by Bryn Colvin
As a consequence of Math’s desires and his ever-shifting enthusiasms, most of his former mistresses were now safely coupled with good fighters whom he trusted. Most of them seemed happy enough and he had never encouraged any of them to believe they would enjoy more than a little of his favour. Some of them had born children, but there was no knowing if any of them had actually been his. He kept a close eye on the boys, planning to give his name to any of them who amounted to anything. As yet, none of them looked especially promising.
By the changes in the way she moved, he could tell that the dancing girl had seen him and knew full well who he was. He watched with amusement as she turned, giving him the best possible view of her movements. She raised her hands above her head, arching her back so that her breasts showed in silhouette through the fabric of her tunic. Math licked his lips—observing the swish of her hips and the fine curves of her long, lean body. There was no sign that anyone else had noticed him and he remained still. Enjoying what he saw without having to bother with anything else. He lived for these rare moments, when he could lose himself and forget that he was a war leader.
When the singer at last finished, the girl excused herself from amongst her companions and disappeared into the darkness on the far side of the fire. Disappointed, Math turned away and continued to survey the camp. He saw the tall and willowy figure before she reached him. Her eyes were shining in the gloom.
“Math Wolfstrong?”
The voice was soft and melodious. Although he could barely see the girl, he was intensely aware of her proximity.
“What’s your name, girl?”
“Sena.”
“You dance like a woman who understands the meaning of pleasure.”
“Perhaps there is a reason for this.”
She was forward and clearly understood what he was about.
“It is a cold night,” he remarked; “I hope that you will sleep warmly?”
He never forced himself upon the women of his company; that only bred ill feeling. He had not always possessed such scruples where the locals were concerned, not that anyone much cared what happened to them.
“I sleep in my father’s tent with my sisters for warmth, but I think the company of a man would be warmer.”
“I think it would indeed.”
He slipped his arm around her waist, drawing her in close. She needed no invitation to press her body against his, opening his heavy cloak so that she could put it between her and the night. Her hands were light but certain and when he touched her breast she laughed with evident delight.
“Well, Sena, would you allow me to keep you warm on this long night?”
“I should be honoured.”
Liss was still at the campfire when he returned. He thought and not for the first time, that he should arrange some small tent for her and a few suitable women to look after her and keep her out of danger. She was growing too old to have a bed at the foot of his and too aware to be allowed to see what he did with his own women. Math knew exactly what sort of creatures men could be and was determined to protect his child from all of that, at least until she came of age. He supposed there would come a time when she would want a lover of her own and he knew that, however little he liked the idea of some man making use of his own daughter, he would not be able to prevent it. If she proved to be as hot blooded as her parents, he would no more be able to stop her than he could tame a forest fire.
What Sena lacked in artistry, she largely made up for with exuberance. By the light from a small fire dish, she slowly peeled off her clothing, doing her best to make an erotic spectacle of the act and teasing out her undressing. Math was in no hurry and was curious to see what the delectable girl would offer him of her own volition. There would be plenty of time on other nights to teach her how best to please him. Every now and then, he would find a woman with a new trick to tantalise him and would add it to his repertoire of preferred acts. Sena was not the first to attempt seduction through stripping and, while she was not practised in that art, she carried it off well enough. Her dancing prowess stood her in good stead.
Math lounged on his bed, sipping liquor from a goblet and enjoying this private display. Her bare skin was smooth and unblemished, her breasts pleasing in their full roundness. She advanced on him, her expression confident as she knelt beside the low bed, her legs splayed so that he could see everything perfectly. Leaning over him, she unlaced his loose trousers and pulled them open, releasing his already engorged cock. With a wicked little smile playing about her lips, she bent over him and began to tease the tip with her tongue. Math liked to plunge himself into his lover’s mouths almost as much as he liked their cunts, but Sena had not yet allowed him that pleasure. He reached out, meaning to catch the back of her head and encourage her down, but she moved beyond his reach and his fingers fell through her hair to no effect. She licked him again, circling the sensitive tip, running her tongue back and forth until he was straining for more.
“Enough of this,” he growled, “give me your mouth, girl.”
She had moved such that she was kneeling on his bed and she looked up, then, smiling innocently at him, before ducking down to continue exactly as she had been. Math squirmed with frustration, wondering exactly what he would have to do in order to tame this little minx and get her to give him what he wanted. He sat up partially, leaning his weight on his elbows. Sena looked up again and he stared fiercely at her. He had little inclination to take a girl who would give him nothing but trouble but, even so, there was a fiery quality to her that he found appealing. If it came to it he could force her, but he much preferred to have her willing submission.
