Turghan looked down at her, disbelief mixing with the anger visible on his face.
'What kind of women are you?' He spat, 'Do you respect nothing? Care for no one but yourself? These were responsible for you. Now, because of you, they will be punished.'
The woman near his side turned and knelt near him, obedient to a fault. The gesture made Sam's stomach turn, but not as much as when Turghan tore her dress open with a knife and raised the whip.
'No! It was my fault. If you need to beat a women to feel like a man, try me!' Sam lifted her voice, looking Turghan in the eye.
Turghan looked almost pleased when he responded, though his tone was still bitter.
'I value spirit in my horses, not my women,' he informed her, thankfully switching his attention from the other woman.
He stepped towards her and grabbed her hair and it took all of Sam's willpower not to kick out at him when he leant in, no matter how futile it would have been while her hands were tied behind her back. He stank of unwashed human, sweat, blood and milk and she held her breath when he kissed her.
'You belong to me, you will learn your place, and be obedient. You will suffer far worse then a beating.'
He pushed her onto her knees on the floor of the yurt and gestured to one of the younger men standing around the edge.
The man stepped towards Sam. He was young, still in his adolescence and he was almost gentle when he unbound Sam's hands from behind her, though he was careful to keep the knife at his waist out of her reach. He retied her hands in front of her and stepped neatly away. Sam had heard Turghan pacing behind her throughout, until the youth returned to his initial spot in front of Sam with his hands clasped behind him. Sam kept her eyes fixed on the pommel of the youth's knife as Turghan grabbed hold of her shoulder in order to pull the dress from her back.
It wasn't going to happen.
Sam clasped both hands together in a double fist and drove her left elbow over her shoulder into the side of Turghan's head. She pulled at her bonds and found that the ropes fell away. The youth had not tied them properly and to make matters worse for him Sam managed to grab his knife from his waist before he could stop her. He cried out, but Sam was already struggling to her feet and throwing away the rope.
Turghan recovered, the blow had not been that strong, but now Sam had both hands free and a knife in one of them, even if her movement was hindered by the dress she was wearing. She felt hands grab her but Turghan waved them away with a twisted smile and a gesture from his knife.
'Let her fight. I will show this woman her place.'
Sam shifted the grip on the unfamiliar knife and waited for Turghan to move. He didn't disappoint as he shifted his feet and then lunged at her with his blade. She dodged it, moving around the confined space within the yurt and keeping him in her peripheral vision. He recovered quickly and came after her, but Sam was a little more prepared this time. She span suddenly, ducking and kicking a leg between his and causing him to stumble, but it bought her little time and there was no where to go. Turghan caught himself with the hand holding the knife and struck out at her with the other, catching her on the side of the head. She pulled back, but Turghan was already up and swiping at her with his knife. Sam ducked and dodged back. The knife caught her once, it's tip scoring a line of pain down her side, but she saw her moment when he was over-extended. She ducked quickly and shoved her knife under his arm, finding soft flesh in his side all too tenuously before his fist caught her in the face again. She twisted away from the knife blade and stumbled over the dress, tumbling to the floor of the yurt. Turghan paused for a moment of satisfaction as he stepped towards her, knife raised, but Sam was already rolling away and cursing the dress by the time the blade came crashing down into the mats that covered the floor. She twisted her legs into Turghan's, sending him tumbling again and slashed at him with the knife, catching him on the arm and opening a nasty long wound down his forearm.
Turghan swore and gave Sam a look that suggested he had just been playing up until now. He launched himself at her from the semi-crouch he had caught himself in. One shoulder slammed into her sternum as if he was giving up all pretence of a knife fight and going for a brawl. She grabbed hold of him, instinctively afraid of being dropped to the ground and lost hold of her knife as they crashed into the matting on the floor. Sam was winded as Turghan's weight crashed down on her. He pinned her and pushed himself up slightly to give her a satisfied look. He savoured the moment and then punched her across the face with the fist that was gripping his knife so that the pommel smashed into her nose. Sam braced herself against his weight, but couldn't get enough leverage to throw him off. Her hands scrabbled for her knife, knowing it couldn't have fallen far. Turghan punched her again, backhanding her this time to whip her head the other way.
He paused and Sam heard a victorious little chuckle. However, there was something under Sam's hand. It was the knife and it was only a seconds work to grab hold of it and swipe desperately towards Turghan. She aimed high, knowing he wore chain mail and leather armour, but she didn't have time to look. She felt something tear across her face and cried out, but then there were no more blows. She slashed again at him, but he just slumped away from her blade.
She looked up at him. Turghan had dropped his knife and both hands were on his neck. Blood spurted from between his fingers and his eyes had rolled back in his head. Men rushed forwards from the sides of the yurt and Sam kicked to free herself. Turghan tumbled off her, blood bubbling in his throat and his limbs twitching. Sam felt sick and tried to sit up to gulp air into her lungs past the blood in her mouth and throat.
The men in the yurt ignored her as they rushed to their leader's side. There was alarmed shouting. Someone pressed a cloth to his throat, but Sam could already see that it was no good. Minutes passed, but eventually Turghan's limbs stilled and the men gave up with a sudden silence.
