Assimilated

She nodded. "This is Honeycomb Creek. There are several others like it."

"I don't think Kabanji was on this creek. Mio wasn't expecting to run into an ambush so soon."

"I heard about an encounter with soldiers on the Aga back in the month of Praise. But that's north and west of here. They would have crossed the Honeycomb to get to it."

"If the stream was running low, I could see how they might have never noticed it," I offered.

She nodded, looking at me thoughtfully. "That might give us more time before they find us again. A day or two."

I ate quietly for a while, savoring the new flavors. She seemed lost in thought, her lips working in that way they did when she contemplated something.

"Do you have family, Djo? Children?"

I shook my head. "My father died before the war. Mother and brother, during the plague, a few years ago. My sisters married. I lost contact with them. I... missed a lot."

She flinched, so slightly I would have missed it if I wasn't watching her. "You never married?"

"I wanted to. I thought once I had some coin, I would settle."

"You must have earned land, though," she said. "You're old enough to have served at least a full term."

I shook my head. "I didn't want a farm. My father was a lake trader. I wanted a boat."

She nodded, sadly. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

**

The next morning, Faisa took me to the stream to bathe me again. I dunked my head, spit out water. A couple of bare-breasted young women washing next to us giggled as they watched me.

"Don't you get tired of this?" I asked, as she rinsed my skin. "You're not my servant."

She didn't need the brush this time, since I wasn't as filthy. Instead she used a cloth and her bare hands. "You have cuts and scratches. You need to stay clean. Should I ask Saidi to do it instead?"

"No," I said hastily. I didn't think I'd survive that.

Faisa chuckled as she rubbed my back down.

I didn't want to ask her to take off the manacles. I doubted she would allow it, but there was more. I was afraid to ask. I didn't want to give her any reason to mistrust me.

The realization shocked me. I wanted to please her.

"There could be a place for you here, Djo. Do you believe that?"

"As the only man, among all these women?"

She didn't respond right away. Reaching around me, her wet hand fondled my cock. This wasn't washing. I was sure of it this time. Her palm cradled my shaft, fingers curling up around it, stroking it as if she was aiming my release out into the center of the stream.

I closed my eyes, not caring if anyone saw. It had been so long. I couldn't even touch myself, these last few days. I almost whimpered with need. My hips began to push against her pull, intensifying the sensation.

Her strokes slowed, and then stopped. When I turned to her, she was looking back at me. I wanted to drown in those eyes. The muscles in my pelvic floor continued to throb, making my cock twitch.

"There are rituals," she said. "Rituals you could undergo to be accepted. Like I was."

I wanted to beg her to finish. It took me a moment to recall what we were talking about. "What are the rituals?" I asked.

"Just think about it," she said. She resumed washing me. She paid close attention to my ass, making me squat in the water while she ran fingers over the pucker of my nether hole.

She took me to the mat and rubbed me down with oil. Again, she was thorough, as I lay on my back and then on my belly. It seemed she was interested in more than protecting me from insect bites. My mind raced, anticipating what she would do to me next.

Her fingers ran up the crack of my ass, two spreading the cheeks while the middle one drew circles on the ring of my asshole. I gasped, squirming, my cock still hard beneath me, trapped between my leg and the woven reeds of the mat.

It was crude. It would have been humiliating even if we hadn't been out in the open. I was a warrior. She was my enemy. And yet I hoped that she would... use me.

Faisa's oiled finger slipped inside me, stretching the ring of my anus and curling the tip within. I moaned, flooded with shame and excitement. No one had ever touched me like that before.

She pulled out her finger and continued rubbing down the back of my legs.

When she was done, she rinsed her hands and put on her skirt. "Do you want to stay outside again?" she asked, as if nothing had happened.

I nodded silently.

I watched her for a long time as she went off to work. A group of hunters had brought in several birds. She and Saidi helped them pluck the carcasses of brightly colored feathers and collect them in baskets. Then they joined a larger group that seemed to be preparing the communal meal, pounding yams and cutting and cleaning garden vegetables.

I watched how she interacted with the others, curious as to the hierarchy. In my world, there had always been hierarchy, from the Queen down to the small farmers and fishermen that made up most of the population. Here there seemed to be none. Faisa and Saidi joked with each other, and joined the other women in work songs.

