Bloodraven (5 page)

Yhalen did shut his eyes then, mortified, pulling uselessly at the rope binding his hands to the pallet frame.

“Don’t—touch me—don’t—murdering monster!” he hissed, twisting enough to get the leverage to kick out. The ogre fended off the blow with one arm, his amused smile fading to something more deadly that showed the sharp points of his fangs. He rose suddenly, towering over Yhalen on the low lying pallet, loosening the laces of his trousers and stepping out of them, revealing legs every bit as long and well-muscled as his arms and between them—well, certainly nothing as terrifying as what his full-sized

brethren possessed, but—an organ that would intimidate even the proudest human male. It probably wouldn’t kill him, if the ogre planned to use it as he feared—but it would hurt a great deal.

The ogre, as naked as Yhalen now, but oh, so much larger and stronger, snatched Yhalen’s flailing legs and settled on the pallet between them, turning Yhalen onto his stomach and scooting up so that Yhalen’s legs were spread to either side of his hips and Yhalen’s rear placed in the ogre’s lap. With the big hands on his thighs, there was very little Yhalen could do to extricate himself from so vulnerable a position. All his desperate writhing accomplished was the gradual hardening of the large phallus that lay under his belly. It was a hard, long length against his own small, soft one and the size and heat of it brought back the terror of only two nights past. Of what those other ogres had done to him—of the pain and the horror and the utter mind-blanking fear.

He gibbered words he could hardly understand himself. Pleas for mercy, promises, threats—cries for succor to people who were far, far away from this nightmare. It took a while for him, immersed in his hysteria, to realize that the big hands were not hurting him. That strong fingers were stroking up and down the length of his shivering back, soothing tense muscle, smoothing flinching skin. The ogre said nothing, but the touch was much like a man might use to calm a frightened animal. Like he might use to break a wild yearling colt to the first touch of a halter and eventually a bit in its mouth and a saddle on its back.

To his shoulders, down his spine all the way to the juncture between his legs. Back again, fingers missing no portion of his body, pausing now and then to test the texture of his frayed braid, to tease the lobe of an ear under the fall of escaped hair—to knead the soft flesh of his buttocks, his thighs, to slide between the heat of his legs and graze the loose skin of his balls.

There was the sound of a ceramic jar uncorked and cool jelly was smeared down the crack of his buttocks, worked around the puckered lips of his anus, but not quite inside. Rough finger pads circled that cringing mouth, stroking the skin between it and Yhalen’s balls with such sensation that Yhalen’s gut tightened as heat flooded the flesh between his legs. The tip of a finger slipped inside him, past that first ring of muscle, past the second, with more ease that it ought to be able—sliding in just the knuckle, methodically, gently massaging the spasming muscle on the inside, just as his other hand continued to do on the out.

And Goddess—he hit something—some place inside of Yhalen that made his body shake and his balls go small and constricted. Made the tip of his manhood pulse, twitching against the thicker shaft pressed against it.

He pressed his face into the fur, tears leaking from beneath his lashes, hating himself for that betrayal, trying to chase the heat and the coiling feeling away. But there was no time, for the ogre shifted, rising a little on his knees, lifting Yhalen’s hips up so that his knees just touched the furs, and the large, oiled tip of the ogre’s erection pressed against his throbbing entrance.

“No—please, no,” he moaned into the furs, oh, very serious and very certain that he in no way wanted this thing inside of him. But his body wasn’t so sure and even as the huge head pressed inside, stretching the ring of muscle wide—but not so wide that flesh split, though blood flowed—he wasn’t certain if it was pain or pleasure that ran up his spine. Surely pain. Surely that, with the blood trickling down his thighs and the pressure in his belly of being filled to capacity—filled beyond capacity as the ogre slowly pushed in, hands supporting Yhalen’s hips, fingers bruising his flesh as he gripped hard in his concentration.

He didn’t think it was possible to take it all, without the tearing mutilation of organs he’d experienced before—but with stubborn persistence, this one nestled himself inside Yhalen’s body, until his big balls pressed tight against Yhalen’s thighs and there was no stabbing scream of pain that signaled internal tearing, only the dull throb of his body stretched and filled and slowly adjusting to the presence that invaded it.

