The Companion (11 page)

Ian’s keeper used a great metal pair of pliers to crimp the slaves’ chains to several posts. Naked, he crouched next to his post, alone there, since several of the other slaves had died. Ian glanced over at the Frenchman. Red marks, twin circles, as well as longer slashing cuts adorned his body. The twin circles were at his neck, his wrists, the crooks of his arms, his upper thighs. The slashes were everywhere. He had lasted longer than most, maybe a month. He was tough, that Frenchman. Now he crouched, rocking and murmuring. Perhaps his mind was gone at last
.

“Go with God,” Ian murmured to the Frenchman, though he was not sure the man could hear and was certain God was not listening to this particular part of his creation, since their many prayers for delivery had gone unnoticed. Or perhaps God did not hold sway here
.

He peeked up to see the tall Arab who followed the mistress of the caravan look sharply at him. The man was clothed from head to foot in a burnoose with a hood. Ian wondered if he would be whipped for whispering. But the keeper was busy throwing jerked meat and dried dates into a bowl to feed the mistress’s specially chosen slaves. They were fed better than the rabble at the rear, at least. Ian ate his portion greedily and dozed in the growing heat
.

The date palms gave a little shade, but that was reserved for the camels and their drivers. He could hear the drivers saying that this was the last oasis for many days. They would stay for two days to let the camels drink their fill. That meant rest
.

Sunset. Someone kicked him. He scrambled to his knees with lowered head, hoping to avoid the lash. The others still dozed. The sandaled foot did not belong to the keeper
.

“You,” said a voice in heavily accented English. “You are Briton?”

The sound was sweet. He had heard no English for six months. “Yes, Master. English.”

“Where do you come from?” The air vibrated around him, but to a lesser extent than around the woman who owned the caravan
.

“Suffolk.” It was the Arab. He had heard Ian speak to the Frenchman in English
.

“Keeper!” the man called in Arabic. “Release this slave. I will take his chain.” The heavy keeper hurried over and unbent the iron link, handing Ian’s chain to the Arab
.

“Come, English.” The chain was jerked up. Ian heaved himself to his feet and staggered stiffly after his new custodian. The man took him to the far side of the pool of precious water, away from the caravan encampment, and bade him drink. Ian knelt and slurped long and noisily. “Now, face.” Ian glanced up and then cupped his hands and rinsed the dust and grit from his face and neck, splashing water even into his hair. He had never felt such luxury. His chain was jerked again and he crept to the side of the man, who sat upon the trunk of a fallen date palm
.

“Tell me of Briton . . . no, England,” he corrected himself. “It is long since I was there.”

“What . . . what would the master like to know?” he croaked, his voice hardly human after not being used for so many months
.

“Is it still green? So green, it was.” The man smelled a little like her, like cinnamon
.

“Yes. Green. When I was last there.” The ache of an English May, so verdant and alive, swept over him until he thought he might waste his body’s water in tears
.

“And Londinium? No, London now. Is it grown even larger?”

“They say almost a million souls.”

“A million?” the Arab marveled. “It must be squalid, with so many.”

“In the poor neighborhoods yes. On the west side, there are the parks and squares, with flowers.” Ian grew a little braver. Yet still he was puzzled. Londinium?

“Did they ever buy back Richard?”

Now Ian was truly at sea. “Richard?”

“Of the heart of the lion. I came away, and then . . . there were other things to occupy me.”

Ian stole a glance upward, expecting a cuff for his boldness, but he had to see if he was being made game of. The Arab’s face was only expectant. Ian ducked his head. “He was ransomed. He came home from the Crusades and took his rightful crown from his brother John.”

“Good. Never did I like this John. He was not like some others of your countrymen. They were good to me. One Walter of Ghent helped me in the prison of the Moors when they had cut my bollocks off. We fought each other in Jerusalem, but when you are in a prison, what matters a city a thousand miles away? We broke from the prison of the Moors and sailed for England.”

Ian shot a look up and saw fond memory pass over the Arab’s face. “I passed some years there. I liked Walter’s people.” He rose suddenly. “But it was too green. I came home to the sand and Asharti found me, and I found my destiny.” He jerked the chain at Ian’s wrist. “Mayhap we will talk English again if you are still alive tomorrow.”