Elsewhere, another group of women labored atop a hut, repairing the layers of thatch in the roof. As I scanned the village, I noticed something that I had overlooked as inconsequential the day before. There were two circular clearings that looked like meeting spaces. The one down closest to the water was most interesting.

In the muddy flat beside the stream was a rounded log on legs. It was too narrow to be a table, and no one seemed to use it for their labors. Furs had been thrown over the top of it. There were metal rings in the earth beside it, at the head and foot, as if to tie something down atop it. It was surrounded by a ring of posts with burn markings at their tips, like torches.

The sun emerged from the clouds overhead, warming my back. I began to drowse. I was still aroused from my exposure and what Faisa had done to me. In my half-dreams, I pleasured myself on the mat over and over again, for all to see.

**

"Where are all the men and children?" I asked her, as she fed me that night, back in my cell.

"There are none," she said. "I mean, there are a few men in other settlements. Some families were smuggled north, from what I am told."

"But how is that possible? Don't you have sex?"

"Of course," said Faisa.

"With each other?"

She was feeding me by hand tonight. Pounded yam dipped in a sauce made of peppers and okra and coconut milk. She popped another piece in my mouth. "Surely you've seen men rut each other in the army?" she asked.

I nodded as I ate. It wasn't common, but I assumed that wherever men were isolated from women they lay together, whether openly or in secret. The Foundlings - the Queen's elite troops - were open about their bonded male pairs.

"With women, it is no different," she said. "We rut each other."

She'd questioned me more about soldiers. How many were now barracked in Lungu, and how many were further inland, closer to where we were. Their dispositions and leaders. How well they knew this area, on the northwestern frontier of the Queendom. I told her everything I knew before the conversation had turned to rutting.

"Do you rut men, Djo?"

I shook my head. "Never."

Faisa fed me another piece. "How long has it been since you were with a woman?"

The question was an intimate one, but I didn't hesitate to answer. "A whore in Lungu," I said. "I guess it has been a few weeks."

I wondered if Faisa rutted Saidi. I imagined the sounds Faisa would make when she was touched, how the expression on her face would soften.

I was silent for a while as she fed me. Finally she said, "I see a question behind your eyes. Ask it."

"What you did to me at the stream," I began.

I didn't ask why she did it, what pleasure it gave her, or whether she had the right. She looked at me expectantly, a piece of yam in her hand.

I couldn't bring myself to say it. Even though the thought ran roughshod through my imagination.

She glanced down at my hardening cock, visible beneath the shadows of the lamp light. "You want me to continue?" she asked.

I nodded.

She fed me the yam. "Do you want to finish your food?"

I could have kept eating, but I wanted this more. Much more.

"I've had enough," I said.

"Lie down on your back."

I did so on the mat, my hands at my side, and the chain beneath my butt. She dipped her hands in the washing bowl. As if an afterthought, she unbuckled her sword and sheath, and the knife at her belt and set them by the door. Then she came and sat by my side.

"What I did to you at the stream," Faisa said, as she began to rub me gently, from my thighs to my belly. "I suppose I wanted most to see how you would react. If it was something that pleased you."

I nodded quickly. "It did."

"But it was not entirely fair of me. If our positions had been reversed... I would not have wanted that."

I understood her point. Did I deserve what she was doing to me, like being marched around naked in front of the others? Maybe I did deserve it, as punishment. Maybe that was the difference.

"Does it matter, as long as it pleases me?" I asked.

Her right hand found my cock and began rubbing along its length. Her left explored further. She cradled my balls, but her fingers delved even lower, to my taint. "What if I want to do more, and that does not please you?"

I don't care... as long as it pleases her.

Of course, I didn't say that. That was lust talking; this desperate need I had to earn her praise and her trust. I wouldn't want her to do something that caused me pain. Would I? I moaned softly, becoming lost in her gaze again. Part of me couldn't believe this was happening.

She began to stroke me, slowly. The finger of her left hand circled my anus. As the speed of the strokes quickened, she began to press on my pucker.

"Relax," Faisa said, watching me intently.

