Chapter 32
32
Cedar
H e was leaving again.
It was all she could think about that day as she walked Kiya around the camp, to the snowfields where he could play. Rathka was, surprisingly, rather talkative, and Cedar wondered if she and Kargorr weren’t the only ones to make good use of their prior night together.
Everyone was busy preparing for Kargorr and Orgha’s caravans to depart. Even Carn was fashioning leather sacks for the journey, so Cedar put herself to work helping him. It was easier than contemplating how slow the time would pass while Kargorr was away.
The thought made her pause. She was foolish for pining after him when he hadn’t even left yet. He wouldn’t feel the same longing for her when he was gone.
But the way he had been with her last night... Cedar shook her head. He told her all sorts of lovely things. He had moved so slowly, so intentionally, looking right into her eyes as their bodies worked in perfect tandem. And yet while he said them inside the privacy of their tent, out here, in the camp, she was merely a possession.
That night, when the work of loading the wagons was finished and both caravans were ready, Kargorr found her and dismissed Rathka.
“See to your agsan ,” he said under his breath, and Rathka gave him a startled look. Then she nodded and hurried away. Cedar could already hear the sounds of other orcs loudly finding their pleasure, and supposed they weren’t the only ones saying goodbye tonight.
Again, Kargorr enjoyed her slowly, working her up with his tongue and his fingers and bestowing attention on every part of her body. Then he sat back on their bed, against the big bear pelt she’d made for him, and set her down in his lap astride him. His eyes roamed over her while he mapped her out with his fingers, as if memorizing her.
“So beautiful,” she thought she heard him say. His hand slid up under her hair, pulling it away from her neck as he devoured her skin with his lips and teeth. He kissed every part of her as she rolled her hips.
“Take your pleasure.”
So she did, angling herself so the head of his cock slid through her petals, dragging her wetness up as she ground her clit against the crown. Her damp center kissed his length when she trapped it between her thighs, and she used him like he had asked, seeking out what felt good and then digging ever deeper.
But soon Cedar couldn’t bear it, and she needed too badly to be with him again, to swallow him up and be completed by him. His lip curled around his tusk as if he knew what she was thinking, and his big hands lent her strength as she sat up on her knees and, at her own speed, sank down on top of him. She brought him inside her body and cradled him there, and as she rocked, he stroked her breasts, hinting at the future with each pluck of her nipples.
Lord Kargorr let her stay that way, in control, guiding their speed and their motions, and she felt that tonight was different, that he was saying many unspoken things to her with his body, and weaving poetry as his black eyes bore into hers.
Cedar took as much as she could, knowing how long he might be gone, so that she could hold on to it and remember it. This new version of her would treasure it and use it to see her through until he returned.
She rode him until she had guided herself to her own finish; then Kargorr could no longer restrain himself, and he pushed her down into the bed, his eyes wild as he crouched over her. This time, he fucked her, plunging through her tight, wet heat while she was still swollen and sensitive. She soared again when those bulges at the base of his cock, his sarga , as he called them, squeezed inside her. Kargorr let out a grunt, almost painful sounding, as he shoved himself all the way in and at last, released.
He lay on top of her for a long time, their chests heaving in unison as they came back down to the ground. He lowered his face toward hers, his big hand now cupping the back of her head.
“Even when I am gone,” Kargorr said with surprising earnestness, his dark eyes burrowing into hers, “I will be thinking of you. I will be remembering this with you, little deer.” The swelling in his sarga had come down once more, and he gently eased himself out of her, turning her hips so he could lie next to her.
Cedar considered this, that he would be thinking of her, while surely she would be thinking of him. She couldn’t deny it.
“And then I will return,” he said with more certainty in his voice. “I will come back with great numbers and even greater strength. I will build up this parog into a force mighty and worthy.”
As he always had dreamed—a dream that she was not a part of. As long as he fought for power, he wouldn’t claim her.
So she took her hands away and curled them at her chest, because she didn’t want to visit that place of resentment.
“With this parog at my back, and this fury and power at my behest,” Lord Kargorr said, lowering his head closer to her ear, “then perhaps it will make your agsan worthy of you, too.”
She tried not to give away how this affected her to hear. He wanted to be worthy of her ? She was a human. A plaything.
Lord Kargorr drew her into his arms, crushing her against his chest. Cedar couldn’t help touching him, her hands sampling the strong meat and thick skin, and his cock jumped against her thigh. His fingers returned to the place between her legs where she was dripping and sticky with his spend, and he pushed it back inside her, earning a low moan.
He took her again, slower, her back to his chest, her legs slung wide over his as he milked even more cries of pleasure from her lips.
Cedar wasn’t sure how she fell asleep, but she did it surrounded by the scent of Kargorr.
Kargorr
It was painful to walk away from the parog , from the way Cedar was tentatively blooming for him. But he had said his goodbyes and kissed her softly inside the protective walls of the tent, and ran his hand across her belly, feeling the soft swell of it. He did not relish leaving her while she grew his orcling inside of her, but this was what he had to do in order to build the life he wanted for them.
And once he had grown his force large enough to do what he wanted to do, and had advanced upon the larger human settlements and burned them to the ground, only then he would claim his yapira in front of everyone.
