‘And you’re offering, are you, Arioc?’ Veraine grunted to the linen sheet under his face.
‘No, sir. You’re not my type. I’d suggest you go back to that silk-house though.’
‘The silk-house just about threw me out last time,’ Veraine growled. Then he added, ‘What do you mean, I’m not your type? Don’t tell me you do prefer pussy to arse, Arioc; four thousand men can’t have all got it wrong.’
‘Four thousand men are under the impression that I’m your mattress,’ Arioc pointed out, digging into his ribs perhaps a shade too hard.
‘Oh, great. Just great.’ Veraine was not really surprised; he supposed he should have expected it.
‘I do screw arse, sir,’ Arioc continued conversationally, adding an extra drizzle of oil between the shoulder blades and running it out to the triceps. ‘But you’re not the kind I prefer. You’re . . .’
‘What?’
‘You’re a general, sir. You walk and act and think like a noble. You smell like a noble. You’re rational, self-disciplined and courteous. Mostly,’ he added as an afterthought. ‘Not what I’m interested in.’
‘You like something a bit less bland, I gather?’
‘I can appreciate a good man, sir. It just doesn’t get me hard.’
‘So you fuck foot soldiers. Well, I can see that your family might want to keep that quiet.’
‘Oh, you don’t know the half of it, sir.’ There was a clink as Arioc picked up the strigil he had prepared. He touched the bronze scraper firmly to Veraine’s neck and the General jumped at the coldness of the metal.
‘Go on, shock me,’ he said grimly.
Arioc began to run the strigil across his body, bringing off a layer of oil, sweat and dirty skin, which he wiped off the bronze onto a handcloth. ‘I fuck foot soldiers,’ he said as he scraped Veraine clean. ‘I take cock. I like it hard and nasty. I like it from a group of men. One isn’t enough. I like it when they slap me about, and when they piss on me, and when they make me crawl. It’s hard to keep that discreet. I’ve tried to tone it down, to make do with the lighter stuff. But it doesn’t give me a rush the way being cluster-fucked in a latrine does.’
Veraine’s eyes were suddenly wide open, though he said nothing.
‘There was this time. This was the best time I ever had – I still think about it, though it left me terrified for weeks. I was in barracks at Antoth. It was late at night, and I was out in the city, just going from tavern to tavern, looking for action. I was crossing the road when I saw a soldier coming out of a wine-house, fumbling with himself. He was a big, rough-looking bloke, with a broken nose and scars all down one side of his face. He had an ear missing too. I didn’t recognise him, he must have been from a different host. He caught sight of me and looked me over, long enough for me to be sure, then he stared right past me like I wasn’t there. He turned away down an alley and I followed him. He went behind the tavern into what must have been a potter’s yard; there were broken pots all over the floor and the ground was all dug up into humps of kilns. He stopped against the nearest one and lifted his tunic. I came in a little closer, and suddenly he turned round and glared at me, asked me why I’d been following him. He had his cock out in his hand and I couldn’t stop staring at it. It was thick and knobbly and misshapen, just like him, with thick veins like snakes twined about it. I told him I wanted to watch him piss. He didn’t say a thing, but he suddenly rushed at me and knocked me flat, then grabbed hold of my tunic and held me up as he straddled me, his legs set either side of my shoulders, my face stuck against his crotch. Then he lifted his tunic again and slapped his cock into my face and he pissed all over me, up my nose and in my eyes, and he stuffed it in my mouth and just kept pissing. I nearly drowned. He was snarling something about if I wanted to see it, here it was, but I couldn’t really hear, I was so busy trying to swallow and breathe at the same time.
‘Just as he finished a bunch of other men came up to us. Three men. His friends. They asked what the fuck was going on, and he told them he had found this little bitch-dog that was following him around. He whipped his belt off and looped it round my neck, then dragged me back and forth across the ground in front of his mates. They were laughing like they were going to burst. They made me bark and whimper, and then lick their feet. They liked the whimpering. Then one of them said he thought the bitch was on heat because she was flashing her ass for everyone to see. He pulled out his tackle and asked me if I wanted to lick at that. So I did, and he held me by the hair and fucked my throat. Then, while I crouched on hands and knees, they took it in turns to bugger me while their friends had their cocks sucked at the other end. They stank of alcohol and piss, and they were so fucking strong and brutal – I had a hard-on every moment of the ordeal. They laughed at that. They threatened to cut it off, because a bitch shouldn’t have a pizzle. They stood round me when they had finished and made me bring myself off, and then eat my spunk off my hands. I was nearly shitting myself in fear. They all had knives.
