Volle

Author’s Note

“If you’re going to write a quarter of a million words, why on Earth would you choose the unknown and unlikely genre of anthropomorphic gay erotica?”

Sometimes my inner voice chimes in just a bit too late.

The truth is, I never set out to write one novel, let alone two. I had been kicking around a story idea about a prisoner with some information, and a guard sent to seduce him into giving up that information, and how they eventually fell in love. When I sat down to write it, I took the path of least resistance and made the main character a gay fox, in keeping with my own predilections.

“The Prisoner’s Release” was a fluffy little story that nonetheless kept nagging at me. What information did this fox have that was so valuable? What happened after the story ended?

You hold the answer to the first question in your hands right now.

The novel grew organically from my thoughts about this fox and where he’d come from. Because the short story had included some explicit erotica, that framework naturally extended itself to the novel. I’ve always felt that it should be possible to include some erotica in a story that would enhance the story more than it distracted from it (I’m not sure it’s possible or desirable to write non-distracting erotica).

I’m not sure whether I proved that point with “Volle,” but I gave it a try. I hope you enjoy the result.

“Volle” precedes “The Prisoner’s Release” (published in two installments in Sofawolf Press’s adult magazine “Heat”). The other bookend is “Pendant of Fortune,” a novel of similar length, which takes place afterwards. It is forthcoming from Sofawolf Press.

And for reference, “Volle” is pronounced to rhyme with “wall,” not with “whole.”

December 2004

Prologue

In the city of Divalia, the capital of Tephos, the walled palace sits beside the river, long and low. Inside the walls, the palace is surrounded by three gardens on the north and south. The one on the south side, onto which the main gates open, is the pride of the king. A crew of ten gardeners has no other job but to tend the garden, and nobles and servants alike roam through its lovely flower displays and shaded gazebos that run the length of the palace.

On the north side of the palace are the other two gardens, the rear gardens. They are less frequented and less tended; only two gardeners look after each one. The doors from the palace into these gardens are rarely used.

If you were to wander through the western rear garden, you might eventually come across an old statue of a lion warrior. He stands boldly facing the outer wall of the palace, sword raised, lips curled in a fierce snarl. His mane is richly detailed, though much of the detail has been lost to time. There are nicks and blemishes in the bronze, and it has turned mostly green with age. There is no plaque to identify the origin of the statue, nor any dedication to explain its presence.

It looks like any of the other statues in the gardens. Perhaps it is older and more worn, and certainly it is not in the front garden with the rest of the statues. In your wanderings, having seen the other statues that commemorate valiant generals and glorious battles, you might only be momentarily confused by the lion’s mane—there are no maned lions in Tephos. After a moment, you might wander past the statue, deciding in your own mind that it was dedicated to the lost memory of a long-ago warrior, or a battle the king had fought against the southerners.

But you would be wrong.

Book 1: The Palace of Divalia

Chapter 1

The Hungry Bull was a noisy place even in the early afternoon. Little sun made it through the dirt-clouded windows, and that’s how the patrons liked it. Mostly congregating in couples, they tended to stay for a while and keep ordering drinks, and that’s how the bartender liked it. Some of the patrons’ wives didn’t like it quite as much, so it wasn’t unheard of for a female voice to shout a name over the din.

“VOLLE!”

The slender fox in a back booth flicked his ears and turned his muzzle instinctively. The wolf who was occupying his attention saw the movement and grinned. “That for you?”

Volle nodded. It was Seir, of course, come to fetch him to his Very Important Meeting. He could see the suddenly quiet patrons of the tavern craning their necks to see where he was, though because Seir was a mouse, they would be looking for a male mouse.

He’d half-expected this to happen. He was sick of hearing about how lucky he was, that it was unheard of for someone his age to get such an important assignment. Lucky or not, he would be gone for years, and because Volle believed strongly in taking advantage of opportunities while he could, he was determined to get every little bit of playtime in before he left the city of Caril. It had taken him longer to meet up with a suitable playmate than he’d counted on, true, but this was his meeting and they would not—could not—start it without him. It was the most revenge he could muster against the strict and officious Duke of Westermarch, who was the king’s Minister of Intelligence. Duke Avery had taught a class in politics at the Academy which Volle had nearly failed, his stubborn resistance to being confined clashing with the Duke’s insistence on nearly military attendance and participation in the class. They disliked each other, but Volle was sure the Duke wasn’t as afraid of him as he was of the large, fierce wolf. If Duke Avery had come looking for him, he would have been out the back door without a second word to his companion.

Just the thought made him crane his neck around the edge of the booth slightly to look towards the bar. The bartender, a portly boar, was leaning across the counter to talk down to someone. If the Duke were here, the boar wouldn’t be looking down, that was for sure. Volle was sure that Seir had come alone, just as sure as he was that the bartender wouldn’t give away his location. Rolli was an expert at plausible misdirection, allowing his clients to get out the back door if they had the wits to use the time he gave them.

