Yhalen was tossed to the ground then, and he hit with an impact that drove the air from his lungs.
The lack of breath did not stop him from scampering backwards as they encircled him, a ring of indignant giants with nothing but his destruction in mind. He came up short against a pair of legs like tree stumps, and was kicked back towards the center of the gathering. He rolled, ribs aching from that blow. A female lumbered forward and snatched his braid, yanking him up by that. She pulled back an
arm to strike him, but was stopped by a hand upon her wrist. Bloodraven, stopping her with a short word that she cried out in protest against.
Yhalen shut his eyes and thanked the Goddess. Bloodraven would protect him from their wrath.
Bloodraven would see him safe.
Bloodraven spoke again, louder, a sneer in his voice. There was a rumble from the surrounding clan, and Bloodraven rumbled back, then snatched Yhalen out of the ogress’ grasp. Hauling him under his arm, he strode across the clearing, through a gap they made for him. He stopped at a scaffolding of limbs lashed together, no doubt used for stringing up meat to dry out of the reach of nighttime predators. He spun Yhalen around and yanked his coat down off his shoulders before tossing it aside.
He caught up Yhalen’s wrists and lashed them together with a rawhide rope someone tossed him.
Yhalen stared up into his shadowed eyes, horrified as he tossed the end of the rope over the top of the scaffold, hauling Yhalen up off his feet to dangle by bound wrists.
No. No
. He mouthed the words, disbelieving, but Bloodraven did not look into his face, instead grasping his trousers and jerking them down. He broke the ties with the force of it, leaving him bare from the waist down. Yhalen shrank back from both the wash of cold air against his skin and the menace that seemed to accompany it. There were calls from the gathered clan, cries of excitement and encouragement.
A female came forward with the offended child, whose broad, blunt face was creased with anticipation. She said something to Bloodraven, who stood for a long moment, silent, then nodded his head in assent. Bloodraven handed the child the belt he’d taken from his own middle and the youngster grinned, circling Yhalen with yellow eyes that glittered malice. He reached out and grabbed Yhalen’s shriveled cock, stretching it out from his body and saying something that made his elders rumble with laughter. Encouraged by the attention he was receiving the youngster shifted his grip to encompass Yhalen’s cock and balls, then pulled. It drew Yhalen’s body out at an angle and made his body a painful weight supported by that tender flesh. The child laughed and let him go and he swung backwards, spinning in his bonds.
The leather belt lashed out and caught him across the thighs. And again, this time striking his cock and balls. He screamed at the burning pain. The child seemed intent on punishing his genitalia, and after the first two blows, he lost count until Bloodraven took the belt from the child’s hand and took up the whipping himself. No more blows landed upon the front of his body, but his buttocks and the back of his thighs were laid to mercilessly.
He screamed until he was hoarse, having long ago lost the ability to silently endure. When it stopped he was sobbing incoherently and fell boneless to the earth when Bloodraven finally cut him down. He lay there, shivering, the heat of whipped skin overpowering the cold winter air.
A hand grasped his hair, pulling him up and he stared with incomprehension into Bloodraven’s impassive face.
“
Deal she’ll veer Ann re!
” Then, in the human tongue, “I’ve armor in need of cleaning. My tent, in there. Go!”
He hauled Yhalen up, shoved his trousers into his arms and gave him a push in the direction of a small tent at the edge of the camp. Yhalen staggered that way, body burning. No few ogre hands slapped his abused buttocks or pinched at his dangling cock and balls on his way there. It was pain he hardly felt, so shocked was he from the whipping. Into the tent he went, and fell to his knees upon the threadbare fur on the floor. It was barely big enough to accommodate Bloodraven, much less a full-blooded ogre. It might have been the tent of a mateless female or a child’s, given up for a guest from another clan. Some of Bloodraven’s armor lay neatly against one tent wall, though Yhalen made no move for it, falling instead to his side and curling there in shock.
By the time Bloodraven came to the tent, minutes or hours later, Yhalen had still made no effort to pull trousers on over his smarting flesh. Instead, he had fallen into a half doze that he only came out of when he felt the touch of hands upon his body. Bloodraven’s big fingers on his buttocks, grazing no doubt red skin.
