Quiggs understood long buried memories had surfaced. “You aren’t responsible for what you… ate before you were abandoned. What’s important is you’re human now.”
Beau whimpered and nuzzled his friend’s thigh for comfort.
“Look at me, Beau.”
Beau lifted his head, his gaze fearful of finding contempt.
Quiggs poured unadulterated affection into his smile. “What I see is my good friend Beau who is in dire need of a bath.”
Beau scurried out of reach under the table, his mind off his past and into the perilous bath time of the present.
“My Quiggs is mean!” Beau’s voice reverted to the lopsided little runt he was before the transition.
“Don’t make me chase you down. This is a small cabin, and I have a spear.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Dammit, Beau! I told you to close the trapdoor, then pull the lever after you finished pissing.”
The grayish–brown fin had used its muscular tail to propel itself through the opened trapdoor. Beau’s reflexes saved his cock and balls from razor-sharp teeth wildly snapping at anything within reach. Its short front legs scrabbled around the cabin, leaving a wavy line of slime in the wake of its brown-banded tail. The two dorsal fins flattened to curve around its sides and armor its vulnerable belly. It bit through the legs of Quiggs’s chair and would have tumbled him to the floor, except he’d already leaped to the table, taking a defensive stance with his fork.
Beau hooted. “A fork cannot pierce its scales.” He thought it all hilarious, dancing around the room in Max’s borrowed black robe with the fin snapping at him.
“Quit fooling around and kill it!”
“It is a small fin.” He pulled a spear and ax from the rack of weapons by the steps.
“It’s longer than me, you idiot!” If it bit through a table leg, Quiggs would slide into its jaws.
Beau skidded on a streak of slime, his arms undulating like graceful wings to keep himself balanced. As the fin twisted around, he leaped, and it snapped at him with its elongated snout. The fin lifted its tail and smacked the table, knocking Quiggs off his feet and leaving his head dangling off the edge. Red eyes fixed on him for supper.
“Beau—do something!”
Beau stopped playing. He speared through the fin’s snout, pinning it to the floor while he severed its head with a single powerful blow of the ax.
“This is how I kill many fins on the bank when they stalk my herd.” Beau yanked out the spear. The fins unwrapped from the body, and he plunged the spear through its belly. He hoisted the headless body as easily as roasting a strip of meat over a fire pit. “Get down and finish your supper.”
Quiggs couldn’t get his fingers to release the edge of the table. “Fuck if I’m getting down. The head’s severed and its jaws are still snapping.”
“Death throes.” Beau stomped the head with his bare foot. “There. No more snapping. Sit in your chair and eat with your fierce fork.” He grinned, his happy mood restored.
While Beau tossed the carcass overboard and mopped the floor, Quiggs finished his supper. Max hadn’t returned. Courier messages said he’d visited the site of the second raid, then met with the Herders Guild in Port Paducah.
The cabin cleaned, Quiggs sniffed Beau and told him to take another bath. When Beau whined he already had a bath an hour ago, Quiggs gave him a choice. “Tell me about your family, and you can skip another bath.”
Beau stopped whining. He stared at the floor, but he didn’t squat and throw his arms around his head to block out questions. A pulse pounded in Beau’s throat as he struggled for words.
“Start with your first memories,” Quiggs said softly.
Beau did, his voice timid at first as the memories trickled out, then fiercer as the dam burst and the truth gushed out.
I remember a valley with a wide river running through it, the water white-capped as it tumbled over the bedrock. The water tasted sweet. On each side were cliffs with caves. My family lived in a deep cave on the left side of the river. Lesser families lived on the right side where the caves were smaller.
The black mountains surrounding us stretched into the clouds where the vines could not climb. We knew about the vines. They were knee-high because of the rocky land. Vast herds of wild goats with curved horns grazed the vines. Outside of the valley were patches of gnarled trees with pink smooth-skinned fruits that pregnant females craved. Inside the valley were trees with spreading branches that drew flocks of birds for their tart purple berries.
