Copyright 1996 Revised 11/99

THE CRUSADER AND THE SLAVE GIRL

by Christopher Leeson

The girl clung stubbornly to the varnished doorpost and the knight, growing exasperated, shoved her hard. She staggered into the room, then suddenly spun and clawed his cheek. Cursing, the Frank twisted one of her arms behind her back and half-carried her toward his bed.

The concubine struck the bedclothes face-first and furiously tore at them, doing to them what she would have like to do to the man. The noble then stood back a pace to catch his breath while the slave raged. "Let her gnash her teeth with hate," he thought with amusement. Anger was the first resort of the weak; each time a slave gave vent to it, it told him he was the master. If she carried insoence too far, there was always the strap.

Nonetheless, the Frank didn't want to give his chattel too much respite, and so he moved abruptly, catching the girl's beaded girdle and pulling it sharply. Its tiny hooks burst, allowing him to strip away her diaphanous harem skirt with careless ease.

"You pig!" cursed the brunette, striking at him yet again, but this time he side-stepped and she missed.

The knight then seized her and threw her down. What sport a sport he found it! Grinning, he seized her wrists and while the mismatched pair struggled, thunder crashed above the towers of Belvoir Castle, and a rare, cold desert rain slashed at its stony flanks like a camel whip. . . .

A little less than a year earlier, the Crusader Baron Simon Saint-Mihiel had been climbing another tower, leaving his weary men-at-arms struggling to keep pace with their energetic young master.

Gaining the upper landing, the Frank stepped warily into a circular chamber which, the Crusader was now able to confirm, turned out to be only a prison cell, its air thick with the odors of human captivity, and with the acrid effluent from the fires now burning thickly around the courtyard. Chains rattled and the knight turned en garde toward the sound.

He relaxed; naught but a nude, manacled girl in an alcove confronted him. Also, he noted with equal interest, a second figure lay face-down in the straw -- a white-haired male in robes of damask cloth.

Saint-Mihiel put his boot upon the back of the prone figure and jabbed its ribs with his broadsword; the lack of response satisfied him that the old man was indeed dead. He turned the corpse over with his toes and observed the pearly hilt of a stiletto protruding from its breast.

But that was not all. Bending closer, the Crusader made out a peculiar scar over his enemy's heart. It had the shape of a heathen glyph and its fading announced that the sorcerer must have worn it for many years.

Pagan witchery! The knight crossed himself to ward off baleful magic and then scooped up the dagger as a trophy. Upon drawing it from the corpse he noted the drops of blood running to its point. Clearly, the master of Kala'at Sharwar was not long dead.

Standing, Saint-Mihiel sheathed his sword and reflected that this was a feeble end for the notorious Muawiya al-Tariq, a wizard whose mountain castle had defied his siege lines for so many weeks. The man had been detested even by his own Moslem neighbors; he had kept no faith with their God, they said, but instead worshiped the ancient images of vanished deities -- demons already old before Joshua had destroyed Canaan and smashed the blasphemies of its peoples' worship.

Just then Saint-Mihiel's men stumbled into the chamber; the baron ignored them and turned back toward the chained girl. Though not tall, she was full-breasted and sensuously-endowed. Her rich brown curls tumbled over her shoulders in disarray, but when she shook her tresses away he saw that her features were uncommonly handsome. This maid, he judged, could hardly have been more than eighteen or nineteen.

Ill luck for one so young; the girl was collared as a slave and chained by each wrist. The baron had given orders to take no captives, but he found himself tempted to make an exception of this wench -- the likes of whom he had not often seen in his twenty-nine years.

The beleaguered brunette returned his stare with eager hope. Her lips pursed grimly when she realized that there was no pity in Saint-Mihiel's hard eyes.

"Please, my lord," she whispered in the bastard mix of French, Arabic, Greek, and Turkish that served the Holy Land as a lingua franca. Though not friendly to foreign ways, the Frank had himself learned to speak it.

"Why are you here, wench?" Saint-Mihiel demanded.

"I am Rhea Artavasdos," she stammered; "My father is a gentleman of Thessalonica. Pirates sold me into slavery. I am a Christian like yourself -- free me!"

Tears of rage smeared the girl's face. Already having shed his tunic, the Crusader held the girl pinned between the vise of his muscular thighs.

