Untying the Camel

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This is a story I came across some years ago, in the uplands of Harbalistan. It is a tale with historic roots, based in the Tashli culture of Central Asia (an episode, in fact, from the sprawling Tashli poetic saga Sarambai, which I have rendered into English).

The proper epic-verse version--together with more details on how I encountered the story--can be found here: https://literotica.com/p/untying-the-camel-verse

However, recognizing that Tashli epic poetry is an acquired taste, I also adapted it into prose for readers who prefer that. The prose version appears below.

-MF

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UNTYING THE CAMEL

[AN EPISODE FROM THE TASHLI EPIC SARAMBAI]

Kanikay stood motionless before the jeering throng of men--face set in an expression of cold, haughty defiance.

There was nowhere to run, even if she had been so inclined. The guards flanking her saw to that. What's more, in an effort to embarrass her, the woman's captors had uncovered her long, glossy-black tresses. It was strange to feel her hair stirring in the breeze that way. Still, she remained unbowed. Kanikay was a modest girl, but also the daughter of a khan, and didn't lack for self-confidence. It would take far more than that to shame her.

It wasn't just her immediate predicament that burdened her spirit. Indeed, if Kanikay had burst into tears it would have been entirely justified. Only days earlier, that vile usurper Nurbek had staged an attack on their summer encampment, snuffing out the life of the old khan. Her father... There would surely come a time when she would be able to grieve for him, but it wasn't today. Today, her eyes remained clear--alert to dangers. And opportunities.

Just then, Nurbek himself (the 'emir' as he would have it) strode out into the arena, quieting the mob with a gesture. Kanikay's lip curled at the mere sight of him. A pathetic upstart--a seventh son of a seventh son. A nothing. A man like that could never take her birthright from her.

Nurbek's eyes flashed like onyx. His close-cropped beard came to a violent point at his chin; and when he smiled, his incisors glinted a brilliant white. "Warriors! For three days we have celebrated our legendary victory! Have I not proven myself worthy of your loyalty? Last week, I led you to triumph in battle--against a khan no less! And this week, I have shown you the richness of my hospitality!" The air shook with thunderous cheers.

"Yes, we have feasted. We have gamed. My own son Ermek bested you all at wrestling." Nurbek cast a proud hand toward a strapping hero in the front rank--prompting the ruffians nearby to slap the lad on the back, and jostle him good-naturedly. "But now, we must enjoy lighter pursuits. It is time for the menfolk to watch, and be entertained. So I ask you: what woman is willing to hazard a little competition? To she who prevails, I pledge rich rewards: her freedom, a fine stallion, and nine snow-white mares!"

Movement at the corner of Kanikay's vision made her glance over. A girl of marrying age had wormed her way through the sea of masculinity, and now strode forth. She wore a rough, brown tunic that marked her as a penniless commoner--in all likelihood a bonded servant to Nurbek. And though the woman boasted the freshness of youth; it was diminished by plain features, demoralized aspect, and downcast eyes.

The despot laughed freely at the sight of her. "Ah, Gulsana, I did not think you so immodest! But yes, the contest is open to all of your sex, even one of such lowly status as you."

Then he glanced around the circle of faces, and fixed the princess with gleaming eye. "But--is there no one to vie with this tolengut lackey? Is she to take the winnings unopposed?" Kanikay understood that Nurbek was goading her. She had no idea what game he had planned, but he clearly wanted her to be a part of it. That was why she'd been hauled out into the ring in the first place.

Still, she wasn't one to run from confrontation. Even if the emir had rigged the match--training Gulsana in some noble pursuit like archery, perhaps, or swordplay or wrestling--Kanikay knew she could beat such an inferior specimen. And then, after she won, Nurbek wouldn't dare withhold a prize he had touted so publicly. She took a pace forward. "I, Kanikay, daughter of the true khan of the steppe, am no one's slave. I will play your foolish game and I will win it--and thus reclaim my freedom!"

A hint of smug satisfaction played over her captor's features. "As you wish." Then, to the guards: "unbind the bitch!"

One of the pair shifted behind her, cutting the thongs from her wrists with a rough jerk. But that had been a mistake. Like lightning, Kanikay snatched the dagger from the other man's belt, and threw herself at Nurbek.

