“Where are the rest of them? Of us, I mean.” she whispered.
I could barely make out her tiny voice over the wall of sound, but Paulit heard her well enough. Wordlessly, he pointed to the center of the space. A great bonfire raged so high it almost touched the ceiling. Rather, it would have if it wasn’t open to the outside. The smoke billowed out around the ring and every time a wind blew, was sucked away, out into the night.
Alix shook her head, but I grabbed her arm. “There, look,” I said. “There they are.”
Around the fire, a number of large muscled men, all of whom wore beards like Shingo, if not as impressive, writhed. In the midst of the pulsating heap of Zoran warriors, most of the women we’d travelled with were doing things that I’d never seen. I’d heard about a few of them, but had no idea people actually did things like that.
Two of the women were wrapped around the thighs of one particularly large man. One of them had her lips wrapped around his member as the other one squeezed him in her fist, dragging it up and down in slow, methodical strokes. Both of the women were only partially nude, but it looked as though their clothes had been ripped from them. Tatters of rough spun linen hung from the sultry-eyed blonde girl’s shoulder baring one of her breasts, but leaving the other mostly covered. The warrior’s big, lusty hand scooped under her nakedness and cupped her. When he pushed his thumb in a circle on her, she squealed in delight and dove back down his cock until he was all the way in her mouth.
“I can’t believe...”
Beside me, Alix giggled. “Never seen anything like this before, huh? These easterners are a different lot than the prudish nobles you’re used to, eh?”
“I’m not a noble, but...very different.”
“You can’t take your eyes off them, can you? So big and covered in muscle. Look how they move.” She pointed to another pair that I hadn’t yet noticed. A man with a fur cloak slung over his massive shoulders, but who was otherwise naked held a handful of a girl’s hair. He yanked it, and she’d scream every time he bucked his hips and drove himself deep. The flesh of her thighs moved in tight ripples with each thrust. I put one hand against my chest in an involuntarily sign of shock and reached the other out for Alix who grabbed it and clutched it to hers.
“Feel this?” She said, brushing my hand up and down her body. “Do you feel how excited I am? How stiff? I bet you are, too, huh?”
“How did you...?”
“It’s just something that happens. No reason to be embarrassed. They’re beautiful, aren’t they? Just look at them. Oh wow, look over there.” She clutched my hand against her, and I felt the hard prickle of her nipple against my palm. A deep crimson flushed up my neck, but then I followed her pointing finger and forgot all about where my hand was.
One of the girls we rode with – a red haired girl from the Isle of Spring, who had a very strange accent indeed – was pinned between a man and the wall. He had a handful of her stomach, squeezing her and twisting her flesh. He entered her from behind, pushing himself in long, slow strokes.
“Is he inside her...no, he isn’t. Is he?” I looked at Alix, who was chewing her lip between her teeth and seemed to have a hand between her legs.
“Look!” She jutted her head back to the two men and the woman. “Look what he’s doing to her now. Oh, Jo, what I wouldn’t give for a taste of that one behind her.”
A Zoran with a beard almost as decorated at Shingo’s walked up behind the man who had his cock inside the redhead, and punched him straight in the mouth. Shocked, the bleeding warrior tried to return the blow, but his hand was caught and he was shoved aside. The bigger man bellowed with laughter and shouldered past, shoving himself all the way in the girl with one long stroke. He lifted her off her feet and turned her around. Her breasts smashed against his chest, he bit her neck, licked her up to her chin and slammed his hips upwards until she screamed out.
“He’s so...so big,” I said turning to Alix, who insisted I look back.
As the huge warrior took his pleasure, and the lady did too, the man who got punched in the face returned. I expected some resumption of the violence, but when he circled the coupling pair, ran his hand along the girl’s sex and then slicked his cock before pushing into her other hole, I gasped almost as loud as she did.
Alix slid my hand down her body, between her breasts and down to the belted waist of the dress she’d finally selected.