The woman Sam had stopped Turghan beating wailed and rushed over to the fallen man's side. She continued to wail and pressed her forehead against Turghan's shoulder. The other women, Nya included ran forward as well, all wailing. The men stood up from where they had been tending Turghan and there was an odd moment that Sam couldn't identify, like they were weighing each other up.
The younger man, the one who had tied Sam's wrists ineffectively, suddenly snapped an order. Three of the men seemed to consider it for a moment, but then bent and picked up Turghan's body to carry it from the yurt in silence. The wailing women took a moment to cover their faces and then went after them.
The younger man looked at Sam, but she could read nothing in his expression. Then he looked away and exited the yurt after the other men.
Sam let herself fall back onto the floor. The pain from the fight began to hit her. Her face was on fire and she began to gingerly probe at her injuries with trembling fingers. Her nose was bleeding and she couldn't decide if it had been broken or not at this stage. Turghan's blows had split her forehead and cheek open, but far worse was the ragged slice from the last swipe with the knife that had torn her face almost straight down her forehead, across the bridge of her nose and down along her cheek. It oozed blood, but Sam didn't have time to examine anything else as the blood from her nose bleed began to gather at the back of her throat and threatened to choke her. She rolled onto her side and spat blood onto the matting so that she could breath.
She needed to get out of here. As much as she wanted to lay on the ground and recover she had to get out. She pushed herself up, deciding that she must have cracked a rib at some point in the fight and staggered to something approximating upright. One of her eyes was swelling shut, but she focussed the other on the doorway to the yurt and made towards it.
She got as far as two steps beyond the doorway when a woman stopped her with a gentle touch on her shoulder. It was all it took to halt her.
'Back in,' the woman told her, not harshly, but with no tenderness in her voice. 'Or the men will make you and you can't fight anyone else today.'
'But,' Sam started, but the woman was already turning her back into the yurt. She walked over the stain left by Turghan and the smaller smears where she'd fallen and half collapsed onto the floor to lean against Turghan's throne. The woman unrolled a bundle along the matting and pulled a strip of cloth from it. She wiped at Sam's face, ignoring her ineffectual attempts to bat the woman's hands away.
The woman pulled a skin from a pocket, uncorked it and tipped it to Sam's lips. She squeezed a mouthful of a potent spirit into Sam's mouth and tilted her head back until she swallowed it. Sam coughed and spat half of the spirit and another clot of blood from her mouth.
'Drink,' the woman instructed, handing the skin to Sam. Sam looked at her with her good eye and began to protest again when the woman reached for a bone needle and a thick black thread from the roll of cloth.
'No, just let me go. My people can treat me.'
'Chinua has ordered that you be treated,' the woman said simply. 'Drink.' She threaded the needle.
'I don't need your treatment,' Sam insisted.
'Drink,' the woman repeated, forcing the skin up toward Sam's mouth.
She did as she was told, swallowing two small mouthfuls of the spirit and coughing enough in the process to be sure that she'd cracked a rib.
'Now,' the woman told her, 'hold still.'
She brought the threaded needle up and began to pull the edges of the wound on Sam's face together. Sam felt the fire of the spirit flood through her system and make her woozy, but she still cried out when the woman pushed the needle through the skin. She bit it back, and clenched her hands into fists.
She didn't cry out for any of the other stitches, but she did wonder how good the best plastic surgeon back on earth was.
The woman finished with her face and looked over her again, lifting Sam's arm to examine her side and tut at the injury. 'That is shallow, it will heal,' she told her, her tone business like, before she rolled away her gear and stood up. Outside the yurt Sam heard shouting and turned her head sluggishly at the noise. Horses whinnied and swords clashed not far from the yurt.
Someone burst in, a man, who looked at the woman and Sam. He nodded to the woman, who pulled the veil across her face and scurried from the yurt. Sam tried to sit up from her slump against the throne, but whether it was the pain or the spirit she was beyond caring. The man had a knife in his hand and he advanced on her, his intentions unclear. He got about half way across the yurt before the young man from before appeared again in the doorway.
'Qadan,' he called in a low voice. 'Leave her.'
'Chinua,' Qadan began to protest.
'Leave her,' Chinua repeated. He gestured towards Sam and two women hurried into the yurt. Qadan turned with a snort and stormed through the doorway past the younger man.
'Take her to my yurt,' Chinua told the two women, who nodded behind their veils. 'Tell Nya and Chotan to care for her.'
The two women pulled Sam up between them and did as they were instructed. The camp was a confusing mass of moving people and horses, Sam couldn't properly focus on any details, but the journey was over quickly as the women delivered her into the cloying warmth of another yurt. The two women inside looked up when they arrived, and Nya yelped quietly, but bit it back. Chotan looked horrified at first, but she quickly led Sam to one of the beds within the yurt and helped lower her to the wool mattress. The other women left the yurt and Chotan turned from Sam on the bed and returned to the fire with Nya. Sam rolled herself onto the side without the cracked rib, which meant she was facing away from the centre of the yurt. She clenched a fist into the blanket she was lying on and listened to the shouting and noise ongoing around the camp.
After a time, she dozed lightly, despite the pain. She woke and stirred slightly when someone else arrived in the yurt, but then she dozed again.
