Bloodraven (9 page)

His breathing had grown harsh, his heart beat rapid and the pain of penetration hadn’t even begun.

There was a tingling sensation between his legs, an aching irritation that begged for attention. Yhalen’s eyes widened in surprise—in horror as he realized that the ache centered about his twitching shaft. Oh, Goddess, how could he...? He was chained and naked and imprisoned and had this thing’s unwanted hands stroking his body like he might stroke a beast to calm it—and his body betrayed him. No matter the feel of the callused hands on his flesh, the rhythmic motion of firm fingers pressed into his skin and muscle—no matter how gentle the touch, how unnerving the sensation as first one nipple then the other was tugged and toyed with—there was nothing, nothing pleasurable about it. Nothing that warranted....

Ah, Goddess, the hand slipped down his belly and between his legs, fingers stroking his half-rigid length, enclosing it within the warmth of the large palm, squeezing gently, pulling on the taut flesh.

Yhalen gasped and whimpered, losing strength in his arms and falling forward onto his elbows.

Bloodraven pulled him back up, the other arm encircling his chest, lips and tongue pressed to the back of his neck.

“Stop. Stop it, damn you.” Yhalen groaned. “This isn’t right. It’s not my fault. It’s wrong. I shouldn’t be—I’m taking no pleasure from this. It’s the Goddess punishing me—humbling me—that’s causing this.

It’s not what you’re doing. Do you understand? You repulse me. You’re not even human—only half a one and my stomach turns when I even look at you...so...it’s... not...not what you’re doing...”

He cried out, when the hand tightened. Bloodraven growled something at him, low and soft.

Perhaps a warning to shut up. Yhalen hardly knew. He could hardly think with his cock encased in the halfling’s huge hand. With a body’s warmth against his back and hot, wet lips on his neck. With a long tongue tracing the back of his ear while teeth took the hard ridge of the shell between them and gently bit, moving down to the lobe to nibble and pull at that. He shut his eyes and moaned, shivering and shamed as his body reflexively jerked forward, pumping into the ogr’ron’s hand.

Yhalen would just come and have it over with. That’s what Bloodraven was apparently after. He did, after a few more strokes, spurting his seed onto the furs and wanting to collapse afterwards, but unable to, as he was held on his hands and knees by the ogr’ron. Bloodraven stroked his back and his sides, repeating the words to stay in that position. Yhalen did, trembling badly, head down and breathing harsh. Bloodraven left him for a moment, but was back in short order, big hands back on his hips and back, stroking, massaging. His fingers were slick with the scented salve he used to prepare Yhalen for sex. He spread Yhalen’s cheeks with his thumbs and rubbed the salve around the human’s puckered entrance. The finger that entered wasn’t painful at all, slick with grease as it was. Bloodraven twisted it around, taking some pleasure, Yhalen thought miserably, from simply watching Yhalen’s body swallow his digit. The ogr’ron much preferred to take Yhalen in positions where he could watch whatever it was he chose to insert pump in and out of Yhalen’s flesh.

Bloodraven added a second big finger and Yhalen’s elbows threatened to give. He braced himself at a soft command from his master, biting his lip as the ogr’ron parted his fingers, stretching the mouth of Yhalen’s anus open. He played with him a while longer, casual and slow, all the anger he’d exhibited upon his return dissipated. Then the big body shifted, positioning itself behind Yhalen as the fingers disappeared, to be replaced by the heated tip of Bloodraven’s cock. Yhalen tried not to tense. To tense would only cause pain. He tried to make himself relax, tried to make himself accept willingly what was about to be forced into him. He shut his eyes and sighed, thinking of the forest and his favorite glade.

Bloodraven’s slick spearhead pressed against the swollen, stretched mouth of his entry, the ogr’ron slowly working it inside, methodically overcoming the resistance of muscle and flesh.

It hurt. No matter the preparation, it hurt. It always did initially. If he’d wanted it with all his heart and soul, it still would have hurt. But the pain was less and this time, with Bloodraven’s strange good humor and patience, his body had time to accept the girth of it, had time to stretch to accommodate it, before the ogr’ron began slowly moving inside him.

