by Nunn, PL
Ah, Goddess, the hand slipped down his belly and between his legs, fingers stroking his half-rigid length, enclosing it within the warmth of the large palm, squeezing gently, pulling on the taut flesh.
Yhalen gasped and whimpered, losing strength in his arms and falling forward onto his elbows.
Bloodraven pulled him back up, the other arm encircling his chest, lips and tongue pressed to the back of his neck.
“Stop. Stop it, damn you.” Yhalen groaned. “This isn’t right. It’s not my fault. It’s wrong. I shouldn’t be—I’m taking no pleasure from this. It’s the Goddess punishing me—humbling me—that’s causing this. It’s not what you’re doing. Do you understand? You repulse me. You’re not even human—only half a one and my stomach turns when I even look at you…so…it’s… not…not what you’re doing…”
He cried out, when the hand tightened. Bloodraven growled something at him, low and soft.
Perhaps a warning to shut up. Yhalen hardly knew. He could hardly think with his cock encased in the halfling’s huge hand. With a body’s warmth against his back and hot, wet lips on his neck. With a long tongue tracing the back of his ear while teeth took the hard ridge of the shell between them and gently bit, moving down to the lobe to nibble and pull at that. He shut his eyes and moaned, shivering and shamed as his body reflexively jerked forward, pumping into the ogr’ron’s hand.
Yhalen would just come and have it over with. That’s what Bloodraven was apparently after. He did, after a few more strokes, spurting his seed onto the furs and wanting to collapse afterwards, but unable to, as he was held on his hands and knees by the ogr’ron. Bloodraven stroked his back and his sides, repeating the words to stay in that position. Yhalen did, trembling badly, head down and breathing harsh. Bloodraven left him for a moment, but was back in short order, big hands back on his hips and back, stroking, massaging. His fingers were slick with the scented salve he used to prepare Yhalen for sex. He spread Yhalen’s cheeks with his thumbs and rubbed the salve around the human’s puckered entrance. The finger that entered wasn’t painful at all, slick with grease as it was. Bloodraven twisted it around, taking some pleasure, Yhalen thought miserably, from simply watching Yhalen’s body swallow his digit. The ogr’ron much preferred to take Yhalen in positions where he could watch whatever it was he chose to insert pump in and out of Yhalen’s flesh.
Bloodraven added a second big finger and Yhalen’s elbows threatened to give. He braced himself at a soft command from his master, biting his lip as the ogr’ron parted his fingers, stretching the mouth of Yhalen’s anus open. He played with him a while longer, casual and slow, all the anger he’d exhibited upon his return dissipated. Then the big body shifted, positioning itself behind Yhalen as the fingers disappeared, to be replaced by the heated tip of Bloodraven’s cock. Yhalen tried not to tense. To tense would only cause pain. He tried to make himself relax, tried to make himself accept willingly what was about to be forced into him. He shut his eyes and sighed, thinking of the forest and his favorite glade.
Bloodraven’s slick spearhead pressed against the swollen, stretched mouth of his entry, the ogr’ron slowly working it inside, methodically overcoming the resistance of muscle and flesh.
It hurt. No matter the preparation, it hurt. It always did initially. If he’d wanted it with all his heart and soul, it still would have hurt. But the pain was less and this time, with Bloodraven’s strange good humor and patience, his body had time to accept the girth of it, had time to stretch to accommodate it, before the ogr’ron began slowly moving inside him.
He was filled so completely, with so much powerful heat that it made his vision spiral. His elbows did give way, but Bloodraven let him fall, hands on his hips, holding his lower body in the desired position. Up into his bowels, Bloodraven found a home. Nestled within Yhalen’s belly, the tip of his cock made a way for itself and Yhalen’s body accepted it. With each slow, powerful stroke, a tremor of sensation passed though him. His balls tightened, his spent penis twitched to life and he moaned into the furs, shamed for the second time this evening.
