by Mike Truk
The world brightened, he felt heat come roaring up from his abdomen to spread like flames across his skin, his cock jerking again and again as he shot his seed inside her - and then he collapsed over her body, holding her close, her arms wrapping around him, her pussy still trembling around his cock, hips grinding up as she rode the last of her orgasm home.
They lay there gasping for a long time. Holding each other. Not needing to speak. Until finally Hugh straightened, pulled her up with him, and with her legs wrapped around his waist, his cock still buried inside her, walked into the rear of the house, into his dark bedroom, and there lowered her onto the bed and pulled the covers over their bodies.
His body was aflame. It wanted more. An unending night of ecstasy. But his soul felt liberated, his heart hammering, and he realized that he simply wanted to hold her, his face in her soft hair, breathing in her vanilla scent, one of her legs hiked up over his hip, his cock still inside her, luxuriating in her slippery warmth.
And all the heartache and pain and misery of the world seemed locked away, kept at bay by the circle of her arms, the tender kiss she gave him before nuzzling her face into the crook of his neck.
Hugh held her close. Marveled at being able to do so, and drifted off into a dreamless sleep.
Chapter Thirteen
Hugh awoke early. The shutters were limned with a soft, gray light. Dawn, or the promise thereof. He lay still, Zarja entwined about him, her leg over his thighs, head cradled on his shoulder, one of her fox ears tickling the line of his jaw.
He closed his eyes and drank in her presence. Moved his hand so that it rested on the swell of her bare hip. This moment of peace, he thought. Let me drink it in, so I can come back to it later, if I need strength.
But he couldn’t rest. His ever-burning vitality was roaring within him, demanding release. His legs felt twitchy, his body yearning to rise. To act. So, with great reluctance he slipped free of Zarja’s embrace, moving slowly, carefully so that she wouldn’t waken, and stood and stretched, reaching for the ceiling.
His muscles strained, ribs expanding, and for a moment his own body felt alien to him; so powerful and strong, an instrument of violence, a reflection of the curse that he bore. All his life he’d been in good shape, but never like this. With a quiet exhalation, Hugh relaxed. Gazed down at himself. The ridges and smooth expanses of muscle, the earthworm-like veins that ran down his biceps and across his forearms, his compact, painfully defined waist, the sheer thickness and expansiveness of his chest.
Never like this.
Putting the thought away, Hugh dressed, belted on his scabbard, and slipped out of the room. Stepped into the front chamber of the house, half hoping, half dreading to find Morwyn or Anastasia there.
Empty.
Feeling relief, and then cowardly for feeling such, he grabbed an apple, laced on his boots, and stepped outside.
Dawn. The Mandroga ran swiftly below, its waters mercurial and metallic. Already cookfires were burning in the homes on its far side, plumes of cottony smoke rising from chimneys. The day started early for the common folk. Bread was being baked, homes cleaned, livestock milked. The men no doubt had already left to begin their labors, whether that was tending their fields or seeing to their herds.
Hugh felt a pang of sorrow. To have a simple life. With everything predetermined by the Fate Maker. To know one’s lot and have no choice about the course of one’s life; and in losing that ability to determine one’s path to find peace in resignation. To live fully within the limits of one’s scope, never needing to worry about big decisions or self-fulfillment. A simple, peaceful, wholesome life.
Hugh chomped on the apple as he made his way toward the upper bridge. Finished it by the time he was halfway across and tossed it upriver. Moved to the other side and waited, watching, for the core to bob into view and then be lost to the waterfall’s carnage of foam and chaos.
Smiled, remembering simpler times of his own, when as a child he’d played this very game.
From there he took off at an easy jog, heading north, following the road up into the mountains. The gradual incline quickly warmed him, and he ran easily, not rushing, taking in the forest around him. One hand always on the pommel of his blade so that the scabbard wouldn’t bang against his leg. Bird song was rife in the canopy on either side. Ahead, rounding a curve, he saw a family of bull deer freeze, stare at him, and then leap into the undergrowth and disappear in a flash.
