by Lizzy Bequin
What they had done earlier had only served to tighten that bond. And afterward, as they had lain tangled up together by the fire, Thusar’s mind had conjured the image of two trees grown together until their trunks and branches were welded together. Until they were one.
And it was not just Thusar. He knew his brothers felt it too.
Now that they had found Ika, they could never let her go.
Outside, it was nearly dark
There would be a storm soon. A winter storm. Thusar could smell it in the air.
Muk and Slaine were returning now as well.
One of the metal pots that Slaine carried was slopping with cold water from the river. He hung it from the tripod over the fire to heat up. After a few minutes, the water was steaming but not boiling. Slaine took it off the flames.
Thusar watched as his pack brother undressed Ika of her furs. Her naked body was a mess, still stained with the dried sap with which all four of them had marked her.
At the sight of Ika’s naked, firelit flesh, Thusar’s cock raised and spilled a few bubbling drops of that sticky syrup down his shaft.
Gods, what was this power she had over him?
Slaine began washing Ika with a rag. He brushed the warm water over her skin, gently scrubbing away the sap stains.
Thusar knew what violence Slaine was capable of.
He had seen him rip the arm off a nith and beat the bastard to death with it. Another time, he had seen him tear a nith’s heart out of its chest and eat it while it still lived. Slaine’s ferocity frightened even Thusar sometimes, and Thusar was not easily frightened.
But now, the mute ukkur was as gentle as Thusar had ever seen him. Slaine was cleaning Ika as if she were as delicate as a flower, and he was taking great pains not to harm her.
For her part, Ika was compliant.
When Slaine softly nudged her to turn around, Ika did so, stopping when he gently touched her shoulder. When he raised her arm to clean underneath, she obediently held it there until he was finished.
She was exhausted. The hot defiance she had displayed earlier had drained out of her.
For now, at least.
Thusar smirked and growled softly as his brain conjured the image of Ika staring up at him, her blunt little teeth bared as she bit down none too lightly on the shaft of his cock. That had hurt something fierce. Even now, there was a little half-moon imprint to mark where she had bitten him. But the pain only served to heighten his arousal.
Thusar knew that Ika had been holding back. He had seen what she had done to Gunnar’s hand. He knew what kind of damage she could do if she really tried. Those little teeth of hers might be blunt, but they could break ukkur skin.
He had trusted her not to go that far.
But could she learn to trust him?
Now, as Slaine washed her, there was a sadness on her pretty little face, and Thusar knew the reason why.
Rolf.
Ika clearly had a strong bond with that ukkur as well. Was it the same as the bond that Thusar now felt with her? He did not think so. Those things they had done earlier with their cocks and with her hole—he sensed that she had never done anything like that with Rolf. Her reactions had been both too shocked and too curious.
The experience was as new for her as it was for Thusar and his brethren.
Then what was her connection with Rolf? Something like the bond that Thusar shared with his pack brothers, perhaps. A powerful bond of friendship.
But Thusar sensed her relationship with Rolf was different.
Part of him was tempted to take her back to Rolf. To interrogate that old ukkur and find out more about Ika’s origin. All she really knew was that Rolf had found her. A gift from the gods, she had said.
There had to be more to it than that.
Now, various strands of thinking unraveled in Thusar’s mind, and he came to the hard knot that lay at the heart of his problem.
He was not willing to deviate from his quest to the south.
He was even less willing to part with Ika.
That meant separating her from Rolf.
They could go back and try to convince Rolf to join them on their quest. But they had already invited him once before, and the old ukkur had flatly refused. Perhaps that refusal had been born of a desire to keep Ika hidden. Then again, perhaps not. Rolf had always been something of a loner.
If they could not convince Rolf to join them, then there would probably be a fight to claim Ika.
A fight to the death.
That fight would end in one of two ways. Thusar’s death or Rolf’s. Both options were unfavorable. Both paths meant that he would lose Ika forever. That was unacceptable.
Thusar had to make a decision.
He was the leader.
Muk was too young. He lacked wisdom. Gunnar, by contrast, was too intelligent. He could reverse engineer a nith contraption, but when it came time to make a difficult decision, he would get stuck. And Slaine, well…gods only knew what went on inside Slaine’s damaged skull.
So the decision lay with Thusar.
He chose to go with the best compromise he could think of.
They would journey to the southern lands as they had already decided. They would not swerve from that quest.
They would take Ika with them as well. To give her up now was out of the question.
After they’d had a chance to see exactly what was transpiring in the southern lands, then Thusar would return and confront Rolf by himself. Ika would remain behind, protected by the three other ukkur.
Thusar let go a deep breath, and some of the tension went out of his shoulders.
He had decided.
“Come,” he said to Ika, whom Slaine had finished bathing. “It is time to retire for the night. Tomorrow we have a long day ahead of us. Tomorrow we begin our trek to the south.”
Something crumbled like ashes behind Ika’s face, and for a moment Thusar thought her eyes would begin leaking again as they had done before when she was upset. But they did not.