” Seksil o’kron, Yhalen,” Bloodraven said softly, a little breathless himself. It occurred to Yhalen that he’d never heard himself called by name before, that Vorjd must have told Bloodraven. He didn’t have time to dwell on it, for when he didn’t move, the ogr’ron leaned over his back and caught one of his hands, drawing it down his body and wrapping Yhalen’s fingers around his own twitching penis.
Oh, Goddess—oh please don’t let this happen. Please don’t let him do this to me. Please don’t let me do this to myself. But when Bloodraven withdrew his big hand, Yhalen’s own stayed, pumping his own flesh with desperate vigor, groaning and whimpering into the furs, hips moving of their own accord, pushing back into the body behind him, forward into his own hand. Oh—Goddess—the sensation flared behind his eyes and deep within his gut, flooding his mind and his body and blanking everything else. He hardly noticed when Bloodraven picked up his own pace, finally spilling hot seed deep inside Yhalen’s body.
The world went white and fuzzy and he came back to his senses curled on his side on the furs, mind reeling from his own orgasm. The ogr’ron sat back on the furs, eyes hooded and speculative. He rose finally, pulling his tunic off, and shedding the trousers that he’d only loosened in his exertions with Yhalen, baring the whole of his thick, muscled body in the dim light of the brazier. He cleaned himself at the basin, then returned with a wet rag to Yhalen. Yhalen lay passively while his master spread his knees and cleaned the leavings between his legs and on his belly.
It occurred to him dimly, while he lay there, that for hands so big, Bloodraven could be surprisingly precise—surprisingly gentle.
“It doesn’t mean,” Yhalen whispered, as the ogr’ron settled into the furs, long body stretched out next to his, one large hand straying to settle on Yhalen’s hip as fingers traced a lazy pattern that made his skin pimple. “That you’re not my enemy. That I don’t hate you—for everything you’ve done—just because you lay a gentle hand on me. Just because you’re half human. The other half is what makes you a monster. I’ll kill you if I can, you know.”
The tears were leaking again. From hopelessness, from shame, from some bit of acceptance in his heart of this position he found himself in and that in itself made him want to die.
“Vras’ka, Yhalen,” Bloodraven said softly, breath slow and even. Shut up. He’d heard that phrase before.
“Who told you that you could use my name?” he whispered, but so soft that he barely heard himself. Bloodraven pulled him closer, warm against his side in the cool of the night.
The morning came too quickly and with it a flurry of activity as the camp made ready to move.
Bloodraven’s other human slaves and his ogre subordinates pulled down his tent and bundled his personal belongings, loading them along with the other supplies onto small carts. Yhalen was staked to a tree by his leash not far from the snarling dog-things while this was about. In preparation of travel, he’d been given a pair of crude boots and a loin cloth to wear about his hips, dressing him very much in the fashion of the other human slaves, save for the fact that he was tanned and smooth of skin as opposed to the pale, hairy bodies of the Northmen. He stood out among them, lithe and supple and young and fair, as all of the Ydregi were.
It gained him stares and what he was sure were lewd comments as the ogres passed. It made him cringe close to his tree in fear of what any one of them might do. It made him wish very badly for Bloodraven’s presence. It made him feel the coward, but how could he not fear, his enemy being what they were and he hopelessly in their grasp? But of Bloodraven he’d seen very little this morning.
“Why do they stare at me like that?” he asked of Vorjd once, when the man gave him his scant clothing. “Are we not as hideous to them as they are to us?”
The man had shrugged. “No. They’ve always wanted what we have. Our lands, our devices, our crafts, our art. As a whole, they’re not a race talented with
much beyond the ability to fight. They envy us—humans. Over a great many things. As beastly as they are, they appreciate beauty.”
Which had not made Yhalen feel better or safer, what with ogres stalking the camp around him and the snarling set of dogs just within snapping range of him. Of the two, he preferred the dogs. The animals he could understand. The animals he could contend with.