A family was a cave of related females, their offspring, and one adult male who raised two cycles of offspring. Females entered their breeding heat at the same time. There was no concept of time, but I think females bred every six years. Before the first cycle of daughters entered their heat, the family traded for a new father from the sons of other families. Sometimes, females brought a human male to the valley. We saw great distances from the mountain, and whoever retrieved a lost human owned all rights to him. If the man appeared strong, he was traded for breeding. If not, he was food.
Families with mixed blood were superior hunters and provided the worthiest males.
My father was found wandering and deemed worthy. I am certain he told me how he arrived in the valley, but my mind did not grasp his language, and his time was consumed with raising twelve children. Mothers did not raise their young. The females of a family hunted and gathered outside the valley and did not share with other families. The daughters hunted when their legs were sturdy and could scale the cliffs. Females grew fast. Males were smaller until transition. Fathers taught their sons chores and crafts.
After the sons turned from ugly weak nestlings into men, they wrestled each other to develop muscles to attract females. My brothers were cruel to me because I was smallest. But I was faster and stronger, and the first to tame wild goats. I should have been a worthy male. But I did not turn with the sons of my father’s first cycle. I remained a boy, which saddened my father because of all his children, I had the gift of voice.
For many, many generations, our caves overflowed with families. Whenever a breeding cycle neared, a ruthless culling began. A family fought to the death to steal a cave and forced those members into exile outside the valley. The males of the cave were killed for sharing the weak blood of the defeated females. My father taught my family how to fight using crude weapons. They won a good cave, and my sisters formed a separate family with plenty of room to grow and invite female cousins to join them and trade for a worthy male.
My father taught his sons skills to give them greater worth when the females traded for new fathers, like how to build bridges and better rafts to cross the river dividing the valley. My brothers fetched tall stacks of hides. Sons who failed to attract a cave of females were put to death along with the retiring father of each cave.
My family ordered me sacrificed with my father after he had raised his second cycle of offspring. It did not matter what good he had brought the family. His worthy blood would be drunk, and his strong flesh eaten by the family. This was their way.
Because it was their way, I would be killed and burned, my weak flesh a threat to any female eating it.
My father took me away at night. We carried a heavy pack of food and skins of water and traveled following the stars and sun. I know now he retraced his path to the canal, studying the flight of birds. My father talked to me, but I did not want to learn language. I missed my valley. I remember “canal” spoken many times. When we reached the tallest vines I had ever seen, as tall as the gnarled trees, our travel slowed. We heard gulls flying overhead, and my father was excited. He hugged me tightly before hiding me in the vines while he searched for the important canal. I understood the word “stay.”
I remember the smell of strange females passing by after he left. They tracked my father. He never returned. After a day and a night, I left my hiding place and followed the sounds of gulls to the canal. I sat on the bank watching them dive and was glad I ha
d not quenched my thirst when a strange toothed fish snatched a gull. Goats who’d strayed from their grazing herd found me crouching in fear by the vines and stayed by my side. The rest you know.
“You say I never cry, my Quiggs? I cried a day and a night for my father before I followed the gulls to the canal. Despite all the new wonders, I was very sad until I made a friend in the academy. My good friend Quiggs. Then I transitioned into a man and knew I did not want to mate a female. I wanted to mate my Quiggs when I was worthy of him.”
Quiggs didn’t know his cheeks were wet until Beau brushed off the tears with his hands. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”
“Because I had not the words, and the memories were forgotten. The memories awakened after I turned into a breeding male.”
In the academy, Beau would kneel on the bed behind Quiggs and soothe their agitation by braiding Quiggs’s long hair. Now, Beau sat on the bed with Quiggs on his lap and stroked his friend’s fuzzy head with gentle fingertips.
Quiggs closed his eyes, thinking of Beau’s awakened memories and of an amazing valley with a river beyond the canal. His eyes flew open. “How wide was the river in your valley? As wide as the canal?”
“Oh, wider by three widths.”
“You said your father taught the families how to build a bridge?”
“With braided vines and branches. It stretched between trees and swung side to side when we crossed. The valley was long, and he built several bridges.”