The emir was caught off guard; but combat-honed reflexes saved him. With a raised hand, he warded off her down-swept blade. Much of the force of the blow was absorbed by his sturdy leather gauntlet, so that the bloody slash she cut through his forearm ran shallow. Then, as Kanikay's momentum carried her forward, he kicked her legs out from under her, sending her sprawling face-down in the dirt. Before she could even gather her wits, Ermek had placed a heavy boot on her wrist, and relieved her of the weapon.

As Kanikay got awkwardly to her feet, knocking the dust from her beldemchi dress, Nurbek remained flustered. Embarrassed at being upstaged, he fell back on face-saving bluster. "It seems this filly has a wild streak! Well, after she is bested by Gulsana, my son will have her. As a cum-drenched concubine, mind you, not a wife. His cock will break her willfulness soon enough!"

Kanikay scowled fiercely, eyes flashing with defiance. No spawn of that worm would ever take her maidenhead. She would die first.

Still, it wasn't her intention to die, not just yet. She hoped to live for at least as long as it took to get revenge. And the first step in getting that revenge would be to win the impending bout with Gulsana, whatever it might be. Gritting her teeth, she resolved that this serving-woman would regret tangling with the daughter of the khan. Even if Kanikay had to kill the tolengut with her bare hands, she felt sure she was capable of it. Though, she'd prefer if it didn't come to that...

Ignoring his captive's insolent manner and rebellious glare, Nurbek brought his rage under control. "But all that is in the future. For now, we must have the special entertainment I promised." Turning to the women, he clapped his hands resoundingly. "Come along, wenches! Let us see which of you can untie the camel first!"

At the words sank in, a prickly heat flowed into Kanikay's cheeks, and she sucked in a panicked breath. May blessed Khidr protect her--had he said untie the camel?!!

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She'd heard whispers of this abomination, once or twice. It was an unsuitable topic for polite company--most certainly in front of a lady. Yet, her family's loutish retainers had loved to gab, and sound passes easily through horsehide walls. By such means, Kanikay knew that long ago, before her grandfather's time, nobles had sometimes amused themselves by watching women 'untie the camel.' A pair of girls from the lowest dregs of society had been made to expose themselves to their betters. Then, nude before the entire assembly, they'd vied to undo the knotted lead-rope of a camel, using only their teeth. The winner took possession of the beast.

The practice had died out after the people adopted Islam--cast aside as an obscene, pagan revel. Or so she had thought. Today, however, Nurbek appeared bent on reviving the tradition.

Well, Kanikay may have found the emir's pronouncement startling; but it appeared Gulsana had already known what Nurbek had in mind, and made no effort to protest it. Glancing down and lifting timid hands to waist, she just started right in on loosening her belt.

The yells and catcalls from the encircling horde started low, but mounted quickly. The servant-girl's fingers were clumsy, and it took a couple of failed attempts before she managed to unfasten the girdle, and let it drop to the earth. Then, to the crowd's delight, she began fumbling with the strings that held her shapeless garment together. As their contempt and derision grew steadily louder, it seemed the girl would surely crumble beneath the weight of it--yet still, she persevered. At last, after what felt like an eternity, the clamor reached its deafening crescendo, and she undid the final knot, allowing the tunic to fall heavily around her ankles.

Kanikay sneered openly at her naked rival. Gulsana stood there motionless--dazed and alone amidst the fiery tumult of the mob, gazing mutely at her own bare feet. And she was revealed now to be a scrawny thing. Hips narrow, ribs showing, hazelnut skin betraying a slightly jaundiced tinge. Evidently Nurbek did not feed his domestics well.

Such a servitor was far beneath her, and Kanikay knew she ought to simply ignore the jade. Yet, it was impossible to look away. It was one thing to bathe in the stream with other women--but quite another to see a female stripped like raw meat before a slavering pack of male hyenas. The scene had a sense of debauchery about it that was captivating.

The girl's teats were modest: no more than low rounded hillocks, tipped with rusty-brown areolae as small as a dinar. The latter had hardened now, beneath the scrutiny of a thousand hungry leers--nipples doggedly outthrust, as if to provoke all those thirsty spectators. Down at her mons, meanwhile, she wasn't shaved (as a Muslim of any breeding would have been), but sported a thick, dark triangular patch of pubic hair.

