Bloodraven Read online

  They gathered around him, the four of them crouching or kneeling, and he could hardly tell the two new ones apart from the ones that had taken him, except for one had gold in his ears and a gold circlet around his head and the others seemed to defer some small bit to him. That one held a large wineskin, from which he took a great swig, wiping one hand across the back of his mouth afterwards and nudging the one next to him with a sly word. That one laughed and leaned forward, poking Yhalen in the chest and barking a question at him. Bound as he was, there was little avoiding it. He lay there and glared, drawing his knees towards his stomach in a reflexive motion to protect himself.

  They laughed at that, and one grabbed his ankles and stretched his legs out. Yhalen cursed then and tried to kick his way free of that grasp, writhing so much that the rope at his neck cut off his air and he had to stop, gasping and lightheaded. They enjoyed that, watching him suffocate—sat and chortled over it until he did black out and the one with the earrings finally reached out and loosened the noose.

  Yhalen came back to himself with tears in his eyes and bile in his throat.

  They’d gathered more rope while he was out, and like children with a doll, two of them diligently caught his legs, discussing among themselves perhaps, the best way to deal with him, their new toy.

  The one leg they looped rope about thigh and ankle, then pulled them close together. He’d lost a boot along the way, he didn’t remember where, and would hardly have noticed if the rope hadn’t cut into the flesh of his bare ankle. The other leg, they looped rope about his injured ankle and used it to hoist his leg up. He cried out, as it tightened around the already swollen joint, but they cared little for his pain, and pulled the leg up until it was perpendicular to his body and tied it off to the tree.

  It was a position that left him brutally exposed, his legs spread wide, his hips almost suspended from the ground. He felt cool air against his thigh and realized with growing horror that there was very little left of his trousers, shredded as they’d been from the play of the first two ogres. It took little effort for them now to simply rip them further, and the cool night air touched his shrinking balls and the flesh of his buttocks.

  What did they want? What could they possibly want? The difference in size most certainly prohibited sex, didn’t it? There was no possible way that he could accommodate one of them. What then? Curiosity? Simple torture? Yhalen shut his eyes and pressed his face into the mulch, body shivering in convulsive little twitches that he had no control over. He wouldn’t cry. He wouldn’t scream. He wouldn’t give them that victory along with the rest.

  They touched him, big, rough fingers pressing his balls flat, rolling his penis between their fingers, laughing no doubt at the size in comparison to whatever it was they hid within their pants. It hurt. Oh, it hurt a great deal to have their brutish hands explore him, taunt him, tug at him, and squash him. He bit into the thick braid that lay under his cheek to keep from screaming when they caught the head of his penis between their fingers and pulled it brutally out from his body. He thought they meant to rip it off—it felt like something tore at the root of it, and he could stand it no longer and drew breath to scream at the red agony that shot through his groin—but they let it go. He hardly had the time to shudder in relief when those same thick fingers prodded ungently at the clenched entrance behind his balls. He bit his lip, trying to bring the leg tied ankle to thigh up and prevent it—but another of them simply pressed his knee to the ground and he was helpless to do anything but lie there and tremble and gasp.

  The one with the earrings leaned over, grinning, and tipped the mouth of his wineskin up, dribbling strong red wine over Yhalen’s thighs. It dribbled over his balls and down the short channel to his anus, making the cuts sting and his ball shrink. The one at his bottom laughed and smeared his big finger in the wine, then pressed the tip of it against Yhalen’s opening. It was thicker than Yhalen’s engorged penis and considerably longer. The nail was blunt but ragged, and tore flesh as the ogre twisted it into Yhalen’s resisting body.

  The wine lubricated nothing so well as the thick blood that began to flow, hot and stinging down Yhalen’s spine and across his thighs.

  He did scream then, when the bulge of the knuckle threatened to split already torn muscle. Cried and cursed and spasmodically tried to jerk his body away from the intrusion and failed. And hopelessly, miserably failed. He did nothing but scrape his arms and hands against the bark of the tree and amuse the gathered monsters. They thought it great sport, his humiliation, this brutal torture. He thought he was going to die. The pain was a molten knife at the small of his back that ripped up into his guts and shredded his insides. It dug around inside him, twisting its punishing finger, curving it so that it felt as if it pressed against his belly through the bruised mass of his colon.