The ogre shifted a hand, stroking Yhalen’s trembling shoulders, patting his side in satisfaction, saying something soft and pleased as if he were congratulating Yhalen on a job well done.

Then he started to move. Rhythmic, single-minded thrusts that grew stronger and harder as Yhalen’s body opened to him. The soothing touches were forgotten and Yhalen’s bobbing erection soon ebbed, forlorn and untouched, the vigor of the ogre’s movements beginning to hurt—more so when the pace seemed destined not to slow and the creature riding him showed no signs of impending completion.

He began to sob, mindless little cries wrenched out of him as his face and shoulders were rocked to and fro across the fur—then a startled gasp as the ogre paused in his rhythm and leaned forward, pressing Yhalen’s face hard into the furs as he snagged the rope tied to the pallet’s frame and yanked it

savagely free, then pulled Yhalen up, rising to his knees so that Yhalen’s weight momentarily rested on that which impaled his body, before settling back down, Yhalen upon on his lap, his back pressed to the ogre’s chest.

The sensation of the thing inside him at this angle was riveting. His mouth opened and his eyes strained wide as the ogre began moving him up and down its shaft, using his body weight to press him more firmly down its length before lifting him up by the thighs and slamming him back down again. He tried to scramble away and the ogre casually caught his bound hands in one of his own and twined them around his head, effectively trapping them.

Somewhere along the way, Yhalen ceased to be aware. Ceased to be anything but a limp receptacle for the ogre’s boundless lust. He thought—or perhaps it was only a series of nightmares—that his captor went on well into the night. Finishing one bout and initiating another, very much like a child with a new and fascinating toy that he couldn’t quite let out of his hands even at the risk of breaking it.

When he finally did sleep—true, uninterrupted sleep—it was the sleep of the righteously exhausted.

No dreams marred it, no sounds, no sensations. It would be a long while before he drifted out of blackness and into consciousness again.

Yhalen woke stiff and sore, curled on the floor next to the pallet and lying on furs that spilled over from the frame. He was alone.

Sunlight seeped in from the cracks in the canvas flap, but otherwise the tent was dim and cool. It smelled faintly of sweat and oiled leather and...sex. He shut his eyes, pulling his legs up closer to his body and even that movement hurt. His lower back ached as if he’d been beaten, his thighs screamed protest at any exertion and other things.... He hesitated to dwell on the more centralized ache that throbbed dully between his legs.

His hands were no longer bound, but he couldn’t recall the moment when he’d been untied. There were raw burns along his wrists from the rough rope. Alone and unbound, his mind drifted to thoughts of escape. How deep into the ogre camp had he been led? Everything had been so blurred—his perceptions so blunted by pain and fear and exhaustion that he’d hardly noticed the finer points of detail when he’d first been led through.

He wasn’t allowed the time to put more thought into flight, for the tent flaps shifted and a man entered. A human man, thickly built, with scraggly blonde hair and beard and little more than a loin skin about his hips. Yhalen thought he might have been the same one who had brought water the night before. But this time he held nothing and his eyes fixed immediately upon Yhalen.

“Get up,” he said in an accent so thick that Yhalen could hardly understand the words. Yhalen lay there blinking, and with a huff of impatience the man stalked over and snatched Yhalen’s wrist, yanking him up.

It hurt, both the harsh grip on his wrist and the usage of muscles that would rather not be used.

Yhalen had had as much abuse as a man could tolerate from monsters twice his size and taking it from a man of his own blood was more than he was willing to tolerate.

“Let go!” he demanded, jerking his arm away, glaring at this collared man in frustration.

He got a backhanded slap for his burst of anger that sent him spinning onto his belly on the pallet.

Goddess, he was so weak that he couldn’t even take a man’s casual slap without making a fool of himself. He got yanked up again, this time gripped by the shoulders and hauled close to the bearded face.

“Do what you’re told, slave.”

“I’m not a slave,” he hissed between clenched teeth.

“You are.” The hands shook him once and hard. “You belong to Kavarr Bloodraven and you’ll be obedient or you’ll be punished.”

“Punished?” Yhalen couldn’t hold back the disbelieving laugh. “What more?”

