The tent was feeling more and more stifling. It had been one week since Tatyana and the other surviving villagers, all women, had been marched into the grand encampment of the horsemen, to begin their life of enslavement. For one week, Tatyana had lived in the warrior's tent and served his needs as his bed slave. She had sucked his cock at least once a day and he had fucked her even more than that. Tatyana had grown accustomed to his touch and had learned more and more about how he liked to be touched. That was...when he let her touch him freely.
After her fourth day in camp, something had happened. Tatyana had no idea what it was, since she had no contact with anyone except the warrior. Her entire world had been reduced to the tent, and no one else from the camp, not even other slaves, were permitted in the warrior's tent. The chain around her ankle prevented Tatyana from even reaching the entrance flap, so she could not so much as peer through it to watch the daily routines of the horsemen's vast, tent city. Yet, she could tell from the cold, guarded look in the warrior's eyes that something had upset him.
And he treated her differently. The evening of that first day, instead of asking her to suck his cock as a prelude to several hours of fucking, which had become their nightly routine, he tied her arms tightly to the posts at the head of his bed, then spread her legs wide open by tying her ankles to the posts at the foot of his bed. Then, he slit her humble, ragged shift down the middle, tearing it with his bare hands and leaving her without any clothes to wear.
When he fucked her that night, it was angry and desperate. Yet Tatyana still moaned beneath him at the feel of his cock, stabbing deep in her wet heat, pummeling her furiously. Though his hands gripped her almost tightly enough to bruise, though his teeth gnawed at her nipples where once his lips had suckled so tenderly, the warrior managed to leave her screaming and begging for more. He stared down at her so oddly after he released, as if he were seeking an answer to a question he refused to ask. But he barely spoke to her and, when he was through fucking her, he released her from the bed but retied her wrists and ankles securely with thick, leather cords.
And he had her sleep on cushions far removed from the bed. He no longer held her close to him while they slept together. She was comfortable enough. The warrior always placed two blankets over her, and he had set up her sleeping cushions closer to the fire that warmed the tent. But he kept her at a distance.
That had been three days ago.
Today, something had changed again.
The warrior spoke to her for the first time in days. It was morning, and the warrior returned to the tent scarcely a half an hour after leaving. Usually, he left in the morning and returned only again in the evening, which meant that Tatyana spent the long day alone, reciting stories to herself or scratching pictures on the hearth with cooled chunks of charcoal. Today, however, he returned quickly and set a basket down in the middle of the tent.
There were three, deerskin pouches heavy and swollen with water. There were piles of flatbread, dried and smoked strips of meat, some wild berries and even a few apples.
'I am going on a journey. You will stay in the tent. I have brought you food and water. Do not leave the tent. There is no wood, for I do not want you building a fire. You will be warm enough under the blankets on my bed -- and wearing these clothes,' the warrior explained gruffly.
The warrior tossed what looked like a red, woolen overcoat at her, along with a sash that had been dyed the color of a blue, summer sky. Tatyana saw that he had even brought her a pair of boots. She had been going about naked in the warrior's tent for three days. Having clothing to wear was an abrupt reminder of just how much she had lost in the span of a week. Two weeks ago, she had lived an entirely different life. She had been tending the crops that she and Grigor raised, and feeding their goats and sheep and chickens. Her clothes had been simple and homespun, but pretty -- all decorated with the colorful flowers she had stitched by hand or the geometric bands she had sewn around the arms. Now that the warrior was bestowing new clothes on her, in the style of the horsemen, the full weight of all that Tatyana had lost pressed down on her chest and nearly reduced her to tears.
But she managed not to cry. Instead, in a hoarse voice, she asked, 'Where are you going? How long will you be gone?'
'Where I go is not your concern. Just keep my bed warm until I return. It should be only a few days,' the warrior answered curtly. And with that, he turned and left.
Tatyana wanted to grip his arm, hold him back, and scream at him, 'What's wrong?! What's going on?!'
Instead, she just watched him leave, feeling confused, angry, and frightened.
Had she done something wrong? Had she made him angry? Why had he been so different since that fourth day? Tatyana's mind echoed with these questions and more. She also wondered how she would bear it while he was gone. Although the warrior was her captor, he had been her only companion. When he was gone during the day, Tatyana had no one to talk to. No human contact at all. His few words were all the reminder had that she was a speaking human being, a person, and not just a beast. How would she survive the isolation if the warrior were gone for more than a few days?
