Bloodraven (8 page)

Yhalen stood with his back to the center pole of the tent, limbs still shaking from reaction, staring at Bloodraven as if he were a demon from the lower reaches of the abyss. But not The Demon. Not the evil of all evils. He was, Yhalen had discovered, the least of the evils offered.

After a while, Bloodraven tired of buffing his armor, and for a moment sat on his stood, one hand clutching the oiling rag, the other on his knee. Finally he tilted his head, staring at Yhalen from under a fall of shining black hair. He crooked a finger and Yhalen flinched, but hesitated not in moving forward, trailing his chain to stand before the ogre. Bloodraven opened his knees, not saying a thing. Yhalen took a breath, stomach fluttering in turmoil, and lowered himself carefully to his knees between the ogre’s legs, shaking hands reaching out and fumbling with the lacings of Bloodraven’s trousers.

It was a test of course. One to be expected. To see if he’d learned the lesson of proper obedience.

Vorjd had told him terrible things would happen if he were not a good slave. Yhalen hadn’t believed him. He’d barely missed finding out for himself those terrible things.

His fingers found Bloodraven’s flaccid member, warm and soft to the touch, but beginning to stiffen.

Didn’t look up and meet his eyes, because that would be his undoing. Concentrated on the thickening flesh in his hands, imagined it was his own, only larger and an odd color—or Yherji’s. He ran his fingers down to the root, fingertips tracking the big vein, feeling the throbbing beat of blood. So thick now, that he couldn’t circle it with the fingers of one hand. He put his mouth to it, opened his lips and tentatively ran his tongue along the tip, tasting sweat and the salty flavor of pre-cum. It jerked under his hands, reacting to the touch of his tongue. He opened his mouth wider and took the head inside. Felt his teeth scrape against soft flesh and felt it fill his mouth from the slick, flat roof to the meaty flesh of his tongue. He couldn’t take it all, but he worked the lower part of the shaft with his hands. He moved his tongue as much as he could, sliding it down towards the base of Bloodraven’s shaft.

He pulled back, wrapping his lips about the head, swirling his tongue softly about the slit, hands sliding down to touch the large balls. He felt them tighten in his hand when he swallowed as much of

the shaft as he could again, felt Bloodraven’s hand on his head then, a gentle but insistent pressure to make him force more of the length down his throat. After the forest and the experience with the ogres there, he was shy of huge objects driven past his tonsils and down into his throat. He gagged reflexively and tried to jerk back, but Bloodraven’s one hand was stronger than his reflexive urge of flight.

Yhalen had to force himself to relax. Bloodraven wasn’t trying to jam the entire length down his throat, just more of it than Yhalen felt comfortable with. When he’d calmed, Bloodraven slid the hand down to the back of his neck, stroking the hair there, letting Yhalen pull back and set his own pace. He wanted this over and the only way to that end was to make Bloodraven come. He knew what facilitated his own and Yherji’s ejaculation in similar circumstances—and began bobbing his head with slow rhythmic motions up and down Bloodraven’s shaft, hands gently kneading the tight flesh of the balls and the root of the shaft. He obviously was being a bit too gentle, for Bloodraven’s hand tangled in his hair and the ogre assisted Yhalen in picking up the pace, moving his head up and down, over and over, until Yhalen feared that his jaws would crack before the ogre actually orgasmed. He had to look up finally and the moment he did, Bloodraven’s gaze caught his eyes. Gold and sharp, with pupils dilated with passion. Almost there, then.

Yhalen knew it was over when the balls tightened in his hands and the ogre’s body jerked. There was no pulling back with Bloodraven’s hand in his hair, and the back of his throat was hit with warm, salty liquid. It was never a taste that had particularly appealed to him, and graciously enough, as soon as he was done, Bloodraven released Yhalen and made no contest as the young human leaned to spit the ejaculate from his mouth.

There was wet warmth trailing down his cheeks. He hadn’t realized. He wondered when he’d started. He kept his head lowered in embarrassment, his face hot and wet, ejaculate glistening on his lips. Bloodraven rose then, finished with him, moving towards the pallet. He didn’t gesture for Yhalen to join him there and Yhalen wouldn’t make the move of his own accord. But if Bloodraven beckoned, he wouldn’t hesitate. Not after the threat delivered tonight.