Yes--Kanikay decided--the maidservant was exceedingly common. Not ugly, not misshapen, but lacking the qualities that might have elevated her above her menial birth. Face flat and dull; hair lank; dowery non-existent. Nothing to tempt even the humblest goatherd to betroth her. No wonder she'd let Nurbek bait her into debasing herself this way, merely for the promise of a few horses. Only with them did she stand a chance of snaring a husband.

Neither wealth nor the possibility of freedom could lure Kanikay to such depths of depravity, though. She understood Nurbek's intentions clearly now. Having killed the khan, the man planned to humiliate her in the most abject fashion possible--and in so doing, smear the reputation of the entire royal line. But she had no intention of betraying her people that way.

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After a moment, Nurbek addressed Kanikay again, in a tone of false jocularity. "Come along, slut--you know custom dictates that this game must be played unclothed. Gulsana was obliging enough. It's time now to display the treasures hidden beneath your robes!"

Folding arms over her chest, the princess locked grim eyes with her tormentor, relying on body language to say it all. She would rather die than endure such shame.

Faced with her intransigence, the man's voice took on a tinge of menace. "Whore! You've already agreed to take part in the contest. Do not think to dishonor me by trying to back out now." With a wave of his hand, Nurbek motioned to his guards; and they seized her upper arms roughly.

Kanikay knew it was pointless to struggle against the battle-hardened sinews restraining her. But she hoped the emir's affrontery would sit poorly with the onlookers. Scanning over them, she picked out scores of fighters that her father had known well, even ridden to war with. Wordlessly, feverishly, her proud eyes admonished them. Were they going to simply stand by while this craven usurper ruined her good name?

But to no avail. The faces staring back at her were unyielding: some cold, some contemptuous, some lustful. And all of them seemed to share Nurbek's sentiments--viewing Kanikay's pledge to compete as binding, even though the unseemly nature of the event had been concealed from her.

Satisfied that he had the mob's blessing, the tyrant pulled forth a wicked damascene knife--cold blue steel catching the rays of the sun overhead. Approaching perilously near, peering into her eyes with brutal intensity, he aimed the blade at her sternum, as if he thought to intimidate her into submission.

Well, if that truly was his intent, then he failed miserably. Instead, without warning, Kanikay lunged wildly forward--trying to impale herself on the weapon and put an end to this charade. However, her earlier gambit had taught the emir's thugs not to underestimate her, and they held her fast. After a brief struggle, she subsided in defeat.

One corner of Nurbek's mouth turned up, and there was a pregnant pause as he flicked the knife-tip just inside the neckline of her beldemchi. Then, without ceremony, displaying no more delicacy than if he was gutting a fish, he ripped his way down through the thick, wine-red felt. The sound of fabric tearing rang out over the arena, loud and jagged--and somehow, the noise recalled to Kanikay the scream of a horse, when it breaks its leg.

The ruined garment fell away, leaving Kanikay clad only in her long white shift. The hair on the back of her neck stood up. She was sure the jut of her nipples and shadowy hint of her curves must be visible beneath the gauzy silk, and it made her feel even more exposed than if she was already naked. Still, she managed to gaze steadily back at Nurbek, jaw resolute, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing her squirm.

Of course, both of them knew she was about to join Gulsana in being picked clean. Kanikay's last, few moments of modesty were spent in a frozen, unbearable agony of anticipation. Then, almost with a sense of relief, she saw Nurbek's thin smile broaden into a mocking sneer. Sheathing the dagger, he grasped the flimsy slip in his powerful hands and rent it apart with ease, carelessly tossing the tattered remnants aside.

The spectators had enjoyed seeing Gulsana strip. And yet--to state it crudely--trash of her sort had little novelty to offer. These men-of-means never lacked for tolengut sluts, willing to trade their virtue for a skin or two of mare's-milk kumis. When it came to the serving-wench, therefore, it was really only the public quality of her degradation that excited them.

By contrast, the thrill of seeing a woman like Kanikay bared ran much, much deeper. Simply to witness her aristocratic figure at all, in its natural splendor, let alone to see her brought so very low--it was a joy of an entirely different order, and the crowd registered its approval with rapturous acclaim.

Buffeted by the commotion, Kanikay felt small and wretched. Gazing up at the limitless azure of the sky, lower lip quivering perceptibly, she tried to rally her spirits. Tried to block out all the clamor, and vulnerability, and cringing embarrassment. Tried to imagine herself alone, in some nameless place, far out in the vast reaches of the steppe. Somewhere, anywhere, so long as it wasn't here.

