Enslaved By The Desert Trader. Greta Gilbert
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their arrows upon the tomb workers. A dozen of Kiya’s fellow workers were struck instantly, collapsing where they stood. The rest ran. Some sought refuge inside the Great Pyramid itself. Others escaped into the desert.
Kiya dropped to the ground, playing dead. She counted her breaths. One. Two. Three. Slowly the rain of arrows abated. Kiya opened her eyes to find the Libu raiders gathering around the grain tent. It was as Kiya suspected: the Libu had not come for war. They had come to the plain of Giza for the same reason she had—for that thing that had become, after two years of drought, more precious than gold: grain.
This could not be. Kiya needed her grain. She had earned her allotment of it. And she had been so close, so very close to receiving it.
‘Run!’ a man yelled from far away, but Kiya did not heed him. She had no family, and not a single aroura of land to her name. Without her ration of grain she would have to return to a life on the streets of Memphis—to the life of a beggar.
And that she simply refused to do.
Slowly, she stood. She gripped her grain sack and, in the confusion of Khemetians running away from the grain tent, began to run towards it.
She wrapped the empty sack around her head like a turban. She was a Libu now, a new kind of imposter. On swift legs she darted among the Libu donkeys, and the animals’ large bodies concealed her and protected her from the chaos.
Outside the grain tent few Khemetian guards remained alive. Their wooden shields had not been able to protect them. Like sacred bulls on feasting day the soldiers were being pierced, one by one, by Libu spears and arrows.
It was a grisly slaughter. So much Khemetian blood was spilt upon the sands. But Kiya could not afford to panic or to mourn. She rushed past the battling men and rolled under the tent’s loose hide. Inside, a pile of grain the size of a temple rose before her. She did not stop to gaze or even to think. She just took off her sack and started stuffing it, until it was so heavy with grain she could barely lift it. She did not even hear the ripping sound of her shirt as she rolled over the rough ground back out into the fray.
She could hardly see for the storm of dust outside the tent. She crouched low and kept the sack close to her body. The acrid smell of blood thickened the air and she choked for breath as she dashed eastward, towards the Great River.
As she ran she noticed that her shirt was gone, and that the wraps she had bound so tightly about her chest had been ripped. The tattered strips of fabric hung from her waist like a tailor’s loose strands and she felt the warm air upon her naked breasts. Her sex was exposed, but it did not matter for her sack was filled.
In fact it overflowed. She carried a windfall of grain—vastly more than she would have been allotted by the priests. And it was all hers. She hoisted it onto her back and felt her spirit grow large. It would be more than enough grain to sustain her through a full cycle of the sun. If she travelled far enough upriver she might even be able to find a plot of land to till and plant. She could trade some grain for her rent and await the flood, as farmers did.
She adjusted her course towards the southeast and became resolved: she would not be returning to the capital city. Never again would she skulk around its docks searching for fish heads, or roam the central market hoping to discover an onion peel or a half-eaten radish. With her boon of grain she would finally be free of want, finally merit her countrymen’s respect.
She heaved the bag onto the ground and shook her fist at the sky. ‘Is that all you have for me, evil Seth, God of Chaos?’ she shouted. ‘For that is nothing!’
Suddenly an arrow flew past her. Then another. She ducked her head, afraid to turn around. She heard the thunder of heavy hooves behind her—not a donkey, something larger. They pounded the ground like drumbeats. They were getting louder, closer. She hoisted the sack upon her back once again and coaxed her legs to run, but soon the large donkey-like creature was upon her. Its rider’s large, muscular arm reached down and wrapped itself around her body, and she and her sack were being lifted off the ground and into the air.
‘Do not fight,’ whispered a thick, husky voice into her ear. ‘Now you are mine.’
If it had not been for their mindless blood sport he never would have spotted her. Sickened by the massacre—the senseless loss of life—Tahar had let his eyes seek refuge upon the horizon. That was when he’d noticed her distant figure. She’d been running towards the Great River with a bag so full of grain that she’d scarcely been able to keep it off the ground. But it was not the bag that had caught his eye. It was the way her body had moved across the plain. Her small exposed breasts had swung to and fro in an awkward, seductive way—the way of a woman.
What was she doing there at all? It was well known that Khemetians did not allow women to labour directly upon the King’s tomb. Women were thought to be too closely tied to the beginning of earthly life to be associated with the passage at its end.
And yet there she’d been—a woman to be sure. If she had been wearing a shirt or tunic he might have missed her completely, for in all other ways she was like a man: tall, thin, with taut, muscular limbs that gave no hint of feminine softness. She wore no wig, and her worker’s perfectly shaven head shone like burnished copper in the morning sun.
She had the spirit of a man as well—or so he had discovered as she’d kicked and flailed atop his horse. So energetic had been her rebellion that she had given him no choice but to stop at the first oasis he could find to secure her bonds.
He stood above her now, admiring his work. She was seated against the trunk of a date palm, her ankles and wrists wrapped with twine he had wound three fingers thick. The palm gave little shade, and he smiled with satisfaction as he watched the hot sun melt away any remaining notions she might have of escape.
‘I know that you are thirsty,’ Tahar said at last. He squatted on the ground beside her and placed his water bag at her lips. ‘Drink now, for we cannot linger here.’
The stubborn woman refused to drink. Instead, she pursed her lips together and shook her head.
He studied her angry face. She was no goddess—not yet. But she had potential. Her bones were fine and displayed excellent symmetry. Even in her emaciated state her lips were red and plump, and long, arched eyebrows hung high above her big dark eyes, giving her an air of readiness and making her scowl appear almost charming.
Tahar took a draught from the water bag himself. ‘Do you see?’ he asked. ‘It is just water. You must drink. Quickly.’
The Libu raiders would be swarming every oasis from the Great River to the Big Sandy soon, celebrating their success. If they discovered Tahar and the woman they would insist that she be sold into marriage and would demand their share of her bride price. That was the rule amongst the desert tribes—spoils were divided equally. But Tahar knew that, with any likely suitor absent, the raiders would demand their fair share of the woman herself—a possibility he simply could not tolerate.
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