Up he ran, covering the miles without slowing, lengthening his stride, and as always, his thoughts stilled; his mind became fully present in the moment, focused on where to put his next step, on the verdant world about him.
And in that silence, deeper thoughts emerged, stealing forth at last now that they were no longer suppressed.
Regret. Shame. A deep-rooted desire to do better by Anastasia and Morwyn. Gratitude and pleasure at the thought of Zarja, which led to more complex emotions of guilt and confusion.
Growing up, he’d been told by the Fate Makers that all fae were creatures of evil and duplicity. The truest enemies of mankind, hating people for their successes, their growing numbers, for losing their land to us. Wanting nothing more than to steal back their old homes, to drive all humanity out of Mendev by any means.
But Zarja wasn’t like that at all. Was she the exception? She’d said she preferred humanity’s variability to her kind’s unchanging ways. Were those ways as the Fate Makers had described?
Hugh ran on, mulling these thoughts in abstract, allowing his mind to wander where it willed. Thought of the years Elena had served as a maid at the Rusałka without complaint. Thought of her words last night, the sheer depth and power of her love. How beautiful she was within. How she ennobled him.
Memories assailed him. The battles and fights and raids he’d taken part in with the Lost Reavers. They’d been fewer than he’d expected, going in. Just not that many fae left to track down and kill.
A village of satyrs deep in Osberg Wood. How the blood had tinted the stream crimson. Dragoslav harvesting scalps and horns. The tatzlwyrm of Dunaj Gorge. Its scales hadn’t been mithril and silver as rumored, but simply albino hide, more a dusky gray than true white. It had writhed terribly in death, pinned to the old oak by Kevanir’s boar spear. The hag out in the heart of Berl Swamp. Which had ensorcelled them so that they’d wandered for a week, lost in the mists, till Kuryan befriended that little boggart which had led them to the hag’s hut. They’d slaughtered the hag, hard fight that’d been, and then Jacinia had ordered the boggart killed in turn.
As if in response to his thoughts, the rising path disappeared into a thick fog which clouded the upper slopes of the mountains. Hugh put on speed, gut churning. Even back then he’d felt conflicted. But had obeyed orders, had convinced himself what they were doing was right. Defending humanity. Purging Mendev of evil. The Fate Maker’s sermons ringing in his ears each night, urging them to hew to their liturgy, to honor the Vornovian Creed, to not allow beauty and grace and soft words to deceive them, tempt them from the righteous path.
Would he have cut Zarja down, if he’d met her back then?
Hugh grimaced and ran faster, not wanting to answer that question.
Were all fae the enemy of mankind? Zarja clearly wasn’t. Therefore not all fae were. Which meant that only some were, or might be, which meant in turn that it was far more complex an issue than the Fate Makers wanted to admit, which meant -
Hugh staggered to a stop. A large, stone building loomed out of the fog, wreathed and funereal, a ruin long abandoned but no doubt once grand and imposing.
He stood, hands on his hips, panting for breath. For how long had he been running, now? An hour? Maybe more? He studied the massive edifice. Set just off the path, anybody seeking to pass it by would have to walk right under its walls. Twin towers three stories tall framed a ruined portcullis, the battlements wrapping around and disappearing into the fog, ten or so feet high. The top of one tower was fallen in, but the other still sported a roof of som
e kind, barely visible in the fog.
The fort he’d been sent to repair.
In the dawn light, shrouded as it was in the cottony white fog, it looked haunted, a place of ghasts and demons. No sound, no movement. The weight and solidity of the walls undone and mocked by the ruined portcullis, which was mangled and thrust aside as if a giant fist had smashed it aside as a child might a spiderweb.
Cautious, hand falling to the pommel of his blade, Hugh crossed the road to stand before it. Timbers lay strewn across the entrance. The remnants of the main gate itself, now covered in moss and rotted away.
What had happened here? It hadn’t simply been abandoned. How long had it stood thus, neglected and forgotten except by its owner in distant Stasiek?
