Dan the Adventurer, page 13
part #2 of Gold Girls and Glory Series
“No,” Holly said, “she’s a hobgoblin.”
Lily, who’d been crouching nearby and watching with an amused expression said, “In hobgoblin culture, if you aren't strong, you aren't shit. And no male hobgoblin would take a wife who couldn't provide strong children for him.”
Holly said, “You proved your strength to her, and she’s hoping that she has proved her strength to you.”
“Huh?” Dan said, looking toward where Holly was pointing.
Ula struggled onto all fours. She turned away from Dan, with her ass up and her face down. Reaching back, the warrior woman yanked down her fur bikini, exposing her glistening sex, which was outlined in bright crimson pubic hair.
“What the Hades is she doing now?” Dan said.
“Submitting to you,” Holly said. “She wants you to mount her.”
Dan laughed bitterly, rubbing his jaw. “So this was what, hobgoblin foreplay?”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” Holly laughed. “But her submission is about more than sex. If you mount her, you’re claiming her as your wife.”
“My wife?” Dan said. “I don't need another wife. Tell her I already have a wife.” He glanced at Nadia. “Or two. I’m not even sure.”
Nadia rolled her eyes. “You have one wife. And you’re also lucky enough to enjoy the occasional favors of a sex goddess.”
“Right,” Dan said with a smirk. “I don’t care how you phrase it, Holly. Just tell her that I already have enough women. She’s not mine.”
Holly shook her head. “In her mind, she's already yours. You saved her and then overpowered her, forcing her to submit.”
“This is crazy,” Dan said. “Tell her she’s free of any obligation.” He licked his split lip and spat blood. “I’m just glad the fighting is over.”
Holly laughed. “You misunderstand, husband. If you refuse to mount her, she will assume that you think she’s too weak to bear strong children. She’ll keep attacking you, day after day, to prove that she's worth taking.”
20
Village of the Dead
Good riddance, Dan thought, watching the green elves disappear down the trail to their settlement. Thank Crom he was rid of their constant grumbling.
Dropping off the green elves was the first good thing that happened all day.
He’d barely slept. Nadia hadn’t let him.
He would be glad when she went back to being a garden-variety nymphomaniac rather than an insatiable, moon-crazed super-nympho. Sure, wild sex was great, but he still needed sleep.
Ula walked directly ahead of him, axe at the ready, talking with Holly. The warrior woman had gotten her daily attack out of the way early this morning, tackling him shortly after he’d finished yelling at the red elves to stop complaining about how sore they were and start getting ready to march.
Because she had surprised him, Ula managed to bounce his head off the ground three or four times before he’d rolled, throwing her off his back. They wrestled on the forest floor for a good minute, Ula shouting insults in her guttural language, her yellow eyes glowing with fierce excitement. She was fast and strong, but he was nearly as fast and much stronger, and once he had a good hold on her, he choked her out again.
After coming to, she once more submitted to him. Ass up, face down. But Dan waved her off and went back to rallying the lazy elves.
In her tribe, Ula would be quite the prize, the hobgoblin equivalent of a super model. Her face was too fierce to call pretty, but it glowed with good health and could be incredibly expressive. She had intelligent eyes and a great laugh. She was a tough fighter, fast and powerful and well-trained, and there was no denying that she had a killer body.
But Dan didn’t care how good Ula looked, how nice her laugh was, or how skilled she was at fighting. The last thing he needed was a third wife.
Thanks to Nadia, he was running on three hours of sleep and his dick felt like it had boxed twelve rounds with the heavyweight champion of the world. A third wife would fuck him straight into the grave.
They trudged on beneath cloudy skies. The day was cool but dry. The road narrowed, and the forest to either side thickened. At midday, they came to a village.
Or what had been a village.
Now it was more of a graveyard. Or, perhaps more accurately, a warning.
A charred corpse served as the village emissary. Nailed to a roadside tree, the dead man stared down at them from black and eyeless sockets.