“I just can’t help it. I can’t watch all this and not want someone to touch me, Jo. Look at her face. See how hard it is for her to breathe with them both crushing her like that? Do you think she wants them to stop?”
As I stared, I couldn’t help but notice that my body had begun to warm. From deep inside I felt heat push out of my core, down my belly and between my legs.
“Alix, why do I feel like this? What’s going on?”
“Like what? Does it feel like there are prickles running up and down your spine? Are there fingers that you can’t see running up your belly and tickling your neck? Right behind the ear?”
“Y-yes, sort of like that,” my lip trembled. I put it between my teeth to keep it from moving, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the two savage men pumping away at the little red-head. And I couldn’t stop myself from wanting Alix to move my hand further down, or from wanting her to touch mine.
“Does it feel like your stomach is fluttering, and your stiff little nipples want someone to touch them?” She slid my hand down to the front of her dress. Through the fabric, I felt her heat on my palm. “Does it?”
I nodded.
She shifted her hips a little and my hand disappeared into a pleat on her gown, where her hand had been a moment ago. She ran a fingertip along my hairline, and then tickled my scalp as she traced a line down behind my ear.
“Does it feel...” she put her other hand behind my back, slid it underneath my tunic and touched the bare skin on the small of my back before she pressed her lips behind my ear. “Does it feel like this?”
Somehow in all the noise and excitement of the hall, I could plainly hear every single word she spoke, every syllable that slipped from her lips. Her tongue made a hot circle on me that sent a shock down my knees, and then she sucked a kiss.
“Alix, I...” I closed my eyes for a moment and felt her lips warm my whole body. When I opened them, the two giant men had been joined by a third. Wetness crept out of me, along with tingles that shot up my back. The biggest of the three men, still taking the girl from behind, shoved her forward and forced her mouth to open around the newest one’s cock as they all shifted positions to accommodate. She tried to either scream or moan, but the only sound I heard was a muffled “mmm...” as they all began to move at once, and Alix split her legs open and pushed harder against me so that my fingers moved between her folds.
She kissed me again behind the ear and then followed my jaw all the way to my chin. We kissed gently, I unsure of what to do, and she letting her tongue slip out and explore my lips, moist with anticipation. She slid it between my teeth, and held me tight to her, swirling her tongue against mine.
Again I closed my eyes, letting the feeling of her body against mine wash over me. Her heat on my hand, her taste and her scent filling my nose, I couldn’t believe what I was doing or where I was. The whole was just so unbelievable and it all happened so fast.
And then I felt her hand on my heat. Two of her fingers pushed against my sex, right on my button. I drew a breath around her kiss. When I opened let my eyelids drift open again a moment later, the first thing I saw was her face - her pale blonde hair and her sea-blue eyes and her brilliant smile.
Nothing else existed. Not the noise, not the bonfire or the roasting reindeer or the shouting warriors or the pleasured women. The world faded and all the only two things left were Alix and I, our breath and our lips and our bodies intertwined.
“I’ve never felt like this before,” I said as she touched me with her fingertips. “No one has ever touched me the way you are.”
“I
can tell. You’re as easy to read as you are nice to look at.”
As her hand moved up my back again, fingertips slow-dancing up my side, a heavy thudding sound from the back of the hall threatened to break my concentration. Someone shouted unintelligibly in Zoran, but Alix pulled me closer and snatched me back to the reality where only she and I existed.
Three more thuds. I craned my head to kiss Alix, but she whispered my name and turned her eyes to the back of the hall.
“Something’s happening. Hard to see what, though.”
I tried to strain through the darkness and the smoke and the sweat to see what was causing all the commotion, but as soon as half the room started to grumble and the other half fell to one knee and bowed their heads, it wasn’t hard to figure out.
“Enough! Silence! King Morzan, first of his name, Emperor of the Eastern Kingdoms and son of the Wolf, will not tolerate your noise. Any who does not pay proper respect will find themselves in the pit!”
