“Of course,” she said smoothly. “Your lord’s kind offer is appreciated.”
The young man canted his head somewhat, looking from the lady to Alasdair’s grim face. He half bowed, his eyes still on the knight’s face with what might have been a trace of amusement.
“Then please, allow us to help ease the stress of such a long and arduous road from your bodies.”
There was something entirely seductive and alluring to the young servant’s words and hearing that, no few of Alasdair’s party felt the heat of the proposal. Yhalen felt it, eyes glued to the lovely creatures that served the lord of this keep. Ydregi or no, there wasn’t one of them that he’d have turned away from his bed had the chance arisen. The young man in particular, for his delicate features were more reminiscent of Ydregi than any other that Yhalen had seen since he’d left his forest home.
Yhalen felt a hand on his shoulder, a tightening squeeze of fingers that shook him out of his appreciation of the three servants on the stairs. Bloodraven had moved up behind him, close enough that he felt the heat from the halfling’s body, and felt the press of his hip against his back.
Yhalen blinked, looking around at the faces of his party. Most were wide-eyed and flushed—even Sir Alasdair’s cheeks were stained with the pink of embarrassment. The black-garbed servant smiled 132
and lifted an arm, gracefully indicating the path leading along the right side of the stair.
“This baths are this way. When you’ve washed the dust of the road away, and eased your aches, dinner will await. After that, Lord Elvardo will receive you.”
The red-haired girl slipped past them, eyes flickering over the group with amused speculation as she urged them to follow.
“Come. Come,” she said, walking through a very dark passage as if the lack of light were no hindrance to her.
They had light again soon enough. Lanterns hung from hooks in the walls of the next hallway, and all of them relaxed as the shadows were chased away. They were led down a set of stairs to a room with stone benches and stone cubbies hewn out of the wall. There were towels in some of the cubbies, and an array of soaps and other scented substances in stoppered glass bottles.
“The baths are communal,” the redhead said. “But privacy is provided for, should you wish....” She smiled at the lady Duvera. “If you wish to bathe with your men, you may, but there’s a more secluded pool for your needs if you’re modest.”
Duvera arched a brow, but followed the redhead to a narrow doorway leading to a smaller changing room.
The servant closed the door behind the lady Duvera, and stood surveying the men with red, curved lips.
“If you should require my assistance, I’ll be happy to serve.’
“No,” Alasdair said sharply, before any of his men could respond favorably to her offer. “We’re capable of seeing to our own needs.”
She shrugged and glided out of the room, to a post, one might guess, not far away.
With a collective sigh of relief—or possibly regret—at her departure, the men began shedding weapons, boots and clothing. These men were somewhat more modest of their nudity than the Ydregi, but not so much that they shied from ridding themselves of dirty, sweat-dampened clothing before padding in ones and twos through the arched doorway leading to the baths. No few glances were passed Bloodraven’s way as he disrobed, men being men and having a somewhat more exaggerated appreciation for size than women. Yhalen, who knew that overlarge member rather too intimately, averted his gaze and retreated to the bathing chamber.
The room was large, dominated mostly by a large pool of water, and fed, like the troughs in the stable yard, by an intricately carved beast head protruding from the wall. Natural looking walls of stone jutted out here and there around the edges, forming small grottos where a man might retreat if he wanted privacy. Smooth stone ledges lined the sides, forming comfortable seats.
Stepping into the water was an ecstasy in and of itself. The warmth crept up a body like friendly fingers. At the deepest point, in the middle of the pool, it was shoulder high. Around the edges and in the grottos it reached Yhalen’s hips. He took a chunk of soap and retreated to a sheltered nook, settling on the ledge and shutting his eyes to relax as the warmth suffused him, indeed easing aches and pains.
He heard the conversation of the other men beyond the bend of his own little retreat, a murmured rush of voices over the soft sounds of lapping water.
The water rippled against his chest, a subtle warning before a body waded into his private spot. He blinked up as Bloodraven settled down beside him. Water that topped Yhalen’s chest, barely topped the ogr’ron's waist as he leaned back. Yhalen made a sound of protest, not wanting this company—any company for that matter—and made to move, but Bloodraven’s hand on his thigh under the surface of the water stopped his escape.