Thusar made one final decision for the night.
He decided to remove Ika’s leash, in the hopes that would win some trust from her.
It seemed safe enough, after all. He and his pack brothers would hear her if she tried to slip away in the dark.
CHAPTER 15
Ika did not fall asleep.
Her muscles were weary, and her mind felt sluggish and blunted by the events of the long day—the nith, the punishment at Thusar’s hands, his long interrogation, and then all the shameful things that had followed.
Once or twice, the darkness nearly claimed her, but through sheer force of will, Ika kept her mind awake and alert.
I was an hour before dawn when she finally made her move.
The ukkur were snoring loudly. Their massive bodies hemmed her in on all sides, exuding intense heat which remained trapped beneath the heavy blanket of stur’ux fur that Thusar had spread over top of them. The air was thick with their musky scent. Their naked bodies pressed against her from all sides, and their hard members prodded her from every angle.
That warmth and that sense of protection nearly seduced her too-tired brain to sleep. It required a supreme effort to move.
Taking great care not to rouse the sleeping ukkur, Ika crawled out from beneath the covering and shivered as the chill air of the cave hit her naked body. The fire had died down to embers in the night, and the interior of the cave was dark and cold.
Under normal circumstances, Ika would never have been able to slip away from the ukkur like that. Her movement would have caused them to wake up.
But Ika had taken measures to make sure they did not.
Just before nightfall, Gunnar had taken her outside to relieve herself in the snow. She had been shamefully leashed, like some kind of untamed animal, to ensure that she could not run away. But Ika had not intended to do so anyway. She knew that the ukkur would catch her before she could escape.
Instead, Ika had had a different plan. It had r
equired a great deal of luck, but the gods had favored her, and she had found what she was looking for. Oneirix. A hearty lichen that clung to the bark of trees and survived even through the chill of winter. Rolf had taught her how to identify the stuff by its pale green color.
She had squatted by a tree that carried a large amount of oneirix, and she had surreptitiously gathered a handful while she was making water. Gunnar had not seen.
Ika had wanted the oneirix because it contained a potent narcotic. When crushed into a powder and inhaled, even a small quantity would induce deep sleep and vivid dreams. Rolf had sometimes used it as medicine when Ika had been sick and needed extra rest.
Now, Ika had used it on these ukkur for another purpose.
After they had dozed off, she had sprinkled a sizeable amount under each one’s nose. Enough to keep them unconscious well past sunup.
It would give Ika the chance she needed to escape.
But many obstacles still lay between her and Rolf’s den.
She needed to prepare.
Even though the fire had died down, there was just enough light for Ika to accomplish what she needed to do. She tiptoed across the stone floor to the place where the ukkur’s gear was stored, and she quietly set to work gathering the things she would need.
The first thing was clothing. It was even colder outside the confines of this cave, and Ika would surely freeze to death if she tried to make the trek naked as she was.
Thusar had recovered Ika’s ring necklace from the nith vehicle, but her other clothing had been left behind. That meant she would have to steal some of the ukkur’s.
A couple of fur cloaks would do.
The cloaks were far too big, and they swamped her small frame, but they were warm and would shield her from the cold. For the time being, Ika was more concerned with function than with looks.
For makeshift boots, Ika found a few smaller strips of fur which she wrapped around her feet and bound with long pieces of rawhide cordage.
Good enough.
There was just one last detail.
Ika needed to arm herself, just in case she encountered any danger on her journey back to her home. There were predators stalking those snowy woods, after all.
And worse than that, perhaps, there were the nith. A predator of a different order. Just thinking of her encounter the day before made Ika’s skin crawl and her stomach churn with repulsion.
Ika needed a weapon.
She selected a spear from the ukkur’s collection. Just like the cloaks, it was far too big for her. Long and unwieldy. But she would have to make do.
A pilfered flint hunting knife completed her armament.
She was ready to go.
But before she departed from the cave, Ika hesitated on the threshold.
She turned back, stealing one final look at the four ukkur who lay snoring by the remains of the fire. She inhaled their scent, musky and mixed with the charred wood aroma of the embers.
Should she hate them?
They had saved her life. If not for them, Ika would be nith food by now. Yet at the same time, hadn’t they kidnapped her, and held her captive against her will? Yes, they fed her and protected her, but they had also punished her in the most humiliating ways imaginable. And later they had used her body in ways that were too shameful to even think about.
The ukkur had given her pleasure, but that didn’t matter.
All that mattered now was getting back to Rolf.
Getting back to the simple life without this aching desire that clenched at her deepest core.
Ika’s skin prickled with goosebumps beneath her heavy cloak. Her nipples were hard and sensitive. She told herself it was the cold winter air that was having that effect on her, but she knew that was a lie.
Part of her longed to stay with these ukkur.
She felt a bond with them.
But her bond with Rolf was older and stronger.
Ika turned away and trudged out into the snow-filled forest.
Soon, the sounds of running water reached her ears. A river was only a few dozen paces away. Just a few days ago, that river would have been frozen solid, but now its waters drifted lazily past, carrying huge white chunks of ice downstream.
