Godfang:

The way was dark but for a sliver of moon. The town was not as small as Ta Glen, but it certainly seemed to button up tightly after nightfall. Very little light shone through curtain-drawn windows. Anton began to understand why the girl wished for an escort. Impenetrable shadows leered from every alleyway. She walked close to him, filling every breath of the surrounding silence with tales of travelers and childhood sights from her father's military tours with the Royal Army.

Anton felt Dickny's shoulder brush his forearm--she was a diminutive thing--and was grateful for the bath he'd taken in the river that afternoon.

"Have you encountered any Dark Walkers on the road?" she asked. Anton felt his skin crawl. A flash of horrifying images--the twins standing beside him one moment, ripped into the shadows the next; his mother's eyes when--he shook his head. Dickny looked up at him and must have seen the expression on his face. "Gods, I'm sorry."

"It's fine."

"No, look what you've done, Dickny." She patted Anton's arm before slipping her own beneath his cloak and around his waist. Her touch felt incredible, her body warm, the pressure of her breasts molding perfectly to his side. He craved nothing more than to melt into her. Instead, he let the quarterstaff fall from his hand. It clattered loudly and reminded him of its need for repair.

"Sorry," he muttered awkwardly, slipping away to fetch the stick. "I care not to think about that."

Dickny waggled her head and pulled her cloak more tightly. "I'm the one who should apologize. I let my mouth run away with me sometimes. All the time, actually." They reached the docks and the remnant Wharfman's Guild building. "Well, Anton of the noble Sahtozsman. I thank your courage for safe passage."

Anton gave his best bow. "And I thank you for good company, my lady."

Dickny curtsied and turned to go. Abruptly, she stopped. "You sure you have a place to bed down? I hate to see one of us wandering the night without a place to put his head."

Anton hesitated. "Where did you learn about the Sahtozsman?"

Dickny smiled. "My da used to read the Sahtozsman Diaries to me as a child."

Anton shook his head. Any girl who grew up to tales of the wandering storymakers had to be worth a measure of trust. "If it's not too much trouble, I think I will take you up on the offer of shelter."

Dickny wrinkled her nose. "Are you serious? Does everybody have to ask twelve times before the Great Anton hops to? Is that the lucky number? Come on, then! Pull up your hood. We aren't allowed male guests in the dormitory." Anton swallowed on a dry throat and obeyed.

The Guild was three stories of river stone and mortar. It had once held lavish apartments above a grand meeting hall. Now, it was something of a dormitory. If one considered coffin-sized wooden cubbies padded with straw to be housing. Still, the wealth of body heat made the place warm, and even with the snores and coughs and thickness of breath, Anton was grateful to be out of the elements.

"You'll get in first," Dickny whispered. "There's an extra blanket for you, so don't go stealing mine. Keep your back turned until I'm under my blanket. And gods honesty, you'll keep your hands to yourself or I'll scream until I'm blue and you're deaf."

Anton nodded, then realized Dickny likely couldn't see his nod. "Okay," he whispered softly, then crawled into the cubby where an oppressive sense of claustrophobia was waiting. His own breath seemed to rumble in his head. Turning to face the wall, he focused on the blessed softness of straw and the exhaustion that he'd only held at bay by sheer force of will. He heard a rustle of clothing, and a moment later Dickny's sweet breath filled the cubby.

"I will wake you before dawn," she whispered. "You will need to slip out before first light."

He started to nod again--he'd traveled alone, spoken seldom, keeping his own company for too long--and forced himself to whisper his thanks. Feeling his eyes grow leaden, Anton was drawn quickly toward his first untroubled slumber in ages.

The dream was effortless. Warmth, softness, and a gentle caress coaxing life into his loin. Drifting lazily on a pillow of sweet angel breath and delicate touch, Anton could just hear a small whisper over the sound of his own blood rushing through his ears.

Gently,

the whisper said.