‘Finally they tied my wrists to my knees and left me crouched there in the potter’s yard, unable to move. I was one huge bruise from head to foot. My commanding officer had to send a team of stretcher-bearers to get me back to barracks the next day. But I still had a hard-on. Turn over, sir.’
Without thinking, Veraine rolled onto his back, propping himself up on his elbows. Arioc had set down the strigil and his hands were cupped full of oil. He looked down at Veraine’s body. Veraine followed the line of his gaze.
Arioc raised his eyebrows. Veraine looked uneasily at the tumescent length of his half-erect cock, stirring on his belly. As they watched a surge ran up it, and it visibly thickened.
The smile illuminated Arioc’s beautiful features like a light. ‘I told you, you were tense,’ he murmured. Oil dripped from his long fingers. He reached out to touch the General’s member.
‘No,’ said Veraine, very clearly.
The smile became mocking. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve never fucked a man, sir?’
‘Not recently.’
‘I didn’t think you could be the only virgin in the Eighth Host.’
‘I prefer women,’ said Veraine through bared teeth.
‘That’s all right. I don’t like officers.’ Arioc looked down at his own quite obvious bulge. ‘We can be flexible.’
Veraine sat bolt upright, trying to parry the reaching hand, but he was far too slow. And as Arioc’s oiled fingers closed around his aching length, he forgot why he had any objections. A groan escaped from his throat. The muscles of his stomach clenched and jumped.
‘That’s better, sir,’ Arioc said, kneeling up beside him to get both hands engaged. His grip was firm and knowing, as efficient as his massage. One slim patrician hand worked up and down the shaft, while the other cupped and flexed his scrotum. Veraine imagined hot lead had been poured into his balls; they felt heavy and fit to burst. Unhurriedly, Arioc worked his foreskin back down from the head of his cock, revealing the flushed and angry dome and the slitted eye from which milky fluid was already seeping. And Veraine, who had never intended or anticipated this, could only be grateful that somebody – anybody – was taking in hand the demanding, raging beast that jerked and danced between his legs. He leaned back against his braced arms, eyes closed, feeling the blood begin to boil in his veins.
‘You’re gagging for it,’ Arioc observed.
Veraine forced his eyes open. The young man’s head was bowed reverentially over his toil, his hand alternating between a blur of movement and slow, masterful strokes that made the General bite his lip in frustration. Arioc’s glossy black curls quivered to the rhythm of his pumping muscles. Veraine struggled for speech.
‘That’s enough,’ he managed to say.
Arioc looked up at him sharply and shook his head, the quirk of his lips expressing sheer wickedness.
‘That’s enough, soldier!’ Veraine rasped, and this time his voice held the bite of command. ‘Up against the wall!’
Arioc released him,
crossed the room in two long strides and slapped his hands hard against the plaster, head bowed. Veraine rolled off the table to his feet, glanced around the room and found what he wanted; a short-bladed knife on the pile of linen to be used for rags. He walked up behind Arioc, his cock sticking out before him like a spear, surveyed the young man’s back for a moment, then hitched the knee-length tunic up and cut through the cords of the loincloth beneath. He was sloppy with the knife, nicking Arioc’s skin over the hip. The young man shuddered like a horse on the battlefield.
Veraine threw both blade and shredded cloth to the floor and placed both hands on the other man’s arse, feeling the muscle hard under the sculpted planes of the skin.
‘Spread your legs,’ he growled. Arioc jerked his feet apart on the flagstones. Veraine slid his thumbs into the cleft of his buttocks, finding tight, shiny skin and wiry hairs and – very quickly – the clenched muscular ring of his anus. He guided the head of his own cock to that aperture and without pause or warning shoved nearly the full length of his member hard into it.
