by Max Keith
“It would, indeed, be difficult to imagine he was unaware of your needs.” Matters of the heart were not why people came to talk to mages; he imagined a dry, detached response would work best. “But Drinn is a simple creature; it might have served you better to simply tell him.
She frowned as she thought about what she’d seen beneath his breeches. “He knew,” she repeated savagely. “When he saw me he grew, well, rather rampant.”
“Ah.” It was hardly worth saying more; women, as he’d noticed over the years, always knew exactly what an erection meant.
“Extremely rampant, in fact.”
“I’d imagine so.” Franx did not really think of Chiara in the same way Drinn clearly did, but the soldier’s clothes she was wearing left little enough to the imagination; he assumed she’d look amazing naked. As most women did, in fairness, but Chiara had a vivacious freshness about her that, he knew, would be exactly the kind of thing Drinn liked. He sighed. “May I give you some advice, Chiara?”
“I’d understood that was the sort of thing mages are best at,” she replied bitterly. When he replied, Franx was gentle.
“Sometimes, sometimes not,” he began. “But I’ve known Drinn of Fiveoaks for several years, and I’ve wandered many, many leagues across this continent in small bands of men and woman, doing various things. It’s not uncommon that men and women begin to grow fond of each other when they’re in the kind of trouble we’re in. The solutions, as I’ve seen them, are two and two alone: you two can either sit down and scream until you loathe each other, or you can fuck. But you can’t just let this sort of thing linger.”
Chiara nodded unhappily. She gazed ahead at the warrior’s bouncing pack, moving in rhythm as he climbed the rocky, desperate path. She set her lips in a long, pale line, then hesitated as if deciding whether to confide further in the mage. After awhile, she nodded to herself. “Shall I be offended, then, that Drinn did not find me worthy of his prick? That he preferred to take some random bitch in a mountain village?”
Franx laughed lightly. “Is that what’s bothering you? Shit, Chiara. Drinn’s been backed up since before the pox outbreak. He’s been ready to burst for weeks; you must have seen it, a girl as sharp as you.” He did not need to wait to see her nod. “I’d bet you five gold pieces, merganser or imperial, that he ignored you because he likes you.”
“Likes me?”
“Of course. Drinn is a man of… well, of intense passions. He can be overenthusiastic, if you know what I’m saying.” He paused. “I doubt, if I’m being honest, that the encounter was any sort of fun for that whore back there in the village.” He shrugged, his shoulders tight beneath the rucksack straps. “I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he simply wanted to spare you from what, I’m sure, he knew would be a dirty, unpleasant experience.” He let his eyes flicker down her lank, sweaty body. “Believe me. If you still want to fuck him, you’ll have no trouble at all.”
“Huh.” Chiara trudged on, glancing speculatively back up toward the warrior.
But later that day, as the sun raced down to their right, they had other things to worry about. Their southward path, which had been dwindling for some time, at last faded at a cold, rocky tarn that backed up in the distance to a sheer cliff, cutting impassively through the water. The path continued neither uphill to the east nor downhill to the west; it just died swiftly and completely, like a man underneath a blade.
“Well.” Franx frowned and looked up at the sun. “Here’s a problem. The pass can’t be far; past this very ridge, perhaps.” He sun slowly around to take in the view, ending up with a thoughtful gaze west. “We’d have needed to descend soon, anyway.”
“And have you worried yet about what might be down there?” Drinn dug a toe into the turf. “As I recall, there’s a Firemage and a band of Imperial assholes searching for us. I doubt they got bored and went home.”
“No,” Franx agreed. “They’ll know of this path, probably, and they’ll know or guess where it ends. At best, they’d have simply gone to wait below the Pass.” He shrugged. “It was going to be a problem at any rate. Whether we deal with it today or next week seems moot. I do worry about when the owl will return, though.” He squinted up at the sky as if he could make the bird materialize just by looking; Drinn almost wouldn’t put that past the pair of them. He’d seen them do many strange things. The mage seemed to make up his mind. “Well, whatever. We should probably go ahead and descend, but carefully.”