The red elves wept with fear, clustering together and hurrying through the decimated village, pointedly averting their eyes from the twisted carnage.
Judging by the remains, this had once been a sizeable village, probably a regular stop for travelers. Now it was ash.
The charred corpses lining the road were so disfigured, Dan couldn’t even guess their race. Whatever they had been, they were gone now. All of them. That was the point. Total annihilation, for all the world to see. A warning.
And that warning was signed, here and there along the road, by splashes of bright color, red armbands nailed to the chests of the dead. At the center of each was a symbol that Dan recognized immediately.
The black shackles and interwoven double R of Roderick’s Raiders. The slavers had done this. They had burned the village and its people—men, women, and children, judging by the size of the corpses—and had left a calling card to brag.
“This village must have fought back,” Dan said.
Holly nodded. “And Roderick’s Raiders slaughtered them.”
Glancing at a tiny blackened corpse, Dan said, “How could anyone be so evil?”
Holly shrugged. “If you place no value on human life, this makes sense. Someone must have fought back or resisted. By destroying the whole village, Roderick sent a powerful message to the other villages that he raids. So why not? The raiders didn’t even risk anything here. These villagers weren’t warriors. A dozen raiders could have done this as they passed through. The hardest part would’ve been nailing up the corpses.”
“The raiders should be killed,” Dan said. “All of them.”
“Agreed,” Holly said and glanced toward the red elves with a troubled expression.
Later, as the sun melted into the western horizon, elongating their shadows to funhouse proportions, Dan rounded a bend in the road to see a crumbling fortress sitting at the center of an overgrown meadow.
“Fire Ridge at last,” he said.
“Our little friends will be happy,” Holly said.
“If they ever catch up,” Lily said. Complaining of fatigue and soreness, the red elves had fallen farther and farther behind over the course of the day.
A fifteen-foot palisade of heavy timbers encircled the fortress. Beyond the palisade, a stone wall rose to even greater heights.
But all along the palisade, logs had toppled to the ground, leaving large gaps, and the inner wall was crumbling and covered in vines.
Some defenses, Dan thought. Invaders could march straight through holes in the palisade and scale the vine-wrapped wall as easily as they might climb a ladder. He saw no sentries along the wall or within the guard towers.
Dan, Holly, Nadia, Lily, and Ula marched unchallenged to the palisade gate, which hung crooked and ajar from its rusted hinges. Was the fortress abandoned?
A pair of heads appeared above the palisade and peered down like frightened rabbits.
Initially, Dan thought the guards were women, but then one of them spoke. Dan realized that the speaker was actually male, despite his frightened pixie face and the flowers adorning his long, black hair. “Who goes there?” the guard called down in a shaky voice.
Dan halted and raised a hand. “I am Dan Marshall of the Free, and these,” he said, gesturing toward his motley crew of traveling companions, “are my people.”
“Why are you here?” the female guard squeaked.
“Leave us alone,” the male called. “We are under the protection of Roderick.”
“Protection?” Nadia laughed. “With protection like that, you—”
A tittering cheer sounded behind them as the red elves finally entered the meadow and spotted their home.
At that point, the guards forgot their fear—and apparently their duty. The pair cheered, climbed down, and charged out to meet their friends, seeming to have forgotten all about Dan and the others, even Ula, despite the fact that she was a frigging hobgoblin.
The guards wore no armor and carried no weapons. They scampered across the meadow, fluttering their hands excitedly overhead and squealing at the returning women.
Dan shook his head.
Ula met his eyes, snorted, and shook her head, too. No doubt the warrior women felt even deeper contempt than Dan did for the laughable defenses and defenders of Fire Ridge.
A flood of cheering red elves poured from the gate.
They were mostly young, Dan noticed. The females, who were all built like miniature strippers, outnumbered the males eight or ten to one. The slender, shrieking males were distinguishable from the females only by their lack of breasts.