I didn't fully understand why I trusted her so completely. Perhaps when someone holds your life in their hands, when they accept responsibility for you, it is natural to yield to them. My body, almost literally, belonged to her. I felt at that moment that I would have given her my soul as well.

Her finger pushed inside me, curling as it did before. I knew it wasn't deep, but it was enough. By now, I was as hard as I'd ever been. It was as if my cock was lifting my hips off the floor. As much as I wanted to prolong the pleasure, I needed to come.

She thrust into and stroked me in rhythm, until I reached that point before my climax when nothing would stop it, like floodwaters rolling towards a feeble dam.

"By the Ancestors!" I wailed in relief.

My cock pulsed with each spurt, sending my seed Ancestors knew where. All I could do was groan as my body slowly came down from its summit, relaxing. Her finger pulled out of me, leaving my anus twitching and empty.

Faisa fed me again, this time giving me her hand to lick. It was dripping with my seed. I sucked her fingers and palm clean, amazed at myself.

Seemingly on impulse, she straddled me and bent over me to kiss me. Our lips met; hers as soft and warm as rain in the month of Storms. Then her lips opened, and our tongues dueled. I felt her haltered breasts rubbing against me, and further down, the oven of her yoni on my navel.

"I belong to you, Faisa." I whispered, between kisses, in disbelief of what I was saying. "Rut me."

She kept kissing me, seemingly lost in her own lust. Her hands gripped my scalp, while mine flexed impotently at my side, straining the chain beneath me. Then she slowed and stopped.

"No," she replied, sitting up. "This is new to me. It's been a long time since I've been... with a man. But," she said. She got off me and sat beside me again, this time alongside my chest. "If you want, I could get more practice..."

She reached for my cock again, now glistening with my own seed. I had no doubt I could get hard again, after all of the stimulation of the past days. I wanted to please her too. I curled upwards, trying to kiss her leg.

But this wasn't a position I could hold without use of my hands, especially with the distraction of what she was doing to me. As I lay back down, she stroked my face. Her fingers, still smelling of my sperm, grazed over my stubbly face, and finally found my lips.

As she stroked my cock, and it grew hard again in her hand, she idly played with my tongue and the insides of my mouth. But her focus was on my throbbing shaft.

Faisa seemed to make a decision as I suckled on her fingers. She bent over my cock and took it into her mouth. I moaned around her finger, overwhelmed with the sensation of being, at least in this way, inside of her. Her yoni was not far from my face, and its musk seemed to permeate the air, adding to my sense of being enveloped.

As she said, she may not have been well-practiced. But her continued strokes, along with the suction and rolling of her tongue over the head of my cock soon brought me close to my peak again.

I began thrusting gently into her mouth. She accommodated, her cloud of hair bobbing up and down. Her finger continued to play with my mouth, scissoring my tongue as she sucked the life out of me.

Again I swore, mumbling through her fingers. She continued to tug, her mouth clamped on the head of my cock, as I came. My mind was washed clean. Soon she was kissing me again, her mouth coated with my creamy spend.

"By all the Ancestors," I mused, when we were done. I was suddenly very drowsy.

For the first time, I saw a smile spread across her face. She kissed me once more on the forehead. "Sleep well, Djo."

I did.

**

The next two idyllic days passed much the same way. Faisa would bathe me in the Honeycomb, and feed me twice a day. During the bulk of the day, she would do village work. She left me sitting on the mat near the stream, in plain view of the other village women, as if I were a prize pet to be overseen. I watched the village women go about their duties. They watched me, more subtly. My clothing remained nonexistent, and my manacles remained on. I was becoming used to life as a captive of the Kong.

She continued to pleasure me in the yam hut with her hands and mouth, refusing to allow me to return the favor. Her skill - and my anticipation - grew. Once she brought me to my peak while she bathed me, jerking my cock off into the stream while other women walked by. I guessed that they only pretended not to notice.

I knew little of what Faisa did when she was with the others. I assumed that she had passed on whatever strategic knowledge she'd gained from me to them. She slept, and for the most part ate, outside of my company.

On the third day, while I Faisa was rubbing me with oil, she asked me an unexpected question.

"What was your father's name?"

"Akile," I replied. It meant "independent."

"You hold fond memories of him?"

