by Bryn Colvin
The large bucket steamed with freshly heated water. Liss had stripped off her few items of clothing and stood naked in Dothrin’s room. Like her own abode, this corner of Flash’s house was decorated in the style of the tents they had known for most of their lives. It was the only place, aside from her own quarters, where Liss felt at ease. Dothrin’s mud-splattered face appeared at the door and she smiled warmly to welcome him. The mud had hardened on their skin, trapping fine hairs and resisting any efforts to remove it. They both stank of river mud and rotting vegetation. The water was soon brown from the rags they used to clean themselves as they washed in comfortable silence. After a while Dothrin fetched them fresh water.
Liss brushed what she could from the surfaces of her braids but, finding the mud had worked its way in even there, she began to meticulously un-weave the complex knots and plaits that tamed her hair. Dothrin watched, intrigued. In all the time he had known Liss he had never seen her with her hair free. It took some time, but at last the tresses that snaked down to her waist were revealed. With her locks unbound the darkness of them seemed more apparent, making her exotic and otherworldly. She plunged her head into the bucket, slopping water onto the floor as she did so. With a shake that spread droplets across the room, she surfaced, dripping and waterlogged.
“I want to go hunting further afield as soon as the land dries enough for horses. Will you come with me?” he asked.
“Of course. Where did you mean to go?”
“I don’t know. Towards the hills perhaps.”
Liss had not told him anything about the crow-woman, but the hills were the direction from which she had last appeared and the thought of striking out that way was curiously alluring.
“I should like that.”
“It will be a while before our feast is ready. How would you like to pass the time Liss?”
“Well, now.”
She licked her lips and ran a finger across his muscular stomach, pausing to coil her fingers in the curls of hair above his cock.
“What are my chances of talking you into giving me this?”
Her fingers strayed to his growing erection.
“I want this, not your fingers.”
They had been giving each other pleasure for weeks, but he had steadfastly refused to give her the penetration she craved and take her maidenhead. Today however, there was a glint in his eyes and a determination that usually showed on his face only when he was fighting. The thought of being taken no longer alarmed her. The brush of his desires against her psyche was familiar and she was hungry to share pleasure. They had only touched the surface of erotic possibility, but she longed to plunge into its depths.
She kissed him forcefully, chasing his tongue with hers and rubbing her breasts against his chest until her nipples were engorged.
“I know you want to,” she persisted, taking his fingers and pressing them into the warm folds of her cunt, “see, I’m wet for you.”
Dothrin pressed his hand to her sodden slit, massaging her clit with his thumb.
“I’m not going to take you,” he said.
She growled softly. His refusal to do what they both so obviously wanted was starting to drive her mad. She wondered why he was persisting in holding back.
“What if I take you?” she suggested, gripping his rod more firmly in her fingers.
“That’s different.”
She pushed him across the room, tumbling him backwards into his own cushions and straddling him as soon as he was horizontal. Liss crushed his mouth with hers, feeling the roughness of his stubble on her lips. Kissing his solid chest and powerful shoulders, she worked herself steadily into an utter frenzy of desire, until she did not know where her own wild passion ended and her sense of his unfettered lust began. Using her hands, she guided his cock towards her slit, rubbing him against the folds there until she felt herself opening up to allow him entrance. Slowly, she rocked against him, feeling the hot breadth of his rod filling her. Her long hair fell freely across her back, stroking against her skin every time she moved.
Dothrin’s eyes were closed, his expression one of blissful surrender as her cunt engulfed him, locking his sensitive member into a realm of warmth and wetness. When she had him utterly Liss sat still, gazing down at the handsome young man to whom she had given herself so utterly. As though sensing her scrutiny, he opened his eyes and they blazed intense desire. Taking his hands in hers and using them for leverage, Liss lifted herself until only the tip of his cock remained within her; then slid slowly down the length of him. It was an unfamiliar feeling, but one that demanded repetition. She pressed down again, moving more swiftly and allowing her own urgent feelings to drive her onwards.
It was not long before Dothrin was sweating and thrusting beneath her. Sometimes his hands went to her hips, allowing him to push upwards with greater force. At other times his fingers found her clitoris and rubbed her until she shuddered on the brink of coming. Faster they went, his cock rubbing back and forth across her g-spot. The approach of orgasm made him harder yet and his proximity to pleasure was enough to carry Liss through into her own release. She dug her fingers into his shoulders and pressed herself against him as tightly as she could, feeling him squirting his warm fluids into the core of her being.
Resting her head upon her lover’s chest, Liss heard the furious pounding of his heart subside into a moderate speed. She licked the nipple closest to her face and looked up at him, grinning.
“I could stay here forever,” she said.
“And miss our feast? You’ve fresh meat to sink those sharp teeth of yours into.”
Chapter Six
Sorting through the wooden boxes and tall chests in the cooking room, Liss realised that they were woefully short of supplies. She had been hunting for game but, as far as she could tell, the others were making no effort at all and rations were still short. The freedom to live independently and act as adults had made fools of them and she was ashamed of their carelessness.
