Illyan Daughter

by Bryn Colvin

  “Good?” he asked.

  “Can’t you tell?”

  “You seem to be enjoying yourself, but I like to know.”

  He slowed his pace for a little while, allowing her enough breath for speech.

  “You’re always good, my lover,” she answered, “and if you could see my face, you would know that.”

  “It’s the one thing I don’t like about having you this way.”

  “It looks like you weren’t too tired after all,” she teased.

  “Shut up.”

  “Oh, charming.”

  “Shut up,” he laughed, slapping her rear affectionately.

  The modest blow made her twitch and moan, so he added a few more for good measure, until she was pushing herself back against him. Math gripped her hips tightly, thrusting to meet her as they both succumbed to their mounting lust. They had delayed the moment for long enough, drawing out their pleasures and the intimacy of naked penetration. They crashed against each other, gasping and trembling until, at last, the fierce grip of her muscles on his rod became more than he could resist and he followed her along the sweet path of orgasm, crying out as his fluids gushed into the pulsing depths of her cunt.

  For a while, Math remained kneeling, letting the last trickles of his seed seep into his lover’s willing body. Parting from her was never easy. Eventually, his loss of size caused him to slither from her moist folds. He leaned down, pressing a kiss into her back, then helped her to roll onto her side. Once he had made sure that Sena was comfortable, Math lay down behind her, drawing the blankets over them and resting his arm on the curve of her stomach.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “I know.”

  For a while, they were quiet, each lost in their own thoughts.

  Eventually Math said, “I worry that I will lose my daughter, one of these days.”

  “Daughters always grow up sooner or later.”

  “I didn’t mean in that way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s hard to explain. I think I could lose her utterly—not just the growing up, but that she could leave the company, even.”

  “Where would she go? It’s just wilderness and savages out there.”

  “That is what troubles me.”

  Sena wrapped her fingers around his and brushed her foot over his legs.

  “You worry too much,” she said.

  Math made no reply to this.

  Part Three: Mother Crow

  Chapter One

  When the cold, relentless rainstorms came, the river rose over several days until it swamped the meadows along its banks. Within a week it was lapping at the base of the town walls. Days passed when no one could train or hunt and the town itself became an island, raised marginally above the water level. What would happen if worse floods came, they did not dare to imagine. Horses confined to the streets became fractious, the stallions more dangerous to their handlers with every passing day. Flash wished they had boats and bemoaned the lack of skills to build one. There had been river craft here before the town was taken, but those had vanished away before the first wave of the assault. With boats he could keep them all busy, they could maintain patrols of the river and perhaps even some of the flooded grassland and they could watch more closely for strangers emerging from the distant forests. There was no sign of habitation on the far side of the river, but in the distance there were hills and, further away, where only the sharpest eyes could discern it, lay swathes of dense woodland.

  In the short while before the rains came on in earnest Flash had sent out parties to scour the landscape. Better trained scouts had searched further afield, but, even so, his warriors returned with game and news that the small hills hid nothing of note, but that they had seen the edge of the distant forest and that it stretched for as far as the eye could see. Flash wondered if it reached out to the dark trees they had camped beside when Drew was taken. It was not an idea he found especially pleasing.

  On this particularly rain-swept day he had teams out foraging amongst the unclaimed houses in search of wood. Much of it was being burned for fuel, but he wanted to salvage what he could and see if some river-worthy craft could be fashioned. They had discovered the workshop of a boat maker—still resplendent with tools none of them knew how to use and a partially finished hull that might have seated half a dozen. He wanted the boat finished and spent hours studying its form and trying to see how the work might be achieved. He needed long planks but, in absence of those, they would have to improvise. At least the bottom looked sturdy enough and that was the part that mattered most.

  “Try this!”

  The team of young men had half a dozen long, sturdy-looking expanses of well-seasoned wood and their expressions were triumphant.

  “Dothrin, my boy, where did you find those?”

  “We’ve been stripping the roofs off outbuildings. They all seem to be built this way, with grass tied to wooden beams.”

  Flash clapped the young man on the shoulder and smiled indulgently at him.

  “Well done, all of you.”

  “Do you want more?”

  “Not yet, but perhaps best to gather what you can before some bright soul tries burning those as well.”

  “Consider it done.”

  Flash watched the young man and wished things had gone differently for him. It was obvious he was Drew’s son—you could see it in his face, in those long, loose limbs and the shape of his eyes. Sometimes he even sounded a little like his father—commanding with low tones and easy confidence such that other young men around him deferred readily to his occasional orders. Drew had never seen fit to acknowledge him. Flash remembered at least a score of arguments with his old friend, but Drew had doubted that his slave girl was faithful, even though she had been in his household since childhood. Luthen was a beautiful, dark-eyed creature, who had gifted her son with grace and cursed him to be nothing more than slave-born. Without a father to claim him there were those who would always look askance at the youth and his skills would always be secondary to his lack of lineage. Flash had been half tempted to claim the young man as his own son. Now that Drew was gone there would be no shame in it; you could not dishonour the dead. Luthen had been in the ground herself a good few years and a slur on the honour of a slave woman was nothing at all. He decided that the time had come to see that some right was done by the talented youth and that his potential was not squandered for want of a father.