I nodded, as she kneaded oil into my shoulders and arms. "He was gone a lot. But he spent as much time with us as he could," I said. "When I began to hate the war, I remembered our time together on the lake. I remembered the freedom that I imagined he had."

"If something I do does not please you, if it hurts you or causes you shame, I want you to say his name," she said.

I blinked, looking at her, and she stopped what she was doing.

"This is important, Djo. To me, it is important," she said. "If there are others around, and you wish to keep your dignity, or if you just don't want to tell me 'no', say 'Akile'."

I nodded. "I will," I promised.

Later, while I was sitting on the mat beside the Honeycomb, I saw two women cross the clearing, approaching me. By now, I recognized all of the villagers - I'd counted thirty-two. These two were new.

One of them had gray braids that hung to below her halter top. I could tell by the way the other women interacted with the elders that they were revered. These Kong rebels were mostly young, disconnected from their ancestral grounds. The gray-haired women were the roots of their community.

The other woman was younger and stocky, hazel-eyed with short hair braided into knots. She wore a poultice on her torso. I realized that this was Nika, who had been injured during our capture, and whom I had not seen since that day.

"Rumor has it Faisa has you nearly tamed," Nika said. "A far call from the bounty hunter who once charged her with murder in his eye."

I doubted I ever had murder in my eye. Had I? Who told her that, anyway?

The older woman asked me more pointedly. "Is that true? Are you ready to join us, Djo?"

"I will do whatever Faisa commands of me," I said.

Nika wagged a finger. "Not what she asks. What we all command. If you want to be one of us, you will have to answer to us all. Amora too."

"I don't know what that means," I said. Was this elder woman Amora?

"She hasn't told you about the Box?" the older woman who might have been Amora asked.

I shook my head no, but I saw where her gaze went. The Box. Saidi had mentioned it when they first brought me to the village.

"Then you are not ready," the older woman said, with a slight scowl of disappointment. "What has she been doing with him?" she muttered, as they turned to leave me.

"I'm sorry about Byam," I said, nodding pointedly to Nika's wound.

"Do not be sorry for him," Nika grinned. "He belongs to Amora now. He is sorry enough for himself."

They left me there confused, and went to join some of the other women who were cutting and drying herbs.

I looked back to the strange apparatus by the water. The Box. Curious, I climbed to my feet and slipped on my new sandals. As I passed the dogs, they stared up at me. I knew the women watched me as well, including Nika and her companion.

The log was almost the length of an average person. It had been cut flat on top. I recognized the pelts of various antelopes draped over it. What I hadn't noticed from a distance were four smaller oblong platforms beside and lower than the main one. They were also padded. Two at the head, and two lower ones at the rear.

I gasped and glanced around me. Two young women snickered, watching as I figured out what I was looking at.

You will have to answer to us all.

In Malagande, Queen Catamori's tree-lined capital city, there were objects similar to this in every town square. For publicly binding, flogging, and sometimes beheading those who broke the Queen's law.

The Box was a torture device.

**

"Is Amora your queen?" I asked Faisa, as she fed me that night in the yam hut.

The village meal was stewed beans over yam. I'd smelled the beans frying earlier, but now my thoughts were on something other than food. The spoon Faisa lifted to my lips stopped in midair as she took in my question.

She swallowed visibly before offering me the spoonful. I took it.

"Queen Catamori is a despot," Faisa said bitterly. "Amora is the closest thing we have to a leader, but is nothing like Catamori." She stirred the pasty pieces of yam into the stew before offering me another spoonful. "The third night you were here, you asked how we keep demons away. Amora gives us that protection."

"So she is a priestess?"

"Something like that," Faisa said.

"So then," I continued, getting to the point, "this ritual you told me about."

Faisa did not miss a beat. Clearly, she expected this question. "Apparently, I did not tell you about it. Or so Sekora and Nika scolded me today."

"I am to be strapped upon that Box, right? And all of you, including this Amora, will... what? Flog me? And I must endure it to be given the freedom you have? I must declare my devotion before the Ancestors?"

"We would not torture you!" Faisa said. Her voice dropped then, considerably. "You will be rutted, until you have satisfied them all."

"Rutted?" I said, taken aback. I tried to picture this. It seemed excessive. "I don't think I have that sort of stamina."