“Much more, foolish boy. Much more.”

Yhalen swallowed at that. At the look of utter, solemn dread in the man’s eyes. This man had seen things, he thought, that no sane man ought to see. The blonde slave transferred his grip from Yhalen’s shoulder to his upper arm and hauled him towards the tent flap.

“Wait—at least give me something to wear.” He was painfully conscious of his nudity and although the Ydregi were not a people that held taboos against the showing of flesh—here and under these circumstances, it wasn’t a thing to be desired. His first instinct was to resist, for there was privacy and safety to a degree in this tent and outside it, a camp full of ogres. But he hadn’t the strength in his legs to compete with this burly human and he was dragged into the morning light.

“If he wants you clothed, he’ll clothe you.”

Yhalen glowered red-faced at that short statement, and covered his modesty as best he could with the hand that the blonde slave didn’t have in his grip.

The camp was not bristling with activity. It seemed, in fact, rather subdued. There were only a few lumbering ogres about, but for the most part the majority of them seemed to be absent. Not in their tents asleep, Yhalen thought, for he got no sense of the subtle flow of life energy from within. He feared that they were out doing some mischief and wondered how close they were to the Nakhanor town

where his grandfather had gone to parlay.

There were other human slaves about, performing the daily tasks that any war camp needed doing.

Their eyes followed Yhalen and his escort as they walked along the trampled grass towards the brook.

Once, a pair of animals that might have been dogs, but were much, much larger, lunged at them from the length of chain that held them secure to a spike in the ground. The brutes’ heads came above Yhalen’s shoulders, broad-chested, shorthaired things that bristled with teeth and dripping saliva.

Short, cropped ears were flattened to broad skulls and tattoos had been burned into the hides, denoting what, Yhalen had no notion. But he did notice that his escort had a similar tattoo on his shoulder, a twined circle with a smaller symbol inside. Marks of ownership perhaps. His escort flinched at the snarling animals, shying away, emanating a fear that drove the creatures into a greater frenzy. Yhalen looked over his shoulder once, at the lunging dog-things and wondered what other savage, giant creatures the cold mountains of the north had spawned.

At the brook, the blonde slave told Yhalen to wash, after giving him a shove into the edge of the water. He had no protest, other than the fact that the man stood there with eyes fixed upon him the whole time. It was a pleasure to rid himself of the dried blood and semen and the smell of this Kavarr Bloodraven who was supposedly his master.

“Hair, too,” the slave directed and Yhalen, hip deep in water, cast a glare back up at the shore.

“For what? It doesn’t look as if you’ve seen a bath in weeks. Why bother?” He was being obstinate for the sheer reason that with this human man, he felt he could.

The slave stared at him shrewdly. “He won’t be laying me on his own bed furs, so it doesn’t matter if I smell or not.”

Yhalen blanched, stomach doing odd little flip-flops of dismay, mind going blank with dread. “Oh, Goddess—you can’t just—I can’t...turn your back. Let me slip away. Please, help me.”

It would be so easy. There was forest beyond this brook that he could lose himself in and with his wits about him, he could evade these clumsy invaders with ease.

“No. You make a move towards escape and I’ll have this camp down upon your head.”

“Why? We’re both human—they’re monsters—please....”

“No. I lose you—I die.”

There was utter cold fact in that statement. Utter truth. Perhaps that was why the humans in this camp were unfettered save for the collars of servitude about their necks. To rebel was to die. He wouldn’t ask this man again for help. But he wouldn’t be able to resist escape if the chance offered, on threat of a life or not.

He kept his silence on the matter, instead untwining the leather that held the end of his long braid and combing it free with his fingers, pausing and then working at the smaller braid that hung down from his temple—the braid that signified his passage through the first rite of manhood. A man would earn the right to wear three of the symbolic small braids throughout his life, if he were diligent and faithful to the ways of the people. It was a badge of pride and Yhalen hesitated to loose it in fear that he might not get the chance to properly rebraid it. But, he supposed it needed doing, what with the grime and blood—and other things—that had dried in his hair. He picked up handfuls of sand and scrubbed at his body and dunked his head, working at his hair and left the brook finally, twisting the length of it to squeeze out the water.