Sena stared back for as long as she dared, her mind racing. She knew what Math did with women—that he kept them for a while and then moved on. She had not expected to find herself in his bed but, now that the opportunity had arisen, she meant to make best use of it. The thought of achieving power and status within the community excited her and she was determined to have it in the longer term, not just for the brief duration of a passing fancy. When she guessed he must be a hair’s breadth from either ordering her out or taking her by force, she descended again, this time opening her generous mouth to accommodate his girth. She heard him sigh with relief and smiled to herself, thinking that by conceding she had probably won more ground.
She knew enough to be able to make it slow, giving and withholding in turn to keep him on the edge, stopping to use her tongue on him and to let him lose momentum. Her sisters Fin and Noon had told her that the longer you could make a man wait, the harder he would come and the more satisfied he would be for it. She had practised with friends, eager to sate their desires without wanting to go too far. Now what skill she had acquired, she used in full, teasing and tantalising Math until at last the one beautiful word she had sought fell from his lips.
“Please!”
She moved her mouth a little faster.
“Yes,” he encouraged, “like that,” but there was more pleading than command in his voice and she knew she had conquered him, at least for the time being. She set to in earnest, working him into a final frenzy and granting him release, wondering all the while how it would feel to have that broad and shuddering cock between her thighs.
Chapter Three
Packing days were something Liss hated, when normal life ground to a halt and from first light there was ceaseless activity through the camp. Elaborate tents were pulled down and carefully rolled and stored, their vast bulk magically transformed into something more manageable as soon as their poles were removed. As a small child this process had fascinated her, but repetition had made it tedious. She hated the way it made the camp seem so fragile and temporary: When all the tents were in place and everything running as it should, she was happy, but when they travelled for days on end, living far more roughly, it gave her a lost, uncertain feeling that she did not like at all.
She had guessed it was coming—the trees had all gone for firewood and the livestock had grazed the grasslan
d bare. All the villages within a few days striking distance were accounted for and there was nothing to keep them here longer. Her own few things were packed. She had risen early, going out into the grass beyond the camp to relieve herself, rather than bothering to make the long walk to the nearest pit. As was her duty every morning, she hauled the fire dish out from her father’s tent and tipped the charcoal remnants into the ash of the large fire in the centre of their cluster of tents, before returning it to its usual home. It was a heavy, metal thing and she still struggled to move it. Without them, tents were cold and comfortless at night and their bulk reduced the risk of some stray ember setting the whole camp ablaze.
With this task performed, Liss looked around to see if there was anyone else who might have work for her to do. Wren and Parna were folding bedding and had not noticed her; others were engaged with the dismantling of tents. Liss had little inclination to watch as her father’s grand pavilion tent was brought down and reduced to nothing more than folded cloth. Realising that there was no one to prevent her making an escape, she ran through the muddy lanes their feet had made over the last month or so, dodging those who were hard at work and looking for other bored children like herself who might escape from labour.
“Liss!”
A small girl erupted from beneath a cart, her long fair hair tangled across her face and her bare legs encrusted with mud. Liss grinned, as hand in hand, she and Rina set off together, eyes scanning the chaos in search of other friendly faces.
When they had first made camp in this place, there had been plenty of low trees—ideal for games of hiding and hunting. Liss and her assorted friends had climbed and sported whenever they could, chasing and playing in a small horde of wild and careless children. One by one, the trees had been felled for fuel and the creatures that lived amongst them had gone to pots or spits. Now the landscape had little to offer them, aside from the occasional weatherworn boulder and a few scrawny scavengers who would not be worth eating. The children hunted them for practise and pleasure, taking body parts as trophies or leaving the corpses to the other carrion eaters, as the fancy took them.
“Got one!” Erit whooped his triumph, as the black bird fluttered from the scrubby bush, causing its companions to swirl up in a dark cloud and disperse across the open sky. Liss winced, watching the broken bird flap and then lie still. She thought about the crow lady and wondered if this bird had also been able to take the form of a person, but she said nothing to her friends, not wanting to share her strange story with them. They trouped over to the fallen bird. It was still alive, its dark eyes gleamed as it watched them. One wing was broken and it would not fly again. Erit lifted it by the feet, but it made no effort to lash out at him and Liss wondered again if it was something more than a bird.
“It looks clever, doesn’t it?” she asked.
“Not clever enough,” Erit replied.
With a practised move, he broke the wounded bird’s neck, then slung it in a small pouch.
“You can’t eat that!” Rina said, horrified.
They had all eaten crow, one winter when food had been scarce and, although they had all been very young at the time, they had never forgotten just how foul it had tasted.
“I’m not going to, but I want the wing feathers.”
“Crows are bad luck.”
“Not for me.”
“Nor me neither,” Liss chimed in, as much to agree with Erit as for any other reason.