“Want to go upstairs?” Volle whispered. He could tell the wolf was ready to adjourn to a more private setting, though another five minutes of petting would have been polite.

“Uh, sure.” The wolf’s light grey ears flicked. “You won’t get in trouble?”

“I might.” Volle laid on the charm, giving the wolf his best wide-eyed smile. “But you’re worth it.”

It worked, of course. The wolf was a year younger than Volle, probably an apprentice to some merchant. Volle hadn’t bothered to check because that wasn’t what interested him. He liked the wolf’s build, and his brown eyes and pretty smile, which he got to see again. “Okay. You first?”

“Yeah.” He nuzzled the wolf, slid across the booth, and bumped into someone he hadn’t noticed standing at the end.

“Come on,” Seir said. She stood four feet high, still below his eye level even when he was seated. That had nothing to do with why he hadn’t noticed her. She had a peculiar talent for being quiet and unnoticeable that he hated when she used it against him. No matter how many times he told himself to keep an eye out for her, she always managed to sneak up on him. It wasn’t anything she’d learned at the Academy, his professors said. She’d just always had that talent.

She wore a simple linen dress and a leather vest, similar to the one Volle wore over his linen tunic. Her arms were folded and she was tapping one paw. He turned his charm on her.
“Oh, hi, Seir.”

“Didn’t you hear me calling you? Volle, this isn’t one of your Academy tests you can just walk into late and do barely enough to pass. This is real.”

“I was kind of in the middle of something.”

The wolf leaned forward. “Wait a minute. You’re married outside your House?”

Seir laughed. “He’s not the marrying type. I keep an eye out for him. Otherwise he’d end up doing something stupid, like keeping Prince Gennic waiting.”

Volle blinked. “The Prince?”

Behind him, the wolf echoed his words, and added, “You really do work for the royal family?”

“Well, ‘work’ in the loosest sense of the word,” Seir snorted. “Yes, the Prince is coming to your briefing. I told Reese to tell you.”

“He didn’t, the bastard.” Volle cursed under his breath. “Fox take him! Do I have time to get back and change?”

“If you hurry.” Seir grinned. “Come on.”

With a quick wave to the perplexed wolf, Volle slid out of the booth and followed Seir out of the tavern. “Why is the prince coming?” he asked as they hurried through the streets to Eagle Bridge.

Seir shrugged. “He’s taking an interest in military matters, I suppose. He doesn’t have to give reasons. This morning, he told Duke Avery he wanted to know more about this operation, and Duke Avery invited him to the briefing. I suspect that he was hoping you would be late. I couldn’t find you, so I told Reese. I didn’t figure you’d be gone all day.”

“Things to do,” Volle muttered. “Who knows how long it’ll be before I get back here.”

“There’s a Hungry Bull in every city,” Seir said. “I’d hoped that by this point you would realize that there are more important things.”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Volle said sullenly. Just because she was a couple years older than he was and had graduated from the Academy with honors, she thought she could boss him around.

The annoying thing was that a lot of the time, she was right.

“Listen,” she said as they walked beneath the carved eagles into the Nobles’ Quarter. “I may be one of two people in this whole city who knows your potential. I talked Avery into going ahead with this mission. He wanted to wait another year or two to see if another fox came up through the school.”

“Why do they need a fox anyway?”

“I assume we’ll find out today.” They paused to let a carriage go by. In the Nobles’ Quarter, the buildings had room to stretch their splendid marble limbs, looking down on their crowded neighbors across the river. Above them, the palace walls and towers stood watch, promising security.

The Academy lay just inside the Nobles’ Quarter, because most of the students were nobility. Volle, like Seir and Reese, had been admitted despite his House because he showed particular intelligence and aptitude, and because his mother had sold her house to pay his admission. The house had been one of three things his father had left her: the other two were a fox cub growing in her belly and a gold pendant, which Volle had worn all his life.

He left the pendant on and changed everything else, slipping into his best cotton shirt and velvet doublet, with almost-matching trousers scrounged from the tailor’s castoffs. Reese, a hare whose eleven-inch advantage in height over Volle was entirely due to his ears, came into the room they shared as Volle was finishing his wardrobe.

“Hey, Volle,” he said as the fox came in. “Seir asked me to tell you that Prince Gennic will be at your briefing.” He winked at the mouse.

“Thanks,” Volle said. “It is a great comfort to me that the two of you care so much.”

“Hey,” Reese said with a shrug and a grin, “it’s our mission too.”

“Thanks to me,” Volle said.

“Who else would they pick to keep an eye on you?” Seir asked as they walked out into the sunlight.

“That’s what I mean.” Volle grinned.