"I'll kill you!" Rhea yelled as she tried to drive her thumbs into his mocking eyes. Growing irritated, the Frank slapped her and her head lurched back against the pillow. He then reached for a supple cord which lay coiled upon the nearby stand. "No! Don't!" the girl protested.

Unheeding, the Frank knotted the rope to the headboard and bound her wrists; then, as the young woman struggled wildly, the knight pressed his ale-scented mouth against hers. Disengaging, she spat in disgust, but her captor persisted and tried to force his tongue betwixt her clenched teeth. Simultaneously, the man's eager hands dug between her thighs; she winced at the rough probing of his callused fingers. . . .

While Saint-Mihiel stood there admiring the captive, a small, bald, fair-bearded European in a piebald cloak staggered into the cell. The heat of the Syrian summer, the smoke, and the long ascent, had the man's cheeks running with begrimed sweat. When the newcomer noticed the girl, he cast off his woebegone look and raised his hands as if to stay a blow.

"Saint-Mihiel! For the love of God, let this one live! I will pay good gold! Remember, Lord, you promised me first pick of your captives here -- but your men are putting everyone to the sword!"

The nobleman growled, disliking the importuning little merchant. "This place reeks of deviltry! Its every seed must be burned to ash. -- And you have no reason to complain, Marco Sciarra. You have made yourself rich on the plunder of my victories, at least up to now."

"I pay good money for slaves, my baron! Do you think that I have come so far, endured the lice and the flies, the heat and the dust storms, for no more than a charnel of rotting corpses? I will pay thirty bezants for this beauty -- even blemished the way she is."

"Blemished?" Not understanding, the Crusader took a second look and realized that the slaver's professional glance had discerned something that he had overlooked; there was a patch of inflamed skin on the girl's flank, identical to the scar on the wizard's breast but much fresher. Saint-Mihiel bent closer to trace its angles. The mark resembled a burn yet did not resemble a brand. In fact, it appeared to be a character of some kind -- meaningless to the warrior who could not even read his own dialect of Gascon French. "What is this mark, slave?" he demanded.

"I am not a slave!" the girl contradicted him stubbornly.

The knight raised his gauntlet as if to strike. "Answer my question!"

The captive bent her head resignedly. "I do not know what it is, Lord. Al-Tariq meant to sacrifice me to the strange gods he worshiped. He put this mark on me with a burning salve -- but when you breached the castle wall he took his own life in fear of you."

Now, again, the knight was met by eyes of desperate appeal. "I implore you, Lordship, have mercy on a woman who has been wronged. Free me and return me to my family."

"I would be a fool," the warrior answered unkindly. "I have been offered thirty bezants!"

"No, my lord! I am a Christian!"

"You are a Greek, and so a heretic, and heresy is always worse than heathenism! -- Besides, you are too beautiful to be anything except a slave."

The young woman turned away and Saint-Mihiel glanced back at one of his men-at-arms, ordering, "Break those manacles!"

A big soldier lumbered forward and detached the mace from his belt. He thrust its thick handle through the iron ring which fixed one of the girl's bonds to the limestone wall. Straining hard, the man threw all his strength against the stubborn Saracen iron until a loud snap crowned his efforts with success. Then he set to work on the moorings of the other cuff.

Saint-Mihiel regarded the young squire at his side. "Tell the smith to remove her manacles, but let her keep the collar," he instructed the boy. "When the smith is finished, have my women prepare her."

"My lord!" protested the Italian merchant.

"I may take your thirty bezants yet, Sciarra; if the wench does not please me tonight, she is yours."

That night, Simon Saint-Mihiel celebrated his victory with his officers and afterwards, as the soot-soiled skies grew nearly as dark as the soul of the Tempter, he raped the Greek girl until he was at last overcome by an exhausted sleep.

The thunder rolled. The slave girl yelled in rage, twisting her head from side to side and straining to tighten her vaginal muscles enough to deny him entry, but all in vain. She called out to Heaven for respite, for justice, but her appeal was drowned out by another jagged strike of lightning, a dazzling flare which illuminated the sweating face of her violator and cast his hard-chiseled features into stark highlights and deep shadows, making him resemble in that instant a carved gargoyle poised grimly above. . . .

Simon Saint-Mihiel lifted a hand against the glaring Syrian dawn, still sleepily recalling the pleasures of the night; the Greek girl had been clumsy -- like the virgin she claimed to be -- but the satisfaction of having violated innocence had largely made up for her lack of skill.