Gingerly, Hugh stepped over the fallen planks, slipped past the badly rusted remains of the portcullis, and passed through the large archway into the bailey beyond. The gray walls were slick with moisture, dappled with pale lichen and the stone floor strewn with old branches and the mulch of countless autumn leaves. No sign of bones or rusted weapons, however. It hadn’t been abandoned right after a fight.
The bailey was small, barely large enough for a wagon. Two heavily reinforced doors banded in badly rusted metal led into the base of each tower, while a third led into a squat two-story keep that formed one of the back corners. The thick walls were nowhere breached, to Hugh’s immense relief. From where he stood, he could make out doors in the sides of the towers, allowing egress onto the battlements. Should someone break into the bailey, they’d be trapped, the three doors barred to them, and attacked from the walls above where men could rain down arrows or worse onto their heads.
A small, tightly controlled killing field.
Hugh gave a grudging nod of approval. Not a bad design. Too small for his tastes, however; the place couldn’t withstand a siege for long. No stables, no obvious place for a smithy, and it probably couldn’t garrison more than a score of men comfortably. A determined force could take it through sheer numbers alone, or swarm over its mere ten-foot walls.
He stepped up to one of the tower doors and gave it a push. The hinges were rusted solid. He briefly contemplated kicking the door in, but then backed away. Why bother? He’d only find rot and ruins within.
Hugh turned in a slow circle, getting ready to leave, and then froze.
A corpse was watching him from a high tower window.
Hugh felt his blood run cold, felt it drain from his limbs as his stomach clenched and his throat closed up.
It was the emaciated corpse of a woman, shriveled and brown as if disinterred from a bog, her filthy mane of black hair receding from her brow, her body clad in black rags. But her eyes. Milky and sunken as they were, Hugh felt them locked on him, glaring down with a terrifying rage and hatred - and then she vanished.
Heart pounding, Hugh realized he’d drawn his blade. He stared at the dark window, but nothing moved within. Yet he felt something. A sense of being watched. The nape of his neck prickled, and he spun about - but there was nothing there.
Just the moldy bailey, the dank heavy walls, the arrow-slit windows and the darkness that seemed to roil beyond them.
Carefully, casting glances in every direction, Hugh backed past the portcullis and out onto the road.
Nothing stirred. Nothing showed itself.
Yet Hugh was certain of what he’d seen. A ghost? Some manner of fae? He’d no idea. But now the ill-omened aspect of the fortress made sense.
And with a sinking heart Hugh realized just how hard it was now going to be to restore this fortress to working order.
“Shit,” he whispered, and sheathed his blade. “Well, fuck.”
He backed down the road, never taking his gaze away from the arrow slits that perforated the tower fronts until the whole building was lost to the mists.
Hugh jogged back down to Erro, moving more slowly this time, pensive, pondering the implications of what had happened. Implications he couldn’t game out, as this was far beyond his depth; if he’d still been with the Lost Reavers, he’d have turned to Birandillo with his encyclopedic knowledge of all things supernatural, or the seer-sisters Nevkha and Nastusia.
But perhaps he had an even better recourse now.
He was almost upon the village when he espied a lithe figure moving down the road just around the corner.
Morwyn.
His body responded with almost the same intensity with which it had reacted to the specter or ghoul or ghost or whatever it had been in the keep. Hugh slowed to a walk, thought of retreating up the road, but it was too late.
She’d heard him.
Morwyn stopped, hand dropping to the hilt of her blade, and looked over her shoulder at him.
“Fuck,” she said, voice without emotion.
She was in rough shape. Eyes hooded and ringed with purple, hair mussed and with fragments of dry leaves in it, a smudge of dirt across her pale cheek.
Hugh didn’t know what to say. Her gaze was flat, near venomous. Not that he blamed her. Should he apologize? That’d only make her more upset. Then - what?
“I think I just saw a ghost,” he heard himself say.
Morwyn clearly hadn’t expected that. She frowned then raised a finely arched brow. “A what?”
He gestured back over his shoulder with his thumb. “Up the road, in the old fort. The one we’re supposed to restore. I went inside, looked around.”
Surprise gave way to skepticism. “And you saw a ghost.”
