by Nunn, PL
Goddess. He was giving him back to Deathclaw. Returning the gift. Because of Yhalen’s disobedience? Because he’d refused an order? A quick, clean death was one thing—what Kragnor Deathclaw would do to him was quite another.
“No, no, no, no, nononono.”
Was that his voice? Soft and breathless and beyond terror? Kragnor Deathclaw bent to pick up the end of the chain, frowning and Yhalen couldn’t make himself move. If he could have, he’d have crawled to Bloodraven’s feet and begged forgiveness. He’d have promised anything not to be handed over to the beast that was Kragnor Deathclaw.
Kragnor Deathclaw said something over his shoulder and the ogres behind him chortled, looking to Yhalen in amused expectation. The ogre yanked the chain and the collar jerked hard under Yhalen’s jaw, making him bite his tongue. The pain of that shook him out of the frozen state of fright. He turned desperate eyes back to Bloodraven, trying to make his way back towards him with the small amount of slack Kragnor Deathclaw allowed him.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever you say. I swear. Please, please don’t give me back to him. I’ll be obedient. I’ll be so good, I promise, you won’t be sorry—” He was crying and they laughed at his attempts to crawl like a dog on its belly to an impassive Bloodraven. Pride might hold its own against fear, but against stark terror—it shriveled and hid and Yhalen despaired that Bloodraven could even understand that he was desperately trying to capitulate.
Kragnor Deathclaw jerked him backwards with enough force to land him on his back at the ogre’s feet, the air knocked out of his body. One big boot came down on his hair when he tried to twist away and he stared up and up and up at the muscled torso of his tormentor.
Kragnor Deathclaw crouched and spread one hand out on Yhalen’s belly, the blunt fingernails biting into the soft flesh of hips, belly and groin despite Yhalen’s efforts to pry them off.
Kragnor Deathclaw spoke a word that made the others let out a raucous cheer, then he raked his hand up Yhalen’s body to his neck, hauling him up and off his feet, kicking and struggling to display to the others. He was going to die, he thought in growing hysteria. It was going to be like before, only this time there were more of them and they had all the leisure time in the world to torture him and Goddess, Goddess, Goddess, he didn’t want to die like that—when he’d escaped it so narrowly the first time—and he thought just maybe, he didn’t want to die at all—and why, why, why, hadn’t he just done what Bloodraven wanted and thrown away the tattered remains of his pride when he’d had the choice, instead of having it stripped from him in the form of one bloody section of flesh at a time?
Bloodraven laid a hand on Kragnor Deathclaw’s arm and the crowd of delighted ogres froze. Went silent and watchful even as Deathclaw slowly turned his narrowed eyes downward to look at an ogre almost two heads shorter than him.
Bloodraven spoke, baring just a bit of fang as he did. His face, narrow and elegant in comparison to Kragnor Deathclaw’s, displayed not one bit of emotion other than that. He didn’t remove his hand from Deathclaw’s arm. Deathclaw didn’t lower Yhalen.
Bloodraven spoke again and with a low snarl, Deathclaw flung Yhalen to the ground, rounding on the smaller ogre with one hand on the hilt of the dagger at his belt. Bloodraven was unarmed. He’d stalked out here, in his fit of irritation, without a weapon other than the strength of his body, which, against a full-sized ogre, seemed lacking.
But even with Deathclaw’s obvious threat, even with the hand on the weapon, Bloodraven stood unmoved. His eyes never wavered from the larger ogre’s face. His body betrayed nothing. And very much like a big dog backed down by a smaller, more stubborn and intelligent one, Deathclaw flexed his fingers and took a reflexive step backwards. It was enough.
Bloodraven broke his stare and moved past the larger ogre as if he’d ceased to exist, bending to snatch up the end of Yhalen’s lead and pulling him up and after him. Yhalen made every effort to keep up, staying close enough to Bloodraven’s heels that he had to take up the slack in the chain to keep from tripping over it.
Back to the tent then, with the camp again separated by a thin veneer of canvas. Bloodraven paused to drive the spike back into the earth, before going to his armor rack, and sitting on the stool before it, taking a piece of metal-studded leather down and proceeding to buff it free of dirt.
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.
CHAPTER THREE
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 firsthand 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.
“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 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.
His breathing had grown harsh, his heart beat rapid and the pain of penetration hadn’t even begun.
There was a tingling sensation between his legs, an aching irritation that begged for attention. Yhalen’s eyes widened in surprise—in horror as he realized that the ache centered about his twitching shaft. Oh, Goddess, how could he…? He was chained and naked and imprisoned and had this thing’s unwanted hands stroking his body like he might stroke a beast to calm it—and his body betrayed him. No matter the feel of the callused hands on his flesh, the rhythmic motion of firm fingers pressed into his skin and muscle—no matter how gentle the touch, how unnerving the sensation as first one nipple then the other was tugged and toyed with—there was nothing, nothing pleasurable about it. Nothing that warranted….