Quiggs licked his dry lips. “You said he taught them how to build better rafts. Did they build rafts before he arrived?”
“Long before my father arrived, they used hollowed trunks of fallen trees and gathered branches to pole across.”
Oh, shit.
Beau’s fingers stilled. When he sat beside Quiggs, he looked ill. “My father taught them how to bind limbs with goat hide. Every family owned a raft.”
Max’s voice yelled for someone to let him in. Beau unlocked the door, and without a word, Max leaped down the steps and dumped a lumpy canvas bag on the table with a heavy clank. He swept Quiggs up off the bed in a hug, holding tightly as if Quiggs was a flame, Max was chilled to the bone, and, blisters be damned, he couldn’t get warm enough.
Quiggs darted a look at Beau, afraid to see him hopping foot to foot upset with Max’s ownership. His expression still ill, Beau stood at rigid attention by the table with his fist over his heart, a soldier waiting for his commander’s orders.
Max groaned and set Quiggs down, murmuring, “Later.” He emptied the bag on the table. “Have any idea where the ferals would have found these?”
Quiggs brightened. He named them as he picked them up. “Elbow joints. Pipe fittings. Valves. The blue color pertains to waterworks. The ferals must have discovered an irrigation system when they dug their den.” He scraped a fingernail at the rust on a joint. “The pieces are slightly corroded, which is odd because the colonists developed metal that resists weathering.”
“It’s dried blood,” Max said. “They hurled these at the men passing beneath the trees.”
The ferals were accurate. Each piece had streaks of dried blood. Quiggs flipped over a large disk, spat on his palm, and rubbed off the blood. As he turned the gauge around and around, he matched the markings with pages of illustrations streaming across his mind. This gauge was used in a compression chamber measuring extremely high water flow. It wasn’t used in an irrigation line.
He sucked in a breath. For a dazed moment, his thoughts scattered, then he shouted and pumped a fist at the ceiling. “Those fuckers have discovered the main engineering room.” He bounced excitedly. “Where there’s the engineering room, the lost city of our ancestors is nearby.”
The territory had searched for the main engineering room for centuries. What were the odds of ferals finding it when they dug a breeding den?
Max shook Quiggs’s shoulder before he entered a fog. “Stay with me. Are the ferals tearing it apart?”
He blinked up at Max, the fog dispersing as the question sank in. “The ferals need tools to cause any damage to the existing structure. They must have looted replacement parts from a storage room.”
Max’s voice sharpened. “Is the engineering room large enough to house a hundred breeding females?”
“Easily. There are also miles of tunnels running beneath the canal lit by sensors in the walls.” As he understood why Max wasn’t chest bumping him and Beau with excitement, Quiggs swallowed a knot of anxiety. The tunnels offered plenty of room to raise offspring.
Max turned to Beau, gnawing at his lip though he remained at attention. “At ease, Private Beau. Are you ready to talk about family?”
Beau dropped his fist from his chest, ducking his head and whimpering.
Quiggs draped an arm around him before he slid under the table. “It’s okay, Beau. I’ll tell him.”
Max listened, his jaw tightening when Quiggs mentioned the rafts.
Beau curled his shoulders. “I am sorry, my Commander. These ferals will know how to cross the canal and raid our Triangle for food and breeding males.”
Max patted his arm. “Because of you, I know what we’re up against. There are over a hundred females out there. We can’t fight them hand-to-hand.” He looked at Quiggs. “We need something to scare them off before they turn our Triangle into a cage and our people into livestock. Like the explosive weapon we discussed.”
“It must be very scary for them to desert a breeding den,” said Beau.
“I can invent scary.” Quiggs brought out his sketches, explaining how his weapon using an enhanced fuel would blow up miles. “I haven’t figured out a safe way to ignite the first explosive. The vines are inflammable. If they crowd the path of a lit fuse, they’ll douse the flame before it ignites the explosive. You can’t move a tower within an archer’s range, or the ferals will shy off. Unfortunately, it’s a suicide mission for the soldiers who detonate the traps.”
“If you believe it’ll work, we won’t lack for volunteers. How soon?”
