Bloodraven (2 page)

They played with him like big cats with some small helpless victim. The sharp edges of their blunt nails tore his clothing and the skin under it. They didn’t kill him. They broke ribs and tore skin. He twisted his ankle badly on the roots when they played at batting him back and forth between them.

After that, he couldn’t keep his feet for long enough to entertain them.

All he could do was lie there, curled in pain, and wish for the blackness that would take it all away.

But it wouldn’t come. Oh, it most stubbornly refused him its grace.

One, with a line of gold hoops in its pointed ear and a ring through its flat nose, snatched Yhalen’s braid between its fingers, winding it around its index finger. It drew him up by the hair, almost off his feet, but not quite, and bent down to peer at him. With its other hand it pulled at the neck of Yhalen’s tunic. The lacings snapped like fine spider web, and despite Yhalen’s attempts to prevent it, the ogre tore the tunic off, baring his lacerated, bruised upper body.

The ogre said something, almost questioningly, and the other one came and crouched next to him, reaching out and running one big hand down Yhalen’s chest and stomach. The fingers worked themselves between his legs and he hissed, struggles renewed at the indignity.

Another bout of conversation, and something seemed to be decided. With an almost casual movement the second ogre flicked one large finger against Yhalen’s stomach. It drove the air out and then let the blackness in.

He was only marginally aware after that, of being swung with ease over a shoulder the size of a horse’s back and of the two ogres picking up their weapons and moving through the woods.

He came to again in darkness. The sound of more than two voices. The crackle of a fire. The smell of roasting meat. Himself on his side, his arms numb behind him, his breath constricted by the rough rope around his neck that they’d attached to the ropes binding his arms and then tied to the tree at his back.

If he struggled too much, he’d choke himself.

A miserable situation for a man to find himself in. Disgraced by his cowardice, captured by creatures out of the distant north—he lay there, glassy-eyed, stunned, seeing Yherji’s face over and over. Seeing Yhakinor’s twisted body. What if no one found them? What if there was no one to send them on their way? To bury them under a great tree so that their bodies might contribute to the

continuity of the forest and their souls might soar? He needed to make sure of that. He needed to at least do them that justice.

He turned his face into the soft leaves and tried not to shame himself further by crying. Tried to gather his scattered wits and make sense of what had happened. Ogres as far south as the Nakhanor Valley? How? How could they travel so far and not have it known? They were most certainly not the stealthiest of creatures.

His grandfather, Yhalor, had come to Nakhanor to discuss the dangers of the ogres’ migration—the eventuality, not the actuality.

Oh, Goddess—
Grandfather
—what if they’d come, these brutish people, because of the gathering at the Nakhanor city? What if they meant to kill the wise men of the southern races to ease their own invasion?

He narrowed his eyes and stared into the fire-lit night. It was full dark now, and the shadows deep.

He was in a clearing, a dozen paces from a good-sized fire. Around that fire sat four large forms. They spoke and laughed amongst themselves, tearing at the meat of some animal that they’d spitted over the fire.

Only four. No great army, that. Even four creatures as large as ogres could not defeat the forces gathered at the Nakhanor village. Two well-armed, well-prepared men might take one of them, Yhalen thought. If they were lucky. Just these four were no danger.

There was a glint of yellow eyes and a short burst of laughter. One of them had turned to look his way. The others followed suit and Yhalen shivered at the malicious gleams in their eyes, in the wide grins that split their faces.

Oh, Goddess, please, please, please let them forget me.
He very seldom begged the Goddess who permeated the forest for anything. Having a druid as a great grandfather, one learned not to lightly call on the Goddess for minor things. He prayed to her now, with a frantic zeal. But she ignored him, perhaps punishment for his flight when he should have stayed to confront the evil that had taken his childhood friend.

