Part 1 of this series can be found
here
.
Please note that this story is erotic fiction not porn, and doesn't consist of wall-to-wall sex. With that understood, pull up a log to the firepit and warm your hands as I continue my tale. If you like my work enough to drop 5 stars in the hat, I would be honoured.
Sparks spat from swift strikes of ore against flint. Ceni rested her hand on Yarro's strong shoulder as he bent to his task. Every passing heartbeat mattered, and she silently mouthed her workings. Her lips barely moved as she willed both his fire and his transformation to take hold.
A few sparks nested in the puff of dry willowherb Yarro was using for tinder. They caught, and in an instant bloomed into flame. He fed it pinches of shaved larch and tiny ash twigs, cupping the young fire between broad palms. Earlier, those hands had held her pinned in the sedge as they had climaxed together, the culmination of a chaotic ritual that had freed him from an insidious yearning for defeat.
The change she had kindled was young, like his fire. He breathed strength into the flame, and in a subtle way she did the same for her warrior. In her sight, the signs of change were evident, but his chest was still smeared with blood from the sigil she had gifted him, cut with ecstatic precision into his flesh. If the change was starved at such an early stage it could gutter, smoulder and go out. Both of their lives, as well as the lives at High Hearth, would depend on a strong flame today, and on the strength of Yarro's transformation.
So as they worked to establish a hungry blaze amongst the tall rocks of Shattergrin Carn, she used the activity to feed his power, letting him lead the task and allowing him space to draw strength from his physicality. Ceni watched intently as he stacked the beacon high with ash timbers, hauling them from under the great stone slab that had kept them dry. As the dusk drew in, the beacon would be clearly visible from High Hearth and a couple of other villages as a bright ember amongst the blue hills. This particular spot would also be unseen by the column of slavers approaching across the moor below. Much would depend on surprise in the coming fight.
Yarro set up the largest logs; sections of trunk as wide across as Ceni's shoulders. His change was so obvious to her in the flickering halflight. She saw the play of flame across the thick muscles, and shadows pooling in the smooth valleys between them. She saw the new determination in his jaw, and the purposeful calm in his swift, powerful movements. A soft rain began to fall and the fire spat, but if Yarro's bare flesh felt any discomfort he did not show it. That morning he had left High Hearth a lad; a year older than her but so much younger in his spirit, still playing at manhood despite the well healed coming-of-age scars knotting his muscular form. Before her now was her warrior, a spearcarrier who would stop at nothing to defend his people. He would see them all to safety: the olders with their sharp wits and cloudy sight; the youngers with their chores and games; and most of all, his witch.
The blaze shone in Yarro's eyes as met her gaze. Something twisted in the pit of her stomach and she felt that she was wet for him.
"Run with me," he said.
The spearcarriers left the beacon flaming at their backs and hastened across the heath. They ran at a pace that they could sustain over long distance, heading not for the village but for a pre-agreed rally point above one of the wooded valleys that yawned like long lacerations in the direction of the moor. High Hearth would empty itself overnight as the oldest and youngest packed what they could carry and set out for safe camps known only to the mountains. Children would be sent as runners to alert kin in nearby settlements, and the fastest would be sent as scouts to locate the slavers' staging camp. The hill tribe warriors would assemble in darkness; oaths would be renewed and feuds set aside. They would hit the slavers in the blue light of predawn, defending their people both with great deeds to be repeated in the stories, and with unutterable acts that bonded those present in grim, unspoken, shared knowledge.
Ceni watched Yarro's shoulders pump as he ran. This warrior was hers in body and spirit, and for the first time she felt herself becoming truly his. Yarro's emerging power was shifting something inside her and again she felt her belly flutter at the thought of him. The man loping ahead of her in the rain was no longer like a pup searching for a teat. He was a fully grown mountain dog; thick necked, firm-spirited and feral, ready to lead the hunt.
She felt a warmth spreading through her chest as she remembered the feeling of him inside her, deep enough to turn her orgasm into an earthquake, and so raw that she had opened for him and released herself into a timeless black sea of potential. She had allowed him to join her there, entwined together in the source of her power. If they both survived what was coming she knew that she could give herself to this man.
