Bloodraven shifted his hold, grasping Yhalen’s bottom and stepping away from the unstable support of the horse, moving instead to the nail straight bole of a mature pine. Yhalen’s back hit that, his cloak protecting him from the rough bark. Bloodraven’s mouth moved from his lips to his chin, to the throbbing hollow where his pulse beat at his throat. He cried out something incoherent, fingers curling in Bloodraven’s wet hair as his legs circled Bloodraven’s waist. He was supported himself 125
between Bloodraven and the tree, leaving Bloodraven’s hands free to roam his body, pushing up under sodden clothing to touch chilled skin.
Warm hands, that knew all too well the sensitive spots. Tickling first over the small of his arched back, then trailing across his peaked nipples teasingly. Down, across the hollow beneath his ribs, and down lower to the soft flesh above his hips.
Lower. He wanted lower. He wanted Bloodraven’s large hand to encircle his yearning cock, to encase it in heat and strength...Goddess...wanted more than that.
There sounded a crack of thunder that wasn’t accompanied by the visible aspect of lightning, startling them, although the ground didn’t shake from it. The pelting rain let up, becoming a steady, gentle shower. Bloodraven leaned forward, cheek next to Yhalen’s, forehead against the tree. One hand supported Yhalen’s back, the backside of the other softly stroked Yhalen’s belly.
“There was witchcraft?” the halfling murmured.
Yhalen had to blink and think a moment to recall. “Yes.”
“But no longer?”
“I don’t think...no. No longer.”
“Will she know?”
“Probably.” His destruction of her spell had not been unpretentious.
Bloodraven grunted, and pushed back from the tree, Yhalen still in his arms. Since his feet didn’t immediately come back into contact with the ground, Yhalen secured his grip about Bloodraven’s neck, blushing somewhat now that the heat of no doubt adrenaline-fueled passion had abated. Blushing more to be carried like a child back towards Bloodraven’s great horse and swung up into the high saddle as if he couldn’t manage on his own.
Bloodraven swung up behind him, and the gelding shifted, twitching his ears in displeasure at the extra weight. Very much annoyed not to be in a warm, dry stable somewhere, instead of drenched and cold and shouldering more than his fair share.
“Where...?” Yhalen started to ask, as Bloodraven urged the horse about and into a walk, its hooves making sucking sounds in standing water that had yet to sink into pine coated forest floor.
“Back to your king’s men, before they come looking for us.”
“He’s not my king,” Yhalen reminded him, feeling suddenly embarrassed and sullen. Losing control of his horse and consequently falling off was surprisingly higher on the list than how badly his body had betrayed him in Bloodraven’s arms. Then, because it had hardly occurred to him before, in the heat of the moment, “You came after me. Against the
geas
, you came after me.”
He felt the shifting of muscle behind him as Bloodraven shrugged. “You ride like a pregnant woman.
I feared for the horse.”
If Bloodraven had let him, instead of holding him firmly before him, Yhalen would have slipped down and walked, feet solid on the earth where they belonged, indignant over the slight to his admittedly poor skills as a horseman. Instead he slouched in the saddle, futilely trying not to lean back against Bloodraven. Trying not to appreciate the warmth of the halfling’s body, which seeped through two layers of sodden clothing to take the chill off his back.
In the passage of the worst of the storm, they found Alasdair’s men easily enough, Yhalen spotting the destructive passage of man and horse through the wood before eventually hearing the sound of heavy, equine bodies and human voices.
It was no full contingent they found, in the shelter of a sloping gully, and Alasdair seemed to be in the process of sending yet more of his wet soldiers out. The knight stopped in mid-command as Bloodraven’s great horse broke through the underbrush and leisurely made its way towards the welcome sight of other horses. Alasdair’s face was taut, strands of his dark hair come loose from the tail at his neck to cling wetly to his cheek, mingling with the pale scar.
The knight breathed some curse under his breath, hands unclenching on hilt of his great sword.
“Damn it!” he swore, considerably louder this time and reined his horse up next to Bloodraven’s.
