<div class="floatright">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/c/c9/424955_10151308184782958_110644116_n.jpg)</div>Dawn broke bright and hot over the strangely silent bandit camp.  There was little chatter among the normally talkative women, and all made frequent glance toward the northern horizon.  The camp was a new experience for Miri – the people here were all outcasts and misfits, driven from their tribes or villages for reasons she often could not fathom.  Some of the tribes she’d been with the last year were raiders, but these folk were different.  They had no loyalty to each other except that of necessity, and no one here was related to anyone else.  That alone made the camp strange in this tortured, barren land.<br/><br/>But odd as the assemblage was, there was still a structure and some sense of community, a vestige of stability.  A threat to that stability kept the women silent.  No one wanted to speak the obvious.  The men had been gone too long.  Rare was the hunt or the ambush that kept the raiders away from camp more than a day.  And this dawn ended the second night of their absence.  Bad as the men were – crude and uncultured and unbathed and mean-spirited – worse by far was their absence.<br/><br/>Without the game and supplies they brought back from their outings, the women and the children would starve.  Already food was short.  There was never much surplus in the Wastes, and many would go to bed hungry this night if the men did not return.<br/><br/>And no one wanted to talk about it.  Voicing their plight wouldn’t make it any worse, but it would make it seem worse by confirmation.  And the water was almost gone.  The seepage that fed the rock-shaded pool they drew from was not strong enough to label as a spring.  The pool was deep and collected the seepage well enough.  But their numbers drained it quickly.<br/><br/>If they moved on to the next camp, the slow upwelling from below would refill the pool, but that would take months.  Someone had to say something, and though she was new here Miri was already respected.  Perhaps mostly because she was the Leader’s woman.<br/><br/><strong>“Does anyone know where the next water is?”</strong>Miri asked the group of sullen wenches.<br/><br/>Quick glances shifted about the group – ricocheting one from another until most stared at a flaxen-haired woman.  She was of Wasteland blood, of a tribe that shouldn’t have lost women to mere bandits, and she stared back at the others defiantly for a while, but finally spoke.<strong>“It is to the west, but I am not sure I could find it.”</strong><br/><br/><strong>“I heard the men talk about a trail to the north.”</strong>Miri spoke.<strong>“A trail leading from Trade Town.”</strong>She had been to that place, though she never saw it except through the veiled drapes of her master’s tent. But tent gossip had it that the place wasn’t much by Western standards.  Of course, none of this was much like the comforts of the harem.<strong>“They planned an ambush on the trail.”</strong><br/><br/>That started an argument – what should they do?  Stay and wait for the men?  Head west and hope the nomad girl could find water?  Or head north to the trail that several of them knew to have been the men’s intended target?<br/><br/><strong>“What would we do when we found the trail?”</strong>Demanded one woman barely older than a girl.<strong>“We have no weapons to make ambush, or trade goods to offer.”</strong><br/><br/>Miri glanced quickly around the faces – not one of them was very young, or very old, and all were of passable beauty.  They were all booty, captured and kept because even bandits wanted women.<br/><br/><strong>“We have ourselves.”</strong>She stated the obvious.<strong>“If we stand by the trail – some man will come along and take us.”</strong>Not that women couldn’t provide for themselves.  Usually.  But they had no weapons, and few of them knew how to use them even if they did.<br/><br/><strong>“The men wouldn’t like that.”</strong>Someone spoke.<br/><br/><strong>“The men are not coming back.”</strong>Miri replied with the thought they’d all been avoiding.<br/>