Chapter 8
“W e go to war,” Osric said with finality, and every head nodded as my brother stalked back to me.
The men he had fought, the representatives from the other Congregations, got up slowly from the clearing.
They were alive, at least.
For that they should be lucky.
Lucky that the Prophet hadn’t been here to order Rhyder to kill them. Or maim them.
Eli got out his walkie-talkie, and it crackled as he sent orders to bring someone up.
“The Allfather has spoken!” Rhyder called, spreading his arms, and I felt a thrill of vulgar pride in seeing his strength as I sat in the chair, still limp and boneless from my release. “We will gain the Gardens for ourselves and this is how we will do it.”
I felt the decadence of his power on my tongue.
Then it looked like there was an Unsaved man there, being guided into the camp, a man with messy brown hair and a beard, dressed in khakis and a button-up shirt instead of the usual garb of the male Congregants—jeans or work pants, with sweatshirts or leather jackets.
“Show us what you have,” Eli ordered, and I stifled a gasp as the Unsaved man placed a large case on the table and opened it.
Drones.
I had only seen much smaller ones in the cities, the little whirring airborne machines that delivered mail or food.
The first time I had seen them they had frightened me very badly because I was taught that the only things that flew were supernatural entities like angels or demons.
It had taken me a long time to get used to seeing the small airborne machines frequently in the city.
But these drones were all big, battle-scarred ones, heavy gunmetal bodies with powerful tips that could shoot out darts or bullets.
I had heard rumors that Unsaved were trying to develop new weaponry to battle back against the much stronger Congregations.
“I always thought it was against your religion to involve. . . us in your holy wars,” the Unsaved man said. “What made you change your mind?”
“It’s wrong to involve Unsaved,” Eli said, “But these? These are tools given to us by the Allfather to triumph over Apostates and others who would defile the name of the Allfather.”
“Verse 13012,” Rhyder said, his voice a low rumble. “Avenging angels deliver those who are righteous.”
“ What if it doesn’t work ?” Osric asked. “We have had a tentative truce with their Congregation for over a decade now since Jonas consolidated power. If Ronan finds out we helped you, we might be in danger. He controls every waterway in this whole gotdamn region.”
“Do not ignore the clear will of the Allfather that has just been shown,” Rhyder retorted harshly, “It does not matter what the Apostate does. His weakness and his immorality will be wiped from the face of the earth as the Allfather wills it.”
“The Allfather is GOOD,” he said again, his voice strong and confident, unstoppable brute power in the way he spread his arms.
“All the time,” they replied in chorus.
The Allfather is good
Rhyder moved over to some of the other leaders, and I watched him go. This was how it had always been. My twin always bold, strong in voice and throat for the Allfather, and me trying to blend into the scenery and pretend like I wasn’t there.
When had I started to doubt the Allfather?
My Mother had been the one to make me doubt the Allfather.
She had been captured in a raid of another Congregation and married to my father, and for as long as I could remember she had whispered in my ear, quick, rushed warnings and contradictions of the Prophet that sometimes confused me.
Was what she had done a blessing or a curse?
“Even though I have told you the truth, you must be good,” she had said. I remembered her bone-white hair whirling in her face, the way her blue eyes always looked sad and haunted. How long had she been planning her escape?
She glanced over to where Rhyder had been working later than everyone else in the fields. He always did more, worked harder for the glory of the Allfather.
“Rhyder will make sure you are good,” she said.
And he always had.
I waited with the other whores as the Helpmeets of this Congregations prepared a late supper. Even though it was still quite cool, not spring yet, we would eat outside on long wooden planks stretched over chairs.
Not us, though. As common whores, presumably shared by the whole Congregation, we would be the lowest in status in the whole camp and, accordingly, we would eat last, the chewed and discarded dregs of the table.
We wouldn’t even be allowed to help prepare the meal. Not us with our whorish hands and slutty cunts there for their menfolk to fuck when they got bored of their Helpmeets.
