Title: "Of Princes and Slaves"
Author: Osiris Brackhaus & Beryll
Part: 5/19
Rating: R
Warnings: Smut? ;-)
Credits: To Larry, for his excellent help, To MayetRa, for perpetual encouragement.




- Ardeth Bey -

Waking up to darkness and a warm, breathing form next to me, for a moment I was confused as to where I was. For a long, sweet moment I thought I was lying in my tent, surrounded by the safety of my tribe with the presence of a beautiful slave girl in my arms to kiss me and smile at me when she woke up.

But there was too much light for the confines of a tent, and the body next to me smelled all wrong, triggering fear instead of longing.

It was the prince who had sneaked into my bed and was now cuddling next to me as if I were his favorite lap dog. And to my disgust I realized that not only had he thrown an arm over my chest but also he had somehow managed to wrap one of my arms around him. Or maybe I had even done so myself in sleep? Did he have no respect for privacy at all?

Had I been more awake I might have realized there was no privacy to be had for a slave, but my muddled mind just considered strangling him to teach him the lesson.

Then a small sound intruded into my sleep-fogged attention and suddenly I knew that it had not been the prince's presence that had woken me up. It was the sound of footsteps, of almost inaudible naked feet on the stone floor, trying very hard to be quiet. No, not trying to be quiet but sneaking, and that had wakened my warrior's instinct. Nobody was supposed to be sneaking around there.

I opened my eyes without moving and carefully scanned the room for movement. The stars shed some light through the high windows, illuminating enough of the prince's chamber for me to notice the two dark figures slowly approaching the prince's bed from opposite directions. And they were most certainly sneaking, moving in a low crouch, hiding something in their sleeves that would have glinted had it caught the light.

They were so intent on the bed that they didn't notice when I quietly disentangled myself from the prince and got up from my pallet. There was no cover to use on my own way over to the bed, so I would have to hope I could be fast enough that they wouldn't know I was there before it was too late.

Silently I cursed the fact that I was unarmed. Still wounded as I was, I would have to take one of them down with my first move or my chances would be slim. On completely soundless feet, I started towards the bed. It may be they were well versed in sneaking, but they had never been taught to walk silently on the ever whispering sands of the desert. The stone floor did not really present a challenge to me.

They reached the bed before me, both bending over it from their respective sides, searching for their prey. Only when they did not find it, did they raise their heads again in a startled movement and scanned the rooms for the whereabouts of their quarry.

But I had reached the bed myself and hid in its shadow. They were communicating with signs, but I did not wait for them to finish. One quick move brought me behind one of them. The other would have to circle around the bed to get at me. Hopefully that would give me the time to finish the first one.

His head was clean shaven so that gave me no hair to grab him by, but I still managed to get a firm hold of him and then simply slammed his head forward with all my force. It connected with the bed frame with a satisfying 'thud'. His arms flailed helplessly, dazed but not yet unconscious. I had time to slam him down once more before his comrade came around the bed and lunged at me with the knife he had drawn from his sleeve.

I dodged the first thrust of the knife and moved backward to assess my opponent. He was much smaller than me and slight of build, but he moved with the speed of a striking snake, following me immediately, slashing his knife in an upward motion that would have opened my belly had I not kept moving.

He pressed forward relentlessly, driving me back towards the line of columns and the stream. He was incredibly fast, but slowly I was seeing the pattern in his moves and could anticipate them. Thrust forward, slash upward, slash downward, backhanded thrust, slash at the legs, thrust upward. Obviously he did not consider me a worthy opponent for he never varied his moves.

So he was extremely surprised, when I suddenly lunged forward after his upward slash and caught his arm in the down-movement, catching his knife hand in a firm grip. I drew him close to me, crushing his wrist in my grip as hard as I could. He gave a strangled cry and did as I had hoped - he dropped the knife. Now we were on more even terms.

But he was not willing to give up that easily. His kick into my stomach caught me by surprise and my grip on him loosened. His eyes searched for the glimmer of his knife but I did not allow him the time to find it, punching him in the face with my free hand. Both of us stumbled backward and then he lost his balance and tripped into the stream which we had now reached.

He landed beneath me and I did the simple thing. I pressed his head under water to drown him. His arms flailed wildly, but I put all of my weight between his shoulders and slowly he went still.

I kept him under for a bit longer to make sure he was truly dead, when a voice intruded into my actions. "What are you doing...?"

I looked over to my pallet to find the prince awake, staring over at me in sleepy confusion. "Nothing, my prince." The answer came so quickly I really had no idea where it came from. Still keeping the head of the assassin firmly under water, I stared back at him, silently willing him to go back to sleep.

"You are drowning someone..." he complained, sounding more annoyed by the fact of being woken up than by my actions.

"They were trying to kill you," I explained bluntly.

"Oh." the prince rubbed his sleepy eyes and then sank back down onto the pallet. "Well, keep one alive for questioning," he ordered and then went back to sleep.