“And it might be a good idea to begin traveling by night again,” Chiara suggested. She’d been quiet until now, biting her lip and worrying, no doubt, that her cousin was close by. Drinn nodded.
“That’s a good idea.”
“Agreed.” Franx sighed. “Why don’t we just rest up here, then. We can start out after midnight.” Drinn wasn’t sure he liked that idea; the tarn was deep and dark and more than a little ominous even in the daylight; he’d have been happier anyplace else. And so he volunteered to keep lookout, resting in the shadow of a large boulder with his sword across his knees, looking glumly down at his own legs. Before him the sun dipped down to the far horizon as the hours passed, Chiara and Franx showing as lumpy blanketed shapes in the growing twilight.
The Imperial soldier’s breeches he was wearing certainly hadn’t been meant for this sort of abuse, he reflected; the side seam had split two nights ago, and his crudely stitched repair showed as a ragged line rising out of his boot. He picked absently at one of the knots, wondering whether the owl would return this evening, and quite without intending to he let his eyes droop into soft, dreamless sleep as the last of the sun disappeared from the world.
He started awake after nightfall, lying in the grass right beside the surface of the tarn, instantly realizing he was warmer than he ought to have been. Drinn was a fast waker but a grumpy one, and he wasn’t normally so confused; but he was expecting a rock at his back and the night air nipping at his thin clothes, and when neither of those things happened he took a moment to figure out why.
Ah.
Someone had thrown a blanket over him, and then had slid beneath it to lie naked within the circle of his arms. It took only an instant for him to figure out it wasn’t Franx, and that’s when his penis remembered that a single time with a village whore, no matter how copious the load, is not really enough to make up for three weeks of chastity.
For the tickle of Chiara’s hair just beneath his nose, the feel of her soft, pliable body against his, and the rich warm smell of her cunt, down there beneath the blanket, instantly sent his cock, hard and straight, up toward the waistband of the inadequate Imperial breeches, the dark leather now pressed firmly against Chiara’s bare flesh. And, of course, she wasn’t asleep.
“I’m not much of a guide,” she admitted softly, without turning her head, “but even I know a man shouldn’t fall asleep while on watch.” She moved her body, just slightly, maneuvering his dick into the crack of her ass. “Unpredictable things are liable to happen.”
He sighed against her head, the night cool and dark all around. “This is predictable, I’d say,” he murmured.
“I’d have thought so, too,” the girl agreed, “if you hadn’t fucked that slut back in that village the other day.”
He frowned, genuinely surprised, but a moment’s thought reminded him of the way she’d been around him, the blushes and the veiled looks over these past weeks, and he realized he shouldn’t have been. He kissed the top of her head. “You’re jealous of a mountain whore?” he asked, making sure the amusement was plain in his voice. He allowed his thumb to graze an eager young nipple, already conveniently close and totally uncovered. “You? You’re many times more beautiful than she was.”
Normally, this approach worked to perfection; Drinn had wide experience of pleasing various kinds of woman, and he confidently expected her to melt at once. But Chiara stymied him now. She reached an indignant arm up and jerked his hand off her breast. “I’ve heard that sort of bullshit before,” she hissed. “A wiser man would
have ignored the whore and pursued the beauty.”
He blinked in the night, his cock trembling already. “Who ever said I was wise?” He suddenly wanted Chiara very, very much, and was troubled that she so clearly knew it. This was not a typical situation for him, but he was not so terribly stupid as to try for her tit again. He waited instead. “I’m sorry if I gave offense,” he said quietly, kissing her head again. “I was, perhaps, too eager?” When she didn’t object, then, he moved a hand with unaccustomed gentleness to her belly. She trembled, and he heard her sigh. “I’d have torn you apart.”
“Perhaps,” she breathed, “I’d have enjoyed being torn apart.” Drinn thought of the anger in the mountain whore’s voice as he’d left her, and doubted it.
“I don’t think you’d have enjoyed it as much as you say.” He swallowed. “It was not pleasant for her,” he admitted softly.
She gasped slightly when he started moving his hand in slow circles around her navel. “Mm. So then,” she wheedled, starting to move her body slowly, “what is it you think I would enjoy?” She lifted her upper foot with a great show of carelessness onto his leg, beginning to spread herself.