Ignoring Dan and the others, the mass of squealing elves mobbed the returning women. They lifted Thelia and the others onto their shoulders, broke into joyous song, and carried their friends back through the gate.
Dan shrugged as they disappeared inside. “All right. I guess our work is done here.”
“Oh no, it’s not,” Holly said. “The whole reason we marched here instead of heading to the crevasse was to see if—”
“Master!” Thelia called, appearing at the gate. She was beaming, more beautiful than ever, and for a second, Dan forgot his impatience and frustration and felt happy to see her safely returned to her people. “Please come inside. You must allow us to feed you and give you a comfortable night’s lodging.”
“Nice of you to offer,” he said, “but—”
“Thank you for your invitation, Thelia,” Holly interrupted. Hooking arms with Dan, she started propelling him toward the gate. “We would love to see your home and meet your matriarch.”
That’s when Dan remembered what Holly had said about the red elves’ legendary “gift magic.” Considering the crumbling fortress and the cluelessness of the red elves, however, he didn’t have high hopes for any gift the matriarch might offer.
But they had already burned three days bringing the elves here, and night was falling, so there was no point in rushing off now. Besides, he was getting the distinct impression that Holly would skin him alive if he didn’t go inside.
The gate of the crumbling inner wall was missing. Completely. Dan saw only hinges and splinters, as if during some recent winter, the elves had run out of firewood and, too lazy to venture into the woods, had decided to chop up the gate instead.
Thelia led them through the missing gate into a wide courtyard of cracked and buckling paving stones bordered by stone buildings falling into ruin. Shutters hung crookedly against cracked walls covered in creeping vines and capped with sagging, shoddily patched roofs carpeted in moss.
“This way,” Thelia said excitedly, beckoning to Dan, Holly, and the others, leading them through the singing elves. “I’ll take you to meet my great-great-great-grandmother, Ahneena, our matriarch.”
Thelia led them into a small courtyard and disappeared, promising to return soon.
“Remember,” Holly said, “if the matriarch offers you a gift, accept it, no matter how shitty it is.”
Dan shrugged.
A door opened, and an elderly red elf entered the courtyard, attended by several younger elves, Thelia among them. Though stooped with age, the matriarch towered over the other red elves. She was nearly as tall as Holly.
Flame tattoos covered her cheeks. The flames had presumably been dark black long ago, but they had faded to ash gray.
The old woman smiled warmly and bowed.
Dan bowed in return.
Thelia made introductions, her gold-flecked eyes glowing with excitement. The other elves’ eyes twinkled, too, and even Holly seemed excited.
Meanwhile, Ula remained stoic, standing beside him, axe in hand, his faithful bodyguard.
Dan liked Ahneena immediately. The old woman was friendly and dispensed with decorum, getting straight to business. “As token of my deep gratitude to you for returning my granddaughter and the other girls safely home,” the matriarch said, reaching into her pocket, “I would like to give you a gift.”
The elves watched with eager expressions, as if Ahneena might pull a suit of +5 plate mail out of her pocket.
Holly had warned Dan that first gifts were generally crappy, but judging by everyone’s excitement, he thought the gift might end up being pretty cool.
When the matriarch withdrew the gift from her pocket, he raised one eyebrow, and Nadia stifled laughter.
“Will you, Dan of the Free, accept this gift?” Ahneena asked without the slightest hint that she was bullshitting him and held out a bent and rusty sewing needle.
Dan didn't say anything for a second. He just stared at the needle.
Holly nudged him.
“Oh,” he said. “Thank you, matriarch. I accept your gift. Thank you very much.”
He held up the needle for everyone to see, forcing a smile onto his face, and bounced his eyebrows up and down. Then he gave the matriarch another bow for good measure.
The old woman beamed. Around her, red elves tittered and hugged each other. And, Dan noticed, they were now staring at him with unmistakably lustful eyes.
What the Hades was going on here?
The matriarch invited them to stay for dinner and remain overnight as guests.