To say it was eerie would have been an understatement. I had just saved his life and he simply went back to sleep. And then it hit me. I HAD saved his life. Why in the name of all my ancestors had I done that? Was I going completely out of my mind? There was absolutely no sensible reason why I should protect the evil creature who had tormented me so and taken my life and my honor. But the simple truth was that I had not been awake enough to consider what I was doing. My instincts had just taken over.

And now I was in a fine mess. By saving the prince's life, I was now partially responsible for all he would do from that day on. I had given him the breath to continue his life so his actions were my actions as well. I kicked the dead assassin hard. Stupid wrench! Couldn't he have come in a night when the prince slept in his own bed? Then he would still be alive and the prince would be dead.

But that would have presented me with other problems – like facing charges of having murdered the prince myself. I did not even want to dwell on the method of execution that would have brought down upon me. Not to mention that I would have lost any chance to change my fate back to a brighter future. No, even if I had had the time to consider my actions, I would probably have done the same. Not for the prince but for myself.

I dragged the dead body out of the stream and let it lie there. The guards would find something useful to do with it in the morning, I was sure. Then I went over to the bed to check if the other one was still alive or if I had cracked his skull. Luckily he was still breathing, albeit shallowly. Not my problem. He had said alive, not unharmed. I sat down on the bed and ripped one of his linen blankets into long stripes and tied the assassin with them, leaving him lying face down on the bed.

For a long moment I just sat there next to him, massaging my aching wound. Too much movement too quickly. I really needed to take up my training again or I would get stiff.

With a yawn I went back to my pallet. It was still the middle of the night. I could still get some hours of sleep. It would be interesting to watch how the prince would react when he was awake. I lay down again, this time keeping a careful distance from my uninvited guest, but I could have spared myself the trouble. The moment I got comfortable and started drifting off to sleep, the prince turned around in his sleep, snuggling close to me, resting his head against my chest.

With a defeated sigh I wrapped an arm around him. Obviously there was no fighting him – at least not when he was asleep.

----

- Prince Nekhem (Orlando Bloom) -


"Don't panic, my Prince! We will rescue you!"

My mind numb with sleep and happiness, I struggled hard to make sense of what Senem-Nef's voice said to me.

"And you, bastard, don't you dare move or we will skewer you like the wild boar you are!"

My captain's words still didn't make sense to me, but his constant rambling prevented me from falling back into the sweet dreams it had called me from.

"Senem-Nef, stop it. Let me sleep."

Drowsy as I was, I pulled the heavy arm I felt across my shoulder closer to my chest, annoyed by the wary resistance I felt in it. Was there no way a prince could get a decent sleep in this palace?

Frowning with annoyance, I tried to open my eyes, only to blink in irritation at the tip of the sword I saw mere fingers away from my nose.

Instantly, I was awake, scanning the room around me without moving. I found not only Senem-Nef in front of my bed, but also a whole cluster of guards, all with their swords drawn, all staring ferociously at me. Well, on second thought, two corrections to that: first, it was not my bed I was lying in, but the pallet of my slave, and second, they were staring at him with barely veiled threat, as if trying to protect me from some unnamed evil.

"My Prince," Senem-Nef started once more, "if you move carefully, he'll not be able to harm you!"

Again frowning with confusion, I tried to make sense of my captain's warning. Who would harm me? My barbarian slave? What a stupid idea.

Completely ignoring the whole set of swords pointing at us, I turned around to see if my slave posed any threat to me. And, as expected, I only found my confusion and annoyance mirrored in his beautiful face.

Turning my attention back to my over-protective captain and his men, I said:

"Senem-Nef, you are captain of my guard and my most trusted soldier. Your loyalty to me is beyond praise, but right now you're acting like a toothless crone with no more wits left in her mind than to insult everyone she meets."

Blustering with indignation, the large Nubian put on an even sterner expression, explaining with grave importance:

"My Lord Prince, he has killed two men with his bare hands tonight, and now he has taken you captive. Are you out of your mind to ignore the danger you are in?"

"The only danger I see here, my dear captain, are you and your men."

In a way, it was fun to have them misunderstand the evidence they must have found in my room this morning. Of course, the truth was so far from anything one might have expected that I could not really blame them. But none the less, dear Senem-Nef was making a fool of himself just then.

"Dear Senem-Nef," I said with my desert warrior's arm still wrapped tightly around me, "of those men you mention, he killed only one."

Confusion spread in the soldiers' faces, and I seized the moment to slip out of my barbarian's embrace, stand up from the pallet and wrap the linen sheet around me in a single, flowing motion.

"And I do not see that he captivated me in any way I did not desire."