A hush fell over the crowd, and even the most vociferous of the grumblers went to a knee. Tension hung in the air as the great king’s harbinger issued orders in the Zoran tongue to someone near him.
“Oh good, here comes the debauched king. Here comes the man who would bury the whole country if it brought him pleasure or got him drunk.” A man beside me whispered, strangely, in Lotanese. “Psst! You, girl! You’re his new two favorites, yes?”
“Us?” I said.
“Do you see anyone else to whom I would speak Lotanese?”
“Well, no, I suppose not.”
His eyes turned briefly to the back of the hall and then returned to me.
“I can see why he chose you.”
“He’s never seen me before.”
“Oh, he hasn’t? Curious.”
“Listen closely. You are Jovena, yes? And who is this with you?”
“My friend Alix.”
“Friend, ah?” He smiled. “You are being watched. Things in the kingdom are not as they seem, Jovena. I don’t know what you did, but I’ve been given orders to do what I can to keep you safe. You have friends in high places, princess. Or at least one of them.”
“I’m not a princess.”
“He said you’d say that.”
“Who said?”
“I think you know. You made a powerful friend, princess, but your friend walks a dangerous line. I will do what I can.” He grinned. “You must be wary though. Do not trust the king. He is not what he seems. None of us are. I am called Etoko, princess, but do not speak my name freely.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? All these whispers and mysteries, why won’t someone just tell me what’s going on?” When I stopped talking, I realized I had raised my voice and everyone else in the hall was quite silent. “I – ah – I’m so hungry! What are we waiting for? I want some of that deer!”
A few of the warriors chuckled before returning to their head-bowed kneeling.
“Who knew you could act?” Alix said with an approving nod. “You certainly averted that disaster.”
I turned to repeat my question in a more appropriate volume to the man – Ekoto he called himself – but he was nowhere to be seen.
“Bow your heads! SILENCE!” The king’s harbinger shouted.
“Is that the man from the auction? The one that bought us?” Alix said under her breath. “Same shaved head, same strange clothing. He must be a eunuch from farther East. Never trust a eunuch.”
I giggled.
The oak of the hall’s door sighed as two men clad only in leather straps about their chests grunted and moved the wooden beam blocking the door to the floor. Both of them picked up battle hammers that probably weighed more than Alix and I combined, and resumed thumping them against the floor.
The room, only moments ago bursting with raw energy and debauched pleasure, had fallen so silent that when the king’s boots thudded on the ground behind the door, every person in the hall could hear the jingle of his spurs.
“All hail Morzan!”
A heavy thud, I guessed his fist on the door, pounding from the inside, reverberated through the great hall. Some looked on with rapt attention, others were notably less impressed.
“All hail Morzan, first of his name, son of the Wolf!”
With a roar, and a crushing blow that would have gone straight through a man, the door swung backwards, smashed against the stone wall behind it. The iron opening ring rattled, and the hinges seemed as though they weren’t going to be able to take too many more openings like that one.
Across the room, all I could see was an outline. As he stood there, the bonfire flickered every so often, and glimpses of his features became apparent. He had the same beard as the warriors, and Shingo, only his was far larger than even Shingo’s. All around his thick neck braids hung, laden with gold rings, trinkets and jewels. More sinister gris-gris dotted his whiskers as well, some things that looked like small animal skulls were tied in with the gold. At least I hoped they were animal skulls.
Morzan’s chest was bare underneath a tunic that should have been laced but instead hung wide open. He stepped nearer the fire and I saw the tight muscularity of his body, covered in a complex pattern of scars. Slowly, he took a tour of the hall, inspecting each of his new purchases in turn.
One by one, he sized the girls up, inspecting them. His hands moved over them, he tugged their hair, looked closely at different parts of their bodies. Many of them he rejected after that cursory inspection, but the ones who pleased him were subjected to more prodding, more poking. Of the fifteen women aside from Alix and I that rode from Lotan, three passed his inspections.