  The world went dark then, and he tried to let himself fall into that trance that Mother and Greatgrandfather let themselves experience when they were working some magic or another or trying to speak to the ancestors or the forest or the Goddess. He had that power in him—his bloodline was the oldest of all the Ydregi—he was merely too young for the training of it. A young man had to go through the rites of the warrior—of the philosopher—before he could be trained in the rites of the druid. So many years ahead that they became clouded in his mind just thinking of it. But he still knew the ways.

  He still knew what Grandfather did and Mother—who was a healer of the tribe despite the fact that she’d only seen sixty summers. Yhalen hadn’t seen quite twenty and still, he could almost reach that place and the power that rested there—waiting for the right touch to draw it out. Almost he could feel the overwhelming essence of life that emanated from the forest surrounding them….

  He almost had it— almost—and was brought back by the sudden shock of his head being twisted up, his jaws hinged open and a splash of wine so bitter it made him choke, poured down his open mouth.

  He swallowed and spat and hardly realized the finger gone from his rear until it was jammed down into his mouth. The taste of blood and shit made him gag. The ogre barked something at him, jamming his finger between Yhalen’s straining jaws. Again the same word and he thought the brute might have wanted him to clean it of his own blood and his own shit. He shut his eyes, refusing to do anything but lay there and passively let it rape his mouth. It wasn’t until he felt another blunt, thick finger pressed against his ravaged anus and another gruff voice repeated the same foreign word, that he panicked and thought perhaps a little capitulation in the face of insurmountable odds might not be a bad thing. It filled his mouth to capacity, but he tried to comply. The ogre grinned hugely and pulled his finger out, rubbing it across Yhalen’s lips with bruising force, urging him to lick it clean. He did, stomach churning with nausea, tongue hesitantly lapping at the rough flesh, which was mostly clean, from the thrusts down his throat.

  The second finger pressed into him and he jerked, crying out in shock and anger.

  He’d done what they’d asked and still…. He choked, the finger jammed back down his throat, curling down the back of his throat.

  The pain ate him up from the inside, bloody, raw, torn, stretched wider than a body could stretch and recover as they expanded their games and found other things to force inside him. He lost what sense of dignity he’d striven to hold on to and screamed and pleaded and begged, and all it did was inflame them. He saw through red-tinged vision, one of them take out the horrifying thing between its legs and start to pump it in excited vigor. It was as long as Yhalen’s arm from shoulder to wrist and thicker than his biceps along the shaft, bulging larger at the bluish green head, which was swollen and angry and leaking clear fluid.

  They went into a frenzy, with the smell of the ogre’s sexual fluids so strong in the air that it made Yhalen’s eyes water. The thing reached for him, wild-eyed and intent, and Yhalen knew that he would die, impaled on this thing and knew that he wouldn’t die well or honorably. But, the one with the ear rings, the only one that
hadn’t violated him yet, snarled and shoved the one with the frightening erection back, smacking its own chest once then stabbing a finger towards Yhalen’s tortured form. The other one growled, backing down reluctantly, hunching over to vigorously massage the length of its cock. A tattooed length, Yhalen noted absently, his head swimming with something akin to relief—or perhaps it was blood loss. There were tattooed symbols on their arms and the hints of them under the edges of their armor.

  The leader, who had claimed Yhalen for his own, moved to sit at his legs, taking another swig of the bitter wine, before pouring the last of it down Yhalen’s raised leg and watching as it dribbled down. It burned like liquid fire and he screamed and convulsed weakly. His cries had grown hoarse from so many shameful screams. From the bruising of thick malicious ogre fingers.

  The ogre leader pushed his finger inside to little resistance, blood and torn muscle easing the way.

