The Water Wagon

The lovely female musicians were all of a similar beauty.

They had been chosen by the sultan with the care and vanity of a teamster assembling a match-set of chariot horses. Dark-haired, olive-skinned, large-eyed and full-lipped. Each dressed in flowing white robes, with gold hems. As they played their strings, cymbals, and pipes from their golden shell alcove up in the mezzanine of the sultan's harem, below them the monarch of the southern desert, Ozymandias the Great, slapped his hands to the soft jiggling flesh of the slave girl's ass and squeezed the bountiful rump as his tongue lapped the tangy juices of her sex smothering his mouth and nose.

The sultan's favorite concubine laughed in unrestrained wanton joy as she threw back her head, her long black hair swirling wildly about her head and shoulders, and rotated her wide hips, enthusiastically grinding her drenched pussy down on the face of the monarch who lie on a pile of satin pillows and silken cushions. The king was young, strong, and handsome. He was a man of prodigious conquering appetites, as the women of his perfumed seraglio could well attest. While Ozymandias sucked loud and obscenely at the tasty cunt covering his face, another slave girl nestled his testes in her soft palm as she repeatedly plunged her pretty head up and down, his turgid cock encased tight by her throat.

A night breeze blew in off the desert, gently bellowing the long lengths of red silk curtains draping the floor to ceiling windows of the pleasure dome. The zephyr disturbed the thin, lazy columns of incense smoke to fretting and swirling above their ivory-legged braziers, as the doxie on the face of the desert-ruler climaxed with a piercing scream, momentarily drowning out the soft music. She gushed hot around the tongue fucking into her. And the over-aroused monarch responded with a violent jerk of his cock and shot searing seed down the eager and willing throat of the second girl.

The other women in the room, lounging on pillows of their own, or wading in the lotus-petaled waters of the vast bathing pool, cast sultry glances toward their master. Each fervently hoped to be taken in her turn by the sultan. Aside from any carnal gain, to be rutted by Ozymandias was to obtain high status within the rooms and gardens of the extensive harem.

After his seed was spent, the sultan pushed the slave girl from his face, the other off his phallus, and he rolled on the cushions until he could grab a wineskin lying close by. With a bellowing laugh he pulled the stopper from the skin with his teeth, then guzzled the sweet red wine until it ran over his lips and down his chin and dripped from the curls of his blue-black beard.

Betimes, he thought, tis good to be the Sultan.

It was in such a blissful state that he was informed, by a hesitant and visibly shaken messenger who intruded upon the rather salacious proceedings, of the escape of the hostage Banturian princess from her inescapable prison tower.

By all reports, Ozymandias was highly displeased at the news, evidenced by the fact that he not only had the messenger killed but all the guards on duty during the time of the princess' escape were beheaded before the Sun rose.

Perhaps more telling, the incident so disturbed the young man that it put him off his harem activities for nearly a week.

:.

For nearly a week, he'd been stowed-away within the huge empty barrel of the water wagon.

Z'mbutu had found himself in many an odd and terrifying circumstance in his eventful life but he couldn't recall a predicament quite so uncomfortable as his current one.

He looked across the space which separated him and the most royal Crown Princess Kimya. He could just make out her seated figure in the gloom of the barrel, but not her features. The phosphorescent compound which he'd painted the interior's curved walls gave a feeble green light that did not well illuminate details. Over the years he'd discovered the method of distilling the paint from the bio-luminescent scales of the big-eye cavefish. They rode in an unending muted emerald twilight as the water wagon, part of a long caravan, rumbled and jerked along the great paving blocks of the Eastern Road, which lead away from Ozymandias' Forbidden City now hundreds of miles to the west.

"The air in here grows fouler by the minute," the princess said. Her tone haughty and unhappy. "And the odor of your unwashed body is an intolerable offense to the senses."

By Z'mbutu's count, that was her highness' one hundred and thirty-fifth complain about the stink of the confined quarters. He tried to take the carping in stride, after all, it was a fact that the air in the tank was foul. It was true that Z'mbutu was unwashed. It was also true that he could smell the stench emanating off the royal bitch equally as well as she could his own.

Leave it to a princess not to appreciate the fact that I suffer in the same full measure as she, Z'mbutu thought, disgruntled.