I saw a captured woman with long auburn curls looking at the Unsaved who was still uncomfortably demonstrating how the drones could be used even to dam up a river by carrying loads of bricks or rocks.
“Do you know him?” I asked.
“No. . . no ,” she said. “Well, we went to school together. A long time ago.”
My hands tightened on the bars.
“Oh,” I replied.
“It’s not like that,” she insisted in a low tone. “Well, not exactly.”
But I thought as she looked at him, and he darted one pained glance back at her, that it had been something like that.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Norah.”
When I saw the Helpmeets come around with the leftovers from the table, bones, gristly bits of meat, mashed potatoes scraped into one big pile, some of the other women looked nauseated.
However, I was hungry as fuck, so I grabbed one of the bones I was offered. There was barely any meat on it but I attacked it anyway, cracking open the bone to suck the marrow out from inside it.
Then I saw a pair of huge shitkicker boots stop in front of where I crouched scavenger-like on the ground.
It was my brother, holding out a plate full of ribs dripping with sauce, potatoes swimming in gravy, and even fresh green beans.
I looked up at him.
His brows were drawn together and he looked angry as his eyes scanned the pen they had us in. “You will sleep with me tonight. Not here.”
I wanted to throw the plate back in his face, curse at him, tell him I hated him and I was going to fight anything he wanted to do to me tooth and nail.
But I was hungry and that would’ve been so foolish.
Without a word, I grabbed the plate, and began to distribute the food to the other kidnapped women.
He scanned my face. “This is unnecessary,” he said. “I’ll set up my tent for you now.”
“No,” I said. “If it’s good enough for the other whores, it’s good enough for me. Let me share the food.”
Rhyder hesitated, but then nodded.
“I’ll be back after the readings,” he said.
I nodded.
“Call out if anyone tries to bother you,” he warned, standing up.
“OK, I replied, looking with resentment at his broad back as he left.
“Who is that?” Norah asked as the other women crowded close to share the food.
“My brother,” I said dully.
“Your brother?” she squawked shrilly. “Does he. . . want you like that? Like incest ?”
What was the point in lying?
“He just caught and fucked me in a shack if that counts,” I said, my voice threaded with bitterness.
I wasn’t going to mention that I’d come all over his thighs
“Holy shit,” Norah said, her jaw dropping open.
“Is that what they’re like out here?” a woman with two honey-blonde braids asked.
Utterly, shamelessly depraved and wrong? Yes.
My mouth made sounds of comfort but I knew they were lies.
After each meal it was customary for someone to read passages from the Holy Writ. Boring as shit, but of course Rhyder would never miss it.
Helpmeets began to drift past us, removing the food, and I guessed we weren’t even going to be allowed to help clean up. They only looked at us to glare, some even putting the ends of their head scarves over their noses, as if to emphasize our filth.
“Are these all yours?” one of the men from the other Congregation asked, moving a toothpick slowly from one side of his mouth to the other as he examined us.
New fucking meat, that’s all we were
New wet cunts to dip his cock in
And I should have been looking at the ground, like the other women were.
But I wasn’t fully in the habit yet.
And being with my brother had always made me bolder. In the cities, I had gotten into the habit of keeping my eyes on the cement. Not so low that I couldn’t see if any man tried to grab my tits. But low enough to hopefully avoid any attention. It was what you had to do for self-preservation if you didn’t have someone behind you with knives that would appear in his hands faster than you could blink.
Even if I hadn’t been plain-looking and small, no man in the Congregation would have dared to fuck with me.
“Yes, they are,” Eli said. “Except for that one.”
And he pointed directly at me.
Cold, frozen fear gripped my heart.
No please no please god no
Eli’s eyes flicked over me briefly, as if wondering what Rhyder saw that made him so obsessed, then he opened the gate and left.
The man reached in and dragged me out, my body hitting every fence post on the way.