But within the first few days of their journey, he already hungered for her. Thirsted for her. Dreamed of her and pulsed with his need for her. They still had not had the opportunity to truly bond, to accept and fulfill the frenzy. It was an ache deep in his gut that worsened the farther away he traveled from her.
A few days from the parog , Lord Kargorr said goodbye to Orgha and the two groups split, one to court a new lord, and one to secure Lord Gannag’s fealty and convince him to join Kargorr’s cause.
Kargorr pushed his caravan hard, because the faster they reached their destination, the sooner he would convince Gannag and then return home.
A few of his warriors spoke of their own human concubines, some who had warmed up to their new masters, others who still resisted. There was an unspoken envy that Lord Kargorr’s concubine now trained a cat of her own and walked around the village, helping where she could and behaving in such a trustworthy fashion. They worried about leaving their own concubines alone for so long, and Kargorr wondered what sort of hold humans held over the grrosek that they fretted this way.
It was a hard journey up into the snowy mountains, but their mammoths were sturdy and plodded one foot in front of another, dragging their sledges behind them. Kargorr had more gifts this time, valuable ones, but he believed he held the greatest gift on his tongue: the promise of obliteration. Humans would once more bow before them if only the grrosek could work together.
At last, after two weeks of long, difficult climbing and crossing great tracts of tundra, they reached Lord Gannag’s parog . It spread out across an immense clearing, surrounded on all sides by forest that had been cut away to make room and build walls.
Lord Kargorr was greeted by warriors, all bearing axes, even more standing a distance away on guard towers with arrows aimed and ready. He instructed his own band to lay down their weapons, and once they had been determined suitably helpless, Lord Gannag came out to greet them.
He was older, older than Kargorr, but age could be deceptive. He moved as if he were stiff, but Lord Kargorr would not make a mistake in believing him weak. No weak orc was in charge of his own parog , or another warrior would have ousted him already, someone younger and stronger.
“What brings you to our lands?” Lord Gannag asked as he approached, arms crossed behind his back. “One lord trespassing on another lord’s territory...”
“I understand,” Lord Kargorr said, letting his voice carry. “But I come bearing a proposal that I think might interest you immensely.”
This caught Gannag’s attention. He surveyed the gifts Kargorr had brought, and with a wry smile, he gestured into the camp.
“Fine, then,” he said. “Come in, have a drink, and make your case.”
It was a very good start indeed.
Still, unfortunately, it was a harder battle than Lord Kargorr had predicted. There was little love among the grrosek from one parog to another. Each of them had fought hard for their own territory and built their tents strong. What incentive did they have to leave it? And that’s what he was asking: for them to leave their homeland behind and relocate south, into warmer human lands. It was a move that might put their orclings at risk.
Yet what Lord Kargorr offered was a powerful carrot at the end of a stick. Lord Gannag detested human scum and the way they had destroyed this land while the grrosek were trapped in the ice. Kargorr could detect the weakness in the other kazek ’s armor, where he might be able to wedge a sword and peel him open.
Lord Gannag had no yapira , as many kazek didn’t. Their only love should be for their parog , for victory, for pillage and death. And so behind the walls of their command tent, Lord Kargorr instructed his second Samrak, to bring up Kargorr’s human concubine at the next opportunity.
“One of the delightful things about conquering,” Samrak said over the fire that evening, “is the prisoners.”
This piqued Lord Gannag’s interest.
“I’m planning to take one of my own,” the half-orc went on. “A human concubine. To sate my needs.”
“They are very pliable,” Lord Kargorr agreed. “Soft and small.” He had to stop himself there, as his mind went back to Cedar, and it grated on him to even speak of her this way. But while the idea had sparked some gasps of indignation among Lord Gannag’s leadership, the kazek himself considered it.
“You have one, then?” he asked Kargorr, picking under his nail with his knife thoughtfully.
“I do.” All of his instincts wanted him to say the truth, that she was much more than that to him, but he knew better. “She has taken well to life in the parog . Humans are quite... adaptable.”
This thought settled in with Lord Gannag, and Kargorr let him sit with it for the following days. During this time, Lord Kargorr shared his plan, the size of the camp, the joined city he had planned should other lords choose to come to his cause. Gannag resisted mightily, hating the idea of living down in the warm lands and away from the tundra—but he could also see that Kargorr was right, and they would never be rid of the human pox unless they moved with a greater, more lethal force.
Though his campaign was going well, every night, Kargorr lay awake thinking of Cedar, of her belly getting fuller while he was away, how she was faring without him. Never had another consumed his thoughts like this before, and though it unnerved him to feel cold and hard without her presence there, he still answered the need. Every night, sometimes twice, he pulled out his cock and stroked it hard, his sarga swelling as they imagined being buried in Cedar’s flawless cunt.
Then at last, after two weeks in which Kargorr wondered if the tension among his own band of warriors and their hosts might finally erupt in blows, Lord Gannag relented.
“We will pick up everything, as we have not done in many years”—the other lord gave Kargorr a significant look, as if he didn’t know the pain himself—“and join you at your site. But if you’ve led me astray, know that I will gut you.”
Lord Kargorr accepted this.
“The humans stand little chance,” he said. He had already revealed how Orgha traveled now to yet another lord’s parog , with the intention of recruiting even more grrosek to this cause and bring them together as they had never gathered before.
“Then lead us to victory,” Lord Gannag said. “And we shall both hope that you are right.”