It was a good job that Arioc had slathered him in oil, because that orifice was far drier and tighter than a woman’s sex. The chariot-driver jerked beneath him and made a noise that might have been a sob, but he did not cry out. Veraine rested for a moment against his back, bemused temporarily by its muscularity, by the narrowness of the hips under his hands. He laid his cheek against the youth’s raven-black locks. ‘Comfortable?’ he asked sarcastically.
Arioc made a whining noise in his throat.
Veraine considered abusing him verbally, but impatience got the better of him. Though the young man would probably appreciate it, Veraine was not interested in giving a performance or indulging the other’s tastes. He wanted to come. He wanted to shoot his load into that tight grip and fill the man’s arrogant arse with his jism and that was all.
He reached round and found the other man’s erection, proud as a battle-standard. He slapped it once, stingingly, with his flat palm and then let it fall back to rest there. It felt surprisingly good. Arioc’s cock, like Arioc, was slim and elegant. Veraine gripped it firmly, knotted his other arm around the other man’s belly and began to fuck him strong and hard. Arioc groaned, spread his legs wider and opened up to him, taking it to the hilt. The grip on Veraine’s cock pulsed and clenched and new spaces unfurled about it, the incredible heat and softness and yielding caress of that interior world sending bolts of fire up the invading member and into his spine. He thrust pitilessly and came at last with a snarl, barely conscious of the alien prick spasming under his hand.
He pulled out after only a moment’s rest, before his tumescence had subsided, and stood panting, surprised at the effort the act had wrung from his body. Arioc leaned against the wall, wiping the sweat from his face. Snail-trails glistened beside him on the plaster, where his own ejaculate had bespattered the wall.
‘Well, I do feel better for a good fuck, you were right,’ Veraine nodded, trying to calm his ragged breathing. ‘But if you ever disobey an order again like that, soldier, I will have the chariot-pole rammed up your insubordinate arse. Understand?’
Arioc’s brows shot up. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said soberly.
6 The Devouring Earth
‘If you are ready, Malia Shai,’ said Muth, picking up the paintbrush. It looked tiny in her broad hand.
The younger woman slipped off her dress and lay down on the plinth that occupied the centre of the Room of Writing. A single layer of cloth separated her from the block of stone and it was cool where it pressed on cheek and breasts, belly and thighs. She let out a long breath, composing herself.
‘Forgive me, mistress of lamentation!’ Muth said, and followed up with a swiftly chanted prayer in the priestly dialect, begging the cruel goddess of pestilence to forgive her profane touch. The goddess in question closed her eyes and tried to relax.
She was tense. It was undeniable. Despite her self-control, anticipation of the Drought Ceremony, only a matter of hours away, was making her nerves sing. It was not a rite that could be approached casually. The effort it demanded, both physically and spiritually, had to be garnered from every fibre.
Muth, finishing the prayer, offered the tiny pot containing pigment to the Malia Shai. She looked down at the powders, brown and black, then pursed her lips and spat into them. Her mouth was dry. That was not surprising in this, the height of summer. The earth was parched. Muth stirred the contents of the pot into a paste with the blunt end of the brush she held. Then she laid the clean end, the soft scut of fur, between the Malia Shai’s bare shoulders and ran it slowly down her spine.
The brush tickled. As it reached the curve of her arse, the Malia Shai spread her thighs. The pigment that would be used to paint her body with the sacred sigils of the Drought Ceremony was composed of henna and earth and, to enhance its potency, her own body fluids. The soft brush slipped right down between the round hills of her buttocks into the valley between, paused to circle the dry well of her anus, then gently stroked the cleft of her labia. It found the narrow combe within moist.
The Malia Shai wiped her mind blank, stepping away from the inevitable bodily reactions to Muth’s adroit questing. She listened to the sound of the priest on her other side, who she could not see, patiently grinding the dry ingredients of the paint. She thought about the ritual ahead of her. She felt the first warm trickle of her own wetness begin to gather and seep, but it seemed to be a distant event that had little to do with her.