  Yhalen moaned and pressed his face into the mulch, having no strength left to even flinch. With no resistance met and no cry of pain evicted, the ogre drew its finger out and added a second. It was no new tactic. They had already invaded him that way, eager to see how far his flesh would stretch before it split. It was split now. He shut his eyes and tried to find escape in blackness, but unexpectedly the ogre pulled out of him and leaned over, jerking his head back by his hair.

  Yhalen’s eyes snapped open, and he found himself no more than a hand’s span from the malicious, calculating eyes of the ogre leader. It forced his face down, making him look down the length of his body to the throbbing erection the ogre had freed from its pants. It was huge and unforgiving and glistening with clear fluid. The ogre jutted it hard against his belly like a fist in his gut, knocking the air from his lungs. It said something to him, low and soft and promising. One word that Yhalen thought with detached horror might have meant death. Then the ogre eased backwards, clutching his bloodied thighs in its meaty hands, thumbs stretching the cheeks of his buttocks wide as it pressed the blunt tip of itself against him. The other’s paused in their reverie to watch, wide eyed and expectant—breathless over the final execution of their captive.

  With great hands clutched tight around Yhalen’s thighs and buttocks, it slowly, methodically worked itself inside, slowly deliberately split him asunder, and oh, he screamed then. Opened his mouth and soundlessly cried out in shock and profound, mind-altering agony. He could not even twist his body in the animal desperate need to escape the torture, so filled—so cruelly skewered was he. All he could do was convulse and twitch and reflexively try to keep breath in his lungs. Soon he didn’t even have the stamina left to do even that and breath came short and unevenly. No stamina left to protest, no cognizance left to beg with anything resembling coherency.

  All he could do was lie there, body jerking with the motion of his assailant, oozing blood. So much blood that it soaked the mulch on which he lay. The ogre fucked him methodically, not able to completely immerse itself, even though it tore through his insides in the effort—again, until his hands and great hairy balls were smeared with Yhalen’s blood and Yhalen was fading again, lightheaded and distant, the pain receding in favor of something else.

  He was dying. They were making it as slow a process as they could, but he was finally being drawn down the dark path of death. He was barely aware when the ogre pulled out, spewing a great splash of hot liquid across Yhalen’s body, licking his fingers clean of Yhalen’s blood Ancestors—please don’t reject me. He was afraid they might. Afraid that he’d disgraced himself—afraid that these beasts would consume his body after they killed it and that he might never return to the ground. He had to be buried in the ground at the roots of a mother tree in order for the forest to lift his soul to the place where the ancestors dwelled. Still, even the eternal nothingness that would come if he were not lifted up by the forest, was better than enduring more of their torment. Even being cold and alone forever was preferable to waking up tomorrow and living through this again.

  The darkness came down, like a blanket tossed up and gently floated down over his head. The pain was still there—still present in the background—but the rest was quiet and still. He strove to reach the darkness—the peace. He could just see it. Could feel the overwhelming call of it.

  Even the pain went away—there was nothing.

  Nothing.

  And then a faint gentle presence that pushed him away with a force than made the ogres seem fragile, weak things.

  No singular essence—no perceptible identity—more an overwhelming awareness of…life. Of bursting vitality and deep rooted, undulating vigor. He didn’t want it. He wanted endings. He sobbed and railed at the loss of the darkness and the pain came back with so brutal a stab that it drove him grasping after that ethereal power—the essence of the forest that had always protected the Ydregi and given them strength and life and energy. And surprisingly enough, it responded, like it did to his mother when she set bones or healed wounds. It swept over him and enveloped him in warmth and chased away the pain.

  And then, there was darkness again and this time, nothing interrupted it. No dreams, no voices, no essence of power.

  Yhalen woke up. It was such a profound shock to do so that he didn’t quite believe it at first. He’d expected to die. Had expected to never know anything but that dark nothingness again. It was baffling to open his eyes to filtered daylight. Even more so to open them to anything other than blinding pain.

  Oh, he hurt. He was sore and miserable, and his muscles were cramped from the awkward position he’d spent the night in. But it didn’t feel as if he’d been so cruelly and methodically tortured—impaled, torn, and left to bleed out his life on the forest floor. He twisted his head a little to try and look down his body. He was covered in dirt and blood, but his flesh seemed oddly free of the deep cuts and gashes he’d received during his time in the ogres’ care.

