by Noah Layton
Cass eyed me again and looked over at her brothers wistfully. I thought she would agree, but-
‘I don’t think so… You seem like a good man, especially for a tribe master, but-’
‘Cass?’ Santana said from my side, in the most delicate voice that she could muster. ‘If you do not mind me asking, where do you live at the moment?’
‘Here in town. We rent a small room.’
‘Just a single room between all three of you?’
‘You don’t have to rub it in, tribal wife.’
I was about to step in before things got out of hand, but beneath the table I felt Santana’s hand grasp around my leg.
‘I do not mean to offend,’ Santana continued with the most apologetic tone ever. ‘I just know that it is my husband’s wish to care for his people. He wishes for you and your brothers to be welcomed into his fold, and he promises all of the things he has spoken of – water, food, supplies, a chance for work… Oh, and a home, too.’
Cass’s eyes widened a little.
‘… A home?’
‘Of course. A stone house with two floors, a living room, a kitchen, even bedrooms for you and your brothers. It would be all your own if you would be willing to help us. So what do you think?’
The tone of her voice was like a dancing fairy, tantalising and enticing. Hell, even I wanted to live in the damn house after she had spoken about it.
Cass’s face changed slowly. A look of consideration had spread across it, and steadily she began to nod.
‘All right. I’ll do it. But we need to plan this out properly.’ Cass stood from the table, downing her mug of ale while doing so before stamping the empty container down on the table. ‘Finish your drinks and meet me across the street. There’s an alley next to an Inn there if you wish to find somewhere to stay until night, but we need to determine a strategy before we spend the evening being executed by Alder’s grunts.’
Without another word Cass crossed the bar and tapped her brothers on the back. They both obediently downed what remained of their drinks and followed her outside.
‘That was incredible,’ I said, turning to Santana. ‘How did you think of that?’
‘You are a good negotiator, but sometimes sitting to the side and watching is the best way to truly see a situation for what it is. When making a deal you need to appeal to what the other person wants the most. She desires a home for her and her brothers, and that is what we can offer.’
‘That was the perfect performance. You’re terrifying.’
‘Terrifying is the last thing I wish to be,’ she grinned, taking a sip from her drink. ‘Besides, I think that the strawberry schnapps perhaps helped a little. Still, I cannot help but feel that I cheated her a little there. She is in need, and we may be putting her in danger.’
‘No, we didn’t.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Because we’re going to help her get in to that house.’
Chapter Eleven
After finishing our drinks a few minutes later, we met Cass and her brothers in the alleyway across the street and discussed our plan. Her brothers stood to the side the entire time, watching us intently.
I couldn’t help but look over at them every so often, waiting for some protest against what we were about to do, but they just stood and listened, not saying a word.
They truly relied on Cass and did exactly as she said.
‘There is a small patch of forest just beyond the border of the property. We’ll meet you there.’
They took off out of the alleyway and headed left up the street. Santana and I headed to the inn next to the alleyway and got a room for the night from a spectacle-clad goblin that reminded me of Cobb, the trader I had bought Ariadne from, albeit being a lot more humble and polite.
I paid 100GP for the room and we headed up a set of stairs to a wooden hallway, stopping at the last room on the right, which looked out onto a small yard at the back of the building.
I didn’t know what to expect once we were inside, but I was pleasantly surprised. There was a large bed that was comfortable enough, a dresser, a small desk, and bathtub in the corner, which was the thing I was most happy to see.
The place reminded me of a room in a wild west saloon.
Through a door at the back of the room there was a small set of stairs that led out to the yard, where there was an outhouse and a well. I made several trips back and forth with the bucket until the tub was full then drew the curtains, giving us some privacy.
We both stripped down and took turns taking a bath, washing away the dirt and sweat of the morning and emerging clean. Even if I had had Santana beneath me twice now, even if we had both been as close as two people could get, it was still a task to draw my eyes away from the sight of her flawless body as she rested in the water.
‘This is so weird,’ I said. ‘I just really didn’t expect something like this to be here. When I first landed in the forest weeks ago I thought this was a wilderness, but there are actual towns and communities out here.’
‘They rose up in the aftermath of the war,’ Santana replied. ‘People became more abrasive towards the idea of tribes because of what happened, but they have steadily begun to return. We have just invited more to join, after all. Other new tribes are always doing the same, if they are intelligent enough.’
‘What happens when they decide they want to expand their power?’
‘You must make the decision about what is best for your people, Master Jack, as I said before.’
‘You’re too wise, you know that?’
‘I have a lot of time to think. Solitude will do that. The people out here, they are always around others. It is pleasant to have company, but we all need time alone to clear our minds. These communities… Eventually they will die, and the way of the tribes will dominate the land once again.
‘This town is going the same way. There are inns and bars for travellers and the remaining workers, but eventually it will die, and somebody will decide that they want it. It could be you.’
‘This place is a wasteland,’ I replied. ‘Eventually the only person left will be Alder and his guards, until the people decide to revolt. I wonder if he’s planning for that.’
‘Do you think that will happen one day?’
‘If things get bad enough. It happened once where I come from, hundreds of years ago. There was a king, and he tried to make his citizens pay off the debts of his country. He raised taxes, than a bad winter hit and destroyed all the crops. Suddenly thousands of people with nothing left to lose realized that there were a lot more of them than there were people to stop them, so they revolted. Stormed his castle, destroyed the keep where his soldiers were…’
‘And what happened to him?’
‘They cut his head off.’
‘By the gods…’
‘All the people have to do is realize they have nothing else to lose. But that’s what a leader should do if he wants to keep his power. He needs to take care of his people while still being in charge.’
‘Enough war-talk,’ Santana said. ‘Could you wash my back?’
I crossed to her as she sat up in the water and ran some soap over her back, rubbing it into her smooth skin gently. Even just touching my wife made me hard, and as she leaned her head to the side lightly and closed her eyes, she let out a long moan.
‘You always make these noises when you take a bath?’
‘Only when it’s you touching me, master.’
She turned and kissed me over her shoulder, running her supple fingers into mine and guiding my hand into the water, over her pert breasts and down her toned stomach, dipping beneath the water until I reached the spot between her legs.
We kissed lightly but passionately as I ran my fingers over her, light whimpers escaping her lips as I pleasured her beneath the water before sliding my fingers into her.
Santana let out a gasp and bit her lip before nodding lightly at me as I found the delicate spot inside of her and moved my f
ingers against her.
She let out a long moan, still in the water, and reached her other hand up to me, holding onto me tightly as I moved her faster and faster.
‘Oh, gods…’
Her body went rigid as she climaxed, her form descending into shaking quivers. When she had finally caught her breath I lifted her from the water and carried her to the bed, laying her down on it.
I pulled my pants off just to relieve the swelling of my cock inside them, then descended onto the bed between her legs and ran my tongue up her dripping wet thighs.
You would think water would make sex easier, but the opposite was true. The human body does that all on its own, and water only washes it away.
I was going to have to compensate.
I kissed between Santana’s legs, lapping at her gently before pressing my tongue to her and pleasuring her relentlessly. One of her hands sank into the sheets while the other pressed against the back of my head until she was wet enough to take me.
‘Now, now…’ She moaned. I kneeled up and moved between her legs, bringing my throbbing cock to touch her wet lips and pushing into her. She was as tight as ever, and her body shook and quivered around me, but she only bit her lip and nodded at me to give her more until I had filled her.
‘Go slow,’ she ordered. ‘I want to feel you inside me, every bit of you.’
Her words were like silk and could have finished me instantaneously. My senses felt heightened as I pulled out of her steadily and pushed into her again.
I positioned myself over her, supporting myself on my arms and pressing my body to hers. She ran her hands into my hair and grasped at it firmly, staring me intensely in the eyes as I moved in her again and again.
Suddenly she went quiet, her face straining with a gaping smile before she gasped out as she came around me.
Every bit of her slender body felt perfect beneath my touch, and as she regained her breath she held onto me and rolled me onto my back, my cock still buried inside of her.
She lowered herself onto me, she now pressing her body against mine as she grinded her hips against me slowly.
A haze of frenzied fucking in the treehouse with my wives always took it out of me, but this was a different experience entirely.
Santana filled herself with me, pumping her hips in short, slow, relentless movements until I couldn’t take it any longer. I held her body to me as we stared into each other’s eyes, I finishing inside of her uncontrollably.
By the time I had stopped I was a shuddering, wet mess on the bed as Santana laid atop me, breathing deeply.
‘The third time we have sex and you do something like that…’ I breathed. ‘How…?’
‘Because you make me feel like a real woman.’
***
We changed into a fresh set of clothes and headed out at sundown.
The sun had finally sunk over the horizon by the time we found Cass and her brothers in the small patch of trees at the bottom of the hill. We shared a nod and headed to the western side of the hill where a seven-foot tall metal fence with razor-sharp spikes protruding from their tips began.
‘Alder’s food is delivered through a pulley-system just up there. It’s the only way to get into the house besides the front door, but there’s only one of his goons guarding this side of the house. Once I’m inside, you’ll need to use the pulley to lift me up to the first floor. We’ll need to do it quietly, because if any of the guards hear us they will all come running.’
‘Got it. How do we get past the fence?’
We trailed the edge of the fence to a point further back. Cass examined the ground carefully before pulling us to a stop at a crumbled edge of the stone base that held the fence in place. She nodded to her brothers, who stepped in to pull the stone free. It must have weighed a few hundred pounds at the least, but together they shifted it effortlessly and set it aside.
There was plenty of space for Cass to slide her petite body through, and just enough for me to do the same, although it would be much more of a squeeze for me.
Cass pushed through, squirming onto Alder’s grounds effortlessly. I followed and found myself having to breathe in to make it through. Cass took my hand and heaved me up, and I found myself propelled forward as her brothers each took one of my feet and pushed me through.
‘Thanks, guys.’
They both nodded at me.
‘Keep an eye out,’ I said to Santana.
‘She’ll be fine,’ Cass said, turning to me. ‘You keep your eyes peeled, and try not to kill anyone. Stealing is bad enough, but if there are any bodies and our identities are discovered we stand a chance of having a bounty put on our heads.’
Cass and I set off up the embankment by the house. The grounds stretched up sharply and tapered off for ten yards before the walls of the house began.
We moved silently and ducked to the ground just as the land began to flatten. We crouched in the tall grass and scanned the house’s edge.
The food chute was a dumbwaiter-type mechanism sitting in the wall behind a metal grating. Before it stood a large guard with a sword sheathed at his waist.
‘There’s a guard on each side of the building,’ Cass whispered. ‘We need to take him out quietly. I’m not strong enough to do it that fast, but you can.’
I nodded in agreement. In movies people were always knocked out by being struck over the head, but that didn’t work in real life. Any number of things could happen on the ass-end of that; they groan and stand up, they haemorrhage and bleed out, or they become mentally impaired for their entire lives.
There were only two ways to knock somebody out; smacking their brain against their skull or cutting off their airway.
In this situation the latter was much more attractive. I didn’t exactly care about Alder’s goons, but I had no reason to kill anyone right now, unless it was a situation where only one of us could survive.
But right now there were more democratic ways to get around things.
The guard was twenty yards away, and it was quickly getting darker.
Together we shuffled along the embankment until we reached a point just ten yards from the guard.
I watched him remain from the grass for a few long moments, unmoving.
All was silent save for the occasional breeze brushing against the grass.
I counted down in my head and hurried forward.
With a sharp punch in the back he was startled, before I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled both of us down onto our backs.
Within ten seconds he had stopped struggling against me.
Together, Cass and I rolled the unconscious body to the bottom of the hill. There was no way in hell that we would be able to get him through the hole that we had climbed through; instead, we tied him up and gagged him right there, then returned to the house.
Cass climbed into the dumbwaiter and nodded reluctantly. I grabbed the chain and began to heave.
The journey was only short, perhaps a few yards up, but every inch of the chain that moved downwards begged to make a noise. I measured every pull, my muscular arms shaking under the tension of holding Cass’s weight.
On a given day the only thing travelling in the mechanism would be a meal, but now it was a fully-grown human. Cass probably only weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet, but it was a substantial load to shift at such a careful speed.
The compartment finally creaked to a stop. I faintly heard Cass shuffling, then the weight of the compartment rapidly decreased as she exited into the house.
I lowered the dumbwaiter back into place and opened the shutter to find it empty.
She was inside the building now. There was nothing I could do but wait.
I returned to the embankment and waited under cover of darkness, hiding in the grass. A short while later a guard came walking up from the back of the house, an axe hooked into his belt. He was similar to the others, burly and seemingly vacant.
But the longer I watched him, the more I became a little more aware of the
man. There was intelligence in his eyes that I hadn’t seen with the first.
He waited by the compartment and looked around for the missing guard.
Then, just when I thought he would move on, the guard that I had knocked out woke up.
There was nothing to drown it out.
The new guard drew his axe in one hand and started towards the groaning guard at the bottom of the embankment.
Fuck.
If I moved to take him down then a third would come running, then I would have another of these assholes to deal with.
‘Oh, shit... Eames!’
The guard hurried back up the embankment, barely missing me in the grass. As he reached the compartment entrance a third guard came sprinting from the front of the house.
‘Intruders! Get to the house!’
They both dashed to the front of the house. Seconds later I heard the door unlocking, then slamming open.
Cass was still inside. I had no idea if she was safe, or if she had even found the recipe yet.
But I couldn’t just leave her in there.
No further guards were coming up from the base of the hill. I had a rapidly closing window of time to get inside.
Keeping low, I dashed out from the tall grass and followed the direction of the two guards.
The front of the house turned left sharply, and in seconds I was heading through the front door of the house.
I was a walking paradox; on the one hand I wanted to go yelling out Cass’s name, but on the other I had no intention of alerting the guards to my presence.
Now I knew how Elera must have felt back in the caves when that siren had started creeping up on me.
And the most worrying thing? The house had gone almost completely silent.
No screams, no hammering footsteps on the floorboards below. There was only the occasional creak that I couldn’t trace, or within the wooden interior walls.
At least, I guessed them to be composed of wood. I couldn’t see a surface in the place, hardly even the floor.
The corridor I was standing in was stacked to the ceiling with a sporadic mix of storage chests and miscellaneous junk.
A single word came to mind: hoarder.