Leaving the flimsy cloth open long enough for even the last soldier to understand I was wearing nothing else, I inwardly cackled with glee at the confused looks they shot between me and my now uncovered slave. I really was in a dramatic mood this morning, for I boldly stepped between the soldiers, forcing them to let me pass towards my bed, exclaiming pointedly:

"These men you talk of, dear captain, were assassins, sent here to kill your prince, and it is only by the brave intervention of this very slave you are still threatening with your drawn weapons that I am among the living this morning."

Stepping up to the pedestal of my own bed, I turned around to glare at my soldiers.

"I cannot remember anyone of you having been here tonight, when my life was in danger."

Staring every single one of them down took me a while, but finally all of them sheathed their swords, their eyes cast down in proper acceptance of their failure. My slave, all but forgotten by the soldiers, still rested on his pallet, observing the scene in front of him with undisguised fascination. Even Senem-Nef bowed his head to me, but I was not yet finished with them.

"It is not to me that you have to bow in apology, it is to my slave who did your very duty last night. And more than that, he has left one of the fiends alive to be questioned by you. For my prolonged health."

Slightly confused, the soldiers looked from me to the neatly packed-up prisoner on my bed to my barbarian on his pallet and back to me again, completely at a loss about what to do with this strange situation. What a funny display.

Finally, it was Senem-Nef who gathered his wits first, turning to me, bowing once more, saying:

"Please accept my apologies for failing you, my Highness. I praise the gods to have offered you this unexpected protection, and I will personally make sure that the surviving assassin hands us all the necessary information."

"Of course you will, dear captain," I said, as friendly and forgiving as I could be, stepping down to the same level as my soldiers again. "I trust you, and you know just as well as I do that no one is free of failures. I don’t blame either you or your soldiers for last night's attack on my life. I only trust you with the swift discovery of the assassins' employer."

Putting my hand gently on the huge Nubian's shoulder, I inclined my head in a gesture of respect, and then dismissed both Senem-Nef and the soldiers with another nod. Carefully, I made sure that they carried out both the dead and the captured assassin, before I turned my attention to my barbarian slave.

He was stilly lying on his pallet, raised onto one of his elbows for support, looking at me with an expression that might have been amusement just as well as not. Now what was I to think of him? He showed no real sign of respect, not even an attempt at meekness, and yet he had saved my life tonight.

"Now what am I to make of that?" I asked, more to myself than to anybody else in the room, staring ponderously at my slave.

And that arrogant bastard just stared back! He was smiling politely, almost meekly, yes, but he stared back at me! Of course, as soon as he noticed me noticing him, he cast his eyes down, intently observing the ground underneath my feet. One of these days, that bloody slave would drive me mad.

"One moment you say you hate me," I started, "and the next you save my life at the risk of your own. I know I should give you a token of my gratitude now - but, by the gods, I have no idea why you did so."

And I couldn't trust him. However much I was besotted by this barbarian, there was no denying the fact he had defeated two armed men with his bare hands tonight, even with his shoulder only partially healed. He was a dangerous warrior still, and no laws or shackles would change that. It made me nervous to know such a skilled warrior of doubtful loyalties in my immediate vicinity. I had even slept in his bed tonight, cuddled in his arms! And yet he had fought for my life.

In addition, he was devastatingly handsome, once the grime had been washed from his body, and to know he was not a meek toy only increased his appeal. Was it too dangerous a game I was playing? My wild barbarian warrior was definitely a goal worthy of some effort, yet I was unsure if the price I would have to pay might be far too high.

I hated situations where I could not make up my mind!

But what had the priestess of our Lady Isis said to me? Follow your heart, and your actions will be within the will of the gods. All right then, it didn't make much sense to me, but I would try.

"I am supposed to offer you a gift, but I think we both know that the only gift you would accept from my hands is the one thing I am not willing to give you."

His freedom. I could see it in his eyes, even if he tried to keep them down. He despised being a slave, being there, everything around him. Maybe even me.

"You have reminded me of how foolish it is to trust you, and yet in the same action have given me more reason to trust you than ever before. If there is something you would like me to give you for your honorable deed tonight, please say so. If not, I'll see if I can find something suitable on my own."

That sounded almost like a threat, and I could not really bring myself to suppress a smile. Never before had I been in such a strange situation, but I felt happy nonetheless. I couldn’t really trace the reason and neither could bring myself to bother.

With a dismissing nod in the direction of my fiercely handsome slave, I turned around and began to step down towards the pool, intent on getting myself cleaned and dressed, at least partially according to custom. But when my feet had just touched the still surface of the tiny lake, I had an idea of a small token of gratitude I could offer my desert warrior. It was quite unfitting to be given to a slave by a prince of the realm, but it just felt like the right thing to do.

So I turned around to him once more, and in a voice loud enough to be clearly heard throughout my room, I said:

"Oh yes, slave, one last thing."

It was interesting to see how he stared at me. Was it because he thought I had already forgotten the subject, or was it because I was not wearing one bit of clothing right then? Silently, I wished for the latter, and added mirthfully:

"Thank you."

----