He distracted himself doing just that. Sitting just out of reach of the slavering beasts, watching them, speaking to them softly and making himself known. It was a talent he had, the way with beasts that sprang from his esteemed bloodline. By the time the camp was uprooted and ready to move out, the two dog’s snarls had reduced to the occasional growl and they lay panting and drooling a body’s length away, watchful of Yhalen’s every move. They would rise with alacrity, though, each time a human slave or even an ogre ventured too near and lunge and bark threateningly. Even the ogres gave them wide berth. Only when Bloodraven approached did the threatening posture cease and tails began a frantic wagging. They crouched around his legs, desperate for a touch of his hand or a word.
Armored and armed, in the full light of day, Bloodraven was imposing and dangerous. He spoke to the dogs, touching their great, flat heads. Vorjd and one other human slave had shadowed his wake, but hung far back, wary of the dogs. They held great leather muzzle guards in their hands. Bloodraven beckoned and they crept forward. Almost immediately, Bloodraven or no, the dogs broke into a fit of growls and lunged towards the human slaves. The one cried out and leapt backwards, dropping the muzzle guard, fear so strong that even Yhalen could scent it. Vorjd took a shaky step backwards, but held his ground, just out of reach, eyes white rimmed and breathing harsh. Yhalen wondered if they were simply naturally afraid of the animal’s size and ferocity, or if they’d more reason—if they’d seen these dogs rip apart frail flesh before. But their fear helped nothing. It increased the dog’s frenzy, so that Bloodraven had to raise his impressive voice and exert his strength to call them down.
“They smell your fear. You’ll always be prey to them so long as you’ve no control over it,” Yhalen said softly to Vorjd when the growls had lessened enough for the man to hear.
The blonde slave cast him a skeptical, unappreciative look, before scurrying off to finish his other duties. Bloodraven muzzled the dogs and gathered their chains in his hand. He paused to look at Yhalen sitting calmly against the tree he was tethered to, almost within the reach of the dogs and unconcerned. Showing fear to dog or ogr’ron would be a mistake. Bloodraven passed on, and Yhalen followed his path, watching him attach the dog’s chains to the back on one of the stout carts.
His own leash was soon fastened likewise to the last cart, which was piled high with canvas tents and bundled supplies. The beasts that hauled the carts were stoop shouldered oxen, of a sort. Shaggier than lowland beasts of burden and taller by far at the shoulder. Some twenty hands of dull-eyed, sluggish beast that had to be whipped into moving. But when they did move, their long legs set a goodly pace and Yhalen was forced almost to jog at times to keep up. Thank the Goddess they’d given him boots or his feet would have been bloody and torn by the end of the forced march.
They headed not west towards the forests that bordered Ydregi lands, but southeast. Ten days’
walk, he thought and they might reach the flatlands of Austul where men farmed for their living and supplied all of the human provinces with the bounty of their foodstuffs. Or if they veered more sharply south they would encounter the first of the great cities and a great deal of resistance. More than this band of raiders might be able to deal with, Yhalen thought.
They traveled hard all the day, a good portion of the ogre warriors ranging away from the carts.
Yhalen saw little of Bloodraven. Once he looked up from an exhausted daze to see the towering form of Deathclaw pacing him, staring down with malicious golden eyes and a frown on his broad mouth. All his good advice on showing no fear evaporated with that particular ogre within arm’s reach of him—and he shied away, stumbling in the process as the cart yanked him inexorably onwards. But, Deathclaw made no overt move to touch him, moving on eventually to join a handful of his companions ahead.
Yhalen couldn’t stop shaking for a time after that and clutched the chain connecting him to the cart with white knuckled hands.
At the end of the day, when dusk had long since fallen and the trail became difficult to see, they stopped for camp. The six oxen were unhitched and tethered, the carts hauled to the side and unloaded, save for bedrolls and a few pieces of cookery. They’d killed game during the day, and the human slaves cleaned it and started a small fire to roast it over. They backed away hastily once the meat was done enough to suit an ogre’s taste, leaving all of it for their masters. The ogre’s ravenous hunger left nothing but bones for the humans and of those, Bloodraven chose the best and tossed them to the dogs. Bloodraven had spent much of the evening around the fire with his brethren, leaving Yhalen to his own devices while tethered to a tall cartwheel.