“I don’t know. Might have been. She was in a window, looking down at me. Flesh all withered and shrunken, like she’d been dead for centuries but preserved, somehow. Bones visible under her skin. Then she just disappeared. One second there, then -” Hugh snapped his fingers. “Gone.”
“Sure you didn’t see an old homeless lady?” Morwyn placed her hands on her hips. “Someone squatting up there for a decade or two would look pretty scary to a city boy like yourself.”
She might have been trying to needle him, but Hugh found himself smiling. “Oh no. This was clearly a dead, impossible thing. I could feel her hatred of me. The way she stared at me.”
“Like the way I’m staring at you now?”
“Yeah, maybe.” Hugh fought to keep his voice even. “Except there’s a difference. That thing up in the keep doesn’t have a good reason to hate me. You do.”
Morwyn lifted her chin, frowned. “What’s this? You apologizing for treating me like a whore?”
“Look, the things I said -”
“Because you shouldn’t apologize for treating me like a whore if that’s what you think I am.”
“I don’t think you’re a whore.”
“No? That’s strange. Then maybe you think I’m your toy?” She began walking up the road toward him. “Something to play with, to break and throw away? That what you think I am, Lord Hugh of Stasiek?”
“No,” said Hugh. “I don’t think you’re my toy. Anybody’s toy.”
“That’s strange. What was it you said? That you’d force me to fuck a peasant? Oh. No, that’s right. You were going to chain me up naked like a dog outside your front door and then whip me.” She was drawing close, her slate blue eyes boring into his own. “Sure sounds like you think of me as your fuck toy and little else.”
“Morwyn.” Hugh raised both hands. “I was way out of line. I’m sorry.”
“Now I remember.” She stopped before him, hands on her hips, and smiled. “I’m a tool. A suicidal, self-loathing tool that yearns to be used and broken and then thrown away. Do I have that right?”
Her smile was terrible, somehow at once an expression of beauty and tragic, numbing pain. Her eyes glittered as she stared at him, awaiting his denial.
“Fuck,” said Hugh, rubbing one eye with the base of his palm. “I really am a fucking idiot. I’m sorry. I should never have spoken to you like that. Nobody should.”
“Why not?” Her smile faltered, came back. “I had a long night, Hugh. A very long night. And your words, they forced m
e to come to terms with some truths. Truths about myself. And you know what? You were right. What you said. I’ve finally admitted it to myself. I am a tool.”
“No,” said Hugh, putting heat into his words. “You’re not, Morwyn.”
“No? Strange. What else would you call an object that lives to serve? To be used? To excel in its function? That doesn’t have its own personal life. Hobbies. Friends. Lovers. That doesn’t fucking allow itself to even dream, because those dreams, those dreams, you fucking asshole, they - they -”
Her eyes filmed over with tears. Reflexively, Hugh reached out a hand but she smacked it away with a cry. Reached up to wipe the tears away angrily.
“I’m a fucking tool.” Her voice was a low hiss. “I don’t deny it. Ever since entering your brother’s service fifteen years ago I’ve strived to be nothing else. To be a living blade. Without emotion, without ambition, without pity, without hope. And I’ve been fucking good at it.”
Hugh wished suddenly and desperately that Zarja were here. So that she could say the right thing, help Morwyn as she’d helped Anastasia.
But she wasn’t.
“Why, Morwyn?” His voice was little more than a whisper. “Why? You were little more than ten years old when you moved into the castle. You were like this even back then?”
“Oh yes,” she said, voice brittle, her smile returning. And to Hugh’s horror there was a hint of madness to its tremulous curve. “For as long as I can remember. But you don’t get to know why, Hugh. You don’t deserve that kind of trust. What’s more, you don’t even need it. All you need to know is that you’ve got an adequate tool in me at your disposal. You want something cut down? A tree? A bandit? A villager? A child? I’m ready. But you don’t get to talk to me about anything else. You don’t get to touch me. You don’t get anything except my blade. We clear?”
Hugh took a step back, dismay flowering in his soul. “Morwyn.”
