Well Met in Molos

by J. Hepburn

  It takes her some time—how much, she could not even hazard a guess—to realise Kalle has stopped moving.

  She shifts her hips experimentally, feeling him. The sensation makes her shudder—something she is confident Kalle enjoys as much as she does. "I'm not fragile," she prompts. She gasps when he reaches around to seize her cock, going suddenly rigid as the sensation proves almost too much to bear. She almost panics, but need overrides her shock.

  "Is this good?" Kalle asks.

  "It's good," she says, her voice shuddering. "It's just new."

  Kalle hesitates, making her twist her neck until she can see surprise written on his face. He squeezes her cock, making her gasp again.

  He keeps his hand still as he starts fucking her slowly, his position only allowing him to easily make short strokes.

  When she rocks her hips back against him, he turns her movement into slow strokes on her cock. His fingers are surprisingly soft and teasing, when she had been expecting firm, if not forceful. When she registers her own surprise at the deftness of his touch, she realises that she had been not expecting, but hoping for firm, if not forceful. But his fingers are teasing her too effectively for her to gather enough strength to demand anything different.

  She imagines what her own face must look like as his fingertips make her shiver, and compares it to Kalle's face the night—day? How long has it even been?—before. A parade of other faces emerge from much older memories, but she shies away from those. She has no wish to be reminded of more sordid encounters.

  Another artful touch underneath the head of her cock scatters all thoughts, shameful or otherwise. When coherence returns, she is, for the first time, jealous of all the men she has ever given pleasure. She finally understands their expressions of mingled pain and eagerness as she struggles to control herself. This time, she dismisses old memories with contempt, not embarrassment. It's her time at last. She hasn't even had to leave Molos first.

  She presses her forehead into the rug, arching her back and planting her hands more securely. Behind her, Kalle shifts position until he can make longer strokes, without taking his hand off her cock.

  She is groaning with impending release before he begins grunting with restraint.

  "Have you fucked anyone in here before me?" Tiglis manages to gasp.

  "No!" Kalle shudders, rhythm gone wild.

  Tiglis pushes back roughly, recoils as all the sensations raging within her reach their peak, then comes, her cock spasming in Kalle's hand.

  He pumps her vigorously as his hips twitch convulsively, his cock spurting deep inside her. At the same instant, the sensation to her cock suddenly becomes too intense, making her jerk back against him.

  They collapse sideways, avoiding the wet section of rug. Tiglis takes longer to recover. Kalle holds her until she stirs.

  She twists her neck far enough for them to manage a kiss.

  Kalle, softening slowly, pulls out of her easily. Tiglis twists around to snuggle against him.

  After a while, Kalle says, "We will have to stay awake, to ensure we do not miss the caravans and be forced to lurk another day here."

  "You underestimate me, boy. I can wake when I wish."

  "Ah. I will put myself in your hands, then."

  Tiglis giggles sleepily.

  Thugs in the Night

  In the depths of the darkest part of the night, Tiglis wakes a second after Kalle does.

  Her lips are forming a question when Kalle presses his against them not in passion, but in warning. Tiglis wonders if the fact he could as well have used his hand but chose instead his mouth indicates his presence of mind, or its absence.

  She lies still, calming her heart, and listens.

  Murmured voices sound outside.

  The darkness inside the hut is absolute.

  Tiglis feels Kalle pull away from her, but hears only soft noises that might be the settling of cooling wood, and only barely senses air currents as Kalle moves.

  A chink of light shows as he pulls apart a hanging on one wall to peer through a hole.

  She hears him mutter an oath clearly intended for her, and her alone, to hear.

  In an instant she is on her knees, seizing one of her knives with minimal groping.

  She jumps, nearly lashing out, when she senses Kalle's warm body next to hers.

  "Searchers," he breathes into her ear. "Men with shuttered lanterns. Two on this side of the wall, coming towards us."

  Tiglis crouches in the dark, heart beating in her chest and the solid, reassuring heft of a long desert knife in her hand, as Kalle moves away again, giving her only little sense of where he is or even in which direction he moved.