Drinn felt a rush in his head, his ears ringing, and he knew he’d have her. His dick ached in the tight breeches, but he knew she needed him now, so he did his best to ignore it; instead, he let his hand drift lazily lower, past skin and then hair and then wetness, and as Chiara’s breath started to shudder Drinn’s marching fingers found their way between the girl’s lips and into the hot syrup of her cunt.
It was wide and deep and warm; no need at all to tease her open, he found at once. This was not a squeamish, shy young lady fresh from the mussel-patch; no, the pussy now pushing itself with dreadful need against his palm was ripe and ready, the girl knowing precisely what kinds of things she liked men to do to it. She wedged her own hand over his, trembling around his fingers, controlling his pace and motion as she steered his hand surely across her body, letting him know how to get her off.
She wanted circles, fast and firm against her mound, with two of his stubby fingers jammed a short way inside her. “There,” she whispered once she had him all set up, moving her hips back and forth in easy, supple rhythm with the wetly smacking sounds coming from underneath the blanket. “Oh. Fucking there.” The sigh came out with feeling, the solid naked flesh of her ass driving itself firmly and insistently up and down the embarrassingly hard lump in his breeches, and in a moment the cold, still night was all about her wriggling little body, the sounds and smells of her arousal slicking through the mountain air with their urgently silenced groans.
Drinn had no idea how he came to do something so romantic, but quite before he knew it he had the fragrant skin of her neck beneath his tongue, his coarse lips creeping with most unwonted passion along the taut tendons there and up to the tempting, shuddering skin of her ear, their breath mingling harsh and eager.
At some point, Chiara found she no longer needed to guide him; his thumb, by then, had caught her shivering little clit underneath its nail and was now strumming it steadily, like Cashel with a harp, her gasping breaths loud and steady. “Fuck,” she grunted, and then her hand was groping crazily alongside her own ass, fumbling at his dick, and his other hand was flapping in an uncontrollable quest to find whichever nipple it could, and she was thrusting herself high above his hip, now lying nearly on top of him.
He didn’t notice. Under the circumstances, he was happy to be her mattress.
They convulsed together for a few moments more, but the magic was growing far out of her control and her body was about to leave her mind far, far behind. He felt all of her muscles flex beneath her thin young flesh, once and then twice, and then she had her hand in her mouth to stifle a quick bursting scream as his fingers, already soaked, felt like they’d been immersed into a font of warmed oil.
The orgasm seemed quite overdone; she bucked and shook and gasped, but the evidence around Drinn’s fingers told him the whole thing was genuine, Chiara abandoned completely by any sense of where she was, her entire being torn apart by the pleasure of the moment. The warrior clung, his arms full of her wiry squirming body, and then she was slumped over on top of him, drinking in cold air in great gasps, the air coming back out in short, breathy giggles.
“Wow.” Drinn was just trying to hold on.
She finished breathing, the trail-hardened body relaxing beneath Drinn’s hands. “Now then.” She sighed, then twisted her head around to show him darkened eyes and a red face. She fumbled behind her back, both hands now wedging in between the two of them, and then she found shaft and balls within his tight, clammy breeches. “We should continue before the moon gets too bright. Poildrin wants to leave at midnight,” she reminded him, the excitement thick in her husky voice. “You’ll just need to fuck me fast.”
And as the deep night surrounded them, with a light breeze ruffling the surface of the tarn and setting the long grasses nodding, he felt the eager pressure of her fingers around his dick and he nearly came right then. But it was around that time that an arrow whistled out of the night, the wind off the fletching twitching at Chiara’s hair, and shattered against the boulder that Drinn had rested his back against before he’d drifted off to sleep.
The warrior reacted at once; he’d heard many arrows fly past him, on many fields, and it always meant a second one was soon to follow. So he shoved the girl harshly away from him to roll into the cold mountain water, bellowed a wordless challenge into the night, and then untangled himself from the blankets to fumble for the sword he’d left as naked as Chiara when he’d stretched out.