The girls who displeased the king were shoved back into the center of the room, back to the lusty warriors. Morzan grabbed two of those who pleased him by the hair and yanked them so hard they fell to their knees. He barked a command at the third, which she apparently understood, because she ran ahead, as quickly as she could, through the door where he entered. He dragged the other two, both of them scrabbling their feet along the ground, and then tossed them through the door.
“Lock them. I will use them later. But for now, resume the festivities.” His voice was dark, harsh, and cold. Just like the Zoran weather.
The King collapsed into a simple seat and demanded a horn of beer. The man Alix thought to be a eunuch whispered something into Morzan’s ear when he brought the drink.
“Where?” The king said. “I thought that was all.” He had a voice like kings have. It was soft because he realized that the more quietly he spoke, the closer people had to listen. And the closer they listened, the more it scared them when you yelled.
“He’s talking about us,” Alix said. “I think we should probably just do whatever he wants. Really play it up. Somehow I have the feeling that if he doesn’t like us, we’re not getting out of here alive, no matter how many friends you’ve magicked up.”
“He’s looking this way, Alix. Gods above I’m terrified.”
“I thought you were the one with the steel nerves. Just don’t show it. No matter how scared you are, or I am, we can hide it. We’ve got each other, right? And it won’t be long until your friend shows up. Just keep believing. We’ll be fine.”
“Bring them to me! Bring them now!” Morzan slammed his fist on the armrest of his chair and sat forward.
“No need for anyone to bring us, majesty.” Alix said. “We’re right here. It’s just a shock to see you in all your glory for the first time. Forgive our reticence, but we’re just small little girls. Nothing compared to the great Morzan.”
“Ah, very well. Rise from your knees and come. Does the other one speak as well?”
“I – uh – yes, majesty.” My voice cracked up and down with every syllable. “I apologize for being so nervous.”
“It is...” he pulled the eunuch to him and whispered. “Understandable. My servant tells me the word is understandable. He is strange looking, and not a man, but very useful. Come here. Don’t be shy.”
Alix and I pushed
off our knees and clasped hands without thinking about it. Crossing the room with as much grace as was possible in between stepping over passed out warriors and pools of mysterious liquid and discarded joints of meat, I found it harder and harder to breathe.
“Oh, a young one. Two young ones, looks like. Very good. Bare yourselves to me. I will inspect you.”
“Your majesty?”
“Am I unclear? Bare yourselves. That is the term, yes?”
As if to show me what he meant, the mighty king reached out and hooked two fingers on the fine cloth near my neck. He rubbed it between his fingers for a moment before turning to the eunuch.
“Why are these two so dressed so finely?”
“Those two have been specially purchased, your highness. This one in particular.” He nodded to me. “They were the most expensive of the lot. As such, they are to be very well taken care of. I thought you’d enjoy them.” If what he says is true, Alix and I were destined to be together anyway, even without Shingo’s interference.
The king nodded and slid his hands down my chest, over my pebbled nipples and then reached out to drag Alix closer as well. Each time he moved, the bells and coins and whatever else that was tied up in his braids jingled and clattered.
All of the Zoran warriors, especially the ones that I had watched do their lurid dance a few minutes before, were all large people.
Morzan dwarfed even the biggest of them. From what I remembered, Shingo was close in height, but almost certainly smaller than the king.
Sitting down, he was still almost of a height with me and his chest and shoulders were so broad across that Alix and I together didn’t match him. His brow was hard, and bigger than I expected. His eyes black as pitch and matched his hair. On his face he wore a scowl that only looked more terrifying when he grinned. When he looked to his eunuch, I stole a glance at Alix, but she was absolutely fixated on the giant man who sat before us. Her expression was somewhere in the middle of terror, awe and the same excitement she had when we touched each other.
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