spoke excitedly—joyfully, even. As their donkeys bent to drink, Kiya could see the animals’ saddlebags bulging with grain.

  Khemetian grain.

  Kiya felt her heart pinch with hatred. They were Libu raiders, for certain. Their joy was the Khemetians’ doom. All the workers—the thousands of peaceful farmers whom Kiya had joined in service to the King—would now return to their homes empty-handed because of these evil men. Many of the Khemetian farmers would not return home at all.

  Kiya struggled to keep her breaths even and swore she would have her revenge. The Sun God would soon be on his nightly voyage to the Underworld and the murderous villains would be to bed. The Moon God would rise, and Kiya would execute her escape plan anew.

  Curses on the trader, for she no longer needed him. She had a band of Libu to plunder from instead. Besides, if her captor were any kind of trader he would have quickly understood the threat they represented to his grain. He and his strange, oversized donkey were probably halfway across the Big Sandy by now.

  Chapter Four

  But she was mistaken.

  He slid down noiselessly into the water next to Kiya. He might have been a stranger, for he wore nothing upon his head, nor any distinguishing clothing. His chest was bare, and strands of his long yellow-brown hair floated languidly around his face like threads of smoke. Kiya knew him only by the two cerulean eyes staring out at her. Their colour was incomprehensibly blue, their gaze so deep and steady they might have belonged to a statue of an ancient god.

  His arm slipped behind her back and she felt his hand grip her waist. Gently, he floated her body in front of his and pulled her against him. She could feel the hard, rippling contours of his stomach against her back as he nestled them against the bank.

  Kiya did not know what to do. If she fought him she would reveal them both. What had he told her? That he no longer claimed to be Libu. If that was so, then perhaps he was in as much danger as she.

  She held her breath as he took the hollow reed from her fingers and pressed it to his own lips, drawi
ng in a deep breath then returning it to her mouth. They passed the breathing reed back and forth in this manner as the Libu men began to retreat from the bank one by one. His arm surrounded her waist and kept her body pressed tightly against his, making her feel oddly safe.

  Soon she began to feel something else as well. A growing firmness where her backside pressed against his hips. Neither his loose-fitting pants nor her voluminous wrap could conceal it in their folds. That.

  At the advanced age of twenty-three, Kiya would have never guessed herself capable of stirring a man’s desire. Indeed, she had worked quite hard throughout her life to achieve the opposite effect. Did this man who wished to sell her in fact desire her? Or was this simply what happened when that part of a man came into contact with a woman’s body? Surely it was the latter, for Kiya was not the kind of woman men desired. Fie—she was not the kind of woman men could usually even detect was a woman.

  Kiya gazed up through the water. The Libu raiders were dispersing. She counted only two lingering on the far bank. A large insect glided across the surface of the water above them and a water snake swam languidly past. Meanwhile, the trader’s growing desire had found its resting place in the cleft of her backside.

  It was the first time in her life that she had been this close to a man. She might have moved to the side, but the sensation was not altogether unpleasant. As a test, she allowed herself to imagine what it would be like to feel him there. That was what happened when a man took a woman, was it not?

  She pictured the act, for she had heard the tomb workers discuss it in detail, and had seen it depicted in the reliefs carved upon the gates of Hathor’s temple. In this case he would not be above her, as the reliefs often depicted. He might lift her by the waist, for example, and then settle her upon him, pushing himself into her. But how could that be? How could she possibly contain him? For a moment an unfamiliar pain akin to hunger shot through her, then it was gone.