“You’ll do,” he said.
He was a tall and sinewy man in his 50s, sunken cheeks with crossed knife wounds on his face. Out here away from the cities, Congregations fought hard over shitty pieces of land and it looked like this man had come out on the wrong end of many fights.
“You don’t have a pox do you?”
I hesitated a moment too late.
Rhyder was sitting with his back to me at the table with the Elders and Congregants, his hands raised to the heavens as he prayed, the holy words of thanksgiving spiling from his mouth.
All it would take was opening my mouth. . .
One little word
Rhyder
And my brother would save me as he always had before.
But the anger at what he had done still flared like a dry, crackling heat inside me, the sickening vision of my books and papers, everything I owned, going up in flames.
And by the time I recollected that he was my only protection, it was too late.
This other man had a hand over my mouth and was dragging me into the thin and patchy woods surrounding the center of their Congregation.
Shit
Eli clearly wanted me dead, what if this man left me somewhere to die?
I tried to drag my feet but he only shook me so hard my teeth rattled.
“Stop it, you stupid whore.”
We went further into the dry, tangled brush beyond their settlement.
I tried to struggle, but he just dropped me to the ground and started rummaging around in his pants.
“We haven’t had a good whore run in a while. Fuck, I need this.”
“I belong to—” I began, my throat dry.
Who?
Who did I belong to?
I swallowed bitter bile.
“I belong to Rhyder Oathbringer. He—”
But the man only slapped me across the face and reached into his pants.
His cock was shiny, like it was coated with some kind of slippery slime.
Fuck, had he literally just come from sticking his cock in some other woman, and now I was expected to suck this cold cum off him?
Even though I knew it was unspeakably foolish to try to resist an unknown Congregant, I involuntarily shied away from him.
My action infuriated him so much that he grabbed a branch from a nearby tree, the dead wood snapping in two with a sharp, terrifying crack.
He wielded the branch directly at my face, and my arms only barely managed to shield myself, the branch landing hard on them.
“Are you trying to get away, you little whore?”
The man slapped my hands away and then pressed his cock to my mouth, and I felt the slime coat my lips as he brought the branch down on my shoulder.
Thank Allfather it wasn’t a very heavy one, but it still split the sleeve of my dress open.
I said nothing, knowing if I did he’d shove his cock in my mouth, but the pain made me crumple almost against the tree.
“Open your mouth,” he said. “Or I’ll split your face open.”
I was just about to obey as my skin crawled with revulsion, when suddenly his cock exploded in a wet red haze in front of me, small pink pieces splattering over my face.
Scrambling back, I fell against the tree trunk and screamed.
It was Rhyder.
The other Congregant began to scream, a high-pitched shrill noise, and Rhyder brought out his other knife, his powerful blow piercing the man’s chest and ripping through his ribcage.
If that wasn’t enough to kill him, my brother’s boot to his face certainly was, and I heard the man’s nose crack as he fell onto the ground, his body shaking as his lifeblood spilled out of him.
“Defiler,” Rhyder spat.
Then he turned to look at me, and I couldn’t help the raw thrill I got looking at him despite my terror.
It was a sick pleasure to feel the familiar power of his presence and with an unguarded throb in my voice I sobbed out his name.
“ Rhyder!”
It was enough for him to immediately step away from the corpse and head toward me.
His eyes were gleaming with a very unholy zeal as he looked at me.
“You were only a few paces behind me,” he bit out, his blue eyes pinning me in place, flaming at me. “Why didn’t you call for help?”
“I-I don’t know. I was mad, I guess.”
It was such a weak excuse that my stomach instantly did flip-flops at the look on his face, the way he breathed through his nose, the way there was a slick sheen of sweat on his shirt.
“I told you to call for help,” he snarled, and I twisted to run, my legs getting tangled in my dress, but he grabbed the back of my skirt and hoisted me easily up in the air.
“You want some other man’s cock down your throat?”