The Crusader decided that he would keep his new concubine for many a night like the last one. On the other hand, the Italian slaver was useful should not be sent away angry and empty-handed. Instead of handing over Rhea, the Frank would sell him another of the women he already owned. Reducing their number would serve a positive good anyway; a wise commander did not burden his army with excessive camp followers, thereby making himself a bad example to his men.

Suddenly, annoyance banished the Crusader's euphoria; he was alone! The foolish wench must have decamped while he slumbered! But despite his anger, the act of sitting up alerted Saint-Mihiel to an unfamiliar weight upon his chest. "Mon Dieu!" he cried as he touched what turned out to be tender mounds of flesh. Still sleep-groggy, he did not understand, though, dimly, he recognized these alien extensions for part of his own body!

His right hand flashed to his throat and again he alighted upon something that should not be there -- a leather collar. "For the love of sweet Jesus, what --?"

Now Saint-Mihiel became aware of a rawness between his legs and, when he threw back the coverlets to examine himself, cried a garbled ejaculation of horror.

He had been unmanned!

The Crusader scrambled to his clutter of looted gold, ivory, jewelry, and enameled glass. He threw open a strongbox and, casting aside cups, ornate implements, craters, and candle stands, seized upon a brightly-polished sliver tray. This he lifted with shaking hands.

The Frank threw the reflector away with a shout of dismay; he had not seen the mustachioed, sunburned face of Saint-Mihiel -- but, instead, the olive-tanned features of Rhea Artavasdos!

All Saint-Mihiel's memories of terror, slaughter, and torture paled before his present shock. Was he insane or drunk? He racked his brain furiously to decide which. No, he was not! This was magic! The woman whom he had foolishly spared had cast a delusion upon him!

Saint-Mihiel leaped over the litter of plunder and made for the tent flap, by way of which he thrust himself outside into the intense light of the mountain dawning. "Guards!" he shrilled, his voice high-pitched and strange. "It's witchcraft! Sorcery!"

The begrimed, dust-powdered footmen turned cattle-like toward the shouting -- and many a dust-burned eye brightened at the sight of the nude, collared girl, standing by her master's tent yelling and waving with such excitement. Ribald laughter and appreciative nods passed amongst the breakfasting soldiers, all of them deeming that the lord was a lucky man!

Before Saint-Mihiel could say another word, a shadow fell darkly over his olive beauty; he pivoted with a desperate appeal ready on his lips, but it died instantly with the shock of recognition.

The thunderstruck Frank retreated back into the tent and the other casually stooped to follow him. The man who pursued the Crusader had the same face, the form, as Saint-Mihiel -- the Saint-Mihiel he had known himself to be but the day before. The giant stood up to his full height once inside the pavilion and stared down at the baffled knight with an expression so cruelly intense that it went beyond mere mockery, contempt, or even hatred.

Saint-Mihiel stumbled backwards over his mound of loot, wincing with pain when something scraped his thigh. Looking down at the sore spot, he saw the scabbing of a cursive burn on his hip. The baron finally understood: The witch had possessed him and imprisoned his soul in her own cast-off body!

The Crusader turned on the imposter and burst out with a string of invectives: "Devil! Fiend! Demon from the Pit! Take away your spell!"

Then Saint-Mihiel dived for the cingulum on the central tent pole and tore his well-blooded falchion from its scabbard. -- but as it rasped free, its weight dragged its point to the earthen floor. Before the transformed lord could bring the unwieldy thing up in his enfeebled hands, the other Saint-Mihiel had seized him.

"Monster! Release my soul!" the girl shrilled as she struggled against his overwhelming strength.

Calmly, to make a point, the giant squeezed her wrists with enough force to send shots of burning pain up Saint-Mihiel's thin arms. Though the heavy weapon fell from her benumbed fingers, the enchanted Frank struck back with barefooted kicks and sinewless punches. Unharmed and contemptuous, the false baron threw her down upon the bedroll.

"You are a tasty morsel," the pretended Saint-Mihiel mocked. "We must waste no time in accustoming you to your new life."