The night drew in and the rain dwindled, leaving her skin cool over the heat of her exertion. After a time the clouds began to part, and in the starlight she could see the sweep of heath, a shadow against the blue black of the sky. Yarro ran before her, inexhaustible as a ghost. Looking up, Ceni could see the glint of Nassa's Teeth high above; a slow orbit of crowded pinpricks that encircled the world, poised to bite down. She remembered the old tellings about folk who had climbed to live amongst those bright fangs and who had become angels; ageless ones who knew the workings of life, death and alchemy. She sent up a silent prayer that they would watch over her, and over Yarro.
Grandmother Moon rose, bathing the heath with her cold light. She was waxing, and Ceni addressed her from the deep waters of her lower belly, asking that the great cycles of her life and that of her lover would also wax strong. Yarro did not turn at the sound of her workings.
The spearcarriers crested a ridgeline with a sweeping view across the low moors. They were a dark expanse broken only by the glistening of floodwaters and, at the edge of sight, a sick glow from the direction of the decaying City whose outskirts were just visible over the shoulder of the hills. Beyond the ridge the silvery heather gave onto scrub woodland, and Ceni followed Yarro as he picked through animal tracks knotted with brambles, opening a trail with slashes of his spear. They began to descend through a mottley landscape of bracken and hazel groves; old coppice known to yield a rich crop of nuts at harvest time, and tender venison for those who would hunt this far from the village.
Finally they came to a rocky outcrop in the deepening woods, where a looming shape jutted from the forest floor. The ancient thing was twice Yarro's height, its imposing angles and wide arms pitted with rust and crusted with lichen. Nobody knew what it had been or what its name meant. They called it the Robot. Each face was painted with a large white sigil that marked the hill tribes' rallying point, unused for a generation. No-one else had yet arrived.
Yarro made eye contact, his gaze lingering and his expression unreadable. He shot her a fleeting smile and then climbed on top of the Robot, the movements fluid as those strong shoulders lifted his bodyweight. She could just about make out the shape of him settling into a cross-legged seat beneath the whispering branches. Ceni found a hollow at the base of a tree, drew her cloak around herself and contemplated the man. This distance was new; more evidence of his change. He was choosing his own company, entering the hunter's meditation without reference to her. A knowing smile broadened her lips.
The woods creaked and rustled. An owl hooted, and was answered by its mate. Ceni heard soft paws in the leaves; a fox giving them a wide berth. Her breathing slowed and the moment hung. She became entranced in the sighing of the leaves, felt the threads of life that connected bird and bough; fungus and bark; hunter and prey; warrior and foe.
Her spear would find a mark. She could already feel the trajectory of its thrust; the impact of the strike. Memories of the battle to come echoed back to her through time, indistinct with vicious chaos. Smoke drifting; blood black in the dawn light. The long shadow of a great sorrow fell across her; a yearning that called back from times yet to pass. In the depth of her trance she could not tell the cause of the longing, or to whom it belonged.
She must have slept, but she was not sure how long it had been. As she came to, she sensed Yarro close. Ceni opened her eyes and met his gaze. There was something wolfish about the way he was looking at her, a hunger that might have spelled danger if it had lacked the softness of his devotion. There was something else there now; a canniness that she had never noticed before. It was the look of a hunter ready to take down his prey, absolutely confident in his abilities.
He leaned in and kissed her, taking her jaw in his hand. She opened for him, allowing her eyes to close as she lost herself in the hot passion of his lips. His hand moved over her throat and held her by the neck, firm enough that she could sense his strength, but not crushing. The other hand went under her cloak, moving up her thigh as he worked himself between her legs.
Ceni quivered as he parted her with the bulk of his body. She felt herself becoming wet, and gave a little moan into the heat of the kiss. She felt him as older, stronger, and so confident. Her lithe hunter's body softened; she felt herself a slip of a girl in the broad, strong arms of her man.
"The others..." she whispered.
"Not yet," he told her. "But we don't have long."
"What if we're seen?"
As soon as she voiced the question she realised that she didn't care. Yarro's smile told her that he had read this in her, too.