“Give me three days with Witters and Meeks in my old work tower.”
“The killer will stalk you,” Beau reminded him. “You will be sitting like a volunteer in a baited trap.”
“Not after the heralds tell the people it’s my fuel that will save their lives.” Quiggs preened at how well he’d figured everything out.
Beau did a happy dance, and Quiggs joined him.
Max yawned. “I’ll celebrate later. Now I need a bath, food, sleep.” He began stripping his clothes. It sunk in what Beau was wearing. “Private Beau… are you wearing my robe?”
“Yes, my commander.”
Max walked to the drained tub and noticed the wet towels draped over it. He turned the spigot on the cistern. A few drops trickled out. “What happened to my bathwater?”
“Your Quiggs bathed me and made me wear your robe,” Beau said. “I did not get an erection.”
Quiggs cuffed his head and chased him around the table.
“I miss my Cutty.” Max rubbed the bridge of his nose.
After a bland supper of military rations, Max lounged at the table sipping from his flask of brandy. He’d washed in a trough on deck. Beau had slipped from the cabin to sleep in his hammock when Max discovered the food cabinets were cleaned out.
Across from him, Quiggs played with the blue parts spread on the table, incorporating them into his new weapon. He picked up a pipe and peered through it at Max, teasing, “Looks like the size of my hole when you finish fucking me.”
Max didn’t laugh as Quiggs intended.
“It’s a joke, Max. I loved the sex despite the burn.” Quiggs added quietly, “You should try it.”
“I’d rather volunteer to ignite your explosive.” Max patted Quiggs’s head before using the trapdoor.
Quiggs woke up on his stomach with his white nightshirt rucked to his shoulders and a pillow propping his ass in the air. What felt like three fingers was stretching his ass. “A little warning first,” he compla
ined.
“It’s dawn. I asked. I stroked. I nibbled. You sleep like a rock.”
“Because you woke me up twice for sex and I came both times.”
“My cum was normal the second time.” Max removed his fingers and without apology thrust his cock to the hilt. He’d spent time prepping because the burn immediately faded to a pleasant ache.
What Max lacked in foreplay he made up with words. He praised Quiggs’s hot tight channel, his smooth ass, his mind, his humor, his loyalty, his trust, his honesty.
Quiggs felt like an insignificant brown pebble transformed into a magnificent gemstone with polished facets and fiery depths. Basking in the glow of Max’s words, he surrendered. This wasn’t the sexual release taught to cadets. This was incredibly… delightfully… gratifying.
Max finished quickly, then slipped a hand beneath Quiggs. “Your turn. Let me make amends. I’ll suck you if you’d like.”
Quiggs bucked Max off and rolled to his back. “Your rude fuck is forgiven. Proceed.” He arched his pelvis. Gamey cum trickled down his thighs. When Max stared hungrily at his mouth, Quiggs said, “Uh-uh. Wrong direction.” He shoved Max’s head toward his cock. “I’m clean if you want to swallow.”
“Warn me,” Max growled.
A heavy pounding on the door stopped Max as his mouth engulfed Quiggs’s cock.
His First Captain spoke out, “My pardon, Commander Bronn, a weather check is urgent.”
Max pulled his mouth off with a wet pop. “I’m on it.” He left Quiggs gasping in bed while he pulled on a pair of green pants and a navy tee. At the door he turned around, one brow lifted. “Duty calls. Don’t rub off while I’m gone.”
Quiggs opened his mouth to protest, then realized his hand was already fisting his rigid dick while he reclined atop the sheet with one knee raised. He shot Max an affronted look before lowering his nightshirt and folding his hands behind his head. “Bring breakfast rations when you return. And a bucket of water to wash up.”
The nightshirt was a punishment for Quiggs and Beau using up the water and cleaning out the food cabinet. When Max wrestled it over him, then teased how cute he’d looked with his flat feet sticking out, Quiggs had threatened to rip it apart. Their bickering led to Max’s second cleansing ejaculation with a hot thigh fucking. Then a third cleansing an hour later.
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