“You try my patience.”
Bloodraven shrugged, unconcerned, veiled golden eyes flicking about the muddy forest glade until they found the most sheltered spot, where men had hastily secured a sheet of canvas between a set of 126
likely trees in a makeshift shelter from the worst of the rain. The lady huddled beneath it, swathed in her cloak. Yhalen felt Bloodraven tense up behind him, arms trembling just a little in anger. Whether the halfling would break the truce he’d gone to so much trouble to make in a fit of indignant fury over the lady’s intrusion into his mind with her witchcraft, wasn’t a thing Yhalen wished to wait and let chance decide. His own safety, after all, depended on Bloodraven’s value to the king.
“I lost my horse,” he said to the knight, distracting Bloodraven’s attention. “It ran with the storm. I don’t know where. That way.”
He pointed back the direction they’d come and Sir Alasdair swore again and signaled the men that he’d been prepared to send out into the steady drizzle.
“Go hunt down the others and tell them it’s a stray horse they’re looking for and not stray riders.
But be back within the hour, horse or not. I’ll not have the lot of you out in the rain in the dark if it can be helped. Not over a horse.”
The men nodded, grim faced at being sent out, wet and miserable as it was, but duty minded enough not to complain.
“There’s shelter enough to start a fire here. We’ll camp the night, and see if morning brings better weather.”
Which was fine news to Yhalen, whose back and shoulders still hurt from his fall from his errant horse. Curling up in his cloak in the lee of a tree sounded far preferable than riding through wet woods.
He put a hand on the thick arm around his middle, still feeling the tremor of strong emotion.
Bloodraven didn’t forget so easily, nor, Yhalen suspected, did he forgive easily.
“Let it go,” he said softly, then when Bloodraven’s fingers didn’t loosen. “Let...it...go.” Digging his own nails into Bloodraven’s wrist, demanding attention and a shift of focus.
The hold loosened. Yhalen didn’t look over his shoulder at Bloodraven’s face, didn’t wish to see what expression he wore, simply swung his leg over the saddle horn and dropped lightly to the ground.
He wound his way past shivering horses, intent on a destination. He caught the lady Duvera’s eyes on him before he reached the scant shelter. Saw the paleness of her face beneath her cloak and the wary tenseness about her eyes.
Her man squatted at the edge of the canvas, taking advantage of the shelter but not impeding her personal space. He watched Yhalen, shadow-eyed and on guard, but the lady didn’t protest the approach, so her guard didn’t rise to stop him as he bent and crouched, two foot from where she sat.
She knew. She absolutely knew who had shattered her
geas
. And perhaps she was as shocked by the ease at which he’d done it as he had been. Perhaps there was newfound apprehension in the way she looked at him. He didn’t dismiss it, quite readily appreciating the ability to inspire concern in a situation where he had no control otherwise.
“Advice.” He said it softly, meeting her eyes from under the strands of his own dripping hair.
“Ogres have a great loathing of magicks, it seems. And little tolerance for it being practiced upon them.
It would be a shame if your king’s plans were shattered because you wished to practice your craft.”
She was tired. The ride had taken its toll upon her and that weariness tempered the malice in her eyes.
“Do
you
threaten me?” she asked, as if he were so insignificant, so far below her lofty station, that he dare not breath her same air, much less confront her regarding her misdeeds.
Or maybe not misdeeds. Maybe she’d been set on this course by her king, who didn’t trust his alliance with a half-ogre collaborator so much as to let him loose in his countryside without assurances other than a group of men at arms. Perhaps all she need do was call out to Sir Alasdair that Yhalen had practiced magicks that had proven stronger than hers, to the detriment of the king’s purpose. She could cause great suspicion for him among the men, her word surely holding more weight than his would.
“Not me,” he said quietly and her eyes flickered beyond him through the grayness, to Bloodraven.
She looked back to him, pulling her cloak tighter around her, eyes narrow and full of speculation.
“Of that,” she said, “I’m not so certain.”