  She hears the faint scrape of a flint as Kalle lights and immediately covers the dark lantern, letting out merely a strip of light.

  Tiglis finds and dons a pair of pants, then makes sure she has more weapons to hand before donning a shirt.

  Kalle likewise dresses in his pants and shirt and belt, grabbing weapons that include, to Tiglis's shock, a small crossbow he cocks and loads before setting to one side.

  She hears cautious footsteps outside.

  Kalle continues preparations, but makes no sound as they both listen intently.

  "People have walked this way." It is a hoarse whisper, but Tiglis can make it out by straining her hearing to the upmost. "That door has been repaired. Get the others."

  Kalle ghosts past Tiglis, who jumps at the sudden movement. He appears to be holding the crossbow in one hand, a blowpipe in his mouth.

  Soft footsteps hurry away.

  A scrape of wood announces Kalle pulling back a panel in the door.

  Kalle expels breath violently through his blowpipe.

  A confused mutter. A stumble. A fall.

  The other man can be heard stopping and turning abruptly. A knife scrapes dully out of a wooden sheath.

  The crossbow twangs.

  The second man makes another gurgling sound, but dies even faster.

  There is no outcry.

  Kalle eases the door open, then dashes out to retrieve the searchers' lantern, not wasting time on moving the bodies yet.

  Tiglis frantically dresses, finding her indigo robes without having to search, attaching knives to her person, and pulling on boots as Kalle rushes back in silence to complete his own dressing.

  "I am taking my coffee set," Kalle snarls softly. "It is the best I have ever found, and the goat-fucking plague corpses will not take it from me!"

  "Your coffee tastes almost as good as you!" Tiglis hoarsely whispers back as she shoves the final two knives, the ones she took from Kedar's men, into a belt about her waist, under the top layer of robes.

  "Take anything you wish, we are not returning," Kalle says, sparing time for a florid but quick salute at her compliment.

  Tiglis is already packing a bag; another robe wrapped around jewellery and money, and a small bag that contains her essential shaving equipment and some of her powders and oils.

  Kalle takes money and the rest of his purloined items of value, but has few extra clothes. He wraps those few carefully around his coffee set, adding the last of his beans to the bag as a final item.

  Outside, two more men can be heard climbing over the wall, scrabbling and grunting with the effort.

  Kalle reloads his crossbow and readies another dart.

  Tiglis eases the door open.

  When she slips out, her robes blend seamlessly into the dark.

  The men drop down, the beam of light from another shuttered lantern striking the ground.

  She hides behind the hut as Kalle emerges, aims, and drops the first man with a poisoned dart even as lantern light finds a body.

  This time, the second man cries out before a crossbow bolt lodges in his eye.

  Noise erupts from the other side of the wall. Men shout warnings, battle cries, and authoritative commands.

  Tiglis curses when she hears "Gather the others!"

  Kalle slips next to her, a barely visible m
ovement under the moonlight.

  "There are no doors into this yard," he whispers as he resets his crossbow. "There was one, but it was bricked up long ago. That north wall is the only easy entrance. We can climb to the east or south, but the west wall is topped with knives. Can we expect bows?"

  "Not from Melech's men," Tiglis whispers back. "But from guards elsewhere? Certainly."

  "Climb the south wall," Kalle says. "Run along the rooftop. Keep going if you have to. Meet me by the city gates if we're separated."

  "No! I told you, nobody protects me. I am not carrying the Egg now. We stand together."

  "Then we might fall together," Kalle snarls. "We cannot both leave during a fight."

  "And if I leave, there will be nobody to watch your back. We cannot jump between roofs now. We have to make a stand."

  "Which is why you should leave!"

  "We stand a better chance of surviving together than you do of surviving alone. I am not leaving you."

  They both stop talking abruptly to listen as a voice on the other side of the wall says, faintly to their ears, "Alive if you can, dead if you can't. Melech wants a word, but not at the expense of letting him get away. That goes for Zerris too, if he's here."