The second arrow found him just as his groping fingers slapped down on his hilt, plucking at the leather tunic at his shoulder, and then he was up and moving down the hill, screaming in fury; he’d been so, so close to sinking his cock into the girl’s hot, soupy hole, and here was some shithead shooting arrows at him.
Even without the angry frustration in his loins, though, the rage came as it always had in battle, whether in the army or for the Princess or for himself, on foot or on horseback: Drinn of Fiveoaks lived most of his life awaiting the rush of a sword in his hand and an enemy before him, and he wasted no time. The starlight showed five or six shapes down against the cliff face with a weird, pulsing red glow lighting the night behind them, clearly the work of the Firemage brewing a spell, but he could not worry about that now; all the glow meant was that it showed up his targets, so he ran toward them with his sword held viciously low, screaming again.
The screams were to give him heart and to give his enemies pause, but he also knew in the shrinking corner of his mind still capable of reason that they’d awaken the Shadowmage, and that a roused Poildrin Franx was probably a better weapon than a sword right now.
If the men by the cliff were expecting a frenzied singlehanded attack out of the dark, they gave no sign of it; if they had been, he reflected later, they’d have stood much closer together. As it was, they were spread in a loose chain across the hillside with the archer and the mage safely behind. He knew at least two more arrows had sung past him as he charged down the hill, but it was a dark night and he hadn’t feared the bowman’s aim.
“You,” Drinn growled, angling left toward a tall Imperial farmboy whose very posture screamed fear and uncertainty, his face vaguely familiar, and as the lad’s swordpoint wavered up, flashing dull in the reddish light, he pivoted to come from the side at the next man instead, who’d thought himself a spectator and now, suddenly, horrifyingly, found himself with a long sword glittering through the night to take his blood.
Franx woke up as the boy’s life bubbled and rattled from his torn throat, and while Drinn was swinging around to go back after the first man, a black tempest came roiling down the hill, like dozens of flying snakes all made of cold, slippery wind, to wrap around the Imperials and smite them to the ground, pulling at what felt to them like oily tentacles gripping at their necks and arms; two of them turned and fled straight back down the hill, and the ar
cher was already thinking about putting away his bow even before Drinn took the head off the tall farmboy and advanced, snarling, bleeding from a wound he’d taken somewhere, intent on destroying the man whose arrow had robbed him of a night of torrid sex with a willing wench.
“Fuck!” the bowman gasped, his bowels giving up into his breeches, and then Franx’ second spell came ponderously down the hill, this one in the form of a black wave like a rolling-pin, bowling over the two soldiers who were moving uncertainly toward Drinn while still picking at the sorcerous snakes yet clinging to their necks, and then it was over. A curse from the Firemage rang out loud and clear, echoing off the rock wall, and with a sudden flash of red-orange lightning the mage retreated down the mountain, trailing sparks like a comet as he overtook his fleeing men, and that was it.
Drinn returned to himself then, standing panting with a bloody sword and a curled lip, glaring balefully across the hillside. There was still one Imperial there, picking himself carefully up out of the stony grass as Franx’ second spell faded, and his wary eyes met Drinn’s as the magefire dimmed. The man was older, a veteran, and he knew he was overmatched; his sword dropped to the turf with a gentle clang, his hands went out with the fingers spread wide, and then he backed away, drifting down the mountain with the gruff pride of a beaten warrior who knows his task is undone.
A few rocks rolled down from the campsite by the tarn, and then Franx was picking his way down toward where the Imperials had been. “Is it done?” he asked, and Drinn could hear the catching whine in the mage’s voice: he was a powerful fellow, but two spells with no prep, fresh out of a peaceful night’s sleep, had drawn him. The warrior could hear the steadying breath, Franx building the power again in case it was needed, but as they stood there in the night and watched the veteran back away, they knew they’d won. “How many?”
“I saw five with swords, then the archer and the mage; I feel there might have been another one or two, though I’m not certain.” He sniffed and wiped his nose on his arm, and now he could feel the pain; the farmboy had given him a fierce lick below his right nipple. “I did for two, saw… five? Five retreating?”