GREVESHKA
They had found the man on his own in the Great Wood, the vast tract of forest that girded the peaks that the humans called Ergoline but the orcs had long named the Skyscratchers. This was not the first raid for man's seed Greveshka had been on, but it was the first with Grun, her clan-brother and a near-perpetual thorn in her side.
Ever since she could remember, Grun had made life difficult for her. Well, even more difficult than the meagre, desperate existence eked out by the tribe in the passes, crevices and caves of the mountainsides. Most of his malice came from Greveshka's appearance and status. In his mind, the two were intrinsically linked and both were a reproach to his traditional - and highly-developed - sense of orcish honour.
Greveshka had been born with unnaturally pale skin and had almost been killed at birth because of it. Only the intervention of Sag Nar, one of the tribe's three shamans at the time, had saved the uncomprehending babe. Rather than an aberration to be rejected, Sag Nar declared that Greveshka's birth had been a sign from the gods, particularly Vanak the one-handed, whose mythical deformity had, it had long been theorised, required him to develop a keen and wily mind. Sag Nar had not deigned to explain precisely what Vanak's plans for the soft-skinned orc might be, but his regular reminders of her importance to the tribe granted Greveshka some small measure of protection and respite in an otherwise brutally competitive and extremely violent upbringing.
Greveshka had known her mother, of course, but not her father. Orcs did not marry, nor did they place much store in the notion of monogamy. The males of the G'naaarsh tribe were impulsive and violent in all their lusts, not least those that originated deep in the gut and manifested themselves in engorged, swollen tokens of their masculinity. While chieftains and elders could occasionally claim slaves and concubines, the rank and file of the tribe's men courted the women of their tribe with acts of strength, cunning and bravado, then mating with them in explosive fashion before invariably forgetting about them altogether. Until the next time their blood stirred and the desire for the meaty thighs, full breasts and hot cunts of their female counterparts rose in them once more.
Greveshka could have suffered a similar fate. Despite her freakishly human appearance - considerably more human, in fact, than the half-orcs occasionally sired by lusty orcs on the other races - there were some in the orc tribe who had made crude advances to her in the past. Her rounded, voluptuous body particularly appealed to those reavers who found sport and pleasure in the tribe's occasional raids on human villages and the inevitable rape and slaughter that followed. But, she was under the shamans' protection. Sag Nar took her to his bed when she reached her maturity and, when he died in a raid on the neighbouring Loka tribe, the old, one-eyed Van Kor, all sinew and bone and sly tenderness, took her into his yurt and made her his own.
Many had been unhappy with the new arrangement, not least Grun, whose muttering and scowling became more pronounced in the months after Sag Nar's death. But the one-handed god had spoken through his servants the shamans and Van Kor's connection to the realm of the gods had grown especially strong when he had taken Greveshka in. Through prophecy and pronouncement, supported by Talar, the tribe's chieftain who would never dream of challenging the wisdom of his shamans, it had been made abundantly clear to the G'naaarsh that, if the tribe was to do more than just survive, the old ways had to be, if not abandoned entirely, then certainly modified.
Greveshka, Van Kor had said, was a gift from the one-handed one, a female whose blood was orc but whose body and features, with a little magic and some cosmetic cleverness, could pass as human. She represented a unique opportunity for renewal, a chance for the G'naaarsh to replenish its strength, mixing it with the seed of men, the thrusting, virile race who had, in just the last two hundred years or so, tamed much of the wilderness around the Skyscratchers and bent it to their will. Greveshka would be the first of the tribe's seductresses, but not the last. Others would come. The shamans had spoken.
This particular foray into human lands had gone as well as could be expected. Greveshka's warrior escort had scouted out the land proficiently, settling eventually on a favourable target - a solitary hunter of the kind frequently found in the hinterland between the farmlands to the south and the mountains north of them.
Luring him to her side had been almost pathetically easy. She had simply slumped against a pine tree and, once Grun and the others had concealed themselves as best they could, started snivelling. The hunter, who they had spotted roughly half an hour beforehand, came eventually, cautiously edging close to her, his bowstring nocked, eyes alert. When he saw the state she was in, that alertness had faded to be replaced by a gleam that Greveshka knew all too well...
*****
"Please," she whimpered. "Lost. So lost..."
Human men liked tears, she had learned. Just like orcs, they liked their women weak and in need of protection. She had ripped open the front of her dress beforehand and now she leaned towards him, knowing full well the effect her ample bosom and deep cleavage would have on him. She looked up at him through misty eyes.
The man put his bow down, then. He crept over to her, crouching low, taking in her torn dress and her unarmed state.
"What happened?"
His voice was deep, strong. She liked it instantly and felt the purposes of the one-handed one at work here. His seed would be good and strong, she knew. It was all she could do to stop herself licking her lips in anticipation.
She fluttered her eyes and breathed deeply once. Twice. "I don't know. I was out picking berries... a bear... there was a bear."
At the mention of a bear, the man reached for his bow again and his blue eyes narrowed. Greveshka grabbed him, forcing him to return his attention to her. Her dark, glossy hair, tousled and unruly now; the bare flesh of her chest and arms, lightly scratched by the twigs and marred by the dirt of the forest floor; the softness of her lips; the vulnerability of her quivering eyes: these held the hunter's attention once again.
"My brother... fought... the bear... struck down... I ran..." Greveshka let out a low, keening wail, sobbing from the very core of her being. What happened next happened naturally and without any further prompting.
Gently, the hunter drew her to him, stroking her cheek, wiping the tears away, tenderly telling her that all would be well, that she was safe. His rough hunter's hands on her skin stirred her blood and she raised her head even as he dipped his down and their lips met.
Greveshka forgot herself for a moment. For a moment, there was just the sensation of his lips on hers, tender but quivering with a barely-restrained passion, and the heat of their breath meeting and mingling.
And then the hunter let his hand fall from her cheek and land on her chest, sliding down the curving slope of her breast, slipping easily between the torn fabric of her dress and the inviting warmth of her flesh, cupping her fulness hungrily in his large hand, squeezing it with a fierceness that almost stole her breath. And she remembered herself again.
She kissed him again. And again. Long, deep, passionate kisses; short, nipping, teasing kisses; kisses in which heat and emotion and desire transmitted themselves back and forth between them, each pass seeming to generate a greater and greater intensity.
His hands pawed at her and she guided them with her own. She wanted to feel him everywhere, to feel his touch on her neck, on her shoulders, on her breasts and wide, dark brown nipples. She wanted to feel him on her sex.
Hitching up her skirts, she guided his hand to her cunt and the sensitive bud of flesh just above it. With her hand on his, he began to stroke and rub the folds surrounding her opening, those fleshy lips that she knew many of her tribe found distasteful protruding baldly through the tangle of coarse hair. There was no such disapproval from this man. He slipped a finger into her and she gasped, arching her back against the tree, with one hand lifting a breast to his mouth, urging him to suck and lick even as his fingers found their way inside her. She smiled, almost delirious with pleasure. No orc made
vuk
