by Noah Layton
‘I fucking knew it,’ one of the warriors responded with a laugh. ‘We would have had it if that damned patch of rocks didn’t need mining on the north-western section.
‘Don’t blame the land,’ one of the sun-elves retorted. ‘You picked your patches, now pay up.’
‘How about a rematch?’
‘What did you have in mind?’
‘Double the gold for whoever wins tomorrow.’
The sun-elves deliberated for a moment, then one nodded.
‘Deal.’
‘Things are getting serious,’ I laughed, ‘Let’s ditch the work for the day and get some food.’
The warriors headed into the land through the southern gate, followed closely by the sun-elves. One hung back, the same that had made the bet.
‘I feel somewhat bad about that,’ he said quietly to me.
‘About what?’
‘The bet. Sun-elves’ muscles are lean but recover faster than many other beings from exertion. He and his men may have trouble tomorrow.’
‘I don’t know, man, they’re pretty tough.’
‘We shall see.’
I looked out of the gates before locking up for the night. With this amount of manpower working flat-out we had already completed half of the trench, and with a little luck and probably a few pulled muscles we would be able to get it completed by tomorrow.
Our defences were really coming together, and once the spikes were in place and the obstacles established, any asshole who wanted to try to establish an attack would regret it the moment he started.
I locked the gates up and headed through the pasture towards my home as the sun cast the last of its light for the day over the land. The sun-elves and the warriors had set up tents by their wagons in the southern pasture, and were settling down around small fires for the night with a fresh meal. Their camps were separate, but they were still getting along with each other, something that I couldn’t have been happier with.
I rounded the perimeter to make sure that all lookouts were on point and the gates were locked, saying goodnight to Alorion at the northern tower and returning to my treehouse.
On my return, I found Tormus and Eri sat outside of their home.
‘Moonseed?’ I said, nodding to their canteens.
‘While I am waiting to give birth?’ Eri said. ‘Not likely. Just milk and water.’
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Close. My boy will be here any day now.’
‘We had better have plenty of meat and milk in storage,’ Tormus said, ‘for my boy will be consuming all of it.’
‘If he’s really as strong as you think he will be, get him to come and help me with the fence when he gets a minute.’
‘On the day of his birth?’ Tormus laughed. ‘Perhaps not… A week later? Maybe.’
I bade them goodnight and moved past the rows of crops, stopping at Talia’s house. I knocked on the door, hearing her respond a moment later with-
‘Who is it?’
‘Jack.’
‘Just a moment…’
She fumbled about, then opened the door wide. She smiled at me warmly.
‘Hi…’ She said warmly.
‘Hi. Can I come in?’
‘This is your land,’ she laughed. ‘So I suppose so.’
She headed inside and I followed her into the small shack. Despite the basic nature of the building – it was the smallest structure that could be created using the tribal building system, - Talia had turned it into a homely place. A small lantern sat by the bed, casting orange light around the room, and a book laid open on the bed.
‘To say that this place was originally built to house a prisoner, you’ve made it pretty damn cosy.’
‘You had a prisoner in here? I thought you didn’t take slaves.’
‘We don’t, but it’s a long story.’
‘Right,’ Talia smiled. She stood across from me in the quiet room, looking between my eyes and my lips. ‘Did you want to come and talk about the other night?’
‘Not really, other than the fact that it was incredible.’
‘That it was…’ She said slowly, biting her lip.
‘You’ve been with other men before, haven’t you?’
‘Of course. Being a princess among my old tribe meant that I was only supposed to lie with the man that I eventually married, but I never did end up with a man to marry. I was alone for a long time, but once I turned 20 years-old and still being so ignored by my family, I decided that I could easily sneak away and… Indulge in the pleasures that I wished.’
‘With who?’ I asked curiously.
‘There was a man amongst the ranks of my people, a soldier. We would occasionally sneak into the forest to meet.’
‘A soldier? So you’re into the bad guys?’
‘He thought he was a bad man. Not so much, though.’
‘How was he?’
‘How was he what?’
‘In bed.’
Talia grinned. ‘He was… Fine. I only laid with him for something to do out of boredom if I’m being honest. But… He was nothing compared to you. The way you feel inside of me… It is indescribable.’
She moved towards me and pressed her hands against my chest, looking deep into my eyes.
‘You feel pretty fucking amazing too, if I hadn’t made that clear before.’
‘Thank you,’ she smiled widely. ‘I mean it when I say that I have never met a man like you.’
‘I get that a lot. Don’t make me feel too happy with myself.’
‘Oh, I won’t.’
I kissed her passionately, feeling the perfection of her tight body in my strong hands.
She could have easily pulled a dagger and driven the blade into my back in that moment, but the pain never arrived.
We pulled away from each other slowly.
‘You should be getting back to your wives, no?’ Talia said. ‘I think they would not approve of you spending another night with me.’
‘They’d actually prefer it if we could all share a bed.’
‘… And you?’
‘I think it’s late, and we should get some sleep,’ I smiled. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’
She smiled back at me and we kissed once more before I left her house, closing the door behind me.