As the girl watched, the giant commenced stripping off his tunic, kicking away his boots. When the giant with Saint-Mihiel's face had rendered himself nude, it was not his lust-swollen tool that shocked his prisoner most; she beheld with terror the raw glyph incised into the man's lower belly -- a fresh eschar which resembled the burn-mark on her own flank -- and resembled also the faded scar upon the breast of the dead sorcerer Muawiya al-Tariq.

Stunned, the Greek barely defended herself as the giant crushed her against his chest and covered her face with violent kisses.

The rain beat hard against the master keep, slopping over the window casements, pooling darkly upon the flagstones. To the Crusader's surprise, the Greek in his arms was this time responding differently to the gusto of his rape, making mewing sounds and moving as if to accommodate, even to encourage, the rough back-and-forth motion of his assault.

After another minute it became undeniable; the girl had ceased to struggle. At some level this annoyed the knight and he moved provocatively to reawaken her outrage and defiance, pushing himself home again and again with rude directness. He plumbed her innermost depths, but exacted only her prolonged moan -- one which could have as easily been born of pleasure as of injury. . . .

There was nothing, not even pain, shame, or fear remaining; Saint Mihiel's mind wandered aimlessly, as if lost in an empty dream. Suddenly a man whispered as if behind many folds of black curtain:

"You have caused me great loss, Saint-Mihiel, but Muawiya al-Tariq will have again all that you might have taken from him."

Her dreaming self sought for the speaker, but Saint-Mihiel saw nothing.

"How easy it would be to slay you," the dream-voice continued, "even as you have slain my servants –- but it shall please me more to take from you name, family, titles, wealth -- even all that you possess, -- and let you live on knowing all you have lost.

"Yours shall be a life without joy and without hope, Saint-Mihiel. You shall not give voice to the secret that you have ever been other than what you seem to be. And in the course of months, when you have been forced in the arms of a man for the hundredth time, your true punishment shall only then begin. Fear it, Saint-Mihiel. . . .

Saint-Mihiel woke, blearily relieved that the horrors which she had undergone had been only a nightmare, but she quickly realized that her crotch was sore and, as she looked down at herself, saw the aching bruises upon her limbs.

Now full awake, she looked wildly about. If all she had dreamed were true, she had to escape and seek means to break the spell!

Suddenly, to the young woman's dismay, the tent flaps parted and the giant reentered -- this time with Marco Sciarra waddling in train. She called desperately to the little Italian, but lacked a voice -- only her agitated panting reached the merchant's ears.

Sciarra surveyed the tell-tale bruising on the girl's body and smiled; cruel treatment at the hands of the Frank should make her all the more eager to go with him – and a willing slave is the best kind of slave.

"You shall have every bezant that I promised you yesterday, Saint-Mihiel," he assured the false baron. "I think I said twenty, didn't I?"

The knight shrugged indifferently. "Twenty is fair. But I warn you, Sciarra, the wench is proud and insolent; she fought and bit incessantly. It's only her intractableness that incites me to sell her. Tame her well before you inflict such a hell-cat on a new master."

"If she needs strapping, she shall have it," promised the Italian jovially, and then the little man's face assumed a stern professional frown as he beckoned to the girl. "Come, pretty one. I am your master now."

Flabbergasted, the metamorphosed Frank tried to shout: "I am Saint-Mihiel," but could not utter even the smallest whisper. Only now did she remember the words of her dream, that she would have no power to reveal her own identity. Urgently the captive tried to form other words which might be of help, and one of these finally came forth:

"Mercy."

"Mercy?" echoed the impatient slaver. "You shall have mercy when you have earned it! Now, get up!"

When the Greek beauty did not immediately obey him, Sciarra stepped over the scattered bedclothes to lock his fingers around her upper arm. "No more of this! Come or I will punish you!"

With a cry of dismay Saint-Mihiel struck, beating at the man's thighs and knees. Used to such behavior from new slaves, Sciarra slapped her face smartly and the girl fell back tasting blood on her broken lip. As she lay there, her mind racing, she realized that further fight was useless, even a mistake; if she went with the merchant she would escape the sorcerer, who was much more dangerous. Maybe later she could find some means to tell Sciarra the truth, or, if not, he might grow careless and she could escape. . . .

As the merchant dragged his black-tressed prize toward the flaps, Saint-Mihiel threw an anxious glance back toward the impostor. Surprisingly, the tall man was displaying no interest in her fate; he was merely staring into the silver tray, turning it this way and that, as if seeing it for the first time.

