Olivia

by R. Lee Smith

  “Eh?”

  “Oh, nothing.” Olivia raised both arms and dropped them in a shrug of mingled embarrassment and exasperation. “He just does so little for me. Most of the time, he just…gets on and gets off, you know?”

  Murgull snorted.

  “And he’s big,” Olivia added. “So when I’m not, you know, into it, it’s a lot like getting hit with a hammer a few hundred times, every damn night.”

  “He’s a man, little sister. A good man, eh? A brave man, strong man, but just a man. And men are cattle.” She ran her eye critically down Olivia’s body and grunted speculatively. “What they know is enough only to sink their tool in the right pit. Anything else, they must be taught. If you do not teach him, you cannot blame him.”

  “I’ve tried!” she protested. “Sometimes it works. Sometimes…we’re just not built the same way, Murgull!”

  Murgull heavy hand smacked cheerfully down on her shoulder, knocking Olivia sprawling. “Little sister, you speak words I understand very well. Stand up and let old Murgull have a look at you.”

  Olivia stood up and held still while the old gulla poked at her chest and stomach and pinched her thigh, but did let out a startled scream when Murgull lifted her skirt. Murgull recoiled, blinking at her as if surprised, then walloped her up the side of her head and lifted up the skirt again, this time actually wedging her hand between Olivia’s thighs to prod impersonally at her pussy.

  “What in the hell are you doing?” Olivia scrambled back, shoving her skirt down with both fists.

  Murgull caught her by the gold buckle of her belt and hauled her roughly back, thumped her down on the bench, and pointed one claw menacingly at her face. “You want help, eh? Or just to moan and whine?”

  “Hey, I am not where the problem is!”

  “Ha! You want pleasure in the pit, you learn to give it! And you will not find another female in this mountain who will tell the leader’s mate so freely of the ways of coupling, eh? Now, when the making of whelps is so forbidden?”

  There was that. Olivia kept a protective grip on her skirt, frowning, but she was thinking of Cheyenne, whose captor was apparently risking castration when he snuck out for a tumble with his hideous girlfriend.

  Still…

  “I’ll answer questions,” she said, “but I’m not showing you my stuff.”

  Murgull’s good eye narrowed. “Do you want help?” she asked again, blackly. “Or just to moan and whine?”

  Damn it. Olivia fidgeted on the bench for several scathing seconds, and finally threw up her hands and sat furiously back. “Help,” she said mutinously.

  “Then shut your flapping mouth.” Murgull hunched over to jab at her some more, muttering and rubbing at the scars of her neck. “Problem is, you feel too much, I think. Thin skin, little body…flimsy claws good for nothing. And this!” She pulled the skirt up to aim a ferocious scowl at Olivia’s naked pubis. “It does not take a big man to hammer at that tiny hole!”

  “We are,” Olivia said, gritting her teeth, “just exactly the right size for our own males.”

  “Must be, I suppose, since there are so many humans.” Murgull leaned down to sniff once, her grotesque face furrowing in concern. “Strong musk, even now. Potent. Not always a good thing. But a powerful thing, yes, that much is so. So!” She struck her hands briskly together. “Your hands are nearly useless against your male. Good heavy pelt on that one, and skin is too thick anyway. But there are things even you can do. Old Murgull will show you.”

  11

  Vorgullum was filling the fuel box when Olivia finally returned to his lair. He looked up warily, as though he suspected she might attack him, but at the same time suggesting that he might not be too difficult to conquer. She smiled at him, and went to pick at the remains of the supper he had brought.

  “It is well past nightfall,” he said, joining her. “Where have you been?”

  “With Murgull,” she answered vaguely, picking up the TIME magazine and flipping through it while she ate. She wasn’t entirely sure he would approve of the kind of girl-chat she had been engaging in with the tribe’s oldest nuisance. When she’d taken the edge off her hunger, Olivia put down her magazine, clasped her hands in her lap and gave him her most direct and interested stare. “What did you do today?”