Ian stumbled back to his fellows behind the Arab. His owner’s name was Asharti. The Frenchman was being carried away. He had made his escape at last, though it had taken death to set him free. An imperious command came from the tent, and the Arab hurried ahead in the black night with the stars wheeling against the sky in mute disregard of human suffering. Ian could hear the Arab’s voice, soothing; then Asharti burst from her tent. Ian was being chained nearest to her of all the slaves. She did not hesitate in choosing among them this time. Even before he could be refastened to his post, she gestured at his keeper. Ian could understand enough to know she was giving orders for him to be washed
.

Ian’s heart leaped into his mouth. If only the Arab had not singled him out he would not have been standing where he could catch her attention. She might have chosen the Nubian she had picked up at the last village, or the Turk. She turned back to her tent. His keeper jerked his chain and suddenly, regardless of the consequence, he jerked back. His hands were free, and a lethal chain clanked at his wrist. He swung it at the keeper, hitting him across the cheek and nose. The man went down like a horse at the knacker’s and Ian stumbled around the pool. The keeper raised a cry. Ian saw the camel drivers just ahead of him jolt upright from where they smoked their tobacco. But he was by them, stumbling naked into the deep sand beyond the pool. Ahead were only the black night lit by stars and the white sand pulling at his feet. His breath heaved in his lungs—the freedom of it! He pounded on, expecting the crack of guns at his back from the camel drivers, waiting for the sear of pain that said he was hit, welcoming it, if only his death would come while he was running free in the desert night. But no shot came. Instead he heard the honking cry of a camel, the rhythmic beat of its great splayed feet, so much more suitable than his for sand. He turned just as it galloped past him. There was the sear of pain but it was from a truncheon wielded by a man leaning from the camel’s back. Light flashed in Ian’s head like a thousand stars and he dropped to the sand, dazed
.

Hands pulled at him, shouting. Blows fell about his shoulders. He stumbled, was dragged up, back to the pool. Hands shoved him into the water. He fell to his knees. The water was only to his chest. Two of the camel boys scrubbed him with a rough cloth until he was raw. They held him down and took a razor to his beard, pulled him out, and dusted him with lime to kill lice. His senses began to return, along with a mighty ache in his head. Then it was into the water again, strong lye soap, dried roughly and delivered naked to the flap of the embroidered tent. The angry keeper, a weal across his face, unbolted Ian’s shackle and replaced it with a hemp rope. He was about to deliver a fisted blow when the tall Arab raised his voice
.

“Do not damage him!” The keeper fell back reluctantly and the tall Arab gestured Ian through the flap. “English, it is your time.” He looked sorry. “Your rebellion will please her.”

Ian straightened. What could one woman who probably didn’t weigh nine stone possibly do to a man who even still weighed fourteen? What indeed? Something inside him shuddered so deeply he thought he might faint
.

Inside the tent, lamps burned in a soft glow, their flames flickering on the red fabric of the tent walls. There were the carpets that were rolled every day and put across a camel’s back, unfurled now in sumptuous luxury, and soft cushions, fabric that hung from the tent pole in shades of orange and magenta and burgundy. In the center of the room a low carved table was set with plates of dates and sweetmeats
.

She lay across a low couch, her body draped insouciantly over cushions embroidered in gold. She wore a diaphanous gown that hid nothing, clipped at the shoulders with gold brooches and held at the waist by a girdle of worked gold. Her lips were painted gold, and her toenails. She was barefoot, her leg up to her thigh bared by the slit in that transparent fabric. He could smell her scent. Ambergris. That was what it was. She smelled like cinnamon and ambergris
.

“If you think I’m going to service you like some bullock at a town fair services the local heifers, you’re damned well mistaken,” he said through clenched teeth. Let her have him beaten to death. He didn’t give a damn. He expected shouting, a call to someone to punish him. Even if she knew no English, she could not mistake the tone
.

She smiled. A cobra might smile like that when it saw a rat that thought it could avoid the inevitable. The smile grew, showing even white teeth. She was so beautiful and so sure of it in that flickering lamplight; the black eyes, the skin that never saw the sun, creamy and soft looking. She raised a hand and beckoned to him. He sealed his lips and stood where he was
.

