Portals of Infinity: Reprisal

by John Van Stry

  "Will, this is my wife, Karia, and my daughter, Laria."

  I nodded to both of them, "I'm pleased to meet you both, now if you could show me someplace to bed down for the night, I'd appreciate it."

  Laria looked up at me, and I could see she was a bit pensive, she took my hand and led me off, glancing back at her parents who both nodded, looking a little apprehensive as well.

  "In here," she said and led me into one of the rooms. It was small, probably twelve by twelve, with a narrow window which was shuttered against the cold. There was a bed with lots of heavy blankets up against the wall, easily big enough for me to fit in, and a couple of dressers and closets.

  "Ah, at last," I sighed, "It's been days since I've had a good night's sleep."

  I took my cloak off and hung it over the end of the bed, then pulled my tunic off and tossed if on top of that as well, then turned and sat to start on my pants.

  I noticed then that Laria was now nude, wearing only her fur. She kneeled down before me and started to help undo my pants and leggings.

  I stopped and let her do it, while I looked her over. She was rather pretty and most definitely not a child.

  "How old are you Laria?" I asked as she helped me out of my pants.

  "Old enough, Milord."

  "Your father was serious when he offered you to me then?" I said a bit bemused at this point. Ten years ago I would have been both shocked and outraged. Now, I just noticed that she was looking a bit nervous and determined.

  "Yes, Milord."

  I smiled and took her hand, and pulled her with me as I slid back towards the wall and into the bed. "You may call me Will, Laria. I'm rather honored that your father would offer you to me. However, I'm rather tired tonight, so why don't we just spend this night sleeping, okay?"

  Laria nodded and gulped a little, "Do you not find me pleasing, Milord?"

  "Will, call me Will. And I find you very pleasing."

  I pulled her close and tucked her under my chin, and wrapped my arms around her, I could feel her trembling, I wasn't surprised she was scared.

  "Father says you're a great and powerful warrior," she whispered.

  "So they say," I agreed and yawned.

  "He says that he gave me to you, so you'd come to our village and help us."

  "Sounds about right," I agreed again.

  "I've never slept with a man before, Will."

  "Relax; I'm not going to rape you, Laria. I'm not even planning on having sex with you."

  She pushed back away from me and looked up at me, "What?" She said sounding rather shocked.

  "I have two wives, and several concubines. I am hesitant to add to that list."

  "Am I not good enough for you, Milord?" She said, and I could hear some anger in her voice.

  "Laria," I growled, and she stiffened in my arms.

  "Yes, Milord?" she said meekly.

  "You are more than good enough, and if you really want me, you will call me Will, or William. Now it is late, I am tired, and I wish to sleep." I pulled her close against me, tucking her back under my chin. "And I prefer to sleep with lovely fems such as you, rather than sleeping alone. Even if I'm not making love to them, understand?"

  "Yes, William," I heard softly.

  "We can continue this conversation in the morning."

  "Yes, William."

  I sighed and closed my eyes. I had forgotten her father's offer; I just hoped the others didn't show up with their daughters in tow tomorrow as well, or Rachel would kill me when I got home for sure.

  Four

  Hidden Vale

  8 Months

  I was woken up early the next morning by someone kissing me, and a pair of hands slowly exploring my body. I kissed back of course and rolling over on top of my partner I took the time to kiss her rather thoroughly as I woke up and remembered where I was, and that the female I was kissing rather enthusiastically was someone new.

  "Good morning," I said and smiled down at Laria who was looking a little unsure and embarrassed.

  "Morning, William," she said and blushed.

  "You don't have to do this, you know," I purred and nuzzled her.

  "But my father said I was yours now," she said a little breathlessly.

  "Only if you want to be," I told her and kissed her on the nose, then raised up a little higher, placing my hands to either side of her, to take a better look. Enough daylight was now leaking in through the shuttered window that I got a good view of her beneath me. She was better looking than I remembered, and I was sure Rachel was going to be pissed at me if I brought her home.

  "Father said that I was the price of your help, if I didn't go with you, you'd leave," she said and looked away.

  "Laria," I said, "Look at me."

  She turned her head and looked into my eyes.

  "When your father offered you to me, I realized that he was desperate for help. Not many men would offer their own daughter freely to a man whom they only knew by reputation. Especially not when their daughter is as lovely as you are."

  She blushed again when I said that.

  "I should have told him that it was no longer necessary, once I decided to come here. That he did not have to offer you to me, for my help."

  "Does that mean you don't want me?" Laria said to me, a little confused.

  I smiled and lowered myself down to kiss her again. "Oh, I want you, Laria; you're a very desirable fem." I rubbed against her a little, letting my body make the point that yes, I found her very desirable.

  "However, the important question is, do you want me? I already have a wife, you'd be my concubine. I'm also a busy man, I am often away, having to do the tasks my god assigns me. You will find yourself at home a lot, raising my children, I won't be there often."

  "William," she said softly and reached up to touch the side of my face, "I'm the prettiest girl in the village, do you know what that means?"

  "That you can have whoever you want?"

  She gave her head a slight shake, "No, it means that I'll be bartered away to whomever they need to, to save the village.