  He seemed taken aback by the question, enough that he had to stop and think about the answer. “I went out with a hunting party to search for game. We have not had fresh meat for a day now. My chief hunter found a herd of elk, and we killed two, butchered them, and brought them back.”

  “Big elk?”

  He gave her one of his crooked little smiles. “Elk only come big. And these were males,” he added. “Strong bulls, with antlers as long as my leg.”

  “Were you hurt?”

  “No, no,” he assured her, simultaneously swelling his chest. “After all, there were four of us, and we each had spears. Of course,” he added, “one of the others was hurt. Badly scratched. From here to here,” he informed, drawing a line from his shoulder across his chest.

  “But you were so quick and strong,” Olivia purred, dropping her eyelids and giving him a long, smoky look. “My mate, the fierce hunter.” As with any male, the best stroke was always to the ego. Olivia didn’t even need Murgull’s advice for that one. “My own strong bull. My wild, passionate elk. Elk are passionate, right?”

  “When they rut.”

  “Are they rutting now?”

  “Very soon.”

  “You’ll have to hunt them again after they start, so you can come back to me with their spirit inside you and be my passionate elk.”

  “Now you are teasing me,” he said, but he was smiling.

  “A little. But I’m still impressed.” On impulse, she leaned forward and raised her chin.

  He touched a claw to her inviting forehead, then bent and pressed his brow to hers. “I would rather hear your simple words of praise than songs of adoration, but they did please me, even so. You make me very happy, my mate.”

  “I am glad.” She looked up at him, studying his face as though it was new to her again. “And I want to be happy, too.”

  He leaned back, a guarded expression turning him briefly to stone. “What would you have me do?”

  “Would you relax?” she said, and laughed a little. “I think I’m past asking to be dropped off at the nearest human camp.”

  His expression never changed, but some of the tension went out of the rigid way in which he was holding himself. “Are you?”

  “At this point, my miraculous appearance back home would cause more problems than either one of us could live with.” The reality of this squeezed her heart once in sorrow. “Believe me.”

  “You do not…wish to return to your home?”

  “Oh, I do. But I can’t. Even if I did, after all this time…” This wasn’t going at all the way she intended. She sighed. “I think I killed the mood. Can we just sleep…just for tonight?”

  He was considerate enough not to look disappointed. Vorgullum turned his attention to banking the fire while Olivia undressed and crawled into the pit. When he came to stretch out beside her, she snuggled into his chest.

  “My brave hunter,” she murmured.

  She felt him smile against the nape of her neck.

  “Not even a scratch.”

  He thrummed.

  “My fearless warrior.”

  “If you wish to sleep, I suggest you do so before I am possessed by the spirit of a rutting elk. I have seen them mate twelve times without rest. You are warned.”

  She drowsed a little while, feeling his body gradually relax, then reached up and tugged gently on his chin until he opened his eyes. She said, “I am going to do such things to you tomorrow.”

  He swelled at once against her thigh.

  “Good night,” she said, and rolled over.

  12

  Olivia wasn’t certain quite when she dropped off to sleep, but she was awakened in the middle of the night by Vorgullum tossi
ng restlessly beside her. She lifted herself partway out of the pit and glared at him, as though doing that would force him to be still.

  He groaned sleepily, muttered something unintelligible under his breath and started to roll over. He pinched his wing, gave a weak yelp and rolled back onto his side. For a moment, he was still. Then he sucked in a deep breath, released it in a sigh that carried her name, and began to snore.

  Olivia started to go back to sleep herself when she heard the fire pop. Thinking that it might need another log of fuel, she started to crawl out of her sleeping bag, casting an incurious glance over at the hearth.

  Cheyenne sat cross-legged before the fire, stirring it with a poker.

  Olivia’s heart stopped and then kicked painfully back in—ba-BOOM! She locked her jaws against a scream, but couldn’t quite prevent a smothered sounded whimper.

  Vorgullum stopped snoring, wriggled around, then started snoring again.

  Cheyenne looked around casually, saw Olivia, and lifted one finger in a sort of wave.