The dark woods and the fire and the gathered ogres around it had brought back too many horrible memories of the first night he’d been captured, and Yhalen had crawled under the wagon, making himself as unobtrusive as possible in the shadow, willing them to forget he was there at all. But Bloodraven remembered. Bloodraven rose eventually, and walked towards him, sharp eyes scanning the darkness where Yhalen should have been and spotting the paleness of his flesh against the ground under the cart.
“Yhalen,” Bloodraven spoke his name, beckoning and Yhalen shivered, debating whether or not to rebel. But of course, disobedience would only gain him punishment. Bloodraven didn’t tolerate it in the privacy of his tent, much less in the face of his peers, so Yhalen crawled out, staying on his knees by the wheel and dreading what Bloodraven wanted.
The ogr’ron unfastened his chain and drew him up, leading him across the small clearing to the other side, where the light of the fire didn’t reach so well. The passage was accompanied by laughter and loud comments, the content of which Yhalen could only guess at. But one had a notion. A very good notion of what they thought Bloodraven would do once he’d led him into the darkness of the wood.
Yhalen’s face burned. When Bloodraven stopped, he wasn’t that far from the camp, yet still just within view of the fire—within hearing distance of the grunted conversation as yet progressing around it.
Surely close enough that they would hear and see whatever it was that Bloodraven did to him.
Bloodraven fastened the end of Yhalen’s chain to a metal loop in his belt and settled down with his back to a broad tree. When Yhalen continued to stand, the halfling tugged on the chain and brought him to his knees. There was a bedroll on the ground by the roots of the tree, unfolded before they’d come.
Bloodraven had already chosen this spot as his vantage for the night.
He could hear the voices of the other ogres—they pounded in his ears in rhythm with his blood. If Bloodraven started something here, they would smell it as surely as they smelled fresh blood. It would draw them near, excite them, and then this night might just turn into a repeat of that nightmarish first one.
“Please, please, please—not here,” he whispered, lips numb with fear. How could he stop it if Bloodraven wanted—how could he stop anything?
But the halfling only unhooked his broad sword and laid it on the ground on his other side, then leaned his head back against the tree, shutting his eyes as he did. It seemed as if he intended nothing more than catching a few hours’ rest. Left to his own devices, Yhalen’s heartbeat slowed to a more reasonable pace as he realized he wasn’t about to molested in plain view of the entire camp. He settled on the edge of the bedroll, as far from the ogr’ron as he could get without abandoning the thin comfort of the cloth.
The camp was on its way before dawn, the three carts creaking along at their slow pace while the ogre warriors ranged ahead. It was about mid-day when the attack came. Without warning, bolts flew out of the forest, finding
purchase in the flesh of no few of the giants. Very few of them dropped, though, their thick hides and armor protecting them against mortal blows. A cry went up as the ogres hefted weapons and charged into the forest seeking their enemy.
Yhalen tugged at his chain, straining to see into the forest at what force it was that had attacked the raiding party, his spirit soaring at the thought that freedom might be within reach. Human men made themselves known, meeting the ogre charge. Men with swords and bows and thin leather armor. Poor men from the looks of them, and no organized troop of well-outfitted soldiers. No seasoned fighters, these. They were too quick to engage an enemy that outweighed them twice over for a familiarity with battle. Too quick to learn that mere human strength couldn’t match that of a nine-foot ogre warrior.
They were cut down brutally. Someone had released the dogs and the two thick-bodied creatures darted into the fray, rending with teeth and claws.
“Retreat. Retreat, you fools,” Yhalen screamed into the slaughter, straining at the end of his leash.
He saw a man go down, cleaved in two by the swipe of an ogre axe. Saw another slice into the legs of one ogre, drawing a great spurt of dark blood, only to have his head caved in by the hammer of another that came at him from behind. They were vicious fighters, these ogres, and gave no quarter, nor mercy.
There were scattered bodies of men all about the trail and not a single ogre had fallen. Oh, Goddess, perhaps this small party of some three dozen ogres was more formidable than Yhalen had assumed.