Bloodraven used him in the morning, a casual balm to the stirring of the ogre’s morning erection, and Yhalen endured it, spreading his thighs obediently and lying on the furs, shutting his eyes and clenching his teeth from the discomfort of it. He didn’t bleed this time, his body stretched enough from two days of similar activity to accept the ogre’s large member. Bloodraven had yet to use him without the gift of lubricating, oily salve, being more careful of his possessions than his peers.

When Bloodraven left, armed and armored to perform whatever mischief his small army was about, Yhalen was left to while the time away alone, tethered in the tent. Vorjd came eventually, silent and grim as usual, to empty the chamber pot and bring fresh water for the basin. He also brought with him a small, human sized bowl of morning gruel and a flask of clean, cool water. These he sat down at the end of the pallet, within Yhalen’s reach.

“I thought only he fed me?” Yhalen asked, sitting with the furs covering the lower part of his body, his back against one of the poles that supported the tent.

Vorjd gave him a dark look, not answering.

“Are you his slave, too?”

“Not like you,” the man said gruffly, hefting the dirty chamber pot and padding out of the tent with it.

Yhalen frowned, listening to the sound of receding footsteps without. To the gentle whisper of the wind as it rustled the canvas. He closed his eyes, imagining the flow of it outside, free to go as it wished, unfettered. He felt the faint essence of it, and followed the trail to the greater essence of the forest at the edge of the vale where this camp sat. He sought after the presences of forest dwellers, seeking the warmer, more vibrant essences of flesh and blood things—but there were none close by.

Everything had fled from the anomaly of the ogres and the foul seed they brought with them.

He withdrew slowly, unwilling to shatter this moment of inspired awareness—it was a thing he’d so seldom paused to initiate when he’d been free in his own ancestral forest. He’d not cared for the ways of the elders—rather preferring to delve into the way of the warrior and the hunter, as most of the younger ones were wont to do. He’d had all the time in the world, he’d thought, to make his peace with the Goddess and the learning of her ways as the decades passed.

The tent flap opened and Yhalen blinked, losing his connection with the forest, jarred back to the dim, leathery smell of the tent. Vorjd was back, with the cleaned chamber pot.

“I’m his slave,” the man said, not looking at Yhalen. “For three years.”

“Three years? How have you survived with them?” Yhalen leaned forward, disbelieving. If he survived the month, he’d be surprised.

“He’s not as bad as some. He’s fair, if you do what you’re told. Most ogr’rons are—the ones that have enough rank to hold slaves, at any rate.”

“Ogr’ron? Not an ogre?”

Vorjd looked at him as if he were daft. “Of course not an ogre, you fool. You think you’d have survived the first night, if he were? He’s a halfling. Father was a human, mother an ogre who dallied a little too frequently with her slave. Not uncommon. They’ve a fascination for us.”

“Oh. Oh, I didn’t know. They can...breed with us?”

“The females can. The males play at it sometimes, but there’s nothing left but bloody mess afterwards—not that a human woman could birth something the size of an ogr’ron and survive it anyway. Bloodraven’s not that large for a halfling. Some of them are almost the size of full-blooded ogres.”

Yhalen shivered, sickness rising in the back of his throat as he recalled first-hand how badly a body could be torn when the male ogres
played
with their human victims.

“What’s wrong with you, boy?”

Vorjd was standing over him. Yhalen had to blink to refocus his vision. For a moment, the world had grayed, jerking him back into horrible memory.

23

“Nothing,” he whispered, not willing to admit it. To ever speak it out loud.

Vorjd didn’t press it, having more pressing tasks, such as the cleaning of Bloodraven’s tent. Yhalen sat, half watching, half dwelling on the things that Vorjd had told him. Foolish of him not to have realized that Bloodraven wasn’t of the same ilk as the others. The size alone was hardly the major difference, but the rather crafting of the bone and the muscle that made up features more human than ogre, when you got past the sharp teeth and the golden eyes and the tapered, pointed ears. Yhalen supposed the fear and the frustration and the abuse at all of their hands had blinded him to such details.