A low chuckle escaped her, as though she enjoyed his resistance, his battle with his fear. She beckoned again, only this time her eyes seemed to glow in the lamplight. It was the strangest thing he had ever seen, like cats’eyes in the glow of a lantern, only red. He found himself taking a step toward her. He tried to stop, tried to look away, and he could do neither. He felt strangely distant from himself as he took step after step toward her. Then he was kneeling beside her. He could feel what she demanded of him regardless of the difference in language, and there was no refusing. He did not even want to refuse her. He wanted her, lusted after her as he had never lusted after any woman in his life. He saw his hand reach out and run his palm up the smooth skin of her calf, up the back of her knee, and so on up to her thigh. If only she would allow him to pleasure her . . . He felt the throb in his loins and knew that he was hard and ready for her. She leaned over him. He raised his face to hers that he might gaze deeply into those red, shining eyes. Her breasts hung almost within reach. She wanted him to touch them, so he did, feeling the heft, thumbing her nipple. She put one hand, with those incredibly long nails, at the back of his neck under the fall of his newly washed hair and lifted his lips to hers while her other hand raked across his back, the nails scratching lightly over his most recent welts, threatening. Her mouth was soft, supple. She opened his lips with her tongue and caressed his mouth from the inside. She wanted his tongue as well, and he slipped it inside her mouth and drew it across her teeth. Her canines were sharp. She moved her lips over his face. His eyes closed briefly. She lapped at his temple where a trickle of blood from the truncheon blow wound down toward his cheek. This seemed to excite her and she grew more urgent
.

Somewhere he knew that he was not his own man in this moment. Even his cock was not his own. She pressed herself against him and wrapped her fingers, with those long golden nails, around his shaft. He was hard as he had ever been. Lava pooled in his balls, ready to spurt. He gave a moan as she pulled on his cock, lightly and then with more force. He thought he would burst. But she would not let him burst. She bade him look into her eyes, and with that one look she bottled his lust up inside him. She controlled him, mind and body. The horror of that realization began to work on him. She pulled aside the diaphanous red cloth and bared her breast to him. He bent to suckle it. He tried to pull away, tried with all his soul. She chuckled, low in her throat, and bared her other breast. He bent over it in answer to her demand. Her palms cupped his buttocks, her thumbs feeling the raised welts of the whip across them
.

At last she lay back against the back of her low chaise and pushed his head down to where her gown was split to the waist. She wanted her pleasure from his tongue and not his cock. He gave a groan and found her nub of pleasure. She tasted salty and warm. He was sweating lightly in the heat of the tent. He knew what she wanted, exactly. He did not know how he knew. He lapped in long strokes and then flicked lightly, back and forth, on and on, easing her by stages toward her climax. When it came, she pressed him against her with surprising strength and bucked against him, moaning. Her image seemed to waver for a moment, soft around the edges; then she popped back into hard-edged focus and went limp
.

She released him and wriggled into her cushions like a kitten. Ian sat back, his own need unsatisfied, an ache deep in his loins. Her eyes opened and began to glow red again. She gestured to the table. He fed her dates and offered her honeyed mead from a chased goblet. He was still erect. She ran her hand through his hair as she might pet a dog. She lifted his chin to look at his face, opened his eyelids wider to see the blue. She fingered his nipples and rubbed his throat. Then her caresses grew rougher. He felt the compulsion in his mind grow until she held him tight in mind and body once again and began her demanding
.

This time she opened her knees to him. In spite of his need, he entered slowly, as she allowed him to do. She held his testicles approvingly as he pushed inside her. Ian’s breath was already coming short and shallowly. His body sweated as he thrust inside her, his cock filling her as she wanted to be filled. He would go on as long as she wished to go on, because he had no choice and because it was her choice if he was to have a release. She would choose the time and the strength and the means. Or she might choose no release at all and keep him hard and needing forever. She arched into him and pressed her breasts against his heaving chest. Then she drew him down on top of her and began licking at his throat. He thrust on as she clamped her legs about his hips and banged in counterpoint. A sharp stab of pain at his neck that was not pain but something akin to ecstasy almost put him over the top, but she had him firmly, and they rocked together as she suckled at his neck. Ian gasped for air as she sucked on, and then he felt her release for the second time, a grunting throb that threatened his consciousness. It rocked on and on. Then she allowed his own release as hers ebbed. He came in a shrieking burst as she stopped the sucking at his throat and he collapsed against her, almost unconscious
.