"My apologies, your grace. It shouldn't be much longer now, o' most patient one," he said, using the reassuring tone of the professional courtier. "We're nearing the oasis. Tonight you will be shed of this wagon in addition to my company."

The princess did not deign to reply, lapsing instead back into a sullen silence. In the normal course of events, the royalty and aristocracy of Banturia never spoke to commoners outside their immediate household.

It was just as well, Z'mbutu thought. After a week of being shut up with the high-born woman, her voice tended to grate mightily on his ears. Besides, for all her sundry criticisms, Kimya had yet to thank him for rescuing her from her inescapable prison. The blatant lack of appreciation rankled Z'mbutu's considerable pride.

People, he thought, just tain't no good, whatsoever.

As far as the alchemist was concerned, the escape, from its conception, planning, and through its execution had been both brilliant and flawless. The rescue had taken nearly eight months to engineer, but when it finally unfolded, it had been a thing of beauty. At least, in Z'mbutu's opinion.

He'd arrived in the Forbidden City during the year's first planting, after the river had receded back into its banks from its bi-yearly floods. The flooding had fertilized the land with the organic-laden silt of the long Blue River.

Z'mbutu had entered the city as a librarian's assistant, in the Sultan's Royal Library, as the well-meaning but n'er-do-well son of a Nubian mfalme. The persona he projected had been of a self-effacing, generous, and studious man. Inoffensive. No one saw him as a threat, indeed, he was considered a soft touch among the other junior librarians when it came to lending coin. And Z'mbutu was careful to keep it that way. He was frequently found in some out of the way corner of the Royal Library reading a scroll or book, never bothering to collect on his debtors. To the senior library authorities he was all but invisible.

Besides laying his plans to rescue the princess, Z'mbutu was actually doing research of his own. It was something he'd been pursuing for the last ten years of his life, that of finding the location of the legendary Well of the Jinns. The birthplace and lair of the fabled and dreaded jinnis. Within the library of the Forbidden City he ferreted, as only a scholar can, delving deep into the archives of the extensive house of scrolls, tomes, clay and stone-tablets.

The alchemist believed his months of diligence had borne fruit. He thought he now knew where the Well of Wonders, the headquarters of the Jinnis, was located.

"I shall make certain that my father and husband both hear of the extreme discomfort which I was forced to endure at your crude and incompetent hands."

Z'mbutu had lost count of the exact number of threats she'd issued against him during their time together, but they could be rounded off at two hundred or so. He knew the real fount of Princess Kimya's anger. She was mad because her father-in-law, the king of Banturia, had chose not to go to war with Ozymandias over her imprisonment, and that her husband, the prince, had chosen not to pay the ransom the sultan had demanded over two years before.

She vented her considerable anger on the only person near her, her rescuer. Z'mbutu could understand her frame of mind but the understanding didn't make it easier to tolerate.

"You shall suffer for your lack of respect," she threatened.

I already am, he told himself, then dismissed her from his thoughts.

It was not mere happenstance which had lead to Z'mbutu's decision to make the oasis the rendezvous with Kimya's husband's forces. The city was the deepest thrust point of civilization into the Great Desert. East, beyond the oasis was only scattered, impoverished nomadic tribes, sand, and somewhere in that great waste, the Well of Wonders.

The alchemist was fairly confident he knew how to find it.

:.

Night fell and the wheels of the wagon ceased to turn. The caravan had finally reached the oasis.

The wagon's driver, although ignorant of his role in the princess' escape, had nevertheless been crucial to it. Back in the Forbidden City, when he was hired as the teamster, by Z'mbutu in disguise, he'd been instructioned to ignore any noises he might hear from the water barrel. The driver had also been told to place the wagon as far from others as possible, once reaching the oasis caravan staging area. At that point his employment was at an end and at dawn of the following day he could consider himself owner of the wagon. The alchemist had made it clear that deviation from the instructions, in the slightest, would put the man's family in danger.

The driver, a poor man and no fool, knew that he'd hardly get the chance again to outright own such a magnificent and potentially profitable wagon. He'd followed his instructions to the letter.

When Z'mbutu was certain he could hear no one close about, he unlatched the trapdoor, scrambled out, made sure all was well and helped the snarling princess out of the barrel.

