It was a fortress of the steppes, yet it could pounce like a lioness. A city that could be packed up and moved in a day. It was maze of camps and hitching posts and feedlots, dotted with tents and the ridden-down footpaths that formed between them, smelling of sweat and horses and perfume, too, where it wafted out of the tents of the richer women.
The Laghari encampment boasted over a hundred warriors, with a hundred battle-tested composite bows and a hundred rugged war horses to carry them to victory. Many of the warriors had second and third mounts, and among the women, the more successful warriors kept slaves. Whenever they weren't tending to their mistresses, the slaves watched over oxen and yaks and pack horses to carry the rice and jerky and canteens of water and fermented milk.
Captain Misha Laghari had never bothered to count how many human beings made up her band of mercenaries. She left that to her aides. She found it far more interesting to sit on her rug, the map spread out before her like a feast ready to eat. She planned their next move.
Across from her sat Chaarumathi, her second. The short, skinny brown girl had a drive and an intellect beyond her years, and Misha no longer planned anything without her. And Chaaru no longer went anywhere without her husband, Jalil. A few years ago, she had rescued him from the barbarians who preyed on his hometown, and now he lived to please her. He knelt behind her and massaged her shoulders, relieving her stress so she could think.
Not to be outdone, Misha had a man of her own. She had not yet learned his name, but he had promised her that he was a knowledgeable herbalist and medicine man. He held her left hand in his, rubbing her palm with a steaming cloth and then lathering it with a sweet, aromatic cream.
But Misha was not thinking about her skin. She thought of the map. "Here," she said, sweeping her right hand over a crescent of land. "The lord of the valley said that none of this land is meant to be settled. It is his private hunting ground. Any peasants we clear from the land, we can plunder. The lord did not so much as demand a cut." She pointed at a dot. "And this place is most vulnerable."
Chaaru did not look enthused. "But that village is far from any of the mountain passes. If we go there, we'll be long away. Shouldn't you be getting ready to go home?"
Misha waved this away. "We'll go home next summer."
Jalil's voice came in, "That is what you said last year."
Misha looked up, having forgotten he was there.
Chaaru reached up her right hand and cupped his chin. "Sh-sh-sh-sh," she whispered.
Misha knew that Chaaru valued his opinion. It wasn't that she did not listen to him. Over the years, Misha had watched her grow into a very perceptive and perspicacious young woman who listened to wisdom regardless of where it came from. It was merely that Jalil had spoken out of turn. He dutifully quieted down.
"Next year, we will think of returning," said Misha firmly.
Misha no longer believed in honesty. The truth so often got in the way, it had to be ignored sometimes. But every so often, a spirit of clarity struck Misha, and she was forced to be honest with herself. She had one of those moments now. Privately, she faced the fact that she had put off her return to the mountains for three years in a row, and she would certainly put it off again. She would put it off for a very long time. Part of her felt guilty for this. After all, her sister was still waiting for her to return and bring the dowry they could use to marry.
But that, she could ignore. Life was too short to let the truth get in the way.
* * *
Ihina was looking forward to this. For months, she had stewed in the crowded camp, going stir-crazy as her neighbors became more and more numerous. She spent whole weeks without once getting in the saddle and being out in the open, and her horse was as restless as she was.
And the men were driving her crazy. They wouldn't obey the simplest command from her. They seemed to think that, because they were no longer in the mountains, they no longer had to submit to her, as men should. It was no wonder the other mountain women all kept slaves. Free men were so useless, there was no alternative.
But now Ihina was free to ride under the open sky. And her destination was the nameless village in the bottom of the valley, full of men she could enslave. She licked her lips, imagining the delectable offerings she might find, ripe for captivity.
The village ran along a meandering stream in a grassy, muddy patch in the hills. As she crested the last hill, Ihina spotted the tip of a wooden tower first--it looked like a siege tower repurposed to be a home, probably for some jumped-up mayor. Next, she saw the steep roofs of wooden houses and barns, then the ramshackle huts, and finally the people. Women in thick, layered robes carried water from the stream, picked at whatever crop was growing in the paddies and tinkered in workshops. Women led around horses, piled wagons with goods.
And the men were nowhere. Ihina squinted at each figure she saw, but could find no hairy faces, no broad sets of shoulders, no tall bodies. She looked at the gaggle of teenagers huddled around a dice game, but as she tuned her ears to their gabbling, she heard only female voices.
Ihina gritted her teeth. She's nursed the hope that she could snare herself a man on this raid, and she'd had the luck to stumble across a village full of lesbians! Only the he-warriors would want to take any slaves from here, not that they could. Captain Laghari forbade the enslavement of women. That, at least, was one last shred of propriety the company still had.
Something captured Ihina's attention. On the edge of the village, in a marshy patch where no one could farm and no building could stand, a man knelt on the mud, his wrists and neck bound in a stockade. A black cloak shrouded his face, and a ruined tunic covered his body but was torn open at his back to reveal whip-marks. Ihina pictured herself standing behind him, adding a few stripes to his skin and listening to him grunt. She grinned at the thought. Then she imagined taking him home, cleaning him up and sliding a collar around his neck, and her grin deepened.
But it wasn't time for that yet. She backed off the hilltop, getting out of sight of the village, and mounted her horse. But she did no go back to camp. Instead, she rode downriver to a place where it flowed slowly and pooled, and she and her mount drank their fill. She patted the horse's flank. "We're waiting here, girl. For a while. Until the sun goes down." She thought of the bound, kneeling man. "And when it does, I'm going to go have a talk."
Ihina hated waiting. No matter how many times she muttered curses at it, no matter what she promised the spirits, the sun flatly refused to go faster through the sky. But it did move, and eventually it sank and took all its tattletale daylight with it. Now she could approach the village under the cover of night.
On foot, she wended her way through a gully that followed the meander, weaving between paddies and scarecrows and the silly, superstitious luck charms the women had strung up. She navigated by the light of the gibbous moon and listened for danger, but the women of the village were sound asleep. Then she reached the man. In the moonlight, she could not see his face, but only the ragged edges of his black hood. He looked like a bundle of worn-out cloth, tied together into a cheap facsimile of a man. The only flesh she could see was his striped back and the skin on the backs of his hands.
"Hey," she hissed. "Man. Look at me."
His hood bent up to look at her, and she was disappointed to see a rough, ugly face. "Who the hell are you?"
Ihina had thought about what she would say to him. She had planned to flirt with him, promise freedom and then take the promise back, toy with him and seduce him and revel in her power over him. But this man wasn't pretty, and only pretty men were worth the effort. "Who are you?" she said coldly, "and what are you doing in those stocks?"