But what river was it? Ika was unsure.
Gradually, however, the sky was brightening in the predawn light. Pale gold limned the snow-covered mountain crags that cast their shadow over the forest below. After a moment, Ika began to get her bearings.
She knew those mountains. She knew where she was.
Gods, she was farther from Rolf than she had realized.
But she knew that the river flowing past must be the River Ur that snaked across this territory like a great, dark serpent. She could follow its banks downstream, and it would guide her home to Rolf.
Dear Rolf. Her heart panged as she thought of how worried he must be about her now.
There was no time to waste.
Every moment she hesitated was another moment closer to the ukkur waking up from the oneirix-induced slumber. Once they realized she was gone, they would track her down. She needed to put a lot of distance between herself and them before that happened.
Ika started to walk.
Her crudely shod feet crunched softly in the snow.
Her heart dropped.
That snow would make her far too easy for the ukkur to follow. Her tracks would be unmistakable. And even if she traveled as fast as she possibly could, there was still a good chance that the ukkur would catch up to her and drag her back.
Once that happened, they would keep her leashed forever. There would be no more chances for escape.
Ika needed to do something.
But what?
She scanned her eyes around the gradually brightening forest. The frigid air glittered with suspended ice crystals. The snow-laden trees stood like silent, dark sentinels offering no assistance to Ika’s problem.
How could she travel without leaving tracks?
Ika found the answer floating past in the river.
Enormous chunks of ice were drifting with the current. The largest of these were as big as rafts and possibly buoyant enough to bear Ika’s weight.
Ika waited for a particularly large one to slide past, and she pulled it closer to the bank with the help of her spear. She stepped aboard, and sure enough it accepted her without dipping below the surface, which was important. If Ika’s feet got wet, she would be in trouble.
But the chunk of ice held. Its surface was precariously slippery, but with a great deal of care, it could work as a makeshift raft.
And most important, Ika would leave no tracks behind.
She grinned mischievously at her own ingenuity.
Rolf had taught her well.
Using her spear as a push-pole, Ika shoved away from the shore. Soon the current took her, and she was drifting downriver in the gathering morning light. She watched silently as the shadowed mouth of the cave receded in the distance.
Ika’s heart tugged one last time.
She would miss those scary ukkur. And she would never forget the forbidden things they had done together in that cave.
The ice raft drifted around a bend in the river, and the cave disappeared from view.
CHAPTER 16
Slaine inhaled.
The air was humid and rank with the coppery odor of blood and gore. At his feet, dead nith lay in piles, their bodies flaccid and leaking sluggish green-black blood. All around, hemming Slaine in on every side, a sea of yet more living nith. Thousands of them. Hundreds of thousands. Numbers that Slaine’s mind had no words for. The ocean of nith warriors stretched away to the horizon on every side, and the cacophany of their chittering voices drowned out even the thunder of the storm-darkened sky above.
War.
Death.
This was Slaine’s destiny. The nith had built him for slave labor. Then they had broken his brain.
Now Slaine was a slave to a new master. The God of War. The tumult of battle.
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br /> He let out his breath in a savage roar that shook the blood-drenched ground and set the surrounding nith back on their heels.
Slaine attacked.
In his left hand he carried an axe, but it was not the crude stone implement that he used in his waking life. The weapon was forged from steel, and its finely honed edge gleamed with every flash of blue-white lightning in the dark sky overhead. His right hand bore a long spear. Its pointed blade was razor sharp.
The nith fell before him.
Heads rolled. Bodies cleaved in half. His speartip pierced through multiple chests in one blow.
Slaine slashed and stabbed and fought ferociously, roaring nonstop as he killed. His vision faded to a red mist.
Then, through the chaotic tumult, a scent reached his flaring nostrils.
A scent that had no place in this realm of violence and death.
It was delicate like a flower.
Sweet like honey.
Ika.
Slaine could see her in the distance, her naked skin fairly glowing amid the darkness. She stood atop a dais rising from the churning sea of bodies like an island of stone. A rusted cage of iron thorns encased her.
Ika.
Slaine bellowed her name to the sky. He charged through the throng of gnashing teeth and scaly claws. His weapons were a blur, cutting down everything in his path and leaving a swath of bloody destruction in his wake.
He would reach his Ika.
He would free her from her prison.
Even if he had to lay waste to every single nith bastard who stood in his way.
As he neared the dais, Slaine could see her more clearly. Her hair was plaited. Her naked body was clean and still except for the rising and falling of her breasts with each breath. She did not cry out for him. She simply reeled him in with her eyes that stayed latched on his by some magnetic force.
Slaine would reach her.
He would touch her.
He would free her.
The crowd of nith began to clear away before him. The cowardly creatures were retreating, realizing that they were no match for Slaine’s wrath. They scattered in all directions, until all that was left was Ika, Slaine, and the mangled bodies of the dead.
Slaine roared again in victory as lightning forked across the boiling sky.