The girl saw the master of Kala'at Sharwar no more.

The slave felt her inner body tightening, the carnal friction increasing. Except that her hands were tied, she would have been holding the Crusader's waist to reinforce his lunges with her own pulls. As it was, the girl could only thrust her hips upward in harmony to the man's rhythm. When she realized what she was doing, the Greek let out a gasp of astonishment. In the midst of rape, the act had, in some mad way, become something very much other.

But if it were rape no longer, what exactly had it become?

All of a sudden, the captive girl gave out with a scream and her body went into throes; confronted by her wild response, the man could no longer hold back -- his rushing essence came as a generous flood.

When the nobleman had rolled onto his back, the girl sank quietly into herself, as spent as he. Dazzled, she lay, her lips parting slightly as if to speak, but her intended words flitted away like wraiths in air.

The thunder had finally quelled and the rainfall had grown gentle, its light drumming soothed the tired pair. The Crusader, Giles D'Avernec, had reason to be pleased with himself; for months his favorite slave had carried on like some wild creature of Nature -- defiant, untamable. For sport the knight had tested her resolve to its limit and now knew that he had finally overcome her will to resist.

He stared up at the beams, wondering at his sense of disappointment. It was victory of a kind, but was it what he had wanted? Would an obedient, cowed woman, even one of Rhea's beauty, please him better than the spirited roan mare who had resisted his sharp spurs and harsh training bit so determinedly? This e'en had been the end of something, surely -- but must it be only an ending?

For long hours Simon Saint-Mihiel, known to all but herself as the slave girl Rhea, lay restlessly on a pallet in the women's quarter of Belvoir Castle. The night breeze which had followed the rain fluttered the curtains and fanned her sweat-dampened body as her heated passion subsided; now she began to shiver in the draft and so drew a warm sheet over her nudity.

Rhea was remembering the last terrible year, counting off her many rapes one by one, each of them cut like a notch into her raw and bleeding soul. It had been the false Saint-Mihiel who had first debased her, and then it had been the turn of that fat swine Marco Sciarra. Each time she failed to please the slaver, every time his pudgy hand had touched her, in fact, she had been strapped like a dog.

For weeks she had been dragged from marketplace to marketplace, displayed in finery, or, sometimes naked, before the wealthiest of the Crusading gentry. Finally, the young Lord Giles D'Avernec had accepted the Italian's high asking price and this new Crusader had taken Rhea home to Belvoir -- and there raped her furiously the first night of their arrival.

In the early days, at least, the girl had fought back. Could she do ought but resist? She had been a warrior-knight and though a harsh and ruthless fighter, even an ungenerous conqueror, Simon Saint-Mihiel's heart had always brimmed with stubborn courage and the pride of place.

But, as Rhea, Saint-Mihiel had found herself outmatched in a contest unwinnable. D'Avernec was a fighting man as she had been, and doubtlessly he enjoyed claiming victory in each new test of will. The girl would have hated her captor even more, except that she understood the feelings of such a man all too well. How could she not?

D'Avernec had frequently loaned her to his friends, his officers, his guests, and sometimes even to his favored servants in a calculated program for her taming. Rape had followed rape and, on some terrible days, it had come more than once. As the loathsome count mounted, the girl had not been able to forget the sorcerer's threat -- that her true punishment would begin only with her hundredth violation.

Finally, this night, in the implacable embrace of Lord D'Avernec, that which she had most feared had finally come to pass -- her hundredth outrage.

Afraid of what Muawiya al-Tariq's curse might mean, Rhea had fought D'Avernec as she had not fought back in a long while; but her last fight, like every fight before it, had only served to excite and amuse him.

Now it had happened and she sensed that something profound had happened even as he was in the act of taking her. Was she bewitched anew? If now the sorcerer's full curse had claimed her, what did it mean? Would her body, or her condition, change in some repellant new way?

Rhea touched her breasts apprehensively; sliding her fingers to her loins she detected no alteration either in her manner of thinking or in her person. Nothing had been different except --

The pleasure.

Until tonight, lying with a man had never been anything less than repugnant, but when D'Avernec held her it had been as though her emotions had finally gone into open revolt to claim something which her faculties had tried to deny.

But what?

Thinking feverishly, Rhea realized that she had lost the sense of odium that had always been part and parcel of submission. Where had it gone, and if it were gone forever, what remained?