“Looking for something?” Arl asked.
“Only what we haven’t got.”
“Ah.”
“We can hardly go on like this. We should have traded some of that wine for food.”
“Too late now. Not that I think Storm would have listened to you.”
“I should have ordered him.”
“I don’t know that he’d take orders from you.”
“He should.”
“You’re never here; you’re more a part of Flash’s household by all accounts, Liss. When you aren’t here, Storm rules.”
“The fault is mine.”
“We were always an undisciplined lot. I know you’ve tried but some of them, well, you know how it is. I’m moving on, one of Leaf’s lads has taken a fancy to me and I better like the look of my chances with him.”
“I don’t blame you,” she sighed.
“I’m breaking your hand.”
“It was hardly worth keeping. Half of them don’t train any more anyway, only you and Blade have kept it up.”
“Blade will stick by you, I think.”
“Hello, Ice. I didn’t realise you still lived here.”
Rina sashayed into the room and pinched Arl’s bottom.
“It’s as well I do, or some of you might have starved by now.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Come on, Rina, when did you last fight, or train, or take a watch? When did you last go hunting, or fishing, or trading?”
“Haven’t you heard, we aren’t a bunch of nomad fighters any more, we settled, we got civilised, we don’t have to live like that any more.”
“We still have walls to defend. The last lot who lived here, we wiped out because they got fat and lazy. At least they had the sense to keep themselves in food, which is more than can be said for you by the look of things.”
“We do all right. We do just fine without you. Why don’t you just fuck off and leave us to get on with things? We don’t need you. I hear your father is giving you to th
at lame second of his.”
“That’s crap!”
“So you just fuck him on your own account then?”
“Who I fuck is my own business.”
“I heard you’d got it on with his gangly half-breed son. Makes sense, given you haven’t got a proper lineage either.”
Liss’s anger made her fast. Rina never even saw the blow that sent her sprawling across the floor, making a bloody pulp of her once-pretty nose. Liss stalked out, deaf to Arl’s concerns. There was nothing in this place that mattered to her, the gifts her father had bestowed upon her in the past hung about her person, her weapons she had left with Dothrin after their last sparring session. The rest was unimportant. She was sick of gossip and the increasing foolishness of those around her. They seemed to have lost all sense of what mattered. Town living was making them soft and stupid. If they did mean to settle here, it could not be in idle indulgence forever. They would need food and fuel, defences, livestock and other practical things.
For a while, she walked alone beside the river, trying to vent the rage Rina had inspired. Looking back, she saw three young men following her along the bank. Her father had commanded that she should not leave the town alone and there were boys whose sole duty it was to keep an eye out for her and make sure she was guarded. Their presence was just one more intrusion into her life. Liss felt like a prisoner, maddened by her confinement. For the time of year the weather was warm. She slipped and skidded down the muddy bank, plunged into the river and struck out for the far bank. The three lads, in their studded leather armour, would not be able to follow her. She knew that when news of this got back to her father she would be in trouble with him, but she was beyond caring. The currents in the water were strong and she was a considerable way downstream when at last she emerged onto the bank, cold and dripping.
As the sun carved its path through the sky, Liss followed the riverbank, expecting at any moment to hear voices calling her back. She supposed Flash’s boat would be launched and that she would be collected. Her clothing dried slowly, but it was only when she stopped walking to drink from a tricking stream that she noticed the chilled ache that had set into her back and shoulders. Cursing to herself, she turned and headed back the way she had come. It was late in the afternoon and the sky was growing dark. She wondered if, in her foolish rage, she had walked further than she could return before sunset. The chill from her sodden clothing had dulled her muscles; running would be impossible and she doubted she could swim back against the flow of the water.
It was almost dark when she reached the bend in the river where it looped around the walls of the town. Shivering and weary, Liss looked up and down the bank, but no one seemed to be watching for her. After all the warnings about setting forth alone and the imposition of boys sent to watch over her, when she actually had need of help no one was close by to come to her aid. She supposed her father would be furious. The youths sent to guard her might well die for their lack of care. Gritting her teeth, she plunged into the river, striking out for the opposite shore and bringing all of her will to bear upon keeping herself afloat. She was, perhaps, two-thirds of the way across when cramp bit into both of her legs. Struggling helplessly, she felt herself sinking as the river flow caught her and tore her away from he destination. All Liss could do was fight to keep her head above the water.
Chapter Seven
“Liss?”
Her body ached—and waking thrust her into a realm of all-consuming pain. Liss found she could move, but anything much beyond an explorative twitch of muscles sent flashes of discomfort through her battered frame. As far as she could tell, her body was in one piece. Tentatively she opened her eyes, trying to remember where she was and to locate the source of the voice. Raising her head slightly, she could see a familiar woman sat cross-legged a few feet from her. A look of tender concern occupied the shape-shifter’s face.
“Who are you?” Liss asked her, still half believing that she must be asleep. “How did I get here?”
