by Noah Layton
I moved back onto the sand, guiding Ariadne onto her back as Elera knelt by her side and watched intently. Ariadne teased herself with the tips of her fingers invitingly, waiting for me to enter her, and I could only oblige.
She moaned out lightly as I pushed into her, commanding her legs apart as I filled her up. Her mouth fell open, her eyes going wide as I engulfed myself completely in her.
I thrusted into her slowly as Elera watched. In no time at all she began to pleasure herself to the sight of me taking my foxgirl wife.
I didn’t know where to look.
‘Take her too,’ Ariadne breathed, her body shuddering and shaking.
I looked to Elera, who nodded to me in agreement. She paused in satisfying herself for a moment, and I was about to move to have her on her back, but she had different ideas.
The nymph crawled towards us, positioning her blue body over Ariadne’s so that they were face to face, their forms pressed against each other.
They were both waiting for me – Ariadne on her back and Elera on her front, her round, tight ass perched in the air and waiting for me.
I had never seen anything more perfect in my life.
Spoilt for choice, I pulled from Ariadne and guided myself into Elera, whose moans echoed through the cave as I took her. I ran my hands gently to her hips and thrusted faster.
I couldn’t resist looking at my wives as I fucked my nymph; they had embraced, looking deeply into each other’s eyes as they studied each other’s faces.
I pulled from Elera and moved back to Ariadne, clasping my hands into the sand and taking handfuls of it as I pounded her. Her moans were joined by Elera; I looked down to see my foxgirl’s fingers between my nymph’s legs, teasing her as she waited for me to return.
I managed to hold myself back long enough to push into Elera one last time. She kneeled up, arching her back and whipping her hair back as I slammed into her until I couldn’t cope any longer.
‘You’re going to make me…’
‘Give it to us, master,’ Ariadne moaned. Hearing her say that was all I needed.
Elera slipped away from me and rolled to Ariadne’s side. I stood over them, finishing myself onto their bodies uncontrollably. My seed fell upon them, covering their navels and breasts as I groaned out wildly.
My body was shaking like I had just come back from a battle. I staggered to the sand and fell onto my back, gasping for breath like a man possessed.
‘That was incredible…’ Elera breathed. ‘It was pleasurable the first time, but with another woman… Suddenly the idea of you having more than one wife does not sound so strange…’
‘Just wait till we do it together,’ Ariadne said.
‘You do it with more than two women at once?’ Elera said in shock.
‘If they don’t end up killing me,’ I replied, still breathing hard. ‘If you girls keep doing things like that you might.’
We caught our breath after a few minutes and took a dip in the pool, cleaning ourselves down.
Elera was incredible – I had no doubt in my mind that I had made the right decision in asking her to be my wife, and in bringing her into the tribe. Once the Essence of the River was produced she would be able to spend more time at the land, but in finding this place my success had multiplied.
The cave possessed more than a few assets – a power well, a private place to come and relax, and a source of freshwater for Elera if she wanted somewhere that reminded her of home, not to mention the mermaid’s breath. I couldn’t have gotten any luckier.
Ariadne had taken a liking to Elera, too. They were the more exotic of my two wives, so it made sense that they would get along. I loved Lara and Santana just as much, but sometimes it was good to be different. They had clicked faster than I could imagine.
I was relaxing on the embankment, staring up at the ceiling on my back, when Ariadne called out to me.
‘Are you coming or not, master?’
My wives had linked arms and were heading through the water towards the exit.
Now I was watching both of their pert, round asses swaying back and forth, leaving me alone in the cave.
Hell, even a tribe master had to work for these things sometimes.
Chapter Fourteen
After getting dressed the three of us returned to the land. The exit turned out to only be around 400 yards from our land, but was well-hidden enough that there was no way I could ever have noticed it otherwise.
I wasn’t a believer in keeping things from my people, but I decided to keep the knowledge of the hidden pool just between myself and my wives. If we needed a little downtime after a difficult day it would be the perfect place to relax, and considering all I did I thought that I could afford myself somewhere private.
With the ingredients compiled I headed to the Potions Totem and created the Essence of the River for Elera. She drank it down, frowning at the bitter taste, but as the day passed her body retained its complexion, and she said that she felt as healthy as she did in water.
It had worked – I would just need to make sure that I always had a fresh supply on hand.
I planned to return to the hidden cave later in order to extract as much as I could, but in the meantime I headed into the forest to the west with Lara to forage for more herbs.
The trip Santana and I had taken had been side-tracked by mining and our journey to Grayholde. It wasn’t the bad kind of deviation, but now we had an opportunity to start building our herb stores.
‘I like this,’ I said, slicing through the stems of a patch of sunleaf close to the ground. ‘Foraging, crafting our own potions… We’re really preparing, now. If anything comes our way in the future, we’ll be ready.’
Lara and I were crouched in the forest undergrowth fifty yards beyond the perimeter fence to the west. The air was heavy with the warring scents of the forest, and the fullness of the earth made for an intoxicating atmosphere.