Yhalen looked away, scowling. Bloodraven rested his head against the rock wall behind them, content for a while to merely sit quietly as they absorbed the benefits of a deep fed hot spring. His hand stayed on Yhalen’s thigh, not venturing further, simply a hindrance to Yhalen’s retreat.
Eventually he slitted his eyes open, looking down at the top of Yhalen’s damp head.
“You may soap my back.”
Yhalen looked up, indignant and snapped back, “You may do it yourself.”
The grip on his thigh tightened and Bloodraven leaned closer, golden eyes narrow. No word of threat was needed. Perhaps, even with the collar long removed from his neck, Yhalen still recalled the lessons of a slave too well. Bloodraven’s patience had its limits and as of yet, the king’s minions had shown no inclination to treat him as anything other than Bloodraven’s chattel. He wondered what they might do 133
if Bloodraven took the notion of punishing him.
He swallowed and sullenly snatched the soap from the little rocky shelf where he’d left it.
Bloodraven slipped down off the ledge, immersing his head and shoulders before rising up to kneel in front of Yhalen. Tentatively, Yhalen gathered streaming, black hair and laid it over one broad shoulder, then lathered his hands and laid them on Bloodraven’s back. It was a wide expanse of surface to cover, hard muscle rippling now and then as his hands passed across sensitive, ochre skin. Over shoulders and down the thickly muscled arms, which Bloodraven lifted for him to wash the undersides of. Yhalen had almost finished the above water portions of him when, without warning, Bloodraven rose, casting a steady look down over his shoulder at Yhalen, as if daring him to complain of the expanded duty.
A faint exhalation of breath passed the halfling’s lips as Yhalen bent to the task, running soaping hands across the back of Bloodraven’s thick thighs, across his buttocks and hips and down his legs to the knees and calves that disappeared under the water. Bloodraven turned and Yhalen shut his eyes, drawing a shuddering breath as he prayed to the Goddess that none of Alasdair’s men waded towards the back of the pool and his grotto.
He avoided the placid organ between Bloodraven’s legs, instead washing his thighs and hips before rising to reach stomach and chest, all the while resolutely refusing to meet Bloodraven’s amused gaze.
His wrists were captured somewhere around Bloodraven’s ribs, and firmly guided downward.
A small whimper of a sound escaped Yhalen’s throat as his fingers grazed soft, pliant flesh. Biting his lip and flushing terribly, he cautiously began soaping Bloodraven’s member. The flesh stirred under his hands, slippery and velvet to the touch. The balls were large, loose sacks that shifted in his fingers.
A tremor of sensation stabbed his lower regions, no less pronounced than his acute embarrassment and his fear that someone would see him performing what they no doubt speculated about among themselves.
Bloodraven grew in his hands, thick with pulsing heat, thoroughly soaped and more than clean, yet Yhalen’s hands remained, both fascinated and horrified by the familiar size and heft of the shaft. By the head that blushed violet with the plumping of red blood beneath.
With a startled realization of his lingering intrigue, he drew his hands away, glaring resolutely at the dark water. There was what might have been a chuckle from Bloodraven, before he sank down, pushing himself back into deeper water so that he might completely immerse his body and rinse the soap away.
He surfaced, water sluicing down the defined bones of his face, his hair slick and glistening as it clung to his skull and shoulders. It made his ears seem more prominent, the delicate tapered points standing level with the top of his skull. Squatting shoulder deep in the pool, he fixed his golden gaze upon Yhalen. There was something in his eyes that spoke of intent, and Yhalen paled, casting a nervous glance beyond him, just past the rocky barrier that separated them from the other occupants of the bath.
The sound of low laughter and relaxed conversation told him that Alasdair’s men were well pleased with this comfort Lord Elvardo offered. Yhalen realized, distracted very much by Bloodraven’s lazy approach, that the feeling of unease that had afflicted them all had faded away completely. If it was a spell, as Lady Duvera suggested, it had either been lifted, or they had passed its boundaries.