“It was just by chance. I had gone down to the river to fish and found, instead, a half dead girl washed up against a fallen tree. I pulled you from the water and dragged you here. We are only a little way from the river.”
One again she had evaded the question Liss most needed an answer to.
“I must get home,” Liss said, trying to rise, but finding that her damaged body would not allow it.
“I would not advise it. Your injuries are considerable, I think you have cracked a rib, or two and you have spent the last day in a fever. You are lucky to be alive, girl.”
It seemed unlikely to Liss that, in a landscape known to be empty of settlement, this lone, familiar woman had found her by chance just where the river had seen fit to cast her up. She said nothing, however, thinking that her life would probably depend upon her rescuer for some time to come.
“Am I rescued?” she asked herself, “or am I captured?”
Finding herself too exhausted for further talk, Liss took the opportunity to scrutinise the crow-woman, absorbing every detail of her presence. She was small and light of figure—smaller than she had seemed on previous encounters. There was something about her face that seemed eerily familiar, beyond memories of previous meetings, but Liss could not think what it was. Perhaps there was something of the crow in the woman’s bones, even when she did not wear her feathers.
“You should rest,” the crow-woman said, “are you hungry?”
Liss nodded, finding that she was.
“I will hunt for you, but it will be a little while before there will be anything fit for eating.”
The crow-woman whistled, then and a pair of hounds rose up behind Liss and hurried to their mistress’s side. Both were tall and pale, their ears twitching and their eyes an unusual pink. One of them sniffed the air and the other busied himself taking scent from the wounded girl. The crow-woman nodded and set off through the spinney of trees that sheltered them, one hound at her heels. The second sat at Liss’s side, eyeing her watchfully. She was glad of its presence, knowing she would be powerless to defend herself.
~*~
“I don’t believe it.”
Math crashed his fist down on the table, his blow opening a crack down one of the planks of wood.
“It is certain she is drowned, they saw her carried off by the river,” Gron answered.
“Liss is a good swimmer, she will have reached the bank sooner or later.”
“There has been no sign of her. The boys chased her along the riverbank as long as they could, but the currents are fast after that furthest bend and they lost sight of her. If she had emerged, surely she would have waited on the far bank where we could find her or at least made her way back towards the town. We searched until dusk, but there was no trace of her along our side.
“Why did no one think to use the boat?”
“We did. I went to Flash myself. He had it out of the water, replacing a damaged board from the bottom. It would not have floated.”
Flash nodded wearily, conscious of his part in the unfolding tragedy.
“Nor did it occur to any of you, I gather, to take a few horses down the far bank.”
“The river is still deep, the ford hardly usable; I did not want more riders swept away.”
Math growled, knowing the logic was sound.
“I will go on the morrow and take a few good riders with me. We will search the far bank. I want a dozen riders to search this side downstream. We will find her. I will gift my daughter’s weight in arms and armour to the rider who brings her back.”
Math sighed and looked at the faces of his men in turn. None of them had asked if there might be another explanation and Math did not want to voice it himself. He supposed they must all remember and suspect.
“Enough. We can do no more tonight. See to it that the boys who lost her are whipped to within an inch of their lives. We ride tomorrow. Find me volunteers and have them ready by first light.”
When they had gone Math lowered himself
into a chair, rested his arms upon his broken table and buried his face in them. Sena came to his side, her usually soothing touch unable to penetrate his grief.
“She does swim well. I have seen her cross the river before,” Sena offered.
“I fear some worse ill has befallen her.”
“Why not share it with me? The shadows are only worse for our fearing to speak of them.”
Math straightened his back, rubbing and his furrowed brow with both hands.
“Do you remember when we first came to this country?”
“Only in fragments. I remember the boats and odd things from before then: a garden and a little yellow fruit I can’t remember the name of. I was very small when we left the old country.”
“The coast was densely populated. We spent a fair while pillaging there. Most of the locals were easy pickings—unarmed and unwarlike. We used to take adult prisoners in those days, especially the women. It kept the men happy.”
Sena paled, but said nothing.
“There was one woman I took a liking to. I realised afterwards that we had never caught her—she had come willingly, to spy and sow discord. During the time she was in the camp, we had nothing but trouble—theft and rumour, fighting and ill humour. It was endless; we were on the brink of anarchy. She had me somewhat bewitched, until I woke one night to find a blade at my throat.”
He gestured to a long scar that ran along his neck and down across his shoulder.
“She almost killed me. We fought. I overpowered her, but by the morning she had gone and I thought that an end to it.”
Math could remember the overpowering all too clearly—the way she had screamed curses at him even as he pressed her down into his bed. Then, enchantment had been mutual and, even though there was fierce hatred between them, she had never been able to resist the allure of his cock. That night they had rutted like wild animals, leaving trails of blood across each other’s bodies from scratches and bites. Proximity to death aroused them both and with their blood up from fighting it had been an encounter he would never forget. Her cries in the heat of passion had not been of love, as she called him every foul name her mind could conceive of. Her insults only served to make him harder and more amorous.