He felt a wonderful strain as need caused his hips to move in a purposeful motion. Every motion suffused him with more heat, and when the kiss of soft pressure asserted itself against his abdomen he felt the urge to meet it. The pillow of firm warmth yielded to his thrust and he felt his imagination reach with his arms to draw the fantasy closer.

Anton drew deeply off the scent of freshly baked bread and sweet brown ale--a serving girl's hair. Liga Flang's hair had smelled that way. Her father's inn was the likely source. How often had he fantasized about finding her alone in one of the upstairs rooms? Coming upon her while she was changing bed linen...

Heat enveloped him and Anton woke. His senses were still locked in the dream world, but the experience of slowly sinking into something impossibly soft, impossibly warm, squeezing and clutching--he drew a breath and discovered himself with a face full of Dickny's hair. She was reaching back, feeling beneath his blanket. Finding his hip, she pulled and Anton's cock sunk deeper.

"Oh, blessed gods," she gasped. "You're filling my yahyah."

What...?

Wrenching himself from the dream, Anton tried to sit up. He smashed his head against the cubby, eliciting a groggy moan from the occupant above. For a moment he lay stunned. Dickny rolled over in a flash.

"Gods, are you well?"

In a brain-ringing stupor, Anton reached down to feel his crotch. His small clothes were around his hips. His staff was slick and straining. Dickny's ethereal silhouette was barely visible by the light of a dormitory window, but he felt her shifting beside him. Soft lips kissed the side of his head and the girl's large breasts fell heavily against him.

"What's happening?" he asked, still dazed.

"Sshh," Dickny whispered next to his ear. "The Diviner knew." In seconds, she was crawling over him. That's when he realized she was completely bare. He gasped and took her weight, feeling her furry crotch slide down his stomach. His cudgel notched between her legs and an instant later, he was slipping inside her again. Dickny's gasp was an elixir that swirled his mind to a tempest.

It was his turn to seek religion. "Godddds," he moaned into her kiss. She tasted of eucalyptus and hearth, smelled of rain and wisteria blossom. What in the name of thrown lightning had gotten into her? She'd made him promise to be a gentleman. The pressure of her small, well-proportioned body drove worry from his mind. Soft whimpers came with her every sweet gasp. Anton wrapped his arms around her and drove himself hard and fast. The cubby began to vibrate as they rutted into each other, panting and sweating under the thick wool blankets.

What had she said about--?

"That's it. That's good," Dickny whispered. "I knew there was something special about you."

"You're so beautiful," he answered.

She cooed in his ear and rode him harder. Full hips working sorcery, Anton let himself climb. He crashed through anvil-headed thunderclouds and soared higher. The sweat-slickened tightness of Dickny's neck tasted so good on his lips. She grasped a breast and fed a sharp nipple in his mouth. Anton sucked and ground himself. His mind was bent toward a single imperative. He was going to empty himself in the girl. Fill her as deeply as he could. He needed this. Needed it more than anything. He was desperate to forget all those trailing fears. Desperate to cling to something and taste bliss.

Dickny was still whispering to him, encouraging him. "You're one of them, aren't you?" The head of his staff nudged the mouth of her womb and her words choked off. "I--I knew you were when I saw that Diviner watching you." Her words seemed to come from far away, even as the melody in her voice drove him to greater heights. He could feel the hum of oblivion beckoning, superheating his blood. The tingle and the tickle crept through his gut. Gods, she was tight. Right and wet and warm.

Dickny hooked an arm around his neck and slowed her hips to a languid roll. Anton felt time slow as he crested above the clouds, emerging into a white sky at the edge of heaven. His heavy seed sac jerked and threatened.