The thought had been knocking back and forth in my mind, but feeling how right it was to kiss Talia, to feel her body at my touch, I knew that tomorrow I would ask her to be my wife.
I turned into my treehouse for the night. My wives were relaxing inside, waiting for me.
‘How am I ever going to keep all four of you satisfied?’ I asked, pulling off my vest and throwing it onto the ground by the door.
‘I am sure that large cock of yours will find a way,’ Elera said. ‘There is more than enough for all of us to share, after all.’
God, I loved this place.
‘May I make one suggestion?’ Ariadne said. ‘Can we get a new bed? It’s getting overcrowded in here and I occasionally like to stretch out.’
‘We’ll get one,’ I promised. ‘Although if this approaching cold snap coming around in the near future gets a little too cold we might need to huddle together for warmth. Besides, starting a fire inside a tree might be one of the worst ideas I can think of.’
‘Hot coals and water,’ Elera said knowingly.
‘Like a steam room?’ I replied.
‘What is steam room?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘As I was saying, we use fire outside to heat coals, place them within our home in a container, then pour water to release the steam. There was a pocket I once found during my time in the rivers.’
‘Sounds like a damn good plan. Makes me glad that I built our citizens’ houses out of stone so that we can install furnaces without too much of a risk of setting fire to the places. I wonder what we can do about the people on lookout duty…’
‘I doubt that the cold snap will last that long,’ Ariadne said. ‘It has
been an age since Agraria experienced prolonged cold weather.’
‘If you say so,’ I nodded. ‘I love the hot weather. In my world it wasn’t always like this. We’d get hot and cold at different times of the year.’
‘And what did you prefer?’
‘When its hot people complain, when its cold people still complain,’ I said, pouring a bucket of water into the bathtub. ‘But I prefer the heat, as long as I’m dressed for it.’
‘What is appropriate attire for heat, though?’ Ariadne said.
‘Clothes in public,’ I said.
‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ Elera pouted.
‘But nothing behind closed doors.’
‘That I do like the sound of.’
I shook my head with a smile and fetched a few more buckets of water, filling the tub up before relaxing into the lukewarm water.
My body was hot, tired and overworked, and the feel of it against my skin was soothing and relaxing at the end of a long day’s work.
Elera couldn’t wait to head over and kneel by my side, gently rubbing the water into my skin and wiping away the dirt and marks that I had acquired. The feeling of her soft hands rubbing over my muscles calmed me.
I had no doubt a part of it was her taking any opportunity to have water on her blue skin, but her supple fingers were like pure ecstasy as she ran them expertly over my body.
I almost fell asleep at her touch as I and my girls became drowsier, but after being fully cleaned off I climbed out of the bathtub, towelled off and collapsed onto my back in bed, my naked body indulging in the softness of the sheets and the mattress.
This bed had cost me a decent stack of gold, as well as the silk sheets and luxurious pillows, but when a man spends a third of his life in bed, especially a man who worked as much as I did, I believed that it was his duty to invest in the right bed.
While my exhausted body relaxed, though, my eyes were taking in the sight of my wives as they undressed from the last of their clothes and headed over to join me in bed.
Santana pulled off her robe and let it slip to the ground, revealing her pale, perky breasts, her body wrapped in nothing but a pair of black underwear that wrapped around her waist. She practically crawled to my left side and got comfortable, just as Elera, already completely naked, moved over my body and snuggled up to Santana.
‘Could you help me out?’ Lara said to Ariadne. ‘My arms are too stiff to reach…’
I had been sleeping in bed with both of them almost since I had become tribe master, but I had never gotten tired; especially now that I was watching Ariadne undo Lara’s bra, my hunter shrugging out of it and stretching her shoulders, accentuating her large breasts.
They moved into bed next to me, Lara first and Ariadne behind her, wrapping their arms around each other as my four wives snuggled up to me.
The days in Agraria were dangerous and deadly, and I never knew what I would have thrown at me.
The nights, on the other hand, I always knew what I was coming home to.
But this night would be different from the others.
Chapter Fifteen
Weeks ago, back when we had first established the four lookout posts, we had taken an extra measure to prepare ourselves against outside attack: the beaks of red xeveas.
‘They’re predatorial birds with a knack for bad behaviour,’ Lara added. ‘They don’t just eat other birds and kill their young, they shit all over their nests so that nothing will ever grow there again. They’re also not very afraid of people, either, and if they couldn’t get any worse there isn’t even any pride in eating them because their meat tastes terrible.’
‘So why do we need them?’
‘The beaks,’ Ariadne said. ‘In my old tribe we used to have a competition to see who could kill the most. We gave their severed beaks to the children to play with. They make a distinctive whistling sound when blown through, after they have been cleaned obviously. It is recognisable, but it blends in with the forest. We could use them at each lookout point.’
Everybody on lookout duty had been equipped with one, ready to be used if the tribe needed to be alerted in the event of an emergency occurring beyond our perimeter line.
That night I had drifted off into a restful sleep quickly. At an unknown hour in the dead of night, both Ariadne and Lara sat up on my right, silently listening.