“Well, I think they are,” Rina stomped away and the other two followed after her, exchanging knowing looks.
~*~
Sitting in front of her father, with his broad body shielding her from the wind and the warmth of his horse beneath her, Liss felt at ease. Now that they were finally moving, she decided that she did not mind the travelling so very much, only the strange temporariness of the camps while they sought out new hunting grounds. A little way ahead of them she could see the burned out remains of huts and the crumbling ruin of stone buildings. She eyed them thoughtfully, knowing this would have been her father’s work. The land around them was barren, stripped of its crops and livestock and left to fall into disrepair and wilderness.
“Do you think it must be odd to always live in the same place?” she asked.
“If you are used to it, it seems normal enough,” he replied.
“Have you lived like that?” Liss asked, guessing from his tone that he knew more than he was saying.
“Once, but that was a very long time ago, before you were even born.”
Liss nodded. Her father seldom talked about the past and she did not know all that much about his history save that he had come from another land because he had fought with a man and lost. She could not really imagine her father losing—he always won his fights and she could not really bring herself to believe that there was anyone stronger or better than him. She supposed that the other man had cheated somehow. Whoever he was, he had been very bad to her father and forced him to leave the country. None of it made very much sense to her. Sometimes she thought that the other man must have had a lot more soldiers on his side or much better weapons because, when it came to fighting skill, there was no one who could equal Math. Liss had seen him train, watching him from afar on a few occasions and so had a fair measure of how capable a killer he was.
“What was it like?” she asked, expecting to be rebuffed. The thought of static living perplexed her and so she hungered for more detail of what it meant.
“A house of stone is colder than a tent in the depths of winter; no sun gets in to warm them and there is precious little light. Only very wealthy men can build them, but they will stand for a thousand generations.”
Liss nodded. “You wouldn’t want to live like that now?”
“No.”
She looked around again, at the desolate landscape.
“It must be hard staying in one place. What do you do when all the food and the trees are gone and you’ve eaten everything worth eating and there’re only rats and crows and lozzies?”
She heard her father chuckle, “They don’t all do what we do; some people can live on a tiny plot of land for a lifetime and never go hungry.”
To Liss this sounded like strange magic indeed and she wondered how on earth it could be done. After a month or two in any place, there was seldom enough left for her father’s sizeable company to live on.
“But what happens when they’ve eaten everything?”
“They grow new things, breed new animals, like we do with the horses.”
“But…”
“Enough child, I can’t answer your questions all day. Any more of this prattle and I’ll set you down to walk.”
Liss fell silent, knowing full well that he was entirely serious. The horse beneath her ambled at a steady pace. Peering around the bulk of her father’ torso she looked at the remains of dwelling places and the signs of human habitation, trying to imagine what sort of life that must be and deciding it would probably be boring.
Chapter Four
“He could have a dozen brats for all anyone knows, but he never keeps a woman long enough that you can be sure,” Fin said curtly.
“Are you even sure that you want a child? It’s a lot of work and you’re very young yet,” Noon added.
Both sisters were childless and delighted in their freedom to ride with the men and hunt, fuck or fight as the fancy took them.
“Once there’s a baby, you’ll hardly set foot outside the camp unless you can find other women to help you and you can be sure we won’t,” Fin pointed out ruthlessly.
“I know that.” Sena sighed deeply, no closer to making a decision than she had been.
“Maybe he can’t,” Noon suggested.
“There’s Liss.”
“Maybe she isn’t his. She doesn’t look much like him, does she?”
“True.” Sena had wondered about Liss’s parentage on innumerable occasions, but refrained from sharing these thoughts with her siblings.
“It’s early ye
t, surely, you’ve not been with him a month,” Fin pointed out.
“Two weeks and with the travelling he’s not had the energy for much.”
“Have you?”
“Not yet.”
Fin and Noon both looked surprised.
“Then maybe there is no meat in him,” Fin laughed.
“There’s plenty enough. I’ve not lain with him, but I’ve kept him happy so far, although it won’t be long before he wants the prize. Once he’s had that, I don’t know how long he’ll keep me.”
“And you think he’d welcome a child?”
“Perhaps.”
“If you want a babe, you have one, it’s your life,” Noon said.
“I don’t know if I do.”
“Then best not to, it’s easily avoided.”
“I thought it was hard, the first few times; you said lots of girls catch then, before they know how to do it right.”
“You’ll have to take your chances.”
Sena sighed again and stood up, leaving her sisters to the pot of meaty stew they were cooking.
“I should go.”
She walked back through the camp, working her way towards Math’s place in the centre. When travelling they used the wagons and some of the tents to make swift and temporary shelters, but there was little comfort to be had, even in the commander’s tent. She was in the shadow of one of the vast carts when she heard voices.
