Dark Enchantment (16 page)

‘Come on. You aren’t trying!’ she spat, closing for another bout.

He was aware at the periphery of his vision of the trees moving, of the landscape flexing as the forest warped into an arena for their combat. Water hissed as it boiled away, rocks groaned and shivered into sand. Grit and leaves and pieces of bark whipped around them, stinging his eyes. Even worse was the knowledge that she was right: killing her was not his heartfelt goal. He was not putting everything into it. He wished she were armoured, or even clothed. He wished she wasn’t so fast. He wished he wasn’t starting to pant for breath.

He took the decision and swung a killing blow at her. Somehow she side-stepped, the tip of the blade scoring her ribs, then whirled and kicked out at him. Her foot connected with the side of his knee. In her movements she’d been so swift that she seemed almost ethereal, but she was solid enough when this blow slammed into him. Herrick felt the joint break, even heard the crunch, and then the afterwash of pain took his breath away. He collapsed to a crouch, his head full of a white roaring agony that swamped everything else. He was only vaguely aware that the dryad was still there, that his mouth was open, that he was retching emptily as his body tried to vomit out the pain.

‘Get up.’ She impinged on his consciousness. He swung his head to focus on her, wondering if she would step within reach of his blade. But she stalked in a half-circle well beyond the swing of his arm, her back arched proudly, ignoring the thin
red
trickle crawling down to her hip. ‘You can’t give in just yet,’ she said. ‘It’s much too soon.’

Herrick tried to get his gasping under control. Every nerve sang with strain and the blood was roaring through his veins. He didn’t trust himself to speak out loud. He had to get upright, he told himself, get his back to something solid. It was his only chance; down here on the ground he was finished.

‘You must be in a lot of pain.’

He nodded once, his lips clamped shut. Her hair was dry now, a dense dark cloud the green-black of yew leaves, her skin flushed all over to the russet of an autumnal beech crown. But her eyes were the same, and her piquant, cruel face.

‘I know what pain is.’ She touched the nick on her ribs. ‘Not this. But seeing my trees felled, my land invaded, my shrines overturned …’

Herrick got his good leg under him, trying to rise, but that was not part of her plan. ‘I’ll heal you,’ she announced. ‘We’ve hardly started, have we?’ Taking up a handful of soil from between her feet she threw it contemptuously upon him. Herrick jerked his face away, shutting his eyes. Then he felt his broken leg twist beneath him, and a warmth flare up his thigh and down his calf.

‘Get up,’ she repeated.

He stood straight, testing his knee, dizzy with shock. The joint was whole, as was his pierced hand, the pain nothing more than a memory. His awe must have shown upon his face, because she made a spitting noise.

‘In this wood, man of iron, I am a goddess. The earth hears my whispers; the oak moves to my commands. Do you think you can kill me with that little blade?’

He was beginning to doubt it. ‘I can try.’

Her smile widened. ‘You learn too slowly. Shall we have another lesson?’

Then she threw herself at him. Herrick had no time for anything except to thrust the sword straight out at her breast, braced in both hands. She struck the blade full on, dashed up its length and all over him – a hail of autumn leaves and stones, no more solid than that. The moment she was behind him she took form again, whirled, smashed the helmet from his head and kicked him in the back of the knee, folding him. He caught himself as he went down, but even as he turned and slashed there was movement in the grass all around him. Bramble tendrils whipped from the earth, tangling his feet and hands. In moments he was dragged over on his back, a spiny loop tight around his throat. Fragile in themselves, in numbers they pinned him to the ground. Then new tendrils grew and slid up his sleeves and under the edge of his hauberk, their passage like lines of fire drawn on his skin, emerging at the neck. Dozens and dozens of living strands, binding together into stronger and stronger cords. They tightened and flexed – and tore his mail shirt open. The bronze rivets first corroded and then stretched and snapped.

Herrick had seen thistles cracking marble slabs in Rome, or else he would not have understood that a living plant could be so strong.

Then the ground heaved beneath his back, a huge boulder thrusting him up until he was raised and spread and nearly snapped in half, the pressure against his spine almost unbearable. The brambles did not let go, but having ripped open his armour and shredded the cloth beneath they did nothing but tighten against his skin, a thousand tiny thorns speckling him with his own blood. He felt the air against his stinging flesh. He saw the tree branches tossing overhead and the white petals of shed may blossom fluttering down upon him, and he wondered if this was the end.