Rhea sat up, her fists clenched; she could not go on this way, but what other way was there? Restless, the girl swung up from her pallet and tiptoed through the perfumed darkness, at first not knowing what she sought. But a moment later, finding herself outside the room where the keeper of his lordship's women slept, she heard the matron moaning in heavy sleep.

Moved by impulse, not thought, Rhea stepped through the curtains and saw a vague outline of the slumbering woman. Unsure why she wanted to disturb Tanah, the girl hesitated, some part of her desiring to deliver an urgent message, but the rest of her being only wanting to retreat unseen. Her heart won over her head and she took a faltering step forward to kneel beside the slumberer's bed, as if to pray --

Rhea's eyes wandered in fascination to the orb of the full moon which was beaming brightly through an arabesque grate. The lunar light was fragmented into precious silver coins spilling across Tanah's bedclothes. The quiet beauty of the moonlit chamber fascinated the girl and, as if beguiled by enchantment, Rhea reached out to touch one of the moon-coins.

Tanah awoke with a start. "Who? -- Rhea? What?"

The younger woman startled; what could she reply? What reception could she expect? These last months had not been easy ones in the women's quarter, neither for Rhea nor for those who had shared it with her.

"You have been patient with me, Tanah," Rhea whispered hoarsely, "but I have not been patient with you. I am sorry, Lady Tanah. You must hate me." Heavy of heart, she bowed her head.

The elder woman sat up, puzzled. "I do not hate you, child!" she exclaimed. "You are proud and brave, and this I respect -- but you have not been wise. Your lot would have been much less bitter had you only surrendered to your handsome young master long ago and permitted him to be kind to you." She stroked Rhea's dark locks. "He is not a cruel man, sweet child, but you have challenged him and such a one must win every challenge. It is his way"

"I want to surrender, Mistress!" the girl asserted spilling out the secret of her soul without thinking, but then, realizing the awful thing which she had admitted to, Rhea's face grew hot. Fortunately, the darkness hid her mortified flush from the harem-keeper's discerning stare.

"I don't understand, my darling. What troubles you tonight?"

"I --" Unable to form words, Rhea covered her face, ashamed of the tears rolling from them. She had often shed tears of hate, of rage, but tonight she was not possessed by such dark emotions. Why did these new tears flow?

"Yes?" Tanah urged gently, drawing the girl's hands away from her eyes.

"I was with -- the master -- earlier tonight," Rhea began haltingly. "That you know, but -- but this time -- it --"

"It what, child?"

"It pleased me!" She choked on her shameful words and pressed her face into the sheets.

"Why do you carry on so, fair one? What you say fills my heart with gladness."

Encouraged, Rhea dared to raise her glance. "I -- I am unschooled, Mistress. I know not what to do -- how to act with a man. I have learned nothing because I would not permit you to teach me. I am sorry -- now that it is too late."

The matron regarded her charge with amazement, then, like a doting nurse, drew the girl close, kissing her lovely brown hair. "It is not too late, my precious! I do not know what has come upon you, but I rejoice that it has finally come. I and the other women will swiftly teach you all that you must know -- how to adorn yourself, to dance, and to drive a man mad with passion -- if that is what you truly desire."

Rhea stiffened. Was that indeed what she desired? Still infinitely confused, that part of her in rebellion must nevertheless have wanted exactly what Tanah promised. For what other reason would a slave girl suddenly throw her arms around the older woman's neck and hugged her like the grateful, needful daughter of a generous dame.

D'Avernec had feasted with his retainers that night weeks later, celebrating good news from Jerusalem, and afterwards lay in his chamber inebriated -- to Rhea's profound frustration. The young lord had applauded her belly dance loudly that night and so she had expected to be summoned to his quarters after the guests retired. -- But instead the passed-out knight had to be carried from the table even before the festivities had entirely wound down. Despite her disappointment, the dancer could not help but smile; men ever behaved so and she didn't fault her master for it. What other woman could appreciate men's ways and enjoy men's society better? Her memory of a warrior's life was an essential part of her.

Rhea had returned to the women's quarters, a daring strategy forming in her mind. To act it out, she had arrayed herself in a gossamer body veil and carefully applied scent and paint. Then, at last, she had stolen into D'Avernec's darkened chamber.