“You bastard,” Yhalen whispered and rolled away. Pain assaulted him as the rough fur of the mat scraped against tender skin. His bruised cock and balls complained at any movement. But still he put what distance he could between himself and his tormentor.
Bloodraven sat there, cross-legged, and stared at him, brows drawn, a frown upon his lips.
“I told you to obey,” he said with a soft growl.
“Obey....” Yhalen felt tears gather at his lashes. “I did nothing but defend...against those malicious little....“
He couldn’t finish. He felt such a tightness at his throat, such an overwhelming frustration.
“Do you wish us both torn to pieces over the antics of a spoiled child?” Bloodraven leaned forward and caught him by the shoulders, drawing him forward whether Yhalen wished to be drawn or not.
Yhalen struggled and got shaken, hard, until he subsided. Bloodraven put his mouth close to Yhalen’s ear and growled, “Would you rather I gave you to the females to discipline? Believe me, you would bear the marks of their ire for the remainder of your days, and I would likely have fallen to their blades trying to stop it. So count us both lucky that it was my hand that fell upon you, foolish creature.”
“You let...you let that little monster....”
“What choice?” Bloodraven said softly, hands still gripping tight to Yhalen’s arms. “He was the offended party. Honor needed assuaging.”
“There was honor involved?” Yhalen asked dully.
He let his head drop, forehead against Bloodraven’s shoulder, appalled, exhausted, hurting.
Bloodraven had punished him because Bloodraven had little other choice save letting a mob of angry relatives appease the indignity of a rotten ogre youngster. It was a bitter draught to swallow.
“Can you...soothe your hurts?” Bloodraven said so softly against his hair that he almost didn’t hear. “Without them knowing?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, almost laughing at the fact that Bloodraven had asked. He was not so adept at the art of healing yet that he could predict exactly where the life energy he drew originated from. It could just as well be Bloodraven as from some suspicious ogre outside. He could hear their movements, not so far away. The tents were close enough that almost without trying he could feel the clustered essence of them.
In his mind’s eye, he remembered Deathclaw, falling withered and drained from a magic Yhalen had hardly known he possessed, and imagined the lot of these barbarous ogres withering the same way. For a moment, before he caught himself and stopped it, he wondered how easy it might be to initiate such a theft. It was an appalling notion, one Elvardo would be proud of, and Yhalen cringed and shut his eyes, blanking his mind of such things.
“I’ve salve,” Bloodraven murmured, setting him aside and reaching for the small pile of gear he had salvaged from their packs. It was no small wonder that he’d been able to take what he had under the proprietary eyes of the ogres who had claimed the animals.
Yhalen lay on his side, the only position that the short fur of the mat did not agitate his skin, curling his legs as the cold began to seep in, past the heat of abused flesh. Bloodraven uncapped a small jar of medicinal salve that smelled strongly of mint and evlo leaf, one of the trail remedies that Elvardo’s women had packed for them. Bloodraven’s fingers touched his skin, gently smearing a salve that spread a coolness that was easing in a way the frigid air was not. He shut his eyes and let Bloodraven, who had caused so much of this discomfort, tend to him.
When Bloodraven’s fingers touched his tender genitals he hissed and drew his legs up protectively.
Bloodraven shushed his complaints, pushing his knees down and spreading salve over shriveled cock and bruised balls.
Afterwards he sat, idly stroking Yhalen’s exposed skin.
“I’m cold,” Yhalen said softly and Bloodraven grunted, attention not as focused upon Yhalen’s comfort as it had been. His big fingers pressed firmly into the flesh of Yhalen’s buttock.
“Your flesh colors so easily.”
“There was nothing easy about it,” Yhalen murmured, but Bloodraven ignored him.
“Like the skin of a ripe apple.” Again his fingers pressed into the softest part of Yhalen’s buttocks, and then relented. Bloodraven chuckled. “And white underneath.”
The hands smoothed over him again, down the curve of his rear to his thighs and back up again.