‘We need to keep adding citizens,’ Lara suggested. ‘Build something close to a real fighting force. We have land, growing resources, growing funds… We have defenses, and many of the people that we have are reasonable fighters, but there is safety in numbers.’
‘I’m with you on that. Ariadne was the first person I added to my tribe outside of Alorion, but he came with the land. Technically I bought her, but at the same time I freed her from slavery. It’s a possibility that we do something like that. The amount of produce that moves through Ichabod’s Cove, I don’t doubt that we’ll be able to find more people to free there if we ask around with the merchants.’
‘Definitely. With these potions and a few more rounds of crop harvesting we should have enough gold to purchase – I mean free – a group, and still have plenty left over.’
‘Then we can work on expanding the crops further, building up our livestock… Things are really looking up. All we have to do is keep working. How many more patches of sunleaf do you think we can get today?’
Lara was usually quick to respond, but now I heard nothing. She shuffled in the grass nearby.
I glanced over at her. Her eyes had gone wide, her expression sullen, and she was slowly rising to her feet.
But her bow was already drawn, and an arrow was at the ready. She had done it so quickly that I hadn’t even noticed.
‘Jack…’
‘What’s wrong?’
She raised her bow and nodded behind me, deeper into the forest.
Crunch.
I heard a twig snap behind me just as I turned.
The moment my eyes set on what Lara was looking at, I brought up my inventory in a series of rapid hand motions and retrieved my sword, which I had previously stowed away.
Two men were emerging from the forest on horseback.
They caught sight of us perhaps a second after I saw them. They halted in their tracks immediately.
The man leading by a yard or two sat atop a large black steed. He was wearing a light overshirt and leather pants, with an expensive-looking metal scabbar
d at his waist sheathing a short sword. He was in his late-30s by my best guess, with a face creased with lines and thinning blonde hair perched on his round head.
The man to his left I couldn’t see. His face was shrouded in the hood of a purple cloak that met his neck and shrouded his body.
The leader of the two analysed the situation for a moment. I could see the process taking place in his eyes, even from twenty yards off.
‘Hello!’ He finally called out, projecting a pleasant persona. ‘What’s that?’ He said, looking past me towards the perimeter fence. ‘Is that your land?’
‘You’re asking too many questions, friend,’ I said sharply, staring him down. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Is a man not free to walk the land? What’s your name?’
‘My name’s fuck you, what are you doing this close to my land? Who are you?’
‘Tell me your name and I’ll tell you mine.’
I paused, gritting my teeth then unclenching my jaw just enough to get my words out.
‘Jack Hawthorne.’
‘Hello, Jack Hawthorne. I’m Eldric Werger. This is one of my guards, Tarek. He tells me that he recognises you from Grayholde, from The Iron Temple. That true?’
I looked over at his guard, focusing on his face. He pulled his hood down, and in an instant my heart felt like it was competing with my lungs to see which could drop into my stomach first.
It was the tall, wiry man from Grayholde, one third of the trio of goons who had almost found Santana and I while we were mining in the caves to the west.
‘It might be.’
‘It might be,’ Werger chuckled sardonically. ‘We came through Grayholde before heading out here. Something of an uproar there at the moment. Apparently, Mister Alder’s house was robbed recently. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?’
Fuck.
Are you fucking kidding me? It was me who ordered it. And I’ll do you one better; I’m harbouring the thief right now.
I would have loved to say that before cutting this asshole and his friend down, but that was the defensive part of me. My adrenaline was firing off like a thousand bullets, and I had to control myself.
‘You say you came through Grayholde?’ I called over. ‘So you’re the tribe to the North-west, right?’
Werger’s face dropped slightly.
Not so smart after all.
‘I’ve got ways of finding out information too,’ I said sternly. ‘Tribe master.’
Werger took a long pause to gather himself.
‘Very good, Jack Hawthorne, very good indeed.’
‘Well, I don’t mean to brag, but I would have to agree,’ I said sarcastically.
‘See?’ He grinned widely. ‘Look at us, exchanging information like normal people. We’re getting along just fine, aren’t we?’
‘If you say so.’
The guy may have slipped up, but he wasn’t stupid. Strange and with an odd look in his eyes, maybe, but he definitely wasn’t stupid.
‘So what are we going to do about this?’
‘What are we going to do about what?’ Werger asked.
‘This is my tribal land, and you know where it is. I’ve been keeping it a secret until now, and… Here you are.’
‘It’s fine. I’ll just turn around and walk away and forget you were ever here. You can trust me.’
‘No offence, friend, but I trust you about as far as I can fucking throw you.’
Werger smiled again, baring his teeth.
‘Well, then. It does seem we are in a bit of a predicament.’
‘No shit.’
On my left side Lara still had her bow raised, an arrow at the ready. It wasn’t taut, but her fingers were firm on both the bow and the projectile, and my sword was still raised.
‘Just say the word,’ Lara said quietly.
I took a deep breath and assessed my options.