Breathless, the willful slave shed her light wrapping, and dropped to her hands and knees to approach the bed like a cat intent upon trapping a mouse. Drawing close, she groped for her sleeping master and touched upon his bare thigh, his valets having removed his hose; she smiled, pleased that they had served their lord so well.

The harem girl gently felt her way along his leg until she captured his limp cock in her hand, then positioned herself next to him on the bed. She was acting with alacrity in the full knowledge that D'Avernec would not awaken easily after so much wine. -- And certainly Rhea didn't want him to awaken, -- not yet.

Her eager fingers began massaging his soft tool, rubbing it lightly, exercising her lately-learned arts to excite it. As her hands worked dexterously, the sound of the knight's light snoring changed a little, but he continued sleeping.

Rhea leaned forward, letting her hot breath stimulate the man-meat's flaccid head, then began lapping the warm corona with her agile tongue. Though heavily besotted, some part of Lord D'Avernec's faculties remained alert and the girl's efforts began to have their intended effect -- the dome of his cock beginning to swell, harden.

Rhea now commenced to tease its underside with the flat of her tongue and the longer she played with it, the more it amazed her that her master remained asleep. But she was up to her challenges as a concubine no less than in deeds of war when she was a redoubtable knight, and so Rhea continued her lascivious work. Before long, the girl had engorged more than half of the man's lance and her saliva flow was cascading down its length, while her nostrils flared widely, starved for air.

When D'Avernec's arms moved, Rhea supposed that her lord must be waking at last. But he had made a reflexive motion only and continued to sleep. Determined, the girl sucked even more strongly.

Her head bobbing up and down, Rhea's excitement waxed. Like a sword-swallower admitting a blade, she finally conquered the entire length of her prize, leaving no room for her fingers to hold onto. Only one other harem girl in the castle -- she who had been most diligent in teaching Rhea the art of love -- possessed the skill to do what her pupil had just accomplished, and the Greek felt as much pride as when Saint-Mihiel had unhorsed his first knight-opponent in tourney.

Rhea's long fingernails were digging into D'Avernec's hard bum while her teeth nibbled the base of his cock-stem, hoping to stimulate her lord with a little pain. Of a sudden, she felt a quickening between her jaws.

Mon Dieu! she thought. The knight would surely come before awakening if she kept up her mischievous assault this way. Rhea had only wanted to build D'Avernec's tower to overweening size and hardness, not cause it to exhaust itself uselessly inside her mouth before he even knew who was giving him pleasure. So she at once ceased her phallic worship and climbed astride the supine knight, coming to rest upon his thighs.

In this commanding posture, Rhea took D'Avernec's erection into both her hands and carefully guided it toward the desire-lubricated lips of her restrictive cony. As she pushed its hugeness betwixt the soft, yielding labia, the girl savored the initial penetration, and then skillfully positioned her body -- up, forward, and down -- fitting the lord and master of the herd snugly within her well-lubricated sheath. Once Rhea's pelvic bones kissed his she knew that her master had given all that he had to give.

The Greek enjoyed her situation for an instant and then with gritted teeth began sliding back and forth, her mind swimming with vivid fantasies of passion. She imagined herself a sacrificial lamb impaled by a priestly blade, struggling for life upon the altar of some ancient fertility god -- a god like Muawiya al-Tariq might still yet worship. She imagined herself a harlot of Babylon, in exacting service to Darius of Persia, facing the bladed whip if she should fail to please in the slightest degree. The exhilarated girl moaned and her skin prickled with the friction of D'Avernec's inner presence.

A moonbeam won through the clouds and fell upon them both, allowing Rhea to see her own reflection and be aroused with voyeuristic excitement.

Suddenly D'Avernec gasped and Rhea caught a flash of his eye in the moonlight. Hurrying now, Rhea assailed him with brazen thrusts and the knight, not yet fully awake, could not control his reactions in time. Rhea was rewarded by a hot founting deep inside her.

The chamber echoed with her moans, and the slave now fell exhausted across her master's body and for the first time Rhea had the presence of mind to anticipate the strapping she might receive for assaulting her master while he slept.

Well, if it was the knight's will to punish her, let him, she thought. For Rhea, D'Avernec's displays of strength and virility had become an intoxicant -- even when he was disciplining her with a leather belt.