He always felt a shiver when he walked up to the palace. He’d gazed at it often as a cub on the streets, imagining the wonders that lay within, the beautiful people and the elegance of the royal family of cougars. He’d been in the palace several times during his Academy career, and still felt that same prickling all through his fur and tail every time he stood at the gate, with the southern tower looking down on him.

They met in the northern tower, out of the way of the normal traffic of the castle. It was stuffy even with three windows open to the outside, and Volle thought it was fortunate that he’d left the pub unsatisfied, otherwise he’d be asleep in minutes.

The room was more or less circular; the underside of the stairs formed part of the ceiling to the left, and the door was set into a flat wall, but the rest of the room conformed to the shape of the tower. Six wooden chairs sat around a table, and an upholstered chair sat off to one side. In the upholstered chair, tail tucked quietly underneath it, sat Prince Gennic.

The eldest of the three princes was a short cougar, with a broad tawny muzzle and round black ears, white-striped like all his family. At this meeting, he wore very simple royal clothes: a green tunic that matched the upholstery in the chair, a fancy blue velvet vest over it, and short cotton trousers. He kept his paws folded in his lap, and his ears forward, listening intently.

Seir, Reese, and Volle sat in three of the wooden chairs. Across from them, a large, grizzled wolf sat next to a small female raccoon. The wolf was dressed simply, in a leather vest over a plain tunic, but the vest bore three medals of valor and numerous scars that were as significant as the medals. The raccoon was dressed elegantly, in a long pink silk dress. She wore a simple gold necklace and a silver headpiece to go along with it.

Volle knew the raccoon well. Madame Ferich had been tutoring him in comportment and fashion for the past month—one of the reasons he relished the opportunity to sneak down to the pub and abandon all her lessons. The wolf he remembered from the Academy, and the charged look he got when their eyes met showed that the Duke of Westermarch had not forgotten any of their previous encounters.

He started the meeting without preamble. “This is the last time I will talk to any of you for several years, perhaps the last time ever.” He pushed a sheaf of papers across the table to Volle. “These are your papers. Your history, your pedigree, and a summary of information about your family’s holdings. Learn that last one and burn it; keep the rest. The Tephossians are big on paperwork and you’ll have to carry papers around with you most of the time.

“There is also a letter of reference from Lord Tistunish, which you will need to present to the court. Lord Tistunish is a sympathizer, but he will not know your true identity. He thinks you really are the inheritor of the Vinton estate, as well as a Ferrenian sympathizer, and that’s why he’s helping us place you in the palace. Be sure you do not tell him differently, nor lean on him too much. Let him guide you.” Volle nodded.

“The letter is very important. Do not lose it.” He glared at Volle, and the fox’s ears drooped a bit.

“I won’t.”

“You’ll have plenty of time to read and study the documents on the week-long ride to Divalia.”

“Week long?”

“You’re going to your ‘family estates’ first, so your carriage approaches from the proper direction. In addition, it would do you good to meet some of the people you’re supposedly ruling. In effect, you
will
be their lord.”

Volle sighed, audibly.
The Duke flicked his ears forward and then growled. “Believe me, Volle, if there were another fox available or another peerage we could impersonate, I would go for it and leave you to f—sleep your way through Caril.” He altered his words at the last minute, glancing at Madame Ferich, who wore an amused grin. “This mission demands someone who is dedicated, intelligent, quick-witted, and patient, and as far as I have been able to tell, you are none of those things. But we’re stuck with each other. Just remember that there are a hundred students in your academy who would gladly switch places with you if they could.”

But they can’t. Volle said the words in his head as the Duke talked, looking down at the table. He didn’t bother pointing out that there were only twenty-four students in the academy at present.

“I don’t know—” Why you even joined, Volle finished in his head, but the Duke sat back without finishing. After a moment, he resumed the briefing as if nothing had happened.

“We are especially interested in any military movements, of course, and those around the Reysfields are of paramount importance. But any information you can get for us will be useful. Most important is that you not get caught. You will be holding this position for a long time, hopefully, and will be a key component of our intelligence in Tephos.”

While he was talking, Volle let his gaze wander over to the Prince. The handsome cougar was watching the wolf speak, but his eyes flicked over to Volle and stayed there when he saw the fox watching him. He smiled, and Volle saw his tail tip twitch under the chair. He was handsome, and well built, and Volle immediately found himself wondering how that compact, firm body would feel on top of him…

He jerked his attention back to the Duke even as his sheath started to push against the leather of his trousers. Fantasizing about the Prince was bad enough, but if Duke Avery noticed, he couldn’t fail to mock Volle for it, and he would delight in doing that in front of the prince. Volle’s ears drooped as he looked up cautiously, but the Duke was looking at Seir and Reese, and didn’t seem to have noticed Volle’s wandering attention.