Tatyana worried about that even more than she worried about starving to death.
All throughout the first day, she was edgy. She paced, but remained quiet, as the warrior had told her to be. Tatyana wasn't quite sure why she honored his demand in his absence, except for the fact that she knew no one else in the horsemen's camp, so the warrior was the only one who made her feel even slightly safe. By the end of the day, Tatyana had tensed with hope that she heard the warrior returning so many times, she was exhausted. Sleeping in his bed was only a partial relief. It felt empty.
The boredom that set in by the third day was numbing. Tatyana began to wonder if the warrior had abandoned her, if he was living at a different camp now, with no plans to return. Had this all been a trick? By the fifth day after the warrior had left, a new worry haunted Tatyana's thoughts: what if the warrior had been killed? The most obvious reason that he would have had to leave for a while would have been a raid. What if he had been sent on a raiding party, but he had been wounded in the melee? What if he lay dying somewhere? What would become of her?
That was the day that Tatyana resolved to escape. She couldn't bear the uncertainty, or the thoughts of what her life would be like if she were discovered in this tent, the leftover sex slave of a dead warrior, any longer.
And it had been almost two weeks since she had seen the sky.
Escaping was not easy. The warrior had left her right ankle shackled and iron was unyielding. She did not have the key to unlock the band that encircled her ankle, but Tatyana knew other tools for opening a lock. She had seen locks before in her uncle's inn -- of course she had. Almost every traveler who passed through used locks on their trunks. The trouble was, there was little metal in the tent -- definitely nothing like a knife. She searched and searched the tent and found nothing. It wasn't until, two days after Tatyana resolved to flee, that she peered under the bottom edge of the tent and spied what looked like a pin or a nail on the ground. With her face pressed to the ground, Tatyana scanned what she could see of the surroundings before reaching out quickly to snatch the nail. It took her another half a day before she felt and heard a click inside the lock and the iron band around her ankle fell open.
Tatyana cried with relief as she massaged her ankle and began thinking long and hard about how she would manage to sneak out of such a big, crowded encampment without being stopped by someone. Fate had chosen to favor her, though, for when night fell, she discovered that the sky was cloudy and the moon had waned to barely a sliver. Tatyana could not have asked for more darkness to cloak her movements. She slung one of the skins of water over her shoulder and stuffed some flatbread and dried meat in the front of her overcoat, just above the sash which helped hold everything close to her chest. Then, she pulled on the boots, which felt like soft rabbit fur inside, and for the first time since she had arrived in the horsemen's city, she slipped outside the tent.
The air was cool and fresh. Tatyana lost no time in creeping silently among the tents, until at last, she found her way to the outermost tents and stole away into the night. There was so little light that Tatyana couldn't see whether they were on open plain or near hills. She searched her memory; on the day that she and her fellow villagers had arrived, they had passed hills in the morning and then walked across open grasslands all afternoon. But was she even headed back the way she had come? Without stars or moonlight, Tatyana could not tell what direction she was going.
But she ran anyway.
All night, Tatyana ran and tripped and stumbled and fell and ran until she could no longer lift her feet. As dawn drew its bow and shot the first arrows of light across the eastern horizon, she was finally able to see her surroundings. There was nothing. Nothing but grasslands nearby. She hadn't been running toward home. She was lost on the open plains. But she was free -- she couldn't see the tent city anywhere!
But she could see where the sun was rising, which let her know which direction she needed to go to return home. Tatyana lay down on the ground amid the high grass, her whole body aching and exhausted, and finally let herself sleep.
A twitching in her arm stirred her awake. A painful twitching.
Tatyana's eyes snapped open and she saw two, great vultures perched on the ground, poking at her arm. They must have taken her for dead and were trying to get a meal out of her. Roaring to life, she kicked her legs, thrashed her arms, and screeched at the top of her lungs. This convinced the pair of scavengers that she was too much trouble and they soared up into the air to join a few other, circling vultures. Tatyana rubbed her arm, which was sore from the vultures' pecking but, thankfully, not bleeding.
