Lord Hawk was still smiling and Con had his hand on his shoulder leading him deeper into the Hall. The men began explaining the problem to him as soon as they were out of earshot of the dining Hall. They were not grinning as they had been, but both of them still made him think of benevolent uncles indulging a child by giving that child a new toy. His attention was caught when Lord Hawk began to tell him of the plot to steal an heir. The entire tale had him thinking of counter moves to deal with this new threat. This Hall had seen more than enough strife and bloodshed during his short time on duty here. He was one of three men from Tremble Castle that had decided to stay and build his own nest here.
“The woman has no idea that she is in thrall, you say? The simplest solution to that immediate problem is to substitute a male that is loyal to Hawk’s Nest. That should pull the teeth from the threat to your heir.” He saw the grins on the men’s faces and felt the weight of his own words. They had already thought of that solution, and it appeared that he was to be the sacrificial male. Hawk opened the door to his chamber and Con gave him a small push into the room.
He heard the door close behind him as he gazed upon the beautiful woman lying on the bed, panting and pulling at her nipples. As far as assignments went, this was one he would always remember. The sight of Willa writhing on the bed, begging for a man’s touch, had him removing his tunic as he walked to the bed. Hawk had told him that his prick had not entered the woman, and for that, he was grateful. This woman was beautiful and thanks to Lord Hawk, she was now his. Any child she might have would be his too. The thought made him happy, now that he had a settled position here at Hawk’s Nest, he could truly put down roots. A mate and the good probability of a family of his own made him more enthusiastic as he began to caress the soft skin of Willa’s belly. She was making such pitiful noises and gasping for breath that he parted her thighs and settled his body between them. Her bountiful breasts rose and fell with her breath as she screamed in frustration. He clamped his mouth over one nipple and entered her soaked cunt. The clamp and release of her tunnel made him stop several times before he began to fuck her in earnest. No matter how he tried to control his need to hold back, to enjoy her tight body, the lack of a recent bedmate caused him to lose his seed deep within her much sooner than he wanted to. He dropped his head on her breast and steadied himself long enough to realize that this session with her was not over with. He was ashamed of his performance with her, no woman had ever been left wanting when she gave herself over to him, and he would not allow his mate to go without her pleasures either.
His hands cradled her head as he promised his devotion to her pleasure against her lips. “We will not leave this bed until I have satisfied your pleasures, my dove, that was but a small snack and we have hours to enjoy each other. Come, my dove, let me hear you coo softly for me, and I will give you all of the pleasures a beautiful woman deserves.”
The sounds of a woman screaming in pleasure echoed through the Hallway leading to the sleeping rooms of those who had permanent quarters there, until nightfall.
Hawk and Con took to the skies for an early evening check on the area surrounding Hawk’s Nest. Hawk flew lower over the trees when he spied an encampment of people near the road leading from Tremble Castle. He saw two large wolves circling the gathering and continued to watch from above to make certain the wolves were security for the people rather than predators looking for a conquest. Con perched himself upon a large outcropping of rock and watched over the camp, while Hawk was airborne. With the repatriation of people who had fled the Hall under the governance of its old lord, came more problems. Many of the people resented being sent back to their homes and some had taken root at the town of Tremble. Those people had taken spouses and many had at least one child or were pregnant with the future of Hawk’s Nest. The journey was made more difficult since almost every person and family was bringing their accumulated possessions back with them. Laden carts filled two men high were pulled by thickly muscled beasts with horns, that some called Oxen. This encampment was filled with such wagons and people. Hawk drew encouragement for the future of his new home seeing the number of adults and children. He flew lower, intending to drop in on the people when Con let loose a loud call. As he flew higher and in the direction of Con’s perch, he saw smoke in the distance to the west.
Con was already in the air and heading that way, so he followed. With the larger bird leading, he glided on the wind currents to preserve his strength. There was no rush as of yet, not until the fire was checked on and they made sure no one was pillaging a settler. It was rare for rovers to attack, but not unheard of. In fact, a few of the repatriated humans wished to begin burgs of their own. Places where dual natured beings were not welcome.
In theory that might have worked a thousand years ago. However, there were more dual natured beings than humans on the island, and some remembered the scorn and ridicule that was heaped on them by the original aliens who landed on this rock called Echo. Much of the problem with the dual natured could be sat at the door of that huge silver spacecraft that he had heard so much about. It still sat, intact, in the middle of a group of buildings where the descendants of the original explorers began to build their city. They could not resist dabbling in the natural evolution of the pristine planet they found upon landing. They experimented on evolving species. Injecting various beings with DNA taken from another being, with human DNA, they attempted to create stronger, less weak humans. The plan was logical, but the execution had been poor. Echo was a newly evolving planet at that time. Yet the prejudices between the evolving species, and human beings, were alive and well. The cruelties visited upon certain species had never actually given the scientists what they wished for. All their experiments had produced were human to animal shape shifters. Given the scope of their experiments, sometimes combining DNA from several species and impregnating the eggs into human females and animal species alike, had been disastrous for the humans. The practice of combining DNA and tissue from separate species was supposed to have stopped a hundred years ago, but since Tremble Island was still the main depository of the creatures resulting from those “mistakes”, every few years more creatures that appeared to be human, but were not, were dropped on the shores.
What the humans did not seem to take into consideration was the fact that although they would breed time and again with another human, often the children were dual natured. There had been several instances where a baby would be found abandoned in one of the twelve Halls of Care. The Overlords were sworn to protect all beings under the charter of Tremble. So the babe would be fostered to a family in the village, or the Overlord would take the child in until they became of an age to fend for themselves.
As Con circled the burned out buildings below, he spied several people fleeing through the forest and looked for their pursuers. He saw no one following the frightened people. He widened his circle wondering if he had flown past the miscreants who caused such damage, but saw no one. When he sat down on a thick branch of a tree to wait for Hawk, he continued to watch for trouble but whoever caused this, was gone. He saw Hawk drop down into the clearing through the smoke and watched him walk around the structures. The trilling whistle called to him from the side of the building that might have housed beasts before it was torched. He opened his wings and flew to Hawk’s side.
There were four bodies lying on the ground at the end of chains that were attached to collars around their necks. One of them had a scaly rubbery covering, reminding him of Drago, the new master of Droildorf Hall. It was a young dragon, he would wager on that. Two of the animals were wolves, and the last one was in human form, coughing and crying in despair.
The four were all still alive, barely. The two men transformed to their human shapes to assist the victims. Hawk got the human to talk, but there was not much talking going on. The creature had never been taught words to express herself. She knew curse words, but that seemed to be the extent of her vocabulary. The wolves tried to move to her side, but the smoke
they had inhaled and the starved condition of their bodies made them too weak to come to her assistance. The small dragon eyed them closely, watching their every move, but never tried to communicate at all.
Hawk insisted that Con go back to the Hall and send help. “We need a healer and medicinals, and some sort of transport to get these children back to the Hall. Since you are the fastest of us, you should go and bring help as swiftly as possible. I will stay and guard the young ones until help has arrived.” Darkness was falling rapidly, so rather than argue, Con took to the sky. He was faster than Hawk in the air. His body was larger, but his wings ate the miles with little effort. In less than an hour he was at the Hall, rousing Quinlan from his slumber.
Quinn’s new mate was still asleep in the bed as he left the room, so he directed one of the women that were still in the Hall to watch over her and keep her inside the building. He listened to Con, then nodded his head and ran to the training yard where he taught the Amazons to battle. Several of them were waiting for him already, although training was not scheduled to start for another two hours. They stood at alert when he rushed into the yard, knowing that something was afoot to make him move so quickly.
He began issuing orders, “We have a situation of several children under Lord Hawk’s care who are in need of medical attention and transport to the Hall.” There was no hesitation until he told them to bring a healer. Rose, one of the first five Amazons, told him the healers were at the coven meeting with Fern and Flora. She noticed that Con was standing at the entrance of the yard, but nervously related the news anyway. “They said they all must participate in the night’s rituals, sir.”
When he met Con’s eyes the man nodded and turned to find the healer’s hut. Seeing Flora again was not a burden for him. She was a shapely young woman who he was very attracted to. Perhaps the ritual was over with and she would allow him to fly her to the place where a healer was needed as soon as one could be found.
Chapter Four
Fern sat alone outside the door to her hut. Beside her was a sack, and she greeted Con as he approached. “I will go with you tonight, the others are busy with preparations for the coming time, and mine are complete. I have seen the need and will help.”
Con was disappointed, yet Fern would be the best person to offer aid and comfort to the victims with Hawk. He took the small bundle of cloth in his hand and placed it into her sack, then took on his feathered body, nudging the woman onto his back. For one so gnarled and weak, she held onto his feathers in a death grip that was almost painful to him. He had instructed her to hold on, and she was following that directive to the letter. As they began to soar, Con could see four owls and two hawks already making their way over the treetops toward the direction of the burned homestead. With his added wing size, he easily came above them, eventually passing them, as they all drew closer to their destination. He circled the structures before landing yards from the small camp Hawk had set up with the pitiful creatures they had found. He kept Fern on his back until they reached the smaller area, and Hawk approached to assist her from her feathered perch.
The others began to arrive, and Hawk gave instructions for them to find the people who had fled through the forest such a short time ago. “You are to find those that caused harm to these children and bring them to me at the Hall. They will be tried and made an example of, this will not be tolerated in our lands.” He suspected the people were actually humans who had given birth to the four young dual beings, and that was probably why they were chained and half starved. Wolves and dragons could not eat cooked foods in their animal skins. The meat, while not poison, was not enough to sustain life for long. How they had stayed alive so far, was a miracle. “They cannot have gotten far, but were traveling at a good clip at the last time Con and I seen them running. If they resist and you have no other choice, kill them. They will still prove useful as a portion in the Wizard’s boneyard fence.”
Fern took over the camp, she gave Hawk and Con the task of finding fresh meat for the three animals, and when they were in front of her she bled the meat into a small pouch one at a time. She added liquid to each pouch and trickled the concoction into the open jaws of each creature. The wolves were easy, since they were too weak to do more than attempt a growl when Con held their jaws open for Fern to administer her potions. The little dragon was another story. It wanted nothing to do with any of them. Everyone was surprised when the wild human child pushed Hawk away from the little creature and reached out to soothe it. She made cooing noises and sat down, pulled the small body onto her lap, and held out her hand toward Fern. Con quietly told the older woman what was happening and took the pouch, handing it to the girl, who in turn fed it to the small scaled creature. When she pointed to the fresh meat that sat on the rock, Con tore a chunk from the hindquarter and handed it over. They watched as she tore tiny bites from the meat to give to the baby in her arms.
It was obvious that all of them were young, how young was the surprise. Fern told them with a laugh, “The tiny scaled one is but a few months of age, and the wolves are twins I believe, they might be a season old. The girl child is at least five winters. There is something unusual about her, something I have yet to encounter. Only time will tell us what her other natures may be. I believe her to be fierce whatever her nature matures into.”
Hawk handed the girl a cooked haunch of meat and she snatched it from his hand quickly, and devoured the still warm meat. She even chewed the gristle from the ends. Fern told him not to give her more, even though she stared at the remaining meat on the spit hungrily. “She is not used to enough food to fill her belly, Lord Hawk, if she eats her fill, she will be miserable and probably lose the contents of her stomach from her greed. She will need to be moderate in her eating for a while until her guts can handle more. The same for the wolves, they cannot eat to fill, only enough to sustain life for a short while, until they have built up their bodies. From what I can tell, the baby dragon is the one that has been taken better care of than the rest. That is probably due to the way the child feeds it. My guess is that all three of the older ones have fed the little one instead of themselves from whatever scraps had come their way.”
Hawk was not paying attention to Fern as she talked. He had spied movement in the scrub bushes on the other side of the clearing. He strode over to the bush, and reached over it to grab the person spying on them all. He pulled up a skinny arm from the wiggling bundle of rags. The force that he used to haul the creature up combined with the wiggling landed him on his back in the dirt and the smaller creature laying half over him, still attempting to get loose from the tight hold that Hawk maintained.
Con was laughing as he pulled the captive up and held it by the waist, tucked close to his side, and offered Hawk a hand to assist him to stand. He was shocked out of his laughter by the small girl child who kicked at his ankles and tried to reach high enough to pry at his arm holding the small person. He let go of Hawk’s wrist, causing his friend to land back onto the dirt on his backside, while he plucked the child up by the back of the ragged shift she wore and eyed her. She was sputtering curse words and flailing her tiny fists at him. Her large blue eyes swam with tears, but she would not give up. He gave her a sharp shake.
He heard Hawk laughing and looked at him to see what was funny. The man had stood up and crouched in front to the small being held so close to Con’s body. “My friend let this one loose. It is a small human looking creature with pointed ears. I believe it is called a troll being, but I cannot be certain. Your grip is crushing the wind from its lungs. It is obvious who has been sharing food with the young ones, the girl is attempting to protect this troll.”
Hawk barely caught the small body when Con released it, before it hit the ground. Hawk carried the small burden toward the campfire and sat it down next to Fern, who was tending to the dragon baby. “Fern, can you tell us what manner of being this is, and can we communicate with it?”
The squeal and hiss that finally came from the creature was so high pit
ched that it hurt their ears. “Not a Troll, you boss, I am a Forest Elf, have you never seen a troll before? They are huge and live in the swamps. They are ugly and hairy and they stink. I came this way to see what the fire was burning only to have you pluck me from my bush. You should release the child, boss, she has done nothing but attempt to protect a friend. The poor scraps I give them to eat are small, but the havoc I reigned on the ones who birthed them, then chained them, was much.” The Elf shook himself and stared at Fern, before whistling another piercing noise. “A Witch, you have brought a true Witch, good luck goes where a Witch walks you know.”
Con gently lowered the child to the ground with a stern look, and walked away. He could take no more of the high pitch of the Elf’s voice. He donned his feathers and flew off into the night sky. Hawk could protect the refugees of the fire, he would join the hunt for the humans who had imprisoned and starved the young ones. He was in a mood for a fight, and the evil hearted humans would feel his wrath.
He flew over the trees until he heard a skirmish, then saw a small campfire. The Amazons had several people surrounded and pushed into a circle around the fire. Quinlan was using his fists to pound a large burly man into submission. At the chirping sound Con used to warn the soldiers that he was coming in, the Amazons stood straighter, and Quinlan punched the man one last time, before turning toward Con as he transformed into his human body.
It seemed he would get no satisfaction this night. The humans were cowed and waiting to know the fate that waited for them when Lord Hawk saw them. They knew the imprisonment of the dual natured children was punishable by death and while some stood brave in the face of defeat, others sobbed quietly, and some even begged to be spared.
Con took Quinlan aside and explained the story as told by the Elf. “At first light bring the prisoners to Hawk’s Nest and put them in the dungeon, remove the guards and place your Amazons as guards. These people will face Lord Hawk for their crimes. I will meet the wagons that should reach him by dawn and make certain all is well before I come back to the Hall. It is time for the villagers to see that our Amazons are ready and willing to fight for the good of all of the citizens of Hawk’s Nest.”
Hawk's Nest (Tremble Island) Page 3