Free Warlord by Tasha Temple Page A

exposed.
    A dark, thickset man at the head of the group shifted in his saddle and grunted. “What are you doing here, girl?” he called to her from his horse.
    Sara heard the man’s question coming from above and behind her. Her mind registered that he spoke in a language different from her native tongue, but somehow she had no difficulty understanding him. She got up, unsteady on her feet, and turned to face him.
    The man immediately saw that this was no girl, but a woman. And a woman from a different land. Her skin was pale, sallow, weak-looking. Her eyes were a dull blue, although he had seen blue eyes on occasion among his people. She was skinny. She looked as though she hadn’t eaten in days, perhaps longer. Her hair was brown, matted and dirty.
    He dismounted. In addition to the short loincloth which left little to the imagination, he wore a strip of thick, black hide which wrapped around his neck and over one shoulder before running down the front of one huge arm. It was attached by metal studs to straps of leather which encircled his muscles. The last strap wound around the man’s wrist and connected to a metal ring on his middle finger. The effect was intimidating.
     
    He walked the few paces to Sara and circled slowly, considering her, one hand on the hilt of his sheathed saber.
    “What is your name?” he demanded. His voice was strong, his demeanor authoritative.
    It was easy to see he was used to being obeyed.
    Sara looked at him, a bit of glassiness in her eyes. She told him. He grunted. The name was unusual. He had never heard it before.
    “Where are you from?” He was tiring of this woman, giving her one last chance to convince him she should be allowed to remain unmolested on the plain.
    Sara thought for a moment. It wasn’t just that she was starving and having difficulty thinking clearly, but . . . she really didn’t know. She tried to recall how she had arrived on the steppes; what she was doing in this country . . . this land, wherever it was; anything . . . anything at all from her past. She drew a blank.
    Receiving no answer, the man spat. He picked up a tangled lock of Sara’s hair and then dropped it. He jerked his head at one of the men on horseback and moved swiftly to re-mount his horse. “Take her,” Sabalak ordered. “Add her to the rest at camp.”
    One of the men dismounted, walked to Sara and lashed her wrists together in front of her with a leather thong. He dragged her to his horse, threw her over his shoulder as if she weighed nothing, mounted and slid her to a seated position in front of him, facing forward.
    Perhaps I’ll have her myself, thought Sabalak as he watched the man secure her. Cleaned up a little and fed a lot, he was certain she would be quite fuckable.
    The riders immediately set off again at a gallop across the plain toward distant gray mountains. As the wind rushed through her hair and Sara leaned back against the horseman’s bare chest, it occurred vaguely to her that she should have resisted.

    * * * * *
The riders passed through a copse of archa trees into a large clearing of sorts. On one side ran a small river, on the other sprawled granite foothills, children of a much higher, jagged range standing sentinel beyond. In the clearing clustered innumerable skin tents, makeshift corrals, wooden enclosures, and piles and stacks of various supplies. The encampment was surrounded by the scrub juniper which made it difficult to see from the plain. Behind the camp, a large knoll provided a vantage point from which to scan the steppes. The site was strategically situated and so served as a semi-permanent operations base.
    The horseman holding Sara broke from the group, rode to one of the enclosures, and dumped the woman unceremoniously next to the gate. He departed without a backwards glance. An ancient-looking man with dark, wrinkled skin, his loins bound up in a diaperish animal wrap, puckered his toothless lips at Sara in a lecherous smile and then swung open