They gathered around him, the four of them crouching or kneeling, and he could hardly tell the two new ones apart from the ones that had taken him, except for one had gold in his ears and a gold circlet around his head and the others seemed to defer some small bit to him. That one held a large wineskin, from which he took a great swig, wiping one hand across the back of his mouth afterwards and nudging the one next to him with a sly word. That one laughed and leaned forward, poking Yhalen in the chest and barking a question at him. Bound as he was, there was little avoiding it. He lay there and glared, drawing his knees towards his stomach in a reflexive motion to protect himself.

They laughed at that, and one grabbed his ankles and stretched his legs out. Yhalen cursed then and tried to kick his way free of that grasp, writhing so much that the rope at his neck cut off his air and he had to stop, gasping and lightheaded. They enjoyed that, watching him suffocate—sat and chortled over it until he did black out and the one with the earrings finally reached out and loosened the noose.

Yhalen came back to himself with tears in his eyes and bile in his throat.

They’d gathered more rope while he was out, and like children with a doll, two of them diligently caught his legs, discussing among themselves perhaps, the best way to deal with him, their new toy.

The one leg they looped rope about thigh and ankle, then pulled them close together. He’d lost a boot along the way, he didn’t remember where, and would hardly have noticed if the rope hadn’t cut into the flesh of his bare ankle. The other leg, they looped rope about his injured ankle and used it to hoist his leg up. He cried out, as it tightened around the already swollen joint, but they cared little for his pain, and pulled the leg up until it was perpendicular to his body and tied it off to the tree.

It was a position that left him brutally exposed, his legs spread wide, his hips almost suspended from the ground. He felt cool air against his thigh and realized with growing horror that there was very little left of his trousers, shredded as they’d been from the play of the first two ogres. It took little effort for them now to simply rip them further, and the cool night air touched his shrinking balls and the flesh of his buttocks.

What did they want? What could they possibly want? The difference in size most certainly prohibited sex, didn’t it? There was no possible way that he could accommodate one of them. What then? Curiosity? Simple torture? Yhalen shut his eyes and pressed his face into the mulch, body shivering in convulsive little twitches that he had no control over. He wouldn’t cry. He wouldn’t scream. He wouldn’t give them that victory along with the rest.

They touched him, big, rough fingers pressing his balls flat, rolling his penis between their fingers, laughing no doubt at the size in comparison to whatever it was they hid within their pants. It hurt. Oh, it hurt a great deal to have their brutish hands explore him, taunt him, tug at him, and squash him. He bit into the thick braid that lay under his cheek to keep from screaming when they caught the head of his penis between their fingers and pulled it brutally out from his body. He thought they meant to rip it off—it felt like something tore at the root of it, and he could stand it no longer and drew breath to scream at the red agony that shot through his groin—but they let it go. He hardly had the time to shudder in relief when those same thick fingers prodded ungently at the clenched entrance behind his balls. He bit his lip, trying to bring the leg tied ankle to thigh up and prevent it—but another of them simply pressed his knee to the ground and he was helpless to do anything but lie there and tremble and gasp.

The one with the earrings leaned over, grinning, and tipped the mouth of his wineskin up, dribbling strong red wine over Yhalen’s thighs. It dribbled over his balls and down the short channel to his anus, making the cuts sting and his ball shrink. The one at his bottom laughed and smeared his big finger in the wine, then pressed the tip of it against Yhalen’s opening. It was thicker than Yhalen’s engorged penis and considerably longer. The nail was blunt but ragged, and tore flesh as the ogre twisted it into Yhalen’s resisting body.

The wine lubricated nothing so well as the thick blood that began to flow, hot and stinging down Yhalen’s spine and across his thighs.

He did scream then, when the bulge of the knuckle threatened to split already torn muscle. Cried and cursed and spasmodically tried to jerk his body away from the intrusion and failed. And hopelessly, miserably failed. He did nothing but scrape his arms and hands against the bark of the tree and amuse the gathered monsters. They thought it great sport, his humiliation, this brutal torture. He thought he was going to die. The pain was a molten knife at the small of his back that ripped up into his guts and shredded his insides. It dug around inside him, twisting its punishing finger, curving it so that it felt as if it pressed against his belly through the bruised mass of his colon.