"It's about cursed time," she said, snatching her hand from his once her feet were steady under her. "I require a bath, food, and adequate quarters. And you out of my sight."

"Nothing would give me more pleasure but we're not out of danger yet, Highness. The sultan's desert chargers can traverse road stones far faster than a water wagon in a caravan. News of your escape has, no doubt, already reached this oasis. We must continue to be cautious. We must maintain the ruse that I am your owner and you are a dancing slave."

"I will not play a part subservient to you. I'm not a whore. I am Kimya, daughter of his---"

"Silence," Z'mbutu angrily hissed. "It's worth your life to reveal yourself. Worse, its worth my life as well and it isn't my intent to die in some back hole of an oasis in this wretched desert. All I wish is the gold for your safe return. You are who you are and I have nothing but respect for your linage, but you aren't my princess, your father-in-law is not my king, and I will not die for you."

Kimya stared back at him with narrowed eyes, her plush lips thinned down into an angry line. "I'll have you executed for speaking to me in such a way."

"I doubt that, young one. But, if you wish to live to carry out your threat, for the next little while you'll have to pretend to be a dancer. Do you understand?"

She glared back at him. But Kimya, although as spoiled as any high-status female could be, was no fool. She understood her predicament all too well. It was she, after all, who'd been forced to endure all those months in the sultan's prison tower. She forced herself to look beyond her immediate distaste of her rescuer, to see the greater scheme of things. She gave a curt nod.

"I understand. Lead on, whoremonger," she sneered.

"Eeh." He agreed.

:.

Less than a quarter-hour later, Z'mbutu had cause to regret his decision to guise the princess as a dancer.

They'd quit the staging area for the caravan wagons without incident, crossing the hard packed sand to the residential parts of the oasis. Their route took them through the Water Plaza, the center part of the oasis where the wells had been sunk. Some distance from the stone steps which lead down to the wells, a crowd of men had gathered in the round plaza. There was the sound of drums and pipes and rhythmic clapping. A fire, fueled by dry oxen dung, burned within the circle of men wherein a flesh-peddler displayed the skills and charms of his almahs, dancing slave girls.

They were pretty enough for common girls. There was a raw sexuality and vitality about them as they stood in display pose before the eager eyes of the gathered men. Z'mbutu thought that they were most likely the excess daughters of deep desert nomads, sold to the slave-trader for sheep, goats, or a few coppers each. Whatever the case, the alchemist held no interest in the proceedings.

"The inn is this way," he said, pointing toward a group of adobe structures.

Kimya ignored him. She was very much interested in the goings-on around the dung fire.

Although her vaulted station denied her the right to dance publicly, the princess had learned all the traditional dances of her homeland in childhood and early adolescent, like most other Bantu. And if she were not allowed to display her skills in the open dance pits of the palace, she and her maids practiced the Art diligently in her private apartments.

Kimya stepped toward the circle. Z'mbutu's mouth folded into a disapproving scowl. But, short of putting hands upon her royal personage, there was no way he could stop her.

The slow roll of her hips was exaggerated and earthy as she broke into the circle of men. When it came to dance, movement, grace she'd been taught by the most renowned instructors, Kimya knew what she was about.

Z'mbutu, desperate to preserve his adopted pose, moved into the cleared space beside the girl. His dark face broke into an ingratiating grin, roguish, his eyes merry. "Good sirs, good worthies all. Let me not intrude upon the moment, rather know only that this girl, my almah, will be dancing tomorrow night for your pleasure. As you can see, she is ripe and Bantu. She will bring the dance of the steaming Jungle here to your burning sands, for your pleasure. But for now, we must rest. It has been a long journey. Come, girl."

Kimya stood her ground and gave him the sweetest of smiles, while her eyes were challenging. The lioness was out of her cage.

Then, a request was shouted out by someone in the crowd. "How about a sample, eh?"

It was to his credit that Z'mbutu's grin didn't waver in the least. He gave a broad wink. "Eeh, she is delicious, no? Save your appetite for tomorrow, my eager friend. And your coin, for when the cloth is passed after the performance." Then he gave a laugh and reached for Kimya. He had decided it was better to carry her away than to tarry in so public a place.