Let them go and I would run the massive risk of them coming back with a battalion and killing us all. Cass said that the nearby tribe only consisted of a small caravan, but what if that was just a small fraction of their numbers?
Take them captive or kill them and I would run the risk of that same battalion coming to kill me anyway.
There was no successful way out of this situation. It was like a bad hand in a game of poker – I could do everything right and everything could still go to shit.
The only possible way out was to be democratic.
‘Here’s what’s going to happen,’ I started. ‘My companion here is going to head back to my land and inform my people of what’s happening out here. Then she’s going to come back out, and the four of us are going to head back to your land, and we’re going to have a talk about this situation.’
‘Absolutely. Please, feel free to bring a bigger caravan with you if that would make you feel more comfortable.’
‘And leave my land undefended while running the risk that there are more of your people in the forest waiting for us all to leave? You’re funny.’
‘So you’re a smart man,’ Werger laughed. ‘Very well. Let us return to my land.’
I grabbed Lara before she took off.
‘Find Alorion,’ I whispered to her. ‘Get him to check the perimeter. Don’t come back until he’s checked.’
‘Got it.’
Lara took off sharply, running through the forest and back to the gate.
Werger turned to his guard and began to talk quietly, and for fifteen minutes I stood in the forest in silence. I had lowered my sword but was still holding it tightly in my grasp.
The fact that my people were so close should have set my mind at ease, but the very opposite was true. We were exposed.
This tribe knew where we were. I thought I had had the upper hand, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Lara and Ariadne were two of the most well-trained, but Lara was a ranged attacker and I knew that I might need her on that front. Ariadne, Cass, Aden and Oden were all trained enough to protect the land if they needed to, which would maximise chances of survival.
Lara and I could hold our own in the event that anything broke out during our journey to Werger’s land. I was hedging my bets and trying to turn the tide in our favour; if I knew where his land was, we would have equal measures of leverage over each other.
So I waited. I waited for brutal, stretching minutes that dragged on in the white-noise din of the forest. I waited while the two visitors conferred quietly on their horses, one of them occasionally looking over their shoulder at me before returning to their discussion.
Waiting was all I could do. What I had said to Werger I had meant; I didn’t trust him in the slightest, especially considering the hushed tones that they were now speaking in.
I didn’t expect him to trust me either.
Lara finally returned with the horses and arrived at my side.
‘No sign of anyone in the forest. Alorion carried out a full sweep and I checked the north to southern gates along the eastern side. There are no tracks or signs of anybody apart from small animals. We are alone.’
‘Right…’
All I could do was go out on a limb and hope that they would be safe.
And I seriously doubted that this guy had a battalion at his command.
‘Start moving,’ I called across. ‘We’ll be right behind you.’
‘It’s an hour beyond Grayholde. Are you sure?’
‘Surer about it than anything in my life.’
Werger smirked slightly and conceded.
‘Very well. Let’s get started.’
They mounted their horses and turned, heading back through the forest the way they had come, while Lara and I exchanged a look and followed.
I equipped my scabbard for a quickdraw, but my sword would spend more time in my lap during the journey than it would sheathed.
We kept a distance of twenty yards at all times. In between keeping an eye on them, we were constantly looking into the forest for any signs o
f an ambush or for anyone trailing us, but there was no one.
Ariadne’s sense of hearing was excellent, but Lara’s tracking abilities, especially her tenacity for spotting movement, were unmatched by anybody in the tribe. Even so, every time I looked over at her she shook her head.
There’s nobody out there.
I nodded in response every time, but still spun to glance at every sound that came our way.
We reached the rocky patches and passed by the entrance to the cave that Santana and I had explored and almost been caught in, then picked up a little speed and continued through the forest.
When we finally arrived at the flatland that surrounded Grayholde, Werger and his companion commanded their horses in a north-western direction, keeping the town to our left.
‘Probably best to keep away from there for a little while until things have cooled off,’ he called back.
It was the first time he had said anything to us for hours, and I could still hear that stupid fucking smile on his voice.
The closest we came to the edge of the town as we crossed the flatland was around three hundred yards, and from there I seriously doubted what he had said.
Looking towards Grayholde I could see no roaming groups of goons and hear no screams. The same billowing clouds of smoke poured into the sky from the furnaces.
Nothing seemed to have changed from this distance, but I had been wrong before.
So we continued on.
New, unexplored territory opened up to us as we passed the town. We hit the forest again in no time and I knew that to the east there was only a few miles between us and the Rourke Homestead.
The thought of claiming new land in the name of the tribe had been unbelievably exciting when I had first established it, but now a harsher reality came crashing towards me.
We were closer than I could have possibly imagined to another tribe, one whose master I already didn’t like.
I had grown used to a forest that was luscious and bountiful, and while the space to the north-west was similar in abundance, a darkness seemed to cast itself over the land. It was only mid-afternoon, but it felt much later.
‘How much farther?’ I called ahead as we moved through this new wilderness.