  ~*~

  Stripped to the waist and dripping with sweat from his efforts, Dothrin clambered down from the roof of the outhouse he had been pillaging. The last of the timber had been successfully removed and he watched the last pair of lads in his team carry it off, feeling satisfied in a job well done. Liss watched him, enjoying the way his skin glistened and the confident satisfaction in his face.

  “There must be some reason for this? Let me guess. Firewood?”

  “Try again,” he called out, smiling at her as he strode over.

  “Are you building something?”

  “Good guess, yes, we are.”

  “Tell me.”

  “A boat. Well, we found one, part built and we’re trying to finish it.”

  “You must be busy, then.”

  “I think I’ve done enough for today.”

  He stroked Liss’s cheek and she bit his finger playfully.

  “What brings you here?” he asked, drawing her under the overhanging thatch of the main roof to shelter them both from the persistent rain.

  “I was looking for you, as it happens.”

  “And to what do I owe that honour? Have you been thinking about what I said?”

  “I’ve hardly thought about anything else.”

  “And?”

  Liss ran her fingers over his deliciously slick chest, down to the band of his trousers and the cord that held them in place. She caught her bottom lip under her small teeth, relishing the solidity of his muscles beneath her fingers and feeling the tension flare up in him at
her touch.

  “Why me?” she asked, pressing her thumbs against his nipples and working them in slow circles.

  “Now there’s a question. I’ve been drawn to you since the first time I saw you properly a couple of years ago. You are as brilliant as you are beautiful, Liss, who could resist you?”

  She laughed at this.

  “I love watching you fight. You have such poise,” he added.

  “I don’t think I’ve seen you fight.”

  “Come and watch, or spar with me.”

  “Would you like to fight me?”

  He grabbed her wrists.

  “Oh yes, wouldn’t I just?”

  Liss made a feigned attempt at breaking free of his hold and they tussled playfully for a while, until she found herself backed up against a solid wall. Dothrin grinned at her.

  “You are trapped.”

  “I could knee you in the groin, no trouble.”

  “I am at your mercy, then.”

  She reached up so that her lips met his, brushing lightly over him before surrendering her mouth to the sweet intrusion of his teasing tongue. With her arms around his shoulders, she pulled him close, letting his bare chest crush her breasts as her hands strayed over his warm back. He smelled good and she wanted to lick the sweat from his skin.

  “He’s still here!”

  “Well look at that.”

  There were a few raucous laughs and the kissing couple parted, finding that Dothrin’s work party had returned.

  “I’ll come to you when I can,” Dothrin whispered.

  Chapter Two

  Liss walked the walls, rain seeping through the oiled skins on her shoulders and trickling from her braids down the back of her neck. She was beyond caring about the dampness. Her soul was hungry for a glimpse of sky: Down in the town, the walls pressed in upon her until she thought she might go mad. She silently cursed the swollen river that had denied her the freedom to wander and stopped her training. Without the exercise and the chance to mock fight with her peers she was restless. Her temper flared continually and the inconveniences that normally would do no more than irritate had become unbearable.

  The land had been swallowed entirely by water and she was starting to wonder if it would ever stop raining and if she would see dry land emerge from beneath the muddy swirling of the river again. There seemed to be no colour anywhere—only the grey of rain and cloud laden skies and the brown tints of the water below. Confined as they were, there was little scope for hunting. Sometimes there were fish to be had from the river, but catching them was dull work and she had no taste for it.

  Her sharp eyes picked out a tiny movement on the distant horizon; something was emerging from between the low hills that blocked her view of the land beyond. Squinting, she tried to make out more clearly what it was that moved upon the water. Liss supposed it might be some aquatic beast or a tree torn down by the storms. During the first, most violent, storms, she had seen a number of those float by on the often-turbulent water, their towering forms reduced utterly by wind and water. The dying storm whipped at her hair, pulling dark strands loose from her braids and making them dance in her eyes. She snatched at them, trying to clear her vision and resolving that she would cut every last hair from her head one of these days.

  Gradually the form on the water drew closer until Liss could make out that it was a long, narrow river craft of some sort, rowed by a single human. She had heard rumour of spies along the far shore, but had seen no one herself on her watch duties. As they had no boats of their own this rower must be an enemy and spying their most likely reason for approach. A lone figure would not take on the entirety of a walled town, not unless they sought their own death. Liss wondered if she should raise an alarm, but the boatman was so far away that he would be able to tell precious little from what he saw. Aside from herself this stretch of wall was empty at present, but her standing would be enough to prove that inhabitation continued and the company were watchful for dangers.