Kimya had her own thoughts. She stepped back from the alchemist's hand as he extended it, turning her movement into a slow whirl, so that the silks about her hips billowed outward, displaying fine deep brown thighs. She issued a taunting, teasing laugh. The entire circle of men heard the challenge.

And once more Z'mbutu reacted in character. He frowned, letting his all too-real displeasure show. "Gentlemen, it would appears the slut wishes to dance." He clapped his hands twice, a hard sound in the night. "Make it so, bitch," he spat at her.

The princess' black eyes flashed at that. Called slut, then bitch and within the space of three heartbeats, when no one had ever spoken such vile and base words to her before. Not even her jailers had been so crude. She smirked at the alchemist, both knowing she had escaped his custody, at least for the nonce. She reveled in having her way for the first time in two years. Tossing her head and pulling back her shoulders, Kimya went up on the balls of her feet and strutted around the ring of men, the shadows shifting across their faces from the bonfire. She rolled her ass, the jutted and round buttocks found so rarely around the desert women, inflaming all who watched her.

The scent of her unwashed body only added the her attraction, her pheromones carried clear on the warm night breezes of the oasis. As she swirled about the circle, kicking her legs high, loving the freedom of the open air, the attention of the men. Pipes trilled and cymbals clashed and the high-born girl danced for the common men of the sands, her body felt electric, knowing she was the center of attention, that she held them in her power. And she liked that especially. While imprisoned, she'd missed the power she had held over others since birth.

Z'mbutu watched her along with the others. She was good.

He was a connoisseur of the Dance, in all its various forms displayed across the wide world. He knew quality and the princess had it. It was also clear that she had a love of showing her body to men, something her husband would not be pleased to know. But, then again, her groom had let her smolder in prison. Z'mbutu thought it was not beyond the realm of possibility that the girl's dance was but the first blow in her campaign of revenge against her groom. Knowing women as he did, Z'mbutu was also fairly certain said campaign would be unending.

Kimya, drunk on the luxury of the outdoors after he long confinement, lost herself in the dance.

:.

Inside the room Z'mbutu had arranged for, she lie on her belly, with knees bent, lower legs and feet raised as she counted the coopers she had earned within the circle. The coins composed a sizable pile. Kimya's grin was unalloyed joy.

Z'mbutu couldn't help but smile along with her in her triumph even as he scolded her. "That was foolish."

"Perhaps."

"No, perhaps. It was foolish. Ozymandias is not an idiot. He has spies. And spies have messenger birds."

Kimya sighed. "Alchemist, you have grown far past tiresome and then some. I insist you sleep outside the room."

Z'mbutu lost his smile. "That would be foolish as well. Even as a dancing girl you are valuable. Many men now desire you, thanks to you ill-conceived performance. I will stand guard inside, it's the more practical tactic."

"Practical or not, I've seen enough of you in the last week to last a lifetime. Good-biddings. I shall call if I need you. For now, you are banished without, along with the rest of the common fodder. Oh, and I did not enjoy being called slut, nor bitch. My father will hear of it."

"Really? Then calling you a spoiled little cunt won't make matters much worse, will it?"

He was fast enough to open the door and leave the room before the princess could throw a handful of coppers, which showered harmlessly against the closed panel, clanging dully to the hard-packed dirt floor.

:.

Once outside, the alchemist settled his butt on the ground with his back against the adobe wall beside the door of the room. There was a stone-paved awning-covered breezeway between the row of rooms on his side and the row facing opposite across the space of some five feet or so.

Up at the eastern end of the breezeway he saw a man with lamps attached about his person, who had yellow eyes, the color of cat's eyes. Within moments the lamp salesman had shuffled up to the alchemist. "Greetings, worthy friend. Mind some company this night? I've been hawking these cursed lamps all over the oasis and my feet are complaining mightily."

"Of course," Z'mbutu said. "Sit. You would honor me with your presence."

"And you mine. Thank you, friend."

The lamp salesman settled with a clanking of his wares and a knowing gleam in his eyes as he leaned toward his host. "I saw your whore at the wells. Well-trained. I don't think there was a limp stick in the crowd when she finished, including among the graybeards." He chuckled as he shook his head. "The gift of a Bantu wench's dance is a rare one here. She should profit you well in your travels among us. Where did you say you were headed?"