“Want that creep’s cock down my throat? Of course not!” I yowled.
The dress rode up, exposing my pussy and ass as I tried desperately to yank it down over my body.
“It is dangerous for you not to obey me, Temperance.”
“OK, OK,” I yelped, frightened at the look in his eyes. “I get it, Rhyder.”
But he shook his head, then placed me on the ground with a gentleness quite at odds with this iron-sharp grip of his hand on my chin.
“I have been very patient with you, sister, because I love you, but you are going to learn to fucking taste what obedience should feel like. Now you are going to swallow me down until your mouth is fucking coated with your submission to me.”
“Nooo,” I cried, but he stepped closer until both massive thighs were on either side of my body.
“Open, sister. Your mouth was made to receive my seed, just like your cunt was put together by the Creator just for me.”
And with one hand he wrenched open my jaw. With the other he ripped down his zipper, and then his cock was in his hand, the massive heft of it now a thick, angry color.
I tried to scream, but he buried it in my mouth.
With his cruel hands prying my jaw wide open, I didn’t have any other option than whimper as it went past my wet tongue and stuck painfully there because he was terrifyingly big. I screamed again, but it was muffled by his size.
“Temperance,” he warned. “This is a blessing.”
He drew his hips back and thrust his cock forward, but still it stuck and I screamed again, throaty and garbled.
“Obey me,” he said. “Take and taste.”
His fingers stretched my lips, pulling them wider open, his palm pressed into my cheek. Then he raised my head and as I saw him pull his hips back again, I tried to push away, off his legs, but his body snapped forward, driving his cock down my throat, making me feel like it was nestling in my fucking rib cage.
I tried to bite down, bite his dick off, but he was still holding my jaw open so I couldn’t.
Rhyder groaned.
“You will obey me, Temperance.”
I felt his cock cut off my ability to breathe and I tried to wriggle but of course I was trapped by his hands and cock, panic surging through me as he brought his cock out, giving me a moment to gasp painfully for breath, then he shoved his thick length down again so the tears ran down my cheeks as I struggled to take him.
“Swallow,” he ordered again, his voice low and hoarse, his cock savaging my mouth.
His heavy balls slapped me so hard on the face and cheeks that my skin began to sting.
Then he erupted inside me, the cum thundering down my throat, coating my tongue and the roof of my mouth, choking on my brother’s dominance and control.
If I had expected him to let me go then, I was very mistaken.
The cum was still dribbling out the sides of my mouth as my brother removed his cock, the glistening length still hovering near my face, then he examined under my tongue, his blue eyes sharp and hungry still.
“Not quite coated yet, Temperance. I want your submission coating you, so filled that your obedience is leaking out of your beautiful mouth.”
And he moved his thick cock in my mouth again, his hand forcing my face up so he could watch my submission to him, his rough fingers tracing each tear down my cheek, each rivulet of cum down my throat.
I raged at him.
“Shh, my angel,” he said, and I felt his thighs tense. “You need this so you learn to obey me next time. The world is dangerous and I am your only protector.”
Then he shot another heavy load down my throat as I fumed helplessly, his release spilling out of my mouth and rolling down my face and chest, leaking between my breasts, dripping off the tips of my nipples.
My mouth ached as he finally let me go, my lips feeling like they had cracked open with his size, and I felt them gingerly.
“Don’t fight me next time,” Rhyder said.
I tried to reach up to slap his fucking asshole face, but he caught my hand easily, kissing my wrist.
“I love you,” he said, his grip tightening on mine, moving his lips up my arm, making me shiver with the inexorable power of his cruel love.
“I just want you to be safe,” he said, my stomach turning over at the way he looked when he raised eyes from my skin, and I was too frozen to protest when he turned back toward the settlement or scream at how my nipples tightened until they were so hard they felt like little wicked slivers of glass scraping against my filthy dress and the last remnants of my prior life in the cities.