  Olivia, now convinced she was not dreaming, crawled carefully out of the pit and wrapped herself in one of the ripped sheets of bedding she’d piled up the previous evening. She didn’t dare demand anything of Cheyenne, not even in a whisper. Instead, she snatched up her flashlight, tugged sharply at Cheyenne’s sleeve and stalked out.

  She went to the furthest room, the one Vorgullum used for storage, and huddled in a corner. Cheyenne came a few moments later, carrying a candle and looking around with an expression of mild interest.

  “Hello, Olivia,” she said calmly. “Nice place you’ve got here.”

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Olivia hissed.

  “I need to talk.”

  “About?”

  “About my man sneaking off to fuck around on me and you just happening to be there.”

  “You’d better not be implying—”

  “Like I care. It doesn’t matter how you saw him, although I’m sure it was an interesting story. I just want to hear you tell me he was with another of these furballs.”

  “He was.”

  “A female?”

  “Of course!”

  “Don’t assume. You’re positive it was a female he was fucking?”

  “I’m positive,” Olivia said, frowning. “His back was mostly to me, but I had a really good view of, you know…that.”

  “Did he cum in her?”

  Olivia blanched. “I didn’t stick around to watch.”

  Cheyenne nodded pensively. “Okay, well, I’ve been thinking about it, and the thing is, my guy is gone a lot. I mean, a lot. So if he’s actually meeting up with his girlfriend every time he sneaks out on me, then he is in real trouble.”

  “So what are you going to do about it?” Olivia asked.

  “I’m going to expose him, I think. If I can figure out how.” Cheyenne crossed her arms and tapped one finger against her bicep. “The problem is, no one is awake at this hour. I’ve been as far through these caves as I can go without spelunking equipment, and I’ve yet to see any guards posted, even in the middle of the night.”

  “Why would they need guards?” Olivia asked crossly. “We’re at the very top of a mountain, and about three hundred feet deep. Who would they be guarding against?”

  “Exactly. And this is great as far as my escaping goes, but unfortunately, it’s really bad for exposing the little lovebirds. I mean, I can make all the accusations I want, but no one’s going to take my word for it.”

  Olivia watched while Cheyenne sat herself on a bench and made herself comfortable. “Do you think I’m going to accuse him for you?” she asked finally. “Because I am not having any part of getting someone castrated.”

  “He is raping me.” Cheyenne’s eyes were steady and cold and impossible to meet. “You told me about him and his little fling, so don’t you stand there and tell me that you don’t want to get involved. You’re sleeping with the fucking King Bat, and you are the only one of us he listens to, so you are goddamn well going to help me now. You’re going to tell him what you saw—”

  “I don’t have any proof!” Olivia whispered furiously. “And when your guy denies it, mine is going to have to decide which of us to believe, and I am not that confident in my womanly wiles! Besides, even if he did believe me, all he’d do is castrate him, he wouldn’t set you free as a consolation prize!”

  “I know that,” Cheyenne said coldly. “But if my guy is castrated, I’ll be given to someone else, maybe someone who wouldn’t make it completely fucking impossible for me to escape.”

  “Escape?! Jesus Christ! You come here in the middle of the night talking about castrating people and escaping and you know how sharp their ears are! We could all be in chains tomorrow because of this stupid little stunt!”

  “Not you.”

  “Yes, me, goddamn it!” Olivia crept back along the tunnels to peer in on Vorgullum. He was still sleeping, one arm thrown out over her side of the pit, snoring into the crook of his arm. She watched him as her emotions settled, then returned to the storage room where Cheyenne waited, idly investigating the various tools and devices that cluttered up this chamber. “If you want me talk to him about how you’re being treated—” she began.

  “What good would that do?”

  “He might give you a new mate if you asked for one. Well, he might,” she insisted, when the redhead only gave her a withering stare. “We’re here to make babies. I don’t think he cares who we make them with.”