Yhalen stifled a low groan, knowing very well the signs of Bloodraven’s arousal.
“Over. On your knees,” Bloodraven commanded softly, but did not give Yhalen time to complain or come to the decision to obey, before his hands gripped Yhalen’s hips and sat him in the desired position, shoulders to the mat and red ass in the air. His bruised balls tightened painfully with a surge of anticipation that bypassed his indignation. Bloodraven’s large, cool palms spread out over the heated planes of his buttocks and his thumbs parted smarting cheeks, made Yhalen’s pulse race. His
cock struggled to life and it hurt.
A big, slick finger slid inside him, probing deep as the other hand massaged one buttock.
“Your skin is so hot. So pink,” Bloodraven marveled. “It pleases me, the feel of your heat on the outside.” He leaned over Yhalen’s back, squeezing a second finger in to the knuckle and whispering against Yhalen’s neck, “I’ll take you over my knee when there are no witnesses and redden your pale skin again before I fuck you, hmm?”
Yhalen shuddered, breath harsh and uneven, because somehow Bloodraven saying that in the midst of sex made his cock burn with the influx of blood. Made him want to touch it and pleasure himself, but for the sure knowledge that such attention would bring more pain than pleasure.
“Yes?” Bloodraven prompted, curling his fingers inside Yhalen’s body and finding that most sensitive of places. The whole of Yhalen’s body curled, reacting to that pleasure place and he gasped what Bloodraven wanted to hear. Perhaps even after the pain of a more brutal whipping, what prospect secretly thrilled him.
“Yes. Yes!”
Bloodraven grunted and withdrew his fingers, using that hand to unfasten his trousers while the other spread Yhalen’s buttocks, stretching his loosened hole for the entry of Bloodraven’s big cock. The head squeezed in past protesting muscle and Yhalen bit down on his forearm to keep from crying out and letting the whole of the clan know what they were about. Then the rest slid in, and he felt every ridge, every vein, it seemed, as he was invaded and conquered.
Bloodraven set a slow, rolling gait, his hands forever shifting on Yhalen’s ass and hips, fingers pressing in and out of flesh as if it fascinated him, the pale white marks his fingertips left that were so soon filled with red again. Yhalen grunted with the apex of each deep thrust, feeling it in his belly. He wondered if he pressed his own hands hard enough against his stomach, if he would feel the outline of Bloodraven’s cock. Wondered...Goddess...how much he ought to despise himself for loving this as much as he did.
He touched himself, tentatively, no longer able to contain the need, and hissed at the tenderness.
When he came, it felt like boiling water running through his cock and he did cry out then, shocked at the burning hurt. The depth of that hurt scared him enough to grasp for relief and he instinctively sought soothing power to heal from the most handy source.
Bloodraven let out an explosive breath, stamina depleted suddenly—perhaps a result of Yhalen’s theft. He came unexpectedly, and slumped forward, supporting himself on his elbows over Yhalen while he caught his breath.
“You...?” he finally gasped, slipping out of Yhalen and rolling aside.
“It hurt,” Yhalen said simply, pushing himself up and looking down at his belly and the blood tinged come that stained it.
Seeing it, Bloodraven narrowed his eyes in speculation. Yhalen touched himself and the majority of the pain was gone, his cock pale and lax in its thatch of hair, the surrounding welts on his thighs and hips faded a great deal.
“We leave tomorrow if they’ll allow it,” Bloodraven declared. “No matter the punishment, they won’t so easily forget your transgression. They’ll harass you, and you’ve no aptitude for humility in the face of it.”
“You don’t know what they did. What those men endure....”
“I can well imagine.”
“You’ve done all this to give your half-blood brethren a chance at a better life and yet you ignore the fully human slaves that endure worse?”
Bloodraven didn’t blanch under the accusation. “I can only fight one battle at a time.”
Yhalen woke with considerably less soreness than he was honestly due. If he concentrated while he lay in the warmth of Bloodraven’s blankets, he could pick out individual hurts and the dull aches of bruises that had not entirely healed with his small theft of life energy.