He was filled so completely, with so much powerful heat that it made his vision spiral. His elbows did give way, but Bloodraven let him fall, hands on his hips, holding his lower body in the desired position. Up into his bowels, Bloodraven found a home. Nestled within Yhalen’s belly, the tip of his cock made a way for itself and Yhalen’s body accepted it. With each slow, powerful stroke, a tremor of 25

sensation passed though him. His balls tightened, his spent penis twitched to life and he moaned into the furs, shamed for the second time this evening.

”
Seksil o’kron
, Yhalen,” Bloodraven said softly, a little breathless himself. It occurred to Yhalen that he’d never heard himself called by name before, that Vorjd must have told Bloodraven. He didn’t have time to dwell on it, for when he didn’t move, the ogr’ron leaned over his back and caught one of his hands, drawing it down his body and wrapping Yhalen’s fingers around his own twitching penis.

Oh, Goddess—oh please don’t let this happen. Please don’t let him do this to me. Please don’t let me do this
to myself.
But when Bloodraven withdrew his big hand, Yhalen’s own stayed, pumping his own flesh with desperate vigor, groaning and whimpering into the furs, hips moving of their own accord, pushing back into the body behind him, forward into his own hand. Oh—Goddess—the sensation flared behind his eyes and deep within his gut, flooding his mind and his body and blanking everything else. He hardly noticed when Bloodraven picked up his own pace, finally spilling hot seed deep inside Yhalen’s body.

The world went white and fuzzy and he came back to his senses curled on his side on the furs, mind reeling from his own orgasm. The ogr’ron sat back on the furs, eyes hooded and speculative. He rose finally, pulling his tunic off, and shedding the trousers that he’d only loosened in his exertions with Yhalen, baring the whole of his thick, muscled body in the dim light of the brazier. He cleaned himself at the basin, then returned with a wet rag to Yhalen. Yhalen lay passively while his master spread his knees and cleaned the leavings between his legs and on his belly.

It occurred to him dimly, while he lay there, that for hands so big, Bloodraven could be surprisingly precise—surprisingly gentle.

“It doesn’t mean,” Yhalen whispered, as the ogr’ron settled into the furs, long body stretched out next to his, one large hand straying to settle on Yhalen’s hip as fingers traced a lazy pattern that made his skin pimple. “That you’re not my enemy. That I don’t hate you—for everything you’ve done—just because you lay a gentle hand on me. Just because you’re half human. The other half is what makes you a monster. I’ll kill you if I can, you know.”

The tears were leaking again. From hopelessness, from shame, from some bit of acceptance in his heart of this position he found himself in and that in itself made him want to die.

“
Vras’ka,
Yhalen,” Bloodraven said softly, breath slow and even.
Shut up.
He’d heard that phrase before.

“Who told you that you could use my name?” he whispered, but so soft that he barely heard himself. Bloodraven pulled him closer, warm against his side in the cool of the night.

The morning came too quickly and with it a flurry of activity as the camp made ready to move.

Bloodraven’s other human slaves and his ogre subordinates pulled down his tent and bundled his personal belongings, loading them along with the other supplies onto small carts. Yhalen was staked to a tree by his leash not far from the snarling dog-things while this was about. In preparation of travel, he’d been given a pair of crude boots and a loin cloth to wear about his hips, dressing him very much in the fashion of the other human slaves, save for the fact that he was tanned and smooth of skin as opposed to the pale, hairy bodies of the Northmen. He stood out among them, lithe and supple and young and fair, as all of the Ydregi were.

It gained him stares and what he was sure were lewd comments as the ogres passed. It made him cringe close to his tree in fear of what any one of them might do. It made him wish very badly for Bloodraven’s presence. It made him feel the coward, but how could he not fear, his enemy being what they were and he hopelessly in their grasp? But of Bloodraven he’d seen very little this morning.

“Why do they stare at me like that?” he asked of Vorjd once, when the man gave him his scant clothing. “Are we not as hideous to them as they are to us?”

The man had shrugged. “No. They’ve always wanted what we have. Our lands, our devices, our crafts, our art. As a whole, they’re not a race talented with much beyond the ability to fight. They envy us—humans. Over a great many things. As beastly as they are, they appreciate beauty.”

Which had not made Yhalen feel better or safer, what with ogres stalking the camp around him and the snarling set of dogs just within snapping range of him. Of the two, he preferred the dogs. The animals he could understand. The animals he could contend with.

He distracted himself doing just that. Sitting just out of reach of the slavering beasts, watching them, 26

speaking to them softly and making himself known. It was a talent he had, the way with beasts that sprang from his esteemed bloodline. By the time the camp was uprooted and ready to move out, the two dog’s snarls had reduced to the occasional growl and they lay panting and drooling a body’s length away, watchful of Yhalen’s every move. They would rise with alacrity, though, each time a human slave or even an ogre ventured too near and lunge and bark threateningly. Even the ogres gave them wide berth. Only when Bloodraven approached did the threatening posture cease and tails began a frantic wagging. They crouched around his legs, desperate for a touch of his hand or a word.

Armored and armed, in the full light of day, Bloodraven was imposing and dangerous. He spoke to the dogs, touching their great, flat heads. Vorjd and one other human slave had shadowed his wake, but hung far back, wary of the dogs. They held great leather muzzle guards in their hands. Bloodraven beckoned and they crept forward. Almost immediately, Bloodraven or no, the dogs broke into a fit of growls and lunged towards the human slaves. The one cried out and leapt backwards, dropping the muzzle guard, fear so strong that even Yhalen could scent it. Vorjd took a shaky step backwards, but held his ground, just out of reach, eyes white rimmed and breathing harsh. Yhalen wondered if they were simply naturally afraid of the animal’s size and ferocity, or if they’d more reason—if they’d seen these dogs rip apart frail flesh before. But their fear helped nothing. It increased the dog’s frenzy, so that Bloodraven had to raise his impressive voice and exert his strength to call them down.

“They smell your fear. You’ll always be prey to them so long as you’ve no control over it,” Yhalen said softly to Vorjd when the growls had lessened enough for the man to hear.

The blonde slave cast him a skeptical, unappreciative look, before scurrying off to finish his other duties. Bloodraven muzzled the dogs and gathered their chains in his hand. He paused to look at Yhalen sitting calmly against the tree he was tethered to, almost within the reach of the dogs and unconcerned. Showing fear to dog or ogr’ron would be a mistake. Bloodraven passed on, and Yhalen followed his path, watching him attach the dog’s chains to the back on one of the stout carts.

His own leash was soon fastened likewise to the last cart, which was piled high with canvas tents and bundled supplies. The beasts that hauled the carts were stoop shouldered oxen, of a sort. Shaggier than lowland beasts of burden and taller by far at the shoulder. Some twenty hands of dull-eyed, sluggish beast that had to be whipped into moving. But when they did move, their long legs set a goodly pace and Yhalen was forced almost to jog at times to keep up. Thank the Goddess they’d given him boots or his feet would have been bloody and torn by the end of the forced march.

They headed not west towards the forests that bordered Ydregi lands, but southeast. Ten days’

walk, he thought and they might reach the flatlands of Austul where men farmed for their living and supplied all of the human provinces with the bounty of their foodstuffs. Or if they veered more sharply south they would encounter the first of the great cities and a great deal of resistance. More than this band of raiders might be able to deal with, Yhalen thought.

They traveled hard all the day, a good portion of the ogre warriors ranging away from the carts.

Yhalen saw little of Bloodraven. Once he looked up from an exhausted daze to see the towering form of Deathclaw pacing him, staring down with malicious golden eyes and a frown on his broad mouth. All his good advice on showing no fear evaporated with that particular ogre within arm’s reach of him—and he shied away, stumbling in the process as the cart yanked him inexorably onwards. But, Deathclaw made no overt move to touch him, moving on eventually to join a handful of his companions ahead.

Yhalen couldn’t stop shaking for a time after that and clutched the chain connecting him to the cart with white knuckled hands.

At the end of the day, when dusk had long since fallen and the trail became difficult to see, they stopped for camp. The six oxen were unhitched and tethered, the carts hauled to the side and unloaded, save for bedrolls and a few pieces of cookery. They’d killed game during the day, and the human slaves cleaned it and started a small fire to roast it over. They backed away hastily once the meat was done enough to suit an ogre’s taste, leaving all of it for their masters. The ogre’s ravenous hunger left nothing but bones for the humans and of those, Bloodraven chose the best and tossed them to the dogs. Bloodraven had spent much of the evening around the fire with his brethren, leaving Yhalen to his own devices while tethered to a tall cartwheel.