"Keep me," Dickny whispered, slow-milking his wand like a heifer's swelling teat. "Push that babe into my yahyah. They'll pay us a Queen's ransom for every one." The girl must be speaking gibberish for all Anton understood. He concentrated on tiptoeing the edge, skimming over that gentle cloud bank. He drew Dickny's nipple into his mouth once more and sucked like a man dying of thirst. Gods, he was close. She was grinding slower and slower, her thick thighs making everything squeeze. Almost stopping completely but for a buttery-soft sliver of motion that drew his impending flood to the top of the dam and held it there.

"Give Dickny your white life," she whispered. Anton squeezed his eyes shut and the dam broke. He exploded into her sticky quimlet. Heaving, spurting spasms that spat shepherd's goo into her womb with the force of an arrow. Dickny's soft snort became a halting cry and Anton clung to her with all his strength, emptying, holding, erupting in her clutching honeyhole. "So deep," she choked out. His testicles heaved and he clapped at her slick slot again and again.

"Gods, what a dream," he groaned.

"It's no dream," she hummed. "You're filling your Dickny's yahyah. Babies aplenty. The Diviner knows."

Anton finally heard what she'd been babbling.

The Diviner? Diviners!

Queen's Women. They hunted men suspected of fertility. Dragged them out of villages and loaded them into great caged wagons. His climax ebbed. But still he clung to the girl, once in desperation, now in fear.

Grabbing Dickny's shoulders, he shook her. "What did you say? Where did you see a Diviner?"

"Sshh!" came a voice across the dormitory. Others were shifting under their blankets.

Anton rolled Dicky to the back of the cubby. Miraculously, his cudgel was still lodged in her honeypot. And despite his grip on her shoulders, she insisted on pushing her hips at him, desperately milking the last spurts from his still-pulsing wand.

"Tell me true, Dickny. Is there a Diviner in the village?"

"In the inn," Dickny whispered. He could just make out her confused expression. "You must have noticed the way she was staring at you. That's how I knew. That's how I could tell you were a right catch."

The woman in the inn! Body of the gods, but she

was

staring at him like a leg of lamb. Could the woman really have been a Diviner? If she was, then she knew where--

Anton pushed Dickny away. Her clinging cunny came off his stick with a slurpy

shhlick.

Scrambling for his small clothes, he felt around the back of the cubby for his travel garb. Dressing in the tiny cubby was even more of a challenge than disrobing. Especially with Dickny's hands fighting him.

"Don't go," she cried. "We'll be married. They can't take the father of my unborn child."

"You're more fool than me!" Anton muttered.

He had seen it firsthand. Armor-clad guardsmen bearing the Royal colors, crossbows, swords, and a ring of hooded Diviners; screaming wives; men herded into iron cages for suspected fertility. How had he not noticed the embroidered woolen cloak? Fool hunger and fool lust!

"I'm the fool?" she hissed after him. "Dickny listens. Dickny keeps her ear to the ground." She was seized by madness. Mocking. "'

Does the lightning still strike old Galmillin?'

Travelers love to tell Dickny their tales of bygone lands."

Anton cursed himself. She'd gotten the name wrong the first time, too. He should have smelled the lie before following her down the hill like a lovesick pup. He'd looked for any excuse to believe her! Scrambling past the girl's scrabbling fingers, Anton flung himself from the cubby, disregarding the shouts of protest that pursued him. He snatched up his splintered quarterstaff and tore from the Great Room, hurrying down a stone corridor toward the light of the moon. As soon as he emerged on the street, he came to an abrupt halt, face draining of color.

There were six of them. By the light of the moon, their robes were not brown but black as coal. It didn't matter. He knew who they were and what they were about. Panic rooted him to the spot. He could hear an audible inhale, the melody of anticipation. They'd been looking for him.

"Good," a woman's voice said from beyond her shadowed cowl.

"The seed thrives here," hissed another.

One of the Diviners stepped forward and rolled back her cowl. He recognized her features--the woman from the inn. He felt such a fool.

"Send for the Legion."

For some reason, they had not brought along their armed contingent. Anton did not wait to find out where they were. He fled.