  Tiglis recognises Torres, who accosted her at the street markets—an unimaginative thug, but loyal and therefore rewarded with responsibility for which he is barely suited.

  Kalle takes a deep breath. "Very well. Spare no quarter. I will go first."

  Tiglis grabs Kalle's wrist as he turns back towards the corner of the hut. "You have the crossbow, your dart gun, and, I am sure, many throwing knives," she hisses. "I will go first."

  Kalle does not try to argue with her this time.

  Melech's men come over the wall in force, with lanterns blazing brightly and long knives in every man's right hand. They move slowly, having little prowess in climbing. Grunts of effort and wooden creaking suggest they have bought ladders, chairs, or crates—or possibly all three.

  Tiglis rushes them, running with soft footfalls and saying nothing.

  The first to see her shouts a warning from the top of the wall.

  The first man on the ground hesitates when he sees a female figure, but does not hesitate for long when he sees desert attire. Men of Molos underestimate their own women, but do not make that mistake for tribeswomen.

  His preparation does not help him. In the dark, fighting a figure clad in swirling robes, gashes appear on his thigh, his belly and his fighting arm while he slashes ineffectually at empty air. He screams until his throat parts.

  The man who shouted falls backwards onto his comrades behind, a bolt through his eye.

  Another man falls to a poisoned dart in his throat before Kalle abandons his slow-to-load projectile weapons and sprints towards the fray.

  Men jump at Tiglis from either side, but she is gone before they can come close to touching her. One makes the fatal error of not realising she has a knife in either hand. The other makes the fatal error of not seeing or hearing Kalle.

  This time, attackers with height, weight, and strength on their side lack not merely speed and skill but, against Kalle's sword, reach as well. All they have, as more men jump over the walls, is numbers.

  Kalle almost casually throws a knife into the throat of a man landing on the ground.

  Tiglis squares up to a man who appears to have more bulk than muscle, but when she countercuts, she opens instead the arm of a man attacking from the side.

  Kalle, small and fast and dressed all in black clothes that do not flap around him, can barely be seen, even with several lanterns being held aloft, lying on the ground, or sitting on top of the wall.

  Tiglis moves like a dervish, robes swirling so it is hard to see where her knives—or her arms—are. She flickers in and out of lantern light and shadow, apparently unaffected by scattered light that has the attackers cutting desperately at reflections and getting in each other's way.

  One man tries to snatch at her and nearly loses his hand at the wrist.

  Yet Tiglis has only killed two men, no matter how much blood her knife has spilt.

  In knife fights, everyone gets injured, but deaths are difficult. Opening someone's throat will do it, but Tiglis does not often have the opportunity. Multiple cuts will wear someone down and can kill through blood loss, but that takes time. Stabbing through the heart risks one's knife jamming on bone and becoming irretrievable.

  Even Kalle can count more fatalities to his bolts and darts and thrown knives than to his sword. Against a few opponents, he could pick them off one at a time, as he told Tiglis he had done on Gabrio's roof, but there are too many men here for that. He cuts out at every target, hurting and bleeding instead of going for kill after kill.

  Some of the injured fall back to nurse their wounds and let others get hurt, but some become enraged and wild, which would only make them easier targets were time and space available.

  In a fight with unbalanced numbers, odds will always favour the larger side. Tiglis is well aware of this.

  She abruptly changes tactics, getting inside someone's guard and jamming her knife into his heart. She tries to take his blade as he falls, but a spasm of his arm hurls it away from him.

  Two seconds later, she is holding another blade from inside her robes.

  Kalle fells a man with a throwing knife. He cuts tendons when an unwise stab exposes a wrist, but cannot follow through with the kill before he needs to defend himself against two more.

  Tiglis abruptly turns and sprints away from the fight. Away from Kalle.

  The move startles Melech's men so much, she is yards away before they respond.

  They have barely given chase when, with blades sheathed, she scoops a rock off the ground in either hand.