I stirred awake and looked up at them.
‘What’s up?’ I whispered.
Ariadne’s silhouetted hand flew up in the dark, a single finger telling me to pipe down.
I listened and heard the unmistakable sound of the red xevea’s long, protracted caw.
‘Is that one of ours?’ Lara asked.
It bleated out across the land unnaturally.
‘Yep,’ I said sharply, throwing back the covers and leaping out of bed. I pulled my clothes and my boots on quickly, and equipped my sword at my side and ensured my power stones were at the ready.
Ariadne listened closely.
‘It’s coming from the south.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Definitely.’
‘You think we’re under attack?’ Santana said, waking up sharply.
‘I don’t know. Round up the satyrs and the fox-people, Talia too, and get everyone to Tormus and Eri’s house.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s safest over there, and if anybody’s attacking they’ll be coming straight for here. Nobody would think to go for the farmer’s house.’
‘What about Cass and her brothers?’
‘They’re armed and strong, and their house is a little more remote. They know how to look after themselves.
The girls dressed quickly as I dashed to the door and looked out, scanning for any sign of movement. A torch was burning outside of each house, as they always were at night, but there was no other sign of movement.
From the steps I looked north to Alorion’s tower. A lone torch burned in a holster hanging from the edge, and in the firelight I could see him waving over to me and shaking his head.
It wasn’t him.
I looked in turn to the west and east, Cass and a fox-person manning them respectively. Both gave me the same response. No attackers.
I jumped down from the steps and rounded the tree quickly, then looked south.
The male fox-person who usually manned the south was stood there, waving his arms in my direction and blowing into the red xevea beak.
Shit.
The warriors and the sun-elves encampment stood between me and the lookout post. Half of them were on their feet with their weapons in hand as they looked towards the fox-man in confusion, while the others were stirring and looking around.
I set off at a sprint through the pasture, quickly reaching the temporary camp.
‘Follow me and grab your weapons,’ I said, passing them. Those standing followed me, while those stirring quickly got to their feet and readied themselves, setting off shortly after.
‘What is it?’ I called up to the fox-man.
‘There’s movement out there in the forest. Someone’s coming.’
A sun-elf helped me hoist away the heavy bar that locked the wooden gates. We cast it aside and heaved the gates open, looking out into the darkness.
In the darkness of the crowded trees beyond our wall, a flame was moving sharply towards us. It bobbed up and down sporadically with a mind of its own, growing closer and closer.
‘I need an archer!’ I said, turning to my men.
Two sun-elves immediately moved forward with their bows drawn and an arrow at the ready in each.
I selected my Telekinetic Blast power stone and looked to the flame as it pushed through the final few trees and emerged into the clearing before the gate.
Captain Archie’s fearful face was illuminated by the torch that he clung to. His face was scattered with small scratches suffered from the wilderness that he had come running through.
He didn’t stop, staggering forwards with terrified eyes.
<
br /> ‘They’re coming, Jack. They found the ship.’
‘Who did?’
‘… The mercenaries. They haven’t stopped looking for that woman of yours.’
I gulped as a shudder ran up my spine.
‘How the hell did they find you?’
‘They haven’t stopped searching. I was sleeping in the hold when I heard them approaching and managed to escape.’
‘And you brought them here?’
‘They have a dog with them that can trace the scent, and they’re coming this way right now.’
A dog. It had to be the same breed as the vicious kind that the merc caravan had been travelling with.
‘How far off?’
‘Minutes, maybe.’
‘Okay,’ I said, scanning in the darkness before turning up to the fox-man on lookout. ‘Douse that fire, and we need the rest of the fires putting out right now. Two of you lock the gates, and the rest of you, get out there and put out every other fire on the land.’
‘Then what, Master Jack?’
‘We regroup back here. You’ve got one minute.’
A pair of sun-elves moved immediately to pull the gates shut while the rest of us – myself, the five warriors and the three remaining sun-elves – took off at a sprint to shut everything down.
I dashed to the camp and kicked the fire out, then rushed to the treehouse and extinguished the torch on the ground, stamping it to pieces on the dried dirt.
I moved north slightly, walking at a fast walk towards Tormus and Eri’s house as I looked east to see my wives bringing the satyrs and the fox-people to the stone house by the crops.
Within sixty seconds of leaving the northern post we were jogging back across the pasture, just shapes in the dark suppressing the sounds of our footsteps against the tall grass.
Regrouping with our weapons at the ready, I looked over my shoulder to scan my land once more, but I could no longer see this place I called home.
My small kingdom was completely cloaked in darkness. Not a single fire burned.
‘What’s the plan?’ One of the sun-elves asked.
‘We stay quiet and hope that they get the fuck out of here. The flag of your tribe is hanging right out there. Hopefully that will be enough to deter them from trying to enter the land.’
‘That dog will lead them right here,’ Captain Archie whispered, leaning against the perimeter fence and panting for breath. ‘It puts them in a difficult spot; either they come in here and attack, or take heed of the tribe’s status and leave. But if they want that woman of yours enough, they may bring back reinforcements.’