The rain continued through the morning. No harsh winds or thunderous booms, simply a fine, steady drizzle. It made travel a misery for man and horse alike. There were places in the woods where the foliage was so thick that it shielded the riders for a distance, but never for long.
127
The day was cold and unpleasant. Other than the sucking sound of hooves in sodden earth, and the squeaking of wet leather and gear, they rode in silence. No sign of Yhalen’s horse had been found, so they’d had to distribute the supplies of one of the packhorses among the other horses so that he could ride it.
Alasdair began to lead them northward, and they rode in and out of patches of forested land, until that afternoon they encountered the first sloping ground of foothills.
They were lucky enough to find what might have been a farmhouse, or a traveler’s lodge long abandoned to take shelter in for the night. There were gaping holes in the roof, but after clearing out the bramble and clearing the flue, the hearth proved usable and they had a fine warm meal to take the chill off the damp night.
Though Yhalen didn’t often willingly approach Bloodraven for conversation, the concern that the lady had been dabbling again in her intrusive magicks had been niggling at him for some time. He was too new to his blossoming talents to know how to sense if she were working some spell. He didn’t quite honestly know if such a thing could be detected, if it were not aimed at him, and its target half a dozen horse lengths away. For all he knew, she could be casting a
compulsion
of animosity towards him on the men of Alasdair’s guard. On Alasdair himself, even. Which thought frightened him no small bit, and had him watching the men around him warily for some time after it had occurred to him.
But mostly, he was concerned for Bloodraven. Whether the halfling, now alerted, might be sensitive enough to sense a
geas
against him, Yhalen didn’t know. On the off chance that he could, Yhalen feared violence against the lady that could only result in return violence against Bloodraven, and very likely himself. And though the initial spell, in all honesty, had only been of benefit to the king’s purpose, and had not seemed one that was harmful to the victim of it, still, it bothered Yhalen that it had been cast.
That she cast her malicious powers towards Bloodraven was as irksome as when she’d cast them at him and
that
, upon reflection, was a revelation that set him in a dark mood.
When exactly had he come to consider Bloodraven of more consequence than the human men who guarded him? What insanity possessed him to care in the least if the halfling were shackled by the means of dark magicks, when such a thing should, in fact, benefit him?
They fixed the same canvas they’d used to shelter the lady in the woods yesterday to the side of the dilapidated house, which gave the poor horses some refuge from the persistent rain. The rest of them, Bloodraven included, crowded into the little house. Although, Yhalen suspected, Bloodraven would have just as well taken his rest outside, regardless of weather. Alasdair wouldn’t have it, though, not unless men of his also braved the miserable night to keep watch on him, so Bloodraven didn’t argue the point. He simply ducked his head and shoulders to enter the house and found a relatively dry wall to situate himself against while the humans found reason to arrange their own bedrolls as far from him as the confines as the dwelling would allow.
There was little room on the side of the house where Alasdair’s men clumped together, huddled against the damp cold. Duvera, who had not uttered a word to Yhalen since his reckless words to her the night before, observed him with dark eyes, amused at his uncertainty. Spell of hers or not, he wasn’t popular among the men at the moment, having caused a good number of them to spend the night before out in dark, rain-drenched woods and having added to their loads by the appropriation of a pack horse.
He didn’t trust their welcome, so having little other option, he took his damp bedroll and moved to the wall next Bloodraven’s corner. A persistent drip forced him close enough to Bloodraven’s side to touch, should he care to reach out his hand. The halfling watched his movements from under eyes shielded by half-lowered lashes.
Soon enough, lulled by a warm meal and warm tea, by the friendly crackle of the fire they kept fed in the hearth, the men began to relax, murmuring in low voices among themselves.
If eyes were upon them, Yhalen thought, at least it wasn’t the entire scrutiny of the company. He leaned a little closer to the large, preternaturally still body next to him, wondering if Bloodraven were asleep. Just as well if he were, for Yhalen’s curiosity about whether the lady had again attempted to cast her
geas
upon him would be better answered by the simple act of physical connection rather than verbal questioning.