A Cruel Passing of Innocence Read Online Free

with his sharp tongue, his eyes blazing belligerently. The crowd scattered and the whip-men were cowed and fearful in his presence, uneasy at his displeasure.
    There was an instant flurry of activity as the youths rushed to the horsemen with their water bags. The girls, scarcely daring to believe their deliverance, were now quickly ushered away towards the large tent they knew, eager for its shade, desperate to savour its cool interior.
    Stumbling towards its welcome entrance, Nassara grimaced at the throbbing welt growing across her breasts. Perhaps she should feel some sense of gratitude towards this leader of men; perhaps he would be their saviour, but her mind was no less empty of confusion and hate.
    The chained young men knelt exhausted in the sand, their arms outstretched, begging for the water bags that were passing all too slowly amongst them. Despite their dusty, ravaged appearance, and the scars and wheals that covered their naked torsos, Nassara could see they were of scarcely more than her age.
    They were tall and muscled, although their bellies and backs and their striped buttocks from busy whips were wasted from lack of food, or from the gruelling pace or distance of their journey. Their unkempt hair was mainly fair – as though they had come from far off places – although their pale skins were now deeply bronzed or burned red by the sun. Like her they were entirely without a stitch of clothing, almost as though their captors imposed nakedness upon them as a mark of captivity, a mantle of their lowly status.
    Nassara could see the young men’s hanging sheaths of flesh and their sacks of manhood between their legs. A fleeting moment of shame came over her, as if she should not have let her eyes linger there, not in the men’s humbled state. Yet memories of her brothers and her father came flooding back. Once more her mind was caught in confusion, remembering brief images that had troubled her then. How long ago all that seemed now, here in this dreadful desert.
    The dismounted horsemen, armed with long knives and ferocious-looking coiled whips, watched the young men warily for any sign of insurrection or dissent. But the silent, chained captives were beyond such ambitions, their faces etched with weariness and dejection, resigned to their fate, their eyes vacant of all emotion.
    So, too, must Nassara and her companions learn to suffer their ignominy and the taking of their freedom, and to endure the bidding of their masters, their whims and cruelties. All else was futile.
Chapter 2
    They had been watered and fed some thin gruel, and now again the girls were lined up in the sand, waiting fearfully. The sun was almost at its highest, its rays fiercer than before. There was commotion and bustle all around, with men shouting and rushing about and tents being dismantled as if the camp were being abandoned, its purpose spent.
    Nassara’s twin welt was proud and livid. Whenever she moved the pain nagged at her breasts instantly. Thankfully the welt across her shoulders was healing, and the pain from it was tolerable now.
    Her two companions who’d been victims of the whip-man’s earlier wrath were clearly in greater discomfort. The girl who’d been lashed many times across her buttocks and shoulders was wracked by pain. Her face a mask of misery she shivered uncontrollably, finding it difficult to walk, moaning softly to herself all the while. The girl next to Nassara in the line up seemed to have coped far better with her predicament, despite the blotchy purple weal across her belly and the obvious discomfort deep within the valley of her buttocks. She seemed to have resigned herself to her fate, the shock having numbed the acuteness of her senses. Snatching a moment out of earshot of the guards, Nassara managed to speak furtively to the girl, who thanked her for the warning she’d given, and for her previous words of encouragement. Her name was Belithza. Although her manner of