  Closer and closer the little craft came, skimming over the flood. At last it grew still, the boatman dipping his oars from time to time only to hold his place in the flow. He was at a great enough distance that Liss could make out no detail of face, dress or armour and knew that unless this spy had unnaturally keen sight, he could see no more of her than an outline against the sky. She walked a little way along the wall, so that he would know she was not some decoy but a living fighter. The feeling of those hostile eyes was unsettling. The scrutiny, even at this distance, seemed to burn into her, passing through her almost. She tried to dismiss the impression as nervous conjecture, but failed to banish the feeling that this boatman had come purely to watch her, to catch her here upon the walls and see her for himself.

  “As Math’s daughter and heir, I am important,” she mused, “but not so very important that you should risk paddling all this way just for a look at me and you cannot see me well enough to know who I am. So what else can you see from there that holds your attention so?”

  Liss peered over the stone wall. Beneath her the defences were solid and indistinguishable from the rest of the town’s sturdy perimeter. There was nothing that she could see worth looking at and the longer the figure stayed, the greater his risk of being noticed. They could not know if the town had boats yet and she wondered if a well-drawn shot from a long bow might reach so far.

  “Perhaps he comes to test our weapons then: to see if we have boats to chase with or have mastered the longbows and can shoot him down,” she thought.

  It was a daring strategy, but it had merit.

  Still the boat held still against the currents, its lone occupant staring up at Liss. She could not shake the feeling that she was the sole object of this spy’s attention, even though she could think of no good reason for this to be so. The heavy tread of boots on stone alerted her to an approaching watch. They walked in pairs for a few hours at a time, making several circuits of the small town and scanning the waterlogged landscape for signs of change. It was dull work and usually there was nothing to see but the changing hues of the muddy flood. Math never took any chances. Looking behind her, Liss saw Noon and a stocky man she did not know by name. She nodded at them both and, turning back, saw that the boatman was sculling back towards the distant hills once more.

  “How close did he get?” the man asked gruffly.

  “Not much closer than he is now. He stopped for a while, watching.”

  “I’d heard there were spies, not seen one before and I’d certainly not heard of any in boats.”

  “Will you tell Math?” Liss asked.

  Noon nodded.

  “It’s our watch, we should report it, unless…”

  “You report it,” Liss echoed firmly.

  She had little desire to take this to her father. He needed to know, but she did not want to confess to that eerie feeling that the watcher had come for her alone. It was irrational and she knew it.

  Chapter Three

  Not caring what anyone else thought of her Liss had reclaimed her old tent and travelling gear, using the familiar fabrics and skins to deck out her room. She spent several hard hours breaking up most of the heavy wooden furniture for firewood and replaced the framed bed with her own familiar one. It was smaller and not so soft, but she felt lost in the vast mattress that had once belonged to someone else.

  “Hey, Ice, there’s a boy to see you,” Storm shouted from the room below.

  She heard whistles and catcalls.

  “Shall I tell him to fuck off?” Arl asked.

  Liss emerged from the sanctuary of her room and called out, “Who is he?”

  “He says you know him.”

  Liss sighed; that hardly narrowed it down. Everyone seemed to think she must know them and he was by no means her first visitor. Usually the rest of her hand was good about keeping unwelcome petitioners at bay. She hurried down the stairs. This wooden way between the floors still made her nervous and sleeping so far above the ground seemed unnatural to her. She arrived to
find that Dothrin was at the door.

  “He can come in,” she said.

  “Wait ‘til Rina hears about this, Ice, she’s never going to let you forget it,” Storm chuckled.

  Rina’s teasing had become endless, such that Liss now sought to avoid the company of her one-time friend. Without word or explanation, Dothrin followed her up to the privacy of her room. She could hear laughter from the others below them.

  “Why do they call you Ice?” he asked.

  “Because I wouldn’t fuck any of them.”

  He looked surprised, but made no comment.

  “What brings you here?” Liss asked.

  “I wanted to see you, do I need another reason?”

  She shook her head.

  “Are you going to be ice for me?” he asked.

  “What would you do if I said yes, that I won’t fuck you either?”

  “Accept it. I’ll stay if you want me around. I like your company, you seem to think along the same lines I do and there are things I need to talk about.”

  “Go on.”

  She settled on one of the large cushions and invited her guest to do the same.

  “You haven’t given up the old fashions then?” he remarked.

  “We’ve not been here a season and suddenly everything we used to do is old and everyone wants to emulate the soft fools we conquered.”

  “Not everyone.”

  “So, what was on your mind, Dothrin?”

  “Flash has claimed me as his son.”

  That was news indeed. Liss knew nothing of Dothrin’s parentage and had suspected him to be without a lineage or sponsor.

  “He’s one of my father’s men, fought with him in the old country, I think.”

  “They are related, aren’t they?”

  Liss scratched her head carelessly.

  “They are. Now, Math’s uncle has a wife, I think, who is Flash’s older sister…something like that. Not a close connection.”