Muth, for all her coarseness and her bulk, was an expert in the use of the brush. She wielded it with both delicacy and daring, easing the full fleshy lips apart to stir the pink bud within, then chasing off to tease the younger woman’s anus and returning to probe the well-spring of her yoni. When she had gathered enough moisture on the deer-hair tuft, she wiped it into the paint pot and stirred it in. The dark lacework of the holy words she began to write onto the Malia Shai’s flank were applied with the fine tip of the brush stick.
The goddess felt the first syllables scribed onto her flesh and caught her breath slightly. The ink seemed to burn coldly where it touched, and she could feel the patterns taking their shape in her mind. They spoke of power and destruction and a merciless purpose. She thought of the War of the Gods and her breathing became shallow and hard.
‘Hold still, Mali Shai,’ Muth grumbled. The stick dotted the ripples of her backbone. ‘This is not easy.’
The young woman beneath her made a small noise of acknowledgement. She thought about the sun shining down on the desert rocks, his heat baking them into immobility, the dark lines on her back like cracks in sunfired earth. The stick traced its ancient paths across her skin. The brush flicked and dipped, seeking moisture in her hot cleft. She thought of lizards running over the stones, sliding into any cracks that might offer shade or damp. She thought of their little flickering tongues and their tiny splayed hands. She thought of the warmth of the sun’s body beating down on her smooth back and her coppery fleece. The brush licked at her clit, stoking the heat within it.
‘It’s too hot,’ Muth muttered almost to herself, pausing to wipe the sweat from her brow. ‘I will be glad when the Rains come, Malia Shai. Don’t hold them off too long.’
She thought then of the rain falling on the baked rocks and the desiccated earth, the Rain Lord crouching over her, his grey hair falling on her back, beating and trickling its way into the crannies and the cracks. She smelled the bitter smell of rain on dust. She felt her cleft fill with moisture, brimming with it.
Muth clicked her tongue. ‘You’re wet, lady, all of a sudden.’ She plunged her brush into the sopping well of the Malia Shai’s sex, swirling the implement in the unexpected excess of moisture. ‘What are you thinking about?’
‘The rain,’ she replied, eyes wide.
Muth made the smallest of snorts down her nose. She began to paint quickly, freely, using the bounty offered her.
The Malia Shai pictured the Rain Lord lowering himself over her parched and thirsty
body, his lips on her neck and shoulders where the brush now licked. It was just like a tongue, first flickering over her skin then descending to lap at the rising spring of her sex juices. She spread her thighs a little wider to admit him. She wanted more than anything the long shaft of the lightning strike to stab into her wet earth. She wanted the flash and the burn of his spear to shake her to the core. She wanted his clouds to cover her, the lightning to lash her again and again.
She did not think about the brush. She was not concerned with Muth’s tormenting strokes. Nevertheless, as the priestess dipped into the seeping cleft between her legs one more time, the touch of that fur on her clit drove her over the edge into orgasm. The Malia Shai gave no outward sign, not even by the slightest tremble or moan. Her body was too well disciplined for that. Perhaps if it had been Muth’s fingers questing there and not the brush, she would have felt the pulse and the clenching of internal muscles rippling over them, but as it was the priestess did not notice. And the Mali Shai saw nothing but her inner vision of the Rain Lord entering her from behind and above, their bodies fused in fire and water and darkness.
‘I have a bad feeling about this,’ Rumayn muttered to no one in particular.
Veraine cast him a brief sideways glance before turning his gaze back on the river of pilgrims that was flowing past them, through the courtyard and into the Inner Temple. That river, which had its source in the lower city and was now flowing miraculously upwards, kept looking over at the three Irolian men as they lounged against the colonnade, but no challenge was offered to their presence. The pilgrims were too intent on shuffling forward down the line, craning their necks to see ahead.
‘Why’s that?’ Loy asked.
Rumayn shrugged and stared about him. ‘I don’t know. I just have this feeling.’
‘The only feeling you should have is in your knob,’ the commander advised.
‘It’s the weather,’ Veraine said, from where he stood with his back and one sole propped against a pillar. ‘The Rains are on their way.’
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