The maid recalled Muawiya al-Tariq's warning, but where was his mighty curse? Was it nothing more than a spell cast over her heart to make her desirous to give herself in love and seek for love in return? Was there no more terror in the magician's mighty vengeance than this -- this exquisite pleasure that she hoped might never end?

Was the wizard just a fool after all? Or did Muawiya al-Tariq, a man who had lived for centuries by stealing the lives of others, believe that a woman's surrender to a lover was her greatest denigration? The sorcerer might have believed otherwise if he had spent more than just single a day in the body of a female. Rhea laughed. It was a woman's laugh -- the laugh of one who has realized a kind of victory over the most terrible of trials.

The drink-dulled Frank was by now awakened enough to recognize her ringing peal; he raised his head and muttered, "Rhea?" She who had been Simon Saint-Mihiel smiled and reached out of the darkness to touch her master's breast.

"It is I, my lord," the girl murmured.

The Crusader finally comprehended Rhea's prank; he puzzled about what to do, but finally did nothing, except to draw the girl closer. She nuzzled the hollow of his shoulder and gave out with a sigh of "Mmmmmm." Pleased, the man pressed his lips into her scented hair and breathed deeply. After that he simply held her -- until both of them fell asleep.

Hours later, but still in the dark, D'Avernec again awoke. By now his mind had grown clearer and he turned toward Rhea, whose youthful outline he could barely make out in the feeble starlight.

He marveled how his slave had changed over the past few months; the suddenness of her metamorphosis had left him unprepared. Rhea had once been the wild caracal, the desert-cat whose woman-like screams rived the Saracen hills at midnight, but now the Greek beauty seemed more like a tame kitten napping upon a soft cushion.

Here, surely, was a woman fit for a man! he thought. Rhea had already demonstrated her ability to give a man pleasure. -- And the girl seemed wise in other ways, too; she almost made D'Avernec believe that she understood the travails of a man who must bear arms and he was often surprised by her insights regarding military affairs. Sometimes the girl made him image that he was talking not to a simple harem wench but to an Amazon princess. He could not act upon the advice of a woman, of course, but --

It occurred to Lord D'Avernec that Rhea was like this Syrian land -- sultry, precious, not easy to possess. He had had to fight hard to conquer his fiefdom, and he had had to fight just as fiercely to conquer this Greek beauty. But now the wars were over and both she and the land were undeniably his.

D'Avernec remembered the day that he had left for the Holy Land. His baronial father had warned him that a wise man does not fight merely for the sake of fighting. There comes a time, the elder D'Avernec had advised, when the conqueror must cease to make war and become the defender of that which he has already won. Time is short, he had cautioned -- the vine must be planted, the herd husbanded, the field sewn, the corn harvested. The warrior must cease to burn and commence to build. In peace there may not be great glory, but glory bears no fruit; in peace alone is there increase and joy.

To think such mild thoughts after years of slaughter still seemed strange to D'Avernec. He was, after all, under thirty and proud to be known from Constantinople to Cairo as a redoubtable warrior. Yet how easily these pacific musings came to mind when fanned by the cool drafts of the desert night and comforted by the nearness of the girl who -- what? What did she mean to him?

D'Avernec touched Rhea's cheek. Had not the time arrived that he must start thinking ahead? It was said that a man without a family had no future; death might come suddenly in this violent land, he knew. He ought to find himself a wife before his God-granted time ran out. But what wife? What woman might give him delight in his hours of rest? What woman could discuss with him those weighty matters which brooded upon his soul? What woman could be a friend to a man isolated by rank? What woman should give him an heir?

The nobleman bent his head and kissed Rhea upon the temple; she stirred like an infant in its crib but did not awaken.

Had the Crusader once supposed that he would lose interest in his lovely prisoner after he had secured her surrender? He smiled at his own foolishness; did the knight scorn his charger once he had broken it to the saddle, or feel contempt for the steed as it bore him undaunted into the press? No, he treasured it all the more.

The girl stirred and pillowed her cheek upon his firm pectoral; her breathing, coming in little mews, tickled his flesh more lightly than a feather. He again pressed his nose into her hair, inhaling its florid scent. Life is so brief, he knew; it must be clutched to the heart while one still has it.

Finally, the knight nestled down closer to his companion, his hand placed at rest upon her hip. He then lay back, his eyes closed, thinking warmly of what they had shared, of what they still might share -- until he joined her in the blissful slumber that lovers share.

THE END