Bloodraven caught Yhalen’s wrist in passing and settled himself on the ledge before pulling Yhalen between his lazily sprawled knees. Uncertainty made Yhalen’s heart thump frantically within his chest.
Though Bloodraven had shown a certain modesty to engaging in sexual activity in the presence of his human captors-allies, it had been a long journey here, and Yhalen wasn’t entirely confident of Bloodraven’s ability to maintain indefinite abstinence.
Bloodraven alleviated that particular fear by prying the soap out of Yhalen’s clenched fingers and placing his large hands on Yhalen’s shoulders.
“I can wash myself,” Yhalen hissed, low-voiced and embarrassed, shivering as strong fingers slick with lather traveled down his sides.
“I think not,” Bloodraven said simply.
And that was that. Big hands lathered the soap and spread out across his shoulders and back, washing his body as he’d done for Bloodraven. Back, chest, stomach, and legs. Unsurprisingly, he lingered for some long while around the small of Yhalen’s back and the brand there. Bloodraven hesitated not one bit in soaping the half-hard flesh between Yhalen’s legs. Big hands fondled him, thoroughly working lather into all his crevices, and Yhalen endured it, eyes shut and trembling now and then like a horse under the hand of its groom.
134
It was clinical, which was the only saving grace, and the fear of discovery worked in direct conflict with the occasional stirrings between his legs as Bloodraven casually handled him. Bloodraven let him go, and Yhalen sank down and backwards, pushing out to deeper water and escape. He fixed his gaze warily upon Bloodraven to see if he’d pursue, but the halfling merely leaned back against the smooth stonewall and watched him with barely veiled interest.
Yhalen submerged, rinsing soap from body and hair. Submerged again to rinse his hair a second time and stayed under water, reveling in the strange, deafening silence that buffered him from all the rest of the world.
He surfaced, hanging near the shadowed back of the pool, water lapping at his lips, having no intention of returning to the nook where Bloodraven waited and hoping against hope that Bloodraven didn’t make an issue of fetching him.
Bloodraven didn’t, and soon enough the men were stirred from the taking of their ease by the appearance of the young red-haired serving woman.
“When you’ve finished with your bath, dinner will be waiting. There are clean clothes in the outer chamber for your use.”
She stood there, as if waiting to see if any of them would rise and request her dubious assistance in dressing. But being good knights and king’s men and under the prudent eye of their commander who seemed set against accepting the hospitality of their host to
that
extent, none of them rose, and the woman shrugged before disappearing back through the changing chamber.
With quiet splashes and a murmur of expectation, Alasdair and his men left the pool to pad wetly into the connecting room. Yhalen followed, keeping a wary eye on Bloodraven, who trailed the lot of them. They dried themselves with broad towels and indeed, there were clean trousers and shirts, as well as over-tunics for the lot of them. For Alasdair and his men, there was fine, soft material cut in the style Yhalen had seen the king and his advisors wear.
Each item was a perfect fit, even Bloodraven’s. His clothing seemed to have been tailor-made and was of a cut more reminiscent of the clothing he’d worn under his armor when Yhalen had first encountered him, than the human-styled tunic and trousers he’d been given after Lord Dunval had captured him. Thick leather guards were sewn along his elbows and the lower portion of his trousers, and rune-like symbols were stitched into the collar. What seemed to be small, bleached bones and feathers dangled from the lacings of his tunic.
Yhalen found, with much wariness, that the new clothing that filled the cubby where he’d left his travel worn clothing, was the very likeness of Ydregi finery—soft leathers sporting intricately cut patterns along the arms and shoulders, as well as a trim here and there of the small, tubular ceramic beadwork that the artisans among his people produced.
How could they have possibly known? Even if they had guessed his origins upon entry into this uneasy castle, no mundane hand could have sewn these clothes in the time they’d spent in the baths.
The lady Duvera awaited them in the passageway outside, along with the red-haired girl. The lady had been gifted with a fine gown of indigo blue, which, from her look of satisfaction, must have met well with her approval. Her eye passed over the men of her party, lingering in speculation upon Bloodraven, and, both brows lifting in some regard that Yhalen didn’t find comforting, upon himself.