  “Or how they get made,” Cheyenne countered. “And even if he cared, which he won’t, all he’d do is ask my guy if it was true. He’d deny it, and then he’d beat the living shit out of me. No thank you.”

  “But if you could prove your side of the story—”

  “If I could prove anything, I could get the son of a bitch’s balls cut off! Forget it!” Cheyenne stood up, raking her hair back and pacing around the room until she’d calmed herself down. “But you have a point,” she said at last. “And I have to admit, you’re more useful to me as a good slave than someone who makes accusations, so okay, we’ll play it your way for now. I’m leaving.”

  “Good. Don’t ever sneak back in here like this again.”

  Cheyenne looked at her. “I’m leaving,” she said again. “I’m going to go back to that bastard’s cave and if he’s there when I show up, he’ll beat me until I piss blood again, so you think about that while you’re lying there with King Bat’s arm around your waist tonight.”

  Olivia’s anger continued to simmer, but the words hit hard, and the shame that came with them made her feel sick and hot.

  “I can’t get out of here by myself.” Cheyenne said, her eyes piercing at her, hard and sharp as knives, unblinking. “I need your help, damn it.”

  Her stomach clenched and churned.

  “Do I have to beg you, is that what you have to hear? Fine, I’m begging. Help me before he kills me.”

  “I…” She broke, pressing one hand over her eyes in defeat. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Just be there when I need you,” Cheyenne said. “I have to think about things, plan things. I’m not going to have a lot of time when it happens, so just be there. And believe me.”

  Olivia could only watch while Cheyenne took her candle and left. She stood in the empty room for a while, then made her way back to the sleeping room and the pit. Vorgullum murmured sleepily as she came in close to him, then opened his eyes and blinked at her.

  “Go back to sleep,” she whispered. “It’s too early.”

  “I dreamed of voices,” he said thickly. “Yours and someone else’s.”

  “Shh. There’s no one here but me.”

  “I know, but—” He yawned cavernously, and spooned up against her. He mumbled something more, then disintegrated into snores again.

  Olivia lay awake, his arm lying over her like an accusation. She didn’t think she’d sleep after that, but she did. Her dreams were cold and filled with pain.

  13


  She was wakened a second time by Vorgullum trying without much success to extract himself without jostling her. She sat up, rubbing her eyes crossly, and he ducked his head in apology.

  “I tried not to wake you.”

  “I was awake, sort of,” she muttered. “It was cold in here last night. Can you try to find some more bedding for us?”

  He glanced at the pile of random rags and rough fabric she had removed from the pit the day before, then shrugged. “Yes, if you like. If the weather is good, there will be humans in the foothills.”

  “Good,” she smiled, dropping back into the pit. She stretched luxuriously, aware of his appreciative gaze. “Because I want to try it out with you. Oh, my handsome mate,” she sighed. “I wish that you could stay with me all night. You cannot know how much it hurts me to open my arms and have nothing but your memory to fill them.”

  He tightened his belt and looked at her, amused. “And where was this last night when I had time to tend to you? Such things I will do to you, indeed.” He made a final adjustment and tossed his horns at her. “If you are lonely, there is a gathering of humans in the commons this morning.” He hesitated, then said, “This mountain is your home. I forbid my mate no part of it.”

  She rose from the pit, knowing just how the firelight would be playing across her naked body, and hugged him. “You take such good care of me,” she murmured. “I don’t deserve such a fine mate.”

  “No, you don’t,” he agreed, and let her slap playfully at his arm before he left her.

  She washed up and dressed, donned her climbing claws, and went to the commons. She recognized Beth, Judith, and the crazy lady with her saucepan, but the other two were strangers. Beth and another blonde were playing cat’s cradle with a long loop of twine while the other woman watched. Judith sat next to the crazy lady, watching her reflection in the pot’s copper bottom as she rocked. All looked up when Olivia came near.

  “Hi there!” Beth cried happily. “We were only expecting four. Or five, I mean,” she added, glancing at the madwoman.

  “I have special permission,” Olivia said. “He’s tired of baby-sitting me.”