  "This is a small village, and it's not very powerful. There are bandits in the mountains that at times come together and threaten us. The elders buy them off by giving their leaders females. That's the reason I haven't been married off yet." She looked away from me, "I don't want to live in some poor shack in the mountains, belonging to a male who thinks of me as nothing more than cattle, to be bought or traded, who won't care about me or for me."

  I blinked, that didn't sound like much of a life, even the women in Hiland got a say in who they were going to marry.

  "And you think I'll treat you better than that?" I said.

  "You'll take me away from here, back to your city, take care of me, and give me your children?"

  I nodded, "Of course."

  "Then I want you, William. That you asked me my mind shows that you will care more about me than any of the other men I thought I would end up with."

  She smiled up at me then, and pulled my head down to kiss me.

  I purred and kissed her back, I was sure Fel was laughing at me somewhere, and I was also sure Rachel was going to have words with me; she'd been getting a little more possessive of late. But Laria was hot, she was here, she wanted me, and she was right, I was her best option for a better life.

  And yes, I was a male chauvinist pig with a huge ego and the ability to back it all up. Screw it, I'd make it up to Rachel, but damned if I wasn't going to make this lovely and very willing female mine.

  "I want you too, Laria," I whispered in her ear, and then took the time to show her just how much.

  Breakfast was cold when we left her room to join her parents in the kitchen, at the table set there. Laria was pretty much plastered up against my side, and was smiling and looking rather content. I had been surprised that I really was her first; most of the fems here in Saladin took an early, and active, interest in sex. I guess only being fertile a couple times a year made the problem of unwanted pr
egnancies an easily avoidable one.

  Both Rodd and Karia, her parents, looked rather relieved when they saw their daughter, and the way she was leaning into me, as well as the way my tail was wrapped around her waist.

  Whether that was because it meant I'd stay, or because their daughter was happy with me, I had no idea.

  "Sleep well?" Rodd asked.

  "Yes, Father," Laria said.

  "Please make sure that the others know that I'm not interested in their children, okay?" I said sitting down and starting in on breakfast. I'd definitely worked up an appetite.

  "Does that mean?" Karia looked at me questioningly.

  "I'll be going with him, when he leaves, Mother," Laria said and moved to sit next to me on the trestle seat that the kitchen table had.

  I smiled, and leaned over and gave her a kiss and a hug, yeah I love women, sue me.

  "Now, tell me what your problem is," I said and nodded to Rodd and Karia as I returned to eating. I watched Laria out of the corner of my eye as I did so. She was serving me from the food on the table, but did not have a plate of her own. Instead she was eating off of mine, a rather curious custom.

  I made sure to start pushing things over to her side of the plate for her to eat. She leaned into me a little more then, purring softly. I noticed her mother started to smile as I did this, Rodd however was looking up at me and completely missed the byplay. That or he didn't care.

  "Gunis should be here soon, I sent my youngest to get him a few minutes ago."

  I nodded, "Fine, he can explain the details to me when he gets here. But I still want to know, now."

  Rodd looked a little uncomfortable.

  "Giants," Laria said next to me, and Rodd scowled at her. I guess she was breaking hierarchy or something by telling me.

  "Rodd," I growled softly and he looked up at me shocked, "Yes, William?"

  "Don't look at my woman like that, understand?" I said and gave Laria a hug. "She's not your daughter anymore."

  "Yes, William!" he said looking a little shocked.

  Karia however, just smiled even wider.

  "Tell me about the giants, Laria."

  She shrugged, "They started to show up last fall, before the snows came. They would attack some of the herds belonging to the outlying farms, nothing closer, but come the heavy snows of winter, they stopped coming."

  "Until now?" I asked between bites.

  She nodded, "They started to show up again as the snows started decreasing. They attacked one of the farms and have even attacked the town twice now; the last was four nights ago, after my father and the others decided to lure you here to help us."

  "Why not just ask the Queen of Hiland for help?" I asked her.

  She shrugged, and I looked up at Rodd, but before he could answer, Gunis entered the room.

  "I thought I asked you to wait until I was here?" Gunis said looking at Rodd as he took his heavy cloak off.

  "I insisted," I told him. "So why didn't you just ask Queen Rachel for her help?"

  "Because we're not a part of the Hilander kingdom, nor do we want to be," he told me.

  "Well, too bad, you are now," I said and took a drink.

  "You can't make that declaration!" Gunis said looking at me, "We've paid for your help," he said and motioned towards Laria, "We want nothing to do with the Hilanders and their ways!"

  I set down my fork and turned slowly to look at Gunis, he seemed a lot surer of himself now in the daylight, back in his village.

  "Don't like the idea of a woman being in charge?" I asked him.

  "It's not right! It's not a woman's proper place; it is a sham for any woman to place herself above men! Queen Rachel is...."

  "Gunis!" I said standing, cutting him off.

  He stopped and looked at me.

  "Queen Rachel is my wife," I growled.

  His ears went down, and his whole body seemed to wilt just a little.

  "You will keep a civil tongue in your head when you talk about her, or you won't have a tongue in your head at all, understood?"

  He nodded mutely.