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Graced by high cheek-bones, dainty chin, coy smile, and darting, hazel-green eyes, the princess had long been known as a matchless beauty. Now, Nurbek's riders discovered that her naked form lived up to that same standard of perfection. Indeed, few present had ever laid eyes on such a flawless female specimen. It's a basic fact of human society that the daughter of a khan bears a lighter burden--and with her disrobing complete, the advantages of that carefree existence were laid out for all to see.

Mind you, Kanikay was never one for idleness or gluttony. Like any proper nomad girl, she worked hard for her community. Sewing clothes and tents; cooking; mending tools and saddles; preserving foods; tending sick animals--in all of these domains and a hundred more, the blue-blood maiden won praise for her skill and dedication. But hard work is not the same thing as deprivation. And lofty birth had spared Kanikay from all the usual miseries of existence--the bouts of starvation, deathly cold, bone-aching exhaustion--that would have blighted her freshness and beauty. As a result, those watching beheld her figure as something rare and utterly beguiling: a pearl without price.

Standing there, revealed before them in the harsh midday sun, Kanikay shone with the summer-kissed color of dry barley, at the peak of harvest. Her skin had a splendid clarity, a sensual smoothness, that put one in mind of the finest silk from Cathay. She had long, well-formed limbs, and a frame made lithe and strong by constant activity. Yet, though she wasn't plump, there was nothing stingy about the noblewoman's splendid curves and succulent pliability either. Every inch of her testified to wealth, health, and abundance; and it sent strange visions through the minds of the onlookers--visions of gaining access between her legs, and staking lecherous claim to that lifeforce she so vibrantly exuded.

Kanikay kept her head up, her face a stoic mask, and stared off at some spot above all the probing eyes. Yet her tongue was cotton-dry, and a quick, anxious cadence pounded in her ears. The burning in her face felt like live coals--infusing her caramel cheeks with a ruddy blush, and threatening to betray the turmoil bubbling below her frosty veneer.

The emotions swirling topmost in Kanikay's brain were shame and mortification. These were excruciating, but Kanikay felt sure she could bear them. At the very least, they made sense. They fit the situation she was in. No, the thing she found truly bewildering--unsettling, disturbing--was the... other feeling. The strange, volatile buzz of erotic excitement that pricked insistently at the edges of her consciousness.

She was familiar with animal lusts, of course. Every nomad was well acquainted with the instincts of the herd. The raw, mindless potency of a bull's desire; the generative, creative power of a cow's receptivity--from such base materials sprang the prosperity of Kanikay's entire society.

There had once been a time when she'd viewed the urges of the livestock solely from that detached, practical perspective. More recently, however, as she grew into womanhood, Kanikay had faced the dawning, uncomfortable awareness that those same animal passions formed a part of her as well.

Month after month, her agony had mounted, as her father jealously kept her back from the marriage market. Saving her to buy some advantageous alliance, or princely bride-gift. Each time the beautiful, boastful young men came swaggering back from their hunting trips or raiding forays--oh, how the butterflies had raged in the girl's stomach, and how her loins had ached. She'd had to bite her lip, hard, just to remember her rank, and act accordingly.

Then later, in the deep stillness of pre-dawn, it would all come spilling out at last. Unbidden, the secret, guilty fantasies would descend on her, overwhelming her efforts to resist. For nights on end, lying sleepless in the dark, Kanikay's body would burn, her mind churn, with unspeakable yearnings. Feverishly, unrepentantly, she would find herself thinking of the virile young studs camped so close-by--wishing one would steal into her bed, and rut her as if she was her father's prize mare.

Now, bared before a multitude, Kanikay sensed those same feelings welling up from her depths once more. The indignity of being stripped like this was real, and intolerable--and yet, there was an edge of crude, untamed sexuality to it as well, beckoning her to submit. The feel of sun and wind on her skin; the glow of her own youthful fertility, even the ribald taunts of the warriors... everything about it seemed purpose-built to liberate her repressed cravings.

She tried to dispel these forbidden thoughts, knowing they were wrong and unbefitting her station. But the harder she stamped at the embers, the more they flared. She felt a lump in her throat and a catch in her chest. Her nipples were hard, poking out as if to lure the breeze's caress, and an indecent wetness had begun to flow between her legs...