  How? How had this happened, this miraculous healing? Even his mother, an experienced healer, could not have regenerated such grievous wounds. Not so completely. She could only have aided.

  Panicked, he looked for sign of his captors and saw them—four huge, sprawled shapes deeply asleep around the burnt out fire. They were snoring to wake the dead, and there were no animal sounds to break the morning solitude—all the birds chased away by the clamor, or perhaps merely by the ogres’ corrupt presence. But—there was something else.

  Yhalen hadn’t noticed in the dark, but the trees, the bushes, the brush, the vines—even the weeds struggling up through the pine mulch—everything surrounding the campsite was dead. Brown, shriveled and lifeless. Likewise, the tree he was anchored to was brittle and dead, though it was apparent from the dried leaves still on their branches that it had not been dead long.

  How? He’d not felt this, this profound lack of life before. All the essence, all the life force had been sucked out of this small area of wood—a cruel twist on the gentle borrowing that the healers and druids of his people practiced.

  Had he done this? Had he, in his desperation to stop the pain—had he pulled the life force from the surrounding wood and used it to heal himself? That was the way of it, according to his mother. To borrow from the forest—from the Goddess—to heal their hurts. But Mother never killed the forest in her little thefts of power. She never left dried husks in her wake.

  Yhalen began to tremble, terrified at the audacity of what he’d done. Terrified that any remote chance he’d had at redemption in the eyes of the ancestors was now banished. Terrified that he hadn’t died. That he’d done nothing more than heal his body so they could do it all over again. That they would wake up and see him….

  He couldn’t stop the shaking. The fear ate its way through him, chasing away all other rational thought, all senses, all emotion until all he could do was lay there and stare at those snoring hulks in frozen anticipation. He jerked mindlessly at the rope binding him. He was bound in the same manner as he’d been last night when they’d finished with him, one leg up, the other folded tight an
d both so cramped that new pain lanced up his back as he twisted. The dead tree rustled and dried gray leaves floated to the ground.

  One of the ogres snorted, disturbed in its slumber and Yhalen froze—wanting it back asleep—wanting a few precious more moments of safety before they rose. But it turned onto its back, lifting a muscled arm and wiping the back of a broad hand across its face. His face. Most definitely male. All of them. Gold eyes turned his way, an absent sweep of the campsite, passed him over in his stillness, then swung back, narrowing as the ogre realized with some surprise that Yhalen was alive.

  An unexpected thing, to be certain.

  Gold earrings chimed as the ogre climbed to his feet, padding over to tower above Yhalen, glaring down with something akin to accusation in his small eyes.

  Krebakle ouvbre ne sekhre? he hissed. How are you still alive, Yhalen imagined the words to mean.

  He’d asked the same of himself.

  The ogre bent down, and ran his fingertips tentatively down Yhalen’s trembling body, between his legs, the rough pad of one finger prodding behind Yhalen’s shrunken balls at whole, untorn flesh. Then he pulled back, muttering a word, eyes wary, fingers touching a rune-like tattoo on the inside of one arm. A rune against evil, or magic perhaps. For a while, with those hands on him, Yhalen grayed out.

  Just ceased to see in his panic and his terror and only came back to himself an indeterminate amount of time later when all his captors were up and warily clustered together, across the clearing. They seemed to be conferring amongst themselves, occasionally casting dark, uncomfortable looks his way.

  Eventually some decision was made, for one of the lesser ones, one without an abundance of rings in his ears or gold on his person, ambled over and roughly released Yhalen from his bonds. Or the majority of them. His released legs sent blood rushing to numb extremities and the ogre was unreasonable in his refusal to understand why Yhalen couldn’t stand on his feet when it yanked him up. His legs wouldn’t hold him, though the sprain in his ankle seemed to have fled with the rest of last night’s injury. All he could do was lie there, with his arms still tightly bound behind his back, and try not to sob as the needles of returning blood flow attacked his legs.