The world went dark then, and he tried to let himself fall into that trance that Mother and Greatgrandfather let themselves experience when they were working some magic or another or trying to speak to the ancestors or the forest or the Goddess. He had that power in him—his bloodline was the oldest of all the Ydregi—he was merely too young for the training of it. A young man had to go through the rites of the warrior—of the philosopher—before he could be trained in the rites of the druid. So many years ahead that they became clouded in his mind just thinking of it. But he still knew the ways.

He still knew what Grandfather did and Mother—who was a healer of the tribe despite the fact that she’d only seen sixty summers. Yhalen hadn’t seen quite twenty and still, he could almost reach that place and the power that rested there—waiting for the right touch to draw it out. Almost he could feel the overwhelming essence of life that emanated from the forest surrounding them....

He almost had it—
almost
—and was brought back by the sudden shock of his head being twisted up, his jaws hinged open and a splash of wine so bitter it made him choke, poured down his open mouth.

He swallowed and spat and hardly realized the finger gone from his rear until it was jammed down into his mouth. The taste of blood and shit made him gag. The ogre barked something at him, jamming his finger between Yhalen’s straining jaws. Again the same word and he thought the brute might have wanted him to clean it of his own blood and his own shit. He shut his eyes, refusing to do anything but lay there and passively let it rape his mouth. It wasn’t until he felt another blunt, thick finger pressed against his ravaged anus and another gruff voice repeated the same foreign word, that he panicked and thought perhaps a little capitulation in the face of insurmountable odds might not be a bad thing. It filled his mouth to capacity, but he tried to comply. The ogre grinned hugely and pulled his finger out, rubbing it across Yhalen’s lips with bruising force, urging him to lick it clean. He did, stomach churning with nausea, tongue hesitantly lapping at the rough flesh, which was mostly clean, from the thrusts down his throat.

The second finger pressed into him and he jerked, crying out in shock and anger.

He’d done what they’d asked and still.... He choked, the finger jammed back down his throat, curling down the back of his throat.

The pain ate him up from the inside, bloody, raw, torn, stretched wider than a body could stretch and recover as they expanded their games and found other things to force inside him. He lost what sense of dignity he’d striven to hold on to and screamed and pleaded and begged, and all it did was inflame them. He saw through red-tinged vision, one of them take out the horrifying thing between its

legs and start to pump it in excited vigor. It was as long as Yhalen’s arm from shoulder to wrist and thicker than his biceps along the shaft, bulging larger at the bluish green head, which was swollen and angry and leaking clear fluid.

They went into a frenzy, with the smell of the ogre’s sexual fluids so strong in the air that it made Yhalen’s eyes water. The thing reached for him, wild-eyed and intent, and Yhalen knew that he would die, impaled on this thing and knew that he wouldn’t die well or honorably. But, the one with the ear rings, the only one that hadn’t violated him yet, snarled and shoved the one with the frightening erection back, smacking its own chest once then stabbing a finger towards Yhalen’s tortured form. The other one growled, backing down reluctantly, hunching over to vigorously massage the length of its cock. A tattooed length, Yhalen noted absently, his head swimming with something akin to relief—or perhaps it was blood loss. There were tattooed symbols on their arms and the hints of them under the edges of their armor.

The leader, who had claimed Yhalen for his own, moved to sit at his legs, taking another swig of the bitter wine, before pouring the last of it down Yhalen’s raised leg and watching as it dribbled down. It burned like liquid fire and he screamed and convulsed weakly. His cries had grown hoarse from so many shameful screams. From the bruising of thick malicious ogre fingers.

The ogre leader pushed his finger inside to little resistance, blood and torn muscle easing the way.