The dryad jumped up onto the rocks and straddled his hips.
He
couldn’t even raise his head to look down at those naked thighs.

‘So, does the guest bed suit you?’

He groaned.

‘A little hard on the back? What a pity.’ She bent and licked the blood streaks on his chest; he was surprised to learn that her mouth was warm. ‘Still, you did arrive at very short notice, without invitation. You must make allowances.’

His heart was racing; she must be able to feel its thud against her lips as she sipped from him. ‘Don’t blame yourself,’ he said through gritted teeth, as the world spun around him.

She chuckled, surprised. ‘Do you enjoy this, man of iron?’

‘Herrick.’

‘What?’

‘That’s my name.’ It seemed important to him that she should know it. He did not want to go nameless to death.

She mouthed the foreign word with distaste. ‘Is this how you expected it to end,
Herrick
?’

‘One day.’ And he was horrified to find that his strongest emotion was relief.

‘You’ve fought my kind before?’

‘No. No dryad.’

She circled his nipple with the tip of her tongue, making it harden. ‘Monsters …’

‘Yes.’

‘The last children of Rhea. So that the children of the stones may inherit the earth.’ Her teeth closed cruelly over his left nipple and he groaned from deep in his chest. Then she released the crushed nubbin of flesh and crept forwards up his chest, breathing the smell of his sweat and his fear until her lips were against his ear. ‘Do you wish to hear the good news?’

He managed to swallow, and she took that for assent.

‘This isn’t the end, Herrick. Not yet. You are not going to die
until
I tire of hurting you. And in this place I can take you to the brink of death and bring you back again, over and over, for my pleasure. Until your pain has brought me ease.’

Fresh damp sprang from every pore. His insides seemed to turn liquid. She raked claws down his chest and stomach, testing every patch of skin between the criss-crossed bonds. He rolled his eyes back and tried to call upon the mercy of God, but it came out sounding completely wrong somehow.

‘What’s this?’ Her voice was low with surprise.

He strained to look down at her and found she’d reached his lower garments, had been sliding about on his crotch, had found something that should not have been there at all: his massive, stony erection, pushing up against the cloth, the swollen head seeping with such eagerness that it was making a damp patch. Herrick was washed by a crimson tide of shame.

Dear God give me strength to resist her, he begged.

She ripped his clothing to shreds, delicately. His cock thrust out blasphemously through the rent fabric, and jerked with eagerness as she traced the veins with the tips of her deadly claws. Like a dog rising to greet its mistress, he thought, sick with humiliation.

‘Oh Herrick. Now I know.’

‘No,’ he groaned.

‘This is a gift, isn’t it? A phallus like this, and a man like you, in my power?’

‘You’re wrong …’

‘Wrong? No. Men may lie, but this does not. It makes plain what it wants, Herrick.’ She slapped his prick with first one hand then the other, like a cat playing with a mouse. He burned with shame. ‘Slattern,’ she mocked.

He twisted in his bonds uselessly, driving each pinpoint of pain deeper.

‘Lick me,’ she ordered, looming right over him, lowering her breasts to his mouth.

He put out his tongue to her nipple but she snatched it away, giggling, before he could touch her. He groaned, scoured by her glee and his weakness. Then she wriggled back down and crouched over his prick, laying her lips to the underside of the shaft and nipping her way delicately right down to the root, never quite hurting him but threatening all the way. She took his balls one after the other into her mouth, rolling them between her teeth until sweat ran down his temples. Spitting out his slippery ball sac she then found the silken skin stretched between his soaring cock and his scrotum, and took a fold delicately between two eye teeth. She held it for a moment, letting him realise what she was going to do.

Herrick quivered, choking out incoherent prayers.

She bit down. Two sharp teeth met through a thin fold of skin and he opened his mouth in a soundless roar. His cock jerked twice, and clear fluid bulged at the slit and, welling out under its own volume, ran down his hard length, testament to his need.

‘Herrick,’ she chided. ‘Look at you.’