He mulled over it all the long afternoon, until the racket of armor and the loud press of deep-throated ogre voices announced the return of the ogre war party. Soon after, Bloodraven burst into the tent, flinging the flaps wide, followed by the larger forms of two of his full-blooded brethren. The lot of them were agitated, voices raised in what might have been debate. Arms were flung and fingers and fists jerked in agitation as they spoke. Yhalen pressed back against the tent wall, flinching at the bellowing, at the overwhelming presence of three large bodies so close by and himself trapped in their midst. But they spared no notice for him, more interested in whatever it was they debated. With a final bout of conversation, some conclusion was reached, for the two ogres retreated with a creaking of leather and a jangling of metal, leaving Bloodraven standing in the center of his tent, eyes narrow and angry, chest rising and falling rapidly in what Yhalen assumed to be agitation.

With a snarl, the ogr’ron finally spat a word that was most certainly some blasphemy and flung his helm against the empty armor rack. The whole of it tumbled backwards. He divested himself in much the same manner of the rest of his armor, tossing it with a carelessness that Yhalen had yet to see from him, into the corner with the rest. When the half-breed was finally down to nothing but his cloth undergarments, he snatched the full wineskin that Vorjd had left on the camp table and took a long swig.

Yhalen hoped the silence and stillness of a forest mouse might allow him to escape notice, but the Goddess afforded him no such luck. Bloodraven’s golden eyes turned his way. Another long swig of wine and the ogr’ron corked the skin and laid it down, wiping the back of one large hand across his lips.

He said a word that wasn’t in Yhalen’s small vocabulary. When Yhalen sat blinking and unmoving the ogr’ron bellowed it again, face twisted in anger, reaching out and snatching Yhalen by the hair and tumbling him to the center of the furs.

Yhalen scrambled to his knees, startled and possessed by a sudden wash of anger. He jammed his arms out, palms flat against the much larger Bloodraven’s chest, surprising the ogr’ron just enough to set him off his balance and make him reel backwards.

“Don’t take it out on me!” Yhalen cried. “Whatever they did—whatever happened to put you in such a temper—it wasn’t my doing!”

Bloodraven stared, the furrow of rage in his brow smoothed momentarily from what might have been shock at Yhalen’s presumption. He most certainly had been taken off his guard by the physical rebellion, even if he hadn’t understood the words.

Yhalen expected to be punished for it. He expected to be pummeled into the ground. He didn’t expect the sudden laughter. It was short and abrupt, rumbling out of Bloodraven’s chest—but it was laughter. Bloodraven’s lips pulled back in a grin, exposing white teeth with sharp, overhanging canines.

A frightening smile—but unnervingly enough, not a hideous one.

“
Krav’nok gruag kre
,” repeated Bloodraven in a more normal tone of voice, accompanying the request with a demonstration of what he wished as he caught hold of Yhalen’s hips and pulled him towards him, turning him over onto his stomach and hauling him up onto his hands and knees, then patting the small of his back approvingly when Yhalen kept the position. No use fighting it. He was tethered and at Bloodraven’s mercy no matter what he did, and he’d found that his master tended much more towards gentleness when he complied with his whims.

So he crouched there, on all fours, loose hair spilling down about his arms and pooling on the furs, arms and legs shaking just a little, waiting for the ogr’ron to get it over with. The big body bent over his, and he felt the heat of Bloodraven’s skin on his back, felt the warmth of his breath between his shoulders as the ogr’ron brushed the hair to either side, baring the column of Yhalen’s neck. A wetness touched his skin, rough and velvety at the same time. The stroke of Bloodraven’s tongue. A big hand slid under his belly, encircling his torso, fingers finding one nipple and rolling it between thumb and forefinger, pulling and tugging just enough to evict a sound from Yhalen’s throat—but not enough to 24

make him cry out. The other hand slid down his spine, broad hand splayed out, covering his skin, moving in firm strokes down his hips, across his buttocks, down his thighs and between his legs, lingering in the heat it found there, not quite grazing his dangling balls, but almost, before it roamed back up, taking in every inch of Yhalen’s skin.