“Thanks for the offer,” Dan said, “but we have to hit the road.” This side quest had already burned too much time. Holly had tempted him with tales of gift magic, and he had ended up with a bent and rusty needle.
“Forgive my husband, Matriarch,” Holly said hurriedly. “In his culture, one must always decline an initial invitation.”
Ahneena smiled and gave a small nod. “In that case, I will extend a second invitation. Would you please join us for dinner and stay the night as our guests?”
Holly answered before he could say anything. “Thank you for your gracious hospitality, Matriarch. We would be delighted to accept.” She gave Dan's hand a firm squeeze. “Wouldn't we, husband?”
“Um, yes,” he said, nodding at the ancient matriarch. “Thank you.”
Rolling the rusty needle between his thumb and forefinger, he thought, I hope Ahneena knows more about putting on a feast than she does about giving presents.
Gift magic, my ass!
21
The Tapestry of Sorrow
Dinner ended up being nice.
Weird as Hades, but nice.
Until Holly spoiled everything.
Despite letting their fighting skills and fortress fall into ruin, the red elves had obviously maintained other skills, including cooking, the production of wine, and incredibly sexy belly dancing.
Dan devoured venison stew and fresh bread, caught a buzz on sweet wine. He and his friends sat with Ahneena, who smoked small, black, foul-smelling cigars. Beside the matriarch sat a nervous slip of a man, whom she identified as her great-great nephew, Tibbin, commander of the guard and her head military advisor.
Tibbin, who had elegantly plaited hair and arms like daisy stems, curtseyed and started pounding wine.
The red elves lit braziers around the large hall, and unseen hands began beating bongos in the shadows. The music was primitive, tribal, and mesmerizing.
“The flame dance,” Ahneena explained, puffing on her smelly cigar.
A line of dancers paraded slowly past the table. Dressed in gauzy smoke-colored shifts, the dancers writhed and wavered like fire, eyeing Dan lustfully with their bright red eyes.
With the hypnotic bongo music filling his head, Dan stared at the perfect bodies undulating before him. Every gorgeous curve was visible through the sheer, smoky fabric.
He didn’t recognize Thelia at first. She was even prettier now that she’d washed away the grime of her ordeal.
Thelia didn’t seem like her usual bubbleheaded self. She eyed him seductively, swaying and gyrating her amazing body so provocatively that Dan had a raging erection by the time she bowed and skipped away.
“Enjoying yourself, husband?” Holly whispered in his ear, giving his crotch a squeeze.
Dan gave her a quick kiss. “Reminds me of our dinner at the grove,” he said, “but this one’s even better, since the males are knifing me with their eyes.”
Nadia shifted in her seat and started bouncing her knee restlessly. She wasn’t happy here, Dan knew. They had delivered the elves. Now it was time to go help Zeke.
But Holly had begged Nadia to be patient, insisting that accepting the elves’ hospitality was very important.
Now Nadia titled her head, turning halfway toward the open windows behind them, and Dan soon realized that she had an additional reason to be restless. In the space between songs, he heard the faint howling of wolves in the distance.
Ula sat with her axe leaned against the table. She ate little and drank less, looking serious and studying every dancer who approached the table, apparently ready to tackle any would-be assassins.
At the end of the table, Lily laughed a lot and spent the evening chatting up passing elves. By the time dinner drew to a close, she had a dozen smiling elves standing around her, talking excitedly.
Holly leaned close to Dan and whispered, “It really is a shame that these elves are all dead.”
“Huh?” Dan said.
“We killed them all,” Holly said, sipping her wine and glancing around the room. Dan could see that she was buzzed, too. “We killed them when we freed the slaves.”
“They look pretty alive to me,” Dan said, trying to lighten the conversation.
Holly ignored his attempt. “Roderick’s Rangers are busy now,” she said. “They’re doing press gang work for the Duke of Harrisburg, building up his army so that he can demand a fortune when he eventually backs either Pittsburgh or Philadelphia. Once the Raiders finish that work, though, they’ll turn their attention to other concerns.”