  "I also still have your punishment to decide on, so it would be wise of you to consider your words from this point forward."

  "But, but you said you wouldn't kill us!" he said looking a little worried.

  "No, but trust me when I say I know how to make a man's life miserable."

  I sat back down, gave Laria a hug when she looked at me a bit surprised. She then went back to cuddling up against me and eating from my plate.

  "Tell me about the giants," I said.

  "Well, they stand about thrice the height of an average male, their pelts look dead and unclean, with bare spots all over them, their faces are strange and ugly, with the fur there growing course and wild. They walk upright like we do, but seem to only scream and grunt and make other such noises."

  "Weapons?" I prompted.

  "They carry large clubs, they also use their hands to tear and smash things, and throw rocks and boulders."

  "How many times have you fought them?"

  "Two times now they've attacked the village, the wall doesn't stop them much; they can climb over it without much trouble. Our bowmen have been able to hurt them some with their arrows, but the few who have tried to attack with swords have all been killed."

  "Have you tried flaming arrows?" I asked.

  Gunis looked surprised at that. "Flaming arrows?"

  "Tie a bit of cloth around the arrow, soak it in lamp oil, light it on fire," I told him.

  "I ... we hadn't thought of that."

  "Well, you can tell your bowmen about it, they'll want to prepare the arrows in advance to make sure they don't mess up the balance." I looked down at Laria, "Finished?"

  She smiled and nodded.

  "Good," I stood back up, "get your cloak; I want you to come with me while Gunis and your father show me around the village."

  "Yes, Will," she said and went back to her room, I let my eyes follow her a moment before turning back to the others, Karia was still smiling, so I winked at her and then got my own cloak.

  "Are you serious about making the village part of the Hilander Kingdom?" Rodd asked me as he donned his own cloak. Gunis was holding his tongue I noticed.

  "Between the giants, the bandits, and everything else you deal with up here, how many years do you think this village has left?" I said looking back and forth between Rodd and Gunis.

  "We've been here for almost a hundred years!" Gunis said.

  "Yeah, and how many children do you have to hand over to the bandits? How many have starved to death because there wasn't enough food?"

  "We can survive on our own!"

  I laughed, "Right, that's why you went to all of this trouble to get me to come here, and bribed me with Laria," I said and turned to smile at her as she rejoined us.

  "You're ripe for conquering, and you know it. Queen Rachel would have gotten around to taking this place eventually, you might as well go willingly, you'll get a better deal that way."

  "A better deal?" Rodd asked looking at me.

  "Yeah, you'll all get to keep your stuff, and you'll get to keep you positions of importance in the village."

  "That sounds fair," Rodd said.

  "Rodd!" Gunis said looking at him.

  "Oh shut it, Gunis! I ain't raising my daughters to be bandit fodder. You may be fine with it, but I ain't."

  I could see Gunis fuming over that rebuke as he turned and went outside. I followed, with Laria, as Karia gave her husband a hug, causing him to look a bit surprised. He didn't say anything, but followed us outside.

  "What do you want to see?" Gunis said to me.

  "Start with the center, and lets work our way out. I want to see everything."

  He nodded and started walking; I followed with my arm around Laria, who seemed to be happy with that state of affairs.

  Rodd walked along next to us, glancing at his daughter every once in a while, and apparently thinking about something.

  "This
is the village square," Gunis told me, and I was surprised to see that it actually was a square. There was a large well in the middle of it, with paths worn down through the snow from people going to and from it. It wasn't the first well that I'd seen as we walked here, there was another one a lot closer to Rodd's house, but from the size of this one, I suspected it was the first.

  On all four sides surrounding the square were buildings. There were three taverns, a handful of shops, a blacksmith, and a meeting hall. Everything was built with stone walls and wooden roofs.

  I gave the shops a bit of a looking over, one was just a general store, another was a tannery, a third was a tinkers, fourth a bow maker and fletcher, and so on. There were people busy in each of them, and they all looked at me suspiciously until Gunis introduced me as 'Champion William,' here to take care of their 'problem.'

  The buildings behind most of the shops were the homes of the shop owners, and a few small warehouses.

  After that came the homes of the rest of the villagers. There were a number of corrals interspersed with the homes, in which there were small herds of what looked to be a mountain variety of the suzhen, and of course regular suzhen as well. There were also quite a few cows, surprisingly, though they were a longer haired variety that I wasn't familiar with.

  Closer to the wall, there were a number of small vegetable gardens, that weren't growing anything right now of course, and then on the outside of the wall, there were fields laid out across the valley. There were a few houses out there as well, and more than a few corrals with livestock in them. Laria explained that the flocks were brought into the valley during the worse of the winter, and sent back out to pastures up in the mountains in the spring.

  The wall itself, was all made of stone, as I'd noticed last night, and was about six feet high. It would slow down bandits, and keep most of the livestock in and some of the predators out, but it didn't look very strong, the rocks were mostly stacked and not even mortared together.

  "When do the giants attack?" I asked Gunis.

  "If we knew that, we'd be ready for them," he said.

  I wanted to smack him; he was a pretty snarky guy today. Guess he really hated the idea of having a queen.