‘Oh God, no!’

‘Shh. Stop pretending.’

With her tongue she traced the path of his overspill back up from his balls to the head of his cock, where she lapped his ooze. He groaned again and shook like a man with the ague. His world was in flames. Could there be any defeat more shameful than this – to be beaten in combat, then abused as a whore, his body a treacherous accomplice?

And her mouth was exquisite comfort now after the hurt she’d inflicted, as tender as a mother hugging her child after smacking it. The pleasure was overwhelming; he knew he needed more. More hurt. More solace.

Her lips, wet from painting his glans, left it bereft and straining. ‘Pain,’ she whispered, straightening and kneeling up astride him again. ‘Your pain is my pleasure, I thought. But your pleasure too. Don’t worry, Herrick, I will give you what you need.’ She guided his erect cock between her thighs, into her tight slick grip, her eyes rolling back with the effort of taking his girth. Then she refocused on his face. For the first time she sounded a little breathless.

‘You will not spend, Herrick. You will hold it back. Because if you let spill before me I will walk away and leave you here and never return. You understand that?’

‘Yes.’ Oh my God, yes.

‘But if you give me my heart’s desire, I will give you yours.’ She reached behind her, down between his thighs, and sank her nails into his scrotum. He gasped and nodded, water running from the corners of his eyes. ‘I’m going to hurt you.’ Her voice was cold, her eyes green fire. ‘I’m going to hurt you badly and there is nothing you can do about it. You are mine to play with. Your strength will not save you. Your God will not save you. Your life is mine now, and it is over.’

‘You are beautiful,’ he rasped, ‘my lady.’

She began to move upon him, stirring his cock within her, and he lost all words in a groaning out-rush of breath. Helpless, he could only watch as her hair undulated about her, as her breasts shook and swayed, as her splayed thighs framed his cock. With one hand she touched herself, with the other she scored whatever of his skin she could reach. When her fingers brushed a piece of the living rope that held him the thorns upon it grew longer, piercing into his muscle. He could hear himself moaning softly with the pain, and with the exquisite friction of her grip upon his cock. She bared her teeth in a grin at first, but as her cheeks flushed and her eyes darkened her expression smoothed, becoming the blank mask
of
need. Her chest rose and fell more sharply and her back arched, thrusting her breasts forwards. He wanted to touch her. He wanted to fondle those wonderful breasts, to stroke her taut belly, to knead the straining thighs. He wanted to plunge his hand into the folds of her sex and feel himself pumping in and out of her, the sticky slipperiness of her juices, the way he filled and stretched her hole. He wanted to make her whimper to the rhythm of his fingers and cock. He’d always been able to touch the women he swived; now he was bound tight, his muscles bulging between the green cords. He’d let women ride him before, but never like this. Whatever their physical positions, he’d always been the one in control.

Not now.

Now he was truly mastered. Now he was at her mercy, and she had none. She had beaten him, humiliated him, mocked him. She was going to kill him. And deep in the welter of his pain and fear Herrick knew a wild joy beyond anything he’d ever experienced in his life.

Her head began to roll upon her shoulders. Her hair bleached as white as hawthorn petals and whipped at him like striking snakes. The smell of may blossom, musky and sexual, clogged his nostrils so he could hardly breathe. The bramble rope about his throat was tightening. He strained against his bonds, thrusting up into her, even as the margins of his vision grew dark. She tore the skin down his breastbone. She struck at his face. The thorns at his throat swelled and lengthened, biting deep. Soon he could no longer breathe even if he had wanted to, even if his whole soul had not been focused on her parted lips, the flash and flutter of her eyes, the shudder rippling through her frame. Blotches danced before his eyes, like yellow and black leaves chased by the wind. In that moment before the darkness closed in on him he clenched and jerked and
flooded
into her, feeling her thorns pierce him to the core, seeing the leaves turn red.

There is a wood at the foot of the mountains that no one dares enter. They say that it belongs to a dryad, but she has not been seen in years. To get into the wood one would have to get past the tall swordsman who patrols the edge, driving away all intruders. The guardian of the wood is a matchless warrior, devoted to his duty. For Herrick of Turin has finally, after all these years, found the one he can serve with his whole heart.