  One smashes into the face of a man running towards her. One strikes the head of a man lunging at Kalle. Kalle slices his throat as he stumbles, then uses his falling body as a shield to get enough space to confront and kill a man left briefly on his own.

  Tiglis darts sideways, away from a thrusting knife, diving into a roll and coming up with more rocks.

  Kalle's laughter makes everyone save Tiglis flinch, buying them both time, as rocks slam into faces and ricochet off skulls. Tiglis doubles back past the men chasing her, knives appearing in her hands as if by magic to slash at bellies, thighs, and the tendons behind knees.

  She hurls a knife into a throat, striking squarely more by good luck than skill, and snatches a replacement off the ground.

  Kalle is suddenly among his opponents, cutting at everyone before disappearing again to one side, the tip of his sword doing less damage to Melech's men than the knives of their panicked comrades.

  A single thought seems to pass among the attackers, the way a panicked herd of animals will behave as one.

  They retreat back to the wall, jamming together with knives held out in trembling hands.

  Tiglis confronts them, a knife in either hand. Bodies lay strewn about, many still dying. Lanterns are smashed, burning oil flickering on the ground. A resinous desert bush burns with thick, acrid smoke. Among those still standing, most favour at least one limb.

  There is a frozen second before one of Melech's men asks, hoarsely, "Where is that little turd in black gone to?"

  Tiglis, her face concealed by her mantle, feels her mouth stretch in a huge grin.

  No sound precedes a man staggering, clutching at his neck, then falling. A faint twang is followed by quarrels sprouting from an eye.

  Melech's men break.

  Some scream, some curse, one or two even cry, but all turn to scrabble at the wall to get over, pushing each other out of the way and dropping knives in their haste.

  Two lanterns still burn atop the wall. Tiglis smashes one with a rock, sending the men into even greater panic.

  The men, occasionally throwing frightened glances to where they think Kalle was shooting from, do not see Tiglis glide forward, cut a throat, and dart backwards. They do not see Kalle arrive from the ot
her side, cutting two throats in a heartbeat before disappearing back into the darkness.

  The first men over are already sprinting away. The others climb the wall by desperation, mighty effort, the bodies of their fallen comrades, or each other.

  One is left alone, trying to climb a pants leg until a sound kick in the face leaves him back on the ground and barely upright. He scrabbles at the brickwork, sobbing and exuding a reek of piss, one hand too slippery with blood to gain him purchase.

  Tiglis turns away in disgust, so Kalle finishes him quickly.

  Three lanterns still burn in the yard. Tiglis cleans and slowly sheathes her knives, discovering one is not hers and will not fit its sheath. She resolutely checks the fallen until she recovers hers—itself stolen just the day before from Kedar's men.

  Kalle has cleaned and sheathed his sword and a fighting knife, and retrieved some bolts, throwing knives, and darts.

  Tiglis steps up to Kalle as he straightens from carefully pulling a crossbow bolt from an eye socket. He examines it, then throws it aside with a sigh of disappointment.

  Tiglis draws her mantle aside to pull Kalle into a kiss he was already turning towards.

  They spare some time for a proper moment of celebration.

  "South wall," Kalle says when they separate. Tiglis merely nods.

  They retrieve their bags from behind the hut, strap them to their backs, and head up.

  They run so lightly across the roof of a warehouse workshop they do not risk waking those inside, then scan surrounding rooftops with care before, on Tiglis's word, they leap to the next building, tiptoe along the outer wall, then move on, working their way across the Artisans' Quarter towards the city gates.

  It is several buildings before they halt to confer.

  "How long till dawn?" Kalle asks.

  "Less than two hours," Tiglis replies. "We will not get more sleep, I do not think, even if we found somewhere safe for it."

  Kalle's teeth flash dimly. "Not the first time I have lost sleep to running from ungrateful wretches. Can we pass the gates before they open?"

  Tiglis frowns. "There are ways in and out, but they may be closed to us. We should not attempt the walls. The guards on